effectiveness. I have lumped all the various abdominal muscles together because they act in the same way for the purpose of carrying weight and for locomotion. Since they have a full time job as supporters of the contents of the abdomen, they are very tendinous yet they attach to the ilium and when they contract, they move the hip and the hind leg forward.

      A is the gluteus muscle. It originates at the first and second sacral vertebrae, the tendons covering the croup and at the length of the ilium. Through the tendon of the croup it is also directly connected to the long back muscle, G. The gluteus attaches to the femur at the hip joint. An extension of the greater trochanter above the hip joint gives the gluteus a strong lever in stretching the hip joint. In our drawing, B is the horse’s quadriceps. It originates in two places, the bottom end of the ilium and the front of the femur. It attaches to the patella and through the tendons of the patella to the joint part of the tibia. As it contracts, it stretches the stifle when the leg pushes off and it bends the stifle as the leg swings forward. Attention! Read again, carefully! Please check the drawing against what I just wrote. The way the muscles are attached they cannot bend the stifle but they do bend the hip. It was not my intention to trick you, but I made the mistake myself. Only after reading it again did I notice that I had the quads bend the wrong joint. I felt it might be a good idea to make you stop and think also.

      I hope you found something with caffeine to be able to read on. This reminds me of what one of my students once said: “Darn, if I had known it was going to be this hard, I don’t think I would have started it.“ She is a very good rider!

      Next are letters C and D. C is the biceps and originates at the sacral vertebrae. It also inserts at the ischium, a long extension of the pelvis past the hip joint towards the back. This again increases the power of the biceps in its effort to straighten the stifle. It also bends the stifle while the leg swings forward. It can actually fulfill both these tasks because it attaches at the tibia just below the stifle. As it contracts when the foot is on the ground, its pull acts rearward and straightens the stifle and the hip. When the leg swings forward, the biceps also pulls back, but in doing so it bends the stifle. The companion muscle to the biceps is the long seat muscle, D. The points of origin of both muscles are much the same, and while the biceps attaches to the outside of the tibia, the long seat muscle does so at the inside. Both muscles also stretch the hock through their attachment to the Achilles tendon. Stifle and hock are synchronized in their movement by a system of tendons and ligaments. F is a hip bender. It is also known as the large loin muscle. It originates at the lateral processes of the last two rib vertebrae and the first five lumbar vertebrae, and from there it attaches to the inside of the hip.

      Let us get up and loosen our joints a bit by bending in our hip and knees. This gives us a great opportunity to identify muscles A, B, C and D. You can also locate the kneecap and feel the strong tendons connecting it to the quadriceps on the top and the tibia at the bottom. By

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*Special thanks to artists, Lisa Ludwig and Joseph Havel for their talented and necessary assistance in illustrating this article.