Horse Conformation Principles of Form & Function – Volume 2: Head, Neck, Back and Teeth

Product Description

This book contains the best of the world’s largest collection of conformation photos of horses belonging to people of ordinary means. Over 400 examples! Highly readable, this book is addressed to every horse owner and everyone who works with horses!

Chapter 7: The Loin Coupling
Chapter 8: The Saddle-Adapted Back
Chapter 9: Raising the Base of the Neck
Chapter 10: The Throatlatch and Turnover
Chapter 11: The Head
Chapter 12: The Teeth

Plus: Practice judging examples, blank forms, suggested exercises. Includes footnotes, bibliography and references, index. 274 illustrations.
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Volume II builds on core concepts presented in Volume I. It begins with detailed study of the loin coupling — the anatomical key to the horse’s ability to round up and collect (and also to extend, both the back itself and the stride). The multi-layered anatomy of the back is presented in the very practical context of learning to fit a saddle. The book then returns to “the greatest unsolved mystery of the Classical era” with illustrated discussion of raising the base of the horse’s neck. This is given not merely to show variation in how the neck may join to the chest, but to wipe away longstanding confusions about how a horse arches its neck to go properly “on the bit”. The reader learns that there is a world of difference between raising the base of the neck and merely elevating the poll!
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This concept expands in the next chapter with consideration of how the upper end of the horse’s neck may either contribute to collection—or else be bent, twisted, and contorted because the rider makes bad choices through having an incorrect picture of how the poll joint, atlas and axis work. The volume concludes with a detailed look at the bone structure of the horse’s head, including the importance of the hyoid apparatus to breathing, swallowing, and acceptance of the bit (most riders have never even heard of the hyoid apparatus because it is almost never mentioned in other books on conformation). The final chapter illuminates the darkest corner of conformation study—the world inside the horse’s mouth—to show the structure and eruption schedule of teeth, malocclusions that can be detected by the rider or owner, and ageing by the teeth. If your veterinarian or equine dentist has not shown this volume to you, then you need to show it to them!