Handling a Dislodged Tooth
Most of the time when a tooth has been knocked out, it can be replanted and retained for life, especially if the tooth has been properly handled. One critical factor in achieving a successful replant is the care and handling of a dislodged tooth.

The best way to store a tooth is to immerse it in a pH-balanced buffered cell-preserving solution, such as Hank’s or Viaspan® (used for transplant organ storage). Hank’s solution (under the trade name Save-a-Tooth®) may be purchased over the counter at many drugstores. With the use of a proper storage and carrying container, there is an excellent chance of having a dislodged tooth successfully replanted.

Vision and Corrective Lenses
Your vision, just like the strength in your arms and legs, is an important part of your overall performance, and the demands on your vision during sporting activities are rigorous. To ride your best, you must know what’s behind you, beside you, and in front of you at all times, and this takes a variety of visual skills. If your natural vision inhibits your athletic performance, ask your doctor about corrective lenses.

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Correct ground work is indispensable for later advanced work. Therefore, working fluent, balanced, elastic, calm, and obedient transitions from working canter to working trot is part of the foundation training. The horse can perform these transitions with relative ease. For the rider, the most important concept to understand is that every transition must be prepared. Preparation through half-halts enables the horse to respond calmly to the transitional aids.

Here are some guidelines offered with the customary word of caution not to regard them as recipes. Invest all schooling of a horse with feelings. Understand the tasks intellectually and then feel for their proper physical application when riding.

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Unless the rider sits correctly, the horse will move with pain or discomfort. A deep, adhesive, balanced seat that correctly partners the horse’s movement is indispensable for the rider who wants to help rather than destroy his horse. The absence of any discomfort for the horse signals that mutual cooperation between horse and rider can possibly begin. Through a good seat, we can gain the horse’s trust in us as a partner and his attention to our wishes. Only a correctly seated rider can apply the aids effectively. By the combination of becoming a harmonious weight and by communicating properly, we may achieve the desired athletic development in our horse.

Relaxation allows horse and rider to harmonize, finding pleasure in moving through space in cooperative unity. With appropriate strength in specific muscle groups, the rider can use his aids to communicate with his horse.

Balancing the rider in the saddle is the first and paramount step for him on the way to controlling the horse. As long as the rider fears falling off, or even just losing his balance, relaxation cannot be expected. When losing balance, we instinctively tighten and grip with many sets of muscles, hoping that by strength, we can prevent falling off. Lungeing by an expert provides the rider with the hours in the saddle that give a sense of safety through improved balance. At first, the rider should hold the front of the saddle or a gripper strap and not the reins. The rider will gradually become independent of the need to hold on to anything to secure his balance. Once the rider has stopped losing his balance and slipping in the saddle while riding the basic gaits, he can begin exercises that involve moving various parts of his body independently.

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The half-halt is almost synonymous with dressage riding. Classical riding idealizes the perfecting of the horse’s balance under his rider, without the force of hands. When properly done, the half-halt is a rebalancing aid without pulling.

The success of a half-halt is dependent on the rider’s steadiness and coordination in the torso, for it is based on the anchorage of the seat. The driving aids, so intimately at the heart of a proper half-halt, cannot propel the haunches forward without the restraint of the forehand by a firm anchorage of the seat. The half-halt is an interlude of briefly doubling both the restraining and the driving aids.

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For aiding the flying change, we must be concerned only with phases five and six of the canter. In phase five, a rider can see the horse’s outstretched foreleg on the ground slowly slant backward as his body travels over it. With this movement of the receding inside foreleg of the horse, the rider’s inside (forward) leg must slowly recede. It travels backward on the horse’s side into an “outside” leg position. As a result of the rider having changed his leg position to the opposite of what it was, his entire seat and hand position should change harmoniously.

In phase six, the horse is suspended above the ground and comes easily into harmony with the rider’s new position. Without anchorage to the ground, the horse can rebend himself into a new lateral position. By the time his flight is concluded, he will exercise the option of touching down with the opposite hind leg on the ground. The flying change will have been performed!

Two words of caution: Before asking for a flying change, produce an impulsive, collected canter. As you change position, and with it aiding diagonals during phase five, you must do it harmoniously so that during phase six, you can once again clarify the new balance to the opposite side.

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