How I check Archie's back before and after every event

Archie has been with me through four seasons of eventing, from entry-level training at home to the 2-star at Boneo Park last spring, and the one habit that has saved me from nasty surprises is the quick check I do along his topline on competition days. Eventers put their horses through varied work in a single weekend — dressage, show jumping, cross-country — and each phase loads the back muscles differently. A few minutes of hands-on time, repeated consistently, has become my way of catching small problems before they grow.

This routine is not a replacement for the body worker or the vet, and I am not a qualified equine therapist. It is a practical check I picked up from a coach at Werribee Park, refined after a long float trip home once taught me a hard lesson about tight backs and dehydrated muscles. Below I walk through what I keep in my float, the order I do things in, and the moments between phases where I sneak in another feel.

The kit I keep in the float

Everything lives in one plastic tub in the back of the truck so it never goes missing at a busy venue. Inside there is a clean hand towel, a soft body brush, latex gloves, and a small bottle of rubbing alcohol to cool my hands before I run them along his back on a hot arvo. I also keep a digital thermometer, sorbolene cream so I do not pinch his skin when pressing along the spine, and a couple of instant cold packs rotated between an esky and the float's side pocket.

On deep-going days like the sandy terrain at Camperdown or the hill country around Albury, I add a thick woollen cooler. The cooler matters for the post-ride check because a wet horse on a windy Victorian day chills fast, and a shivering horse tenses the long muscles and ruins any reading I am trying to take. A notebook goes in the tub too, so I can jot down what I felt and compare it with the entry from the week before.

A friend who competes at Gawler in South Australia uses a near-identical setup, and she started hers with just a hoof pick and a bucket. The point is to have what you need in one place so that when you pull your rig into the float parking at seven in the morning and you have already driven two hours from home, you are not rummaging through hay nets.

Feeling for symmetry before I tack up

My first hands-on moment happens before the saddle goes anywhere near him. I stand on the left side, run an open palm flat along his neck, down over the withers, and then gently along the long muscles either side of the spine all the way back to the croup. I press with the flat of my fingers, not my fingertips, and I watch his eye and his back rather than looking at my own hand. A relaxed horse will let the back sink slightly under steady pressure. A sore one will twitch, hollow, or swing his hindquarters away.

I repeat the same on the right side and mentally compare. Most of the time the two sides feel roughly even. When they do not, I press more deliberately on the firmer spot to see if it is just a tight band or something deeper. Hot spots, swellings, or any patch where his skin ripples when I touch it all get a note. If something feels genuinely painful rather than just stiff, I do not ride and I get the saddle fitter or the vet involved before the warm-up begins.

I do this check twice more on the day. Once before the warm-up for dressage, so I know whether he is starting tight or already loose. And once before I tack up for the jumping phases, because cross-country especially asks for a lot of rotation through the loins. It takes maybe ninety seconds each time, which feels like nothing weighed against the cost of pushing a sore horse around a course.

Warming up on the flat before dressage

The warm-up is part of the check, not separate from it. I walk Archie on a long rein for at least five minutes in whatever quiet corner of the venue I can find, listening to his footfalls and watching his hindquarters from behind. A happy back produces a long, even stride with the hind feet tracking up evenly into the forehand. A grumpy back produces short steps behind, a stiff tail carriage, or a tendency to break to canter on the wrong leg.

Once he is walking through nicely, I let him stretch down on a long line for another couple of minutes. This is the best early-warning system I have. A horse that lengthens and drops his head, licking and chewing, is telling me his back is supple. A horse that stays braced and above the bit even on a loose rein is telling me something is sore or cold or both. I take note and adjust accordingly, sometimes extending the walk phase by another ten minutes if the surface feels deep or unfamiliar.

By the time I pick up the contact and ask for trot, I usually know what kind of test I am going to have. If his back is engaged and swinging I can ride the harder movements. If he is tight, I ride a quieter, more correct test and protect him for the jumping phases that follow. Coaches around Bundoora and in the Adelaide Hills have all said the same thing in different words: protect the back on the harder days, because cross-country will find any weakness you left uncovered in the dressage arena.

Cooling down and checking again afterwards

The post-competition check matters just as much as the morning one, because this is when small strains show up as the adrenaline wears off. The first thing I do is loosen the girth a hole at a time over five minutes, walk him on a long rein, and offer him a drink. Walking lets the muscles flush out the lactic acid and lets me watch him move. I am looking for any shortening behind, any head bob, or any reluctance to step under with a particular hind leg.

After ten minutes of walking I take the saddle off, throw the cooler on if it is cold, and do the same flat-palm run along his back that I did in the morning. Often the muscles feel looser and warmer, which is normal. What I am watching for is a new area of tension, a hot patch, or a spot that is sore to pressure now but was fine before. Anything new goes in the notebook with the time and which phase he had just completed, so I have something concrete to tell the body worker on Monday.

If the day has been big, like after a long course at Wallaby Hill, I cold hose his legs and check the sweat pattern under the saddle. Uneven sweat, dry patches, or rubbed spots all point to fit issues that have crept up. Sometimes the answer is a flocked panel that has compressed, sometimes something the saddler needs to look at. Catching it at the float rather than three weeks later at home has saved me a lot of guilt.

When the check tells me to call someone

Most weekends the routine ends with nothing more than a tired horse and a coffee. Some weekends it does not. If I press along his back and he drops or swings away, if his stride stays short even after a long walk, or if I can feel a deep, hot, knotted band under the longissimus muscle, I call our body worker. In Australia most of the good equine therapists I have used are booked out weeks ahead, so I keep the after-hours vet number saved as well. Genuine back pain is a vet job until proven otherwise.

A useful Australian habit I picked up is keeping a small contact card in the float glovebox: body worker, saddle fitter, vet, farrier, and the friend who lives fifteen minutes from Werribee who will lend a yard if Archie needs a night of rest. Having those numbers in my own handwriting, rather than buried in my phone, has made a couple of stressful afternoons much calmer. The local Pony Club network is also brilliant for this — coaches and parents share who they trust and who is worth the drive.

The check itself is not diagnostic, and I never pretend otherwise. It is just data points I collect ride after ride. Over time the notebook becomes a story, and the story makes it obvious when something is a normal training tweak versus a problem that needs a professional. Archie has had three body work sessions in four years — all caught early, all sorted without a long layoff.

Float trips and the travel-day check

Competition days in Australia often start with a long drive, whether that is five hours from the Riverina to Melbourne, two hours across the range to Boneo, or a full day north from Hobart. Float travel compresses a horse's back in a way that arena work never does, especially if the wind picks up across the Hay Plains. I always do an extra back check at both ends of a long trip: before I load, and again once he has stepped off.

The pre-loading check matters because I never want to send a tight horse down the highway for hours. If he feels braced I will walk him for ten minutes, do some carrot stretches in the float yard, and only load once the muscles feel soft. The post-arrival check matters because travel dehydrates the intervertebral discs and the long muscles, and a stiff horse off a float is far more likely to hurt himself warming up in a strange arena. I have lost count of the competitors I have watched at Werribee pull knots out of their own horse's loins in the float parking on the first morning.

Agistment moves are similar. Every time I shift Archie to a new paddock, whether a spelling block behind Goulburn or the agistment place near the coast, I do the same check before and after the float trip, then again twenty-four hours later once he has settled. Back health for an eventer is not built in the arena alone — it is built in the small repeated moments when you put your hand on the horse and pay attention to the answer.