Physical Health of a Dressage Horse

A dressage horse should be examined everyday to see how their muscles are doing, and there should be a nice top line. Find out where a horse should have the most muscle definition with helpful advice in this video on horse training and dressage.

OK, it's very important to look after your horses, and constantly, day to day, go and look at how they're looking muscle wise. Of course, Amicelli, who's a seasoned Grand Prix horse, is going to have a lot more muscle, you know, compared to a horse that's a four-year-old, five-year-old, just starting out in the world, and in the dressage training. So, you can see what you ideally want to see is that they have a nice top line, that there's a lot of muscling up here, not a lot of muscle in here, you don't want to see sort of an under neck. You want to see a beautiful, muscling coming right out of the whither to develop this nice, big neck. And also having the shoulder muscling here, throughout, throughout the back, you want to see that the back is nice and tight, and muscley, not that, you know, that you can push on it, and the horse is not sensitive, you want to see that the he's comfortable there. And also then, through out his hind quarters, that he's got a nice, round croup, with a lot of muscling behind. You don't want to see, you know, anything sticking out here, or having sort of the croup out, and then dive down again, you want to see a nice, round bum. And also that the weight is good, and he's in good flesh, having a nice, round barrel. And so, you can really tell a lot about the horse's age, their training, whether it's good training or not, by looking at their muscling. If the muscling is good, you know, you know that you've worked your horse properly. So, very important to just, you know, keep an eye on it every day, when you're grooming your horse, and just checking to see what, where can I improve the muscling of my horse, where am I lacking, what is looking good.