Before and after images help you note progress

When we see our horses day to day or a couple times during the week, it’s difficult to see changes in their muscles, weight, posture, etc. The best way to get a objective view of how these characteristics change (and for their humans) is to take pictures. Front, back, left, and right.

Now, not all our horses are corporative for standing still for pictures, and if you’re without help for taking pictures, you can set up your phone on video mode and walk your horse through the image, stand for a moment, and then go to the next position. Then, you can go back and take screen shots. That’s what I had to do for Caper and Jayden.

Now that the hay field has been cut, the horses can go back to work! They have mixed feelings about that. Caper is a great example of a horse who very quickly loses his strength when not working, so I thought it would be a good opportunity to practice what I teach- with taking before/after pictures and doing the ground work and homework exercise. Jayden will get this too, but she has stiffness issues rather than strength and pain issues.

Another view you might want to take images of is the rump area. Often, like here, horses are weak in the glutes (and asymmetrically weak). The other thing I did was take a “wither tracing” of Caper’s hindend to help note progress. The tracings are another way to objectively measure progress.

Here is an example of a screen shot taken from a video that is at its limit of zoomed in. While the video option isn’t always the clearest option, it is better than nothing when you are trying to note positive progress.