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Gray-Gun Arabians

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25.01.2022 Gray-Gun Control.photo credit Phyllis Thomson.

23.01.2022 Manana Pharo and Ewyon Park Shilo

22.01.2022 Fun day at the beach a few weeks ago with Gray-Gun Control (left) and Gray-Gun Ooh La La.

21.01.2022 First 80k ride of the 2020 season Sterling Crossing Starter. First ride back for Gray-Gun Ooh La La after a 18th month break. Thanks Mark and Oola. Photo credit Sarah Sullivan Photography.

21.01.2022 Scrambling in Floats (Trailers) Scrambling (inability to balance, leading to panicking and falling whilst travelling) in horse floats is a very common probl...em. First things first - it has little to nothing to do with your float. Horses who stop scrambling when you put them in an angle load instead of a straight load, have just had a band-aid put over the real problem. The problem lies within your horse. Not your float. The same goes for if you have to take the divider out of your straight loader to give the horse more room to spread its legs. The horse will be too weak to stand with the hind legs in normal posture and balance at the same time - the problem lies in your HORSE, not your float. Scrambling happens in horses for either physical or psychological reasons. Physical Physical reasons for scrambling usually start out of the blue following a physical event/injury. One day your horses is fine and the next they are scrambling terribly. The exception to this is long term, chronic weakness leading to instability. The most common injury that will cause a horse to start scrambling is an injury to the hind end stabilizer muscle. If a horse strains or tears this muscle, they simply cannot balance going around corners in a float. This muscle is responsible for holding the horses' pelvis level when the other leg is off the ground or has less weight on it. If the horse has strained or torn his stabiliser, it will have sharp/sudden pain whenever it tries to engage this muscle to balance, resulting in scrambling. Sacroiliac injuries will also have the potential to cause scrambling. An injury to one or both SIJ's will cause the horses' weight-bearing to change, leading to them standing with their weight anteriorly in their toes, instead of posteriorly with their weight going into their heels. They are not able to balance well with this posture and in acute cases, they will also be reluctant to weight-bear on the affected side. This means any time you turn a corner and the horse has to load the compromised leg, scrambling can occur. Effectively, any kind of hind end injury could lead to scrambling but the above two injuries, especially in their acute stages, are the most common sudden-onset cause. Longer-term, a horse with chronic weakness will struggle to stand balanced in a float, especially on longer trips. To fix this, you need to treat and rehab the injury. This is done by using osteopathy for specific muscle release, myofascial release, and joint mobilisation, strengthening exercises (both on the ground and under saddle) and stretches. Re-Training the travelling position In some cases, the horse may have had a fright or slip within the float and is now afraid to use the full floor area of the bay it's standing in. This often happens with the front legs where the horse has had a slip/fright will not stand with one foreleg in the top corner of the float bay. This means it stands with its front legs in more of a scissor formation and when you turn the float, the forelegs aren't square and the horse loses its balance - as shown win the picture below. This is easily corrected using simple groundwork. You simply have to have a look at how your horse positions itself in the float and then (outside of the float), teach it a simple forward step command for each of the front legs. This is easiest using a dressage whip as when you get in the float to do the next step, you'll need it as an extension of your arm. After training the forward step on the ground, you load your horse into the float and then using the same command, correct their posture within the float. Keep doing this until your horse is comfortable to stay standing with both forelegs in the top corners of the float bay. If you feel safe, you can keep correcting your horse whilst the float is moving (in a paddock at home), as well. Psychological/fear orientated problems This is the trickiest side to scrambling, where the horse continues to scramble even when there is no longer a physical problem. When the horse enters the float, it is already prepared for something bad to happen (pain/instability), so they start scrambling pre-emptively. The best way to solve this is to work through the desensitisation and overshadowing techniques taught by Andrew McLean in the Equitation Science Method. I'll attach the link to further information on this below. The best cure for this is prevention. If you notice your horse suddenly starts scrambling, fix the physical cause straight away before the horses becomes too afraid to travel and you have another larger/harder problem to fix. Further reading on desensitisation and overshadowing https://www.researchgate.net//The-application-of-learning- https://books.google.co.nz/books https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18569221/

19.01.2022 Khadi ( GG Vanharlen's sire) with John Downs.

17.01.2022 Gray-Gun Morning Glory ( Aradean Fantasia x Manana Pharo)

16.01.2022 Mark Harris with Vanharlen. The next day after the last ride of the season at Fernvale. 2019. (Aradean Fantasia x Khadi)

16.01.2022 Gray-Gun Control ( Barein Shania x Manana Pharo)

15.01.2022 A exercise to remember

15.01.2022 A lovely image of Diablo who is owned by Tracy Lee .Who is by our stallion Ewyon Park Shiloh. A big boy at 16.1 hands. Thanks Tracy for the pic.

13.01.2022 Dam Gray-Gun Ooh La La x Om El Shadeek.

13.01.2022 Gray-Gun Silver Lining (Left) and Gray-Gun Shazam.

11.01.2022 Gray-Gun Shazam.(Gray-Gun Ooh La La x Om El Shadeek. 19/11/2019

11.01.2022 GG Sheneekie 24/07/2020

10.01.2022 GG Sheneekie and GG Shazam.

09.01.2022 Gray-Gun Garrison (Latif Jemima x Ewyon Park Shilo)

09.01.2022 Gray-Gun Ooh la la. Today on the road to recovery after a paddock accident. Hopefully will be back on track for next season.

08.01.2022 Gray-Gun Krisita (Zita) (Aradean Fantasia x Pandamon)

08.01.2022 Something for the weekend :-) Brain Training Use poles, soft materials, big rocks, whatever handy, put all in a heap so that distances between objects, thickn...ess and heights vary, then patiently and on a long lead ask your horse to find its way through the maze The calmer your horse will approach this task, the better are its coordination skills which are being controlled by the cerebellum, the more nervous and rushing your horse approaches this task the less developed this part of the brain is. Flight instinct sets in earlier if the horse’s ability is challenged by the task because the situation decreases its ability to escape in case of danger. Calmly and patiently ask your horse to go through the maze a couple of times especially if it struggles with the task or becomes worried and nervous. Improvement should show with every repetition as new connections in the cerebellum are established each time. If the horse struggles to calm down, reduce the number of obstacles until the horse feels safer. Once your horse masters the task without worry or hesitation you can ask the same to be done in trot (you might want to increase distances between the obstacles a bit for that though)

03.01.2022 Surely it doesn’t really matter that much if my foot is not level in the irons? It matters, it really does! When we ride, we need flexible joints that help abso...rb the motion. For the joints to do their job, we need to make sure that we are in a good alignment and not bracing thru the joints. I love this simple image showing the heel view because it clearly shows the impact on the shin bone if you place too much weight on one side of your foot. (Image cited fm Franklin, Eric. Dynamic Alignment Through Imagery. Human Kinetics, 2012). Now if the shin bone has to change angles, ask yourself what happens to the knee joint, the thigh bone and the hip joint? The pelvis? The spine? A great deal of research has been done on the impact to the pelvis and the spine if a person over supinates or over pronates the foot. Think about a horse that has been poorly shod and the lameness that can follow. It’s worth consideration. Find your tripod feet

02.01.2022 out of Latif Jemima by Eywon Park Shiloh

01.01.2022 2019 Success for the year for Graysen , Mark and Gray-Gun Vanharlen.

01.01.2022 Some pics of our little pocket rocket GG Morning Glory while we were eating breakfast. She always gladdens my heart and has been left in the paddock far too long.