A Canadian friend was telling about the horrible spectacle of a western 

trainer who slammed his horse onto the ground and then placing a foot on the 

horse head was lighting up a cigarette proud of his domination. Blinded by 

his pathetic ego the man was not even capable to realize that his 

demonstration was showing the magnitude of his intellectual deficiency 

rather than his skill. The same pity arises from interviews of riders 

overstressing the upper half of their horse neck, which does not have enough 

muscle mass or ligament to support the stress and try to explain that their 

horse loves it. 

The spectacle of the "blue tongue video" is horrific. The horse's tongue is 

dead, the horse's brain is dead and from the view from behind at the canter, 

the hocks are dead too. All problems result from the hyper-flexion of the 

upper neck. The horse upper neck is very weak. The horse does not have the 

capacity to oppose great resistance nor support much stress in this area of 

the neck. Once trapped in hyper-flexion the horse has no way out. The sole 

defense mechanism left is shutting off the brain and survives the abuse. 

The lowering and hyper-flexion of the neck do not favor the roundness of the 

horse's back as naïve theories want us to believe. At the contrary, the 

practice stiffens the horse thoracolumbar spine and consequently halters 

proper kinematics of the hind legs. Unfortunately, the practice is not 

limited to dressage. Jumper trainers are over-flexing their horses' upper 

neck with the use of draw reins. There is no physical advantage of doing so. 

In fact, the technique alters the horses' capacity to transmit forward 

through their body the thrust generated by the hind legs. The difficulties 

of many hunter horses to make the strides between the jumps result directly 

from this training misconception. 

If one has the curiosity to ask to the trainer why over-flexing the horses 

upper neck, from the perspective of the horse's physiology, the explanation 

will be ludicrous. The only reason one does it is that every body else do it 

too, each one being worry that doing so the other might have some advantage 

in the show ring. 

There are however, locally and all over the world, truly great trainers. 

Susan Kjærgard from Denmark sent us an e-mail that with her permission we 

publish in this newsletter together with an article and a video about "a 

better way." 

Horses perform out of their athletic abilities and mental strength which all 

are directed by the horse's physiology. The western trainer placing his 

dirty boot on the head of his horse lying on the ground has a theory. It is 

simply that the theory is only true within the restricted limits or the 

trainer' skull. We approach in the following study the practice of neck 

hyper-flexion from the perspective of the nuchal ligament that is a 

structure of the neck particularly stressed in the situation of upper neck 

hyper-flexion.