More Nonsense – Biomechanical Dressage

            The problem with believing everything you read is that you might believe that there was no concentration camp in Auschwitz, and that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is working on a new drug to cure cancer. I personally do not think that a slick magazine is were you go to learn brain surgery

I was going to write a serious article. I did my due diligence, and read a slew of medical papers, had about fifteen footnotes, and then I decided that it was a complete waste of time. People ten years from now are still going to be debating about what is the best training method, and they will probably still be supporting their opinions by offering experts in Astrophysics and quoting The Analects of Confucius.

I have my own theories that I would like to pass on to you. I think that the problem is the saddles we use. All this talk about building a bridge, well I think I know why your horse’s buttocks looks like Clarissa Lockhart’s.

It’s the saddle, stupid. If you want to put some muscle on your horse’s buttock then you will have to start using the saddle that I have designed for that purpose.  Basically I have designed a spring that spans over your horse’s back. After reading Darwin's Theory of Evolution, he didn't mention how the horse would evolve to carry us around. Since evolution evidentially forgot the spring, I intend to correct that error.

I have constructed a carbon fiber apparatus that is molded specifically to your horse’s shoulders and is connected to the horse’s buttocks via space age material that can support five thousand pounds without failing. Now that’s what I call a bridge. Not only will you not have to spend hours plodding around in a rising trot, but you will have a very comfortable ride since my saddle not only has a better suspension than your BMW but costs $1000 less.

And another thing on the drawing board is an attachment to the saddle that will have arms that are suspended from the rear of the superstructure. These artificial appendages will attach behind the horses rear legs. The reason for this should be obvious. We want the horse to be able to bring his hind legs under his body where they belong, and not swinging out behind him. With my saddle your horses hind legs won't be over X when the front legs are already at H. 

The specially designed universal joint - which incidentally was fashioned after the space shuttle open bay retraction system - can withstand a temperature of minus 500 degrees Celsius.  This should be great news to those of you in Canada who will be posting on your horses outside in the winter. The rider will be able to control the spring effect of the artificial appendages so that without any people on the ground with whips applying them to the horse's hocks, the horse will be able to do what looks like a piaffe when the horse’s hind legs are automatically popped up and down in proper rhythm. We were not going to produce the “Piaffe Assistant” since we still had not figured out how to keep the horse’s buttocks from bobbing up each time a leg were lifted, but to our surprise we were told that bobbing only detracts one point, and is not really a concern to the consumer.

Stay tuned. We believe that in your lifetime it will be possible to construct not only bridges and Piaffe Assistants, but we will actually be able to build a totally anthropomorphic robot using sophisticated animatronics and unlike evolution, we realize that humans want to ride horses now and not have to wait another 5 million years for the evolutionary fix. You’ll actually be able to sit to the trot immediately like you would with any well trained horse.