Sunday 30 August 2020

Lottie - Case Study



Name
Age
Type
Job
Lottie
14
Irish Sports Horse
Dressage/ Allrounder
OWNER: Ruth Ofield

Ruth bought Lottie five years ago from a local riding school after having regular lessons together. The pair competed in a few unaffiliated dressage competitions where they started to show some promising results. The following year Ruth decided to affiliate to British Dressage, quickly going up through the levels and regularly gaining fantastic scores of over 70%. Lottie is actually a brilliant allrounder as she also a loves to jump, enjoys a hack and has proved bold on the hunting field. Ruth planned on competing Lottie at medium level British Dressage in the 2020 season.

Ruth decided to bring Lottie to Moulton Equine Therapy Centre in March 2020. With the lambing season ahead and a busy work schedule Ruth did not think she would be able to maintain Lottie’s fitness regime for the coming competition season. Lottie had been swimming and used an aqua treadmill before so there was no doubt that she would cope well with the programme that we designed for her.

 

Lottie stayed at the Equine Therapy Centre for two weeks. Her comprehensive programme consisted of working in deep water on the aqua treadmill to increase hind limb engagement and build core strength and condition along with a tailored swimming programme to increase her cardiovascular fitness. At the weekends, Ruth took advantage of our off road hacking so Lottie had a very varied and pretty intense work programme during her stay.



Lottie on the aqua treadmill -          


Lottie swimming -                          

Before

 

          







After


Whilst we appreciate that photographic evidence can be very subjective to lots of factors, we do think these photos of Lottie show an increase in muscle tone particularly over the hind quarters                    
     

This year has been very disappointing for most in the equestrian industry and is particularly frustrating for Ruth as an owner that was so committed to her horse’s development and wellbeing that her extra effort in sending her horse to a centre such as ours to kickstart her season essentially ended with Lottie being turned away while the county was in lockdown

Hopefully with restrictions eased, Ruth will now be able to get back on track with Lottie’s training at home and will manage an outing by the end of the year.