More 17'1" Horses

Few riders deal with horses at 17'1" hands.  Mucho Macho Man comes to mind.  Zenyatta was 17'2", which is likely were my horse is headed.  As a rider and being now "up there" I can relate that at some point up the height scale it becomes a different world.  The critical point might be were the tuck of the body at the fall fails to result in logical contact with the ground.  To say this another way--falling off a normal size horse one can tuck and calculate the landing.  How?  Once you're in the tuck the ground is there, and you can see/sense exactly when ground contact is happening.

When I sit on the taller horse, however, I visualize "tucking" my body at the fall and the problem becomes that there's still plenty of air between my tucked body and the ground.  The central problem thus becomes what happens to the body between getting into the tuck and hitting the ground.

What's concerning me about this--when I sit up there vizualizing a fall what I see is the body spinning at the tuck.  And that the spinning is a bit out of control, which would result then in an out of control landing from a significant height.  This would be true particular if--as frequently happens with falls at the slow gallop in a pasture--the horse has bolted up into the air.

Coming posts will break this down a bit and hopefully analyze correct falling.  The link below is a good one that shows the scope of a 17 hander. One can see in this vid immediately that 17'1" is a different world, and what the concern is in terms of falling off and landing.  Visualize this rider going down compared to one riding those rodeo midgets couple of posts ago.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXI6wv1kBrc

Training:  Two weeks of mostly very cold weather cost some under tack time.  Back on last eve, and the forecast looks good rest of year, knocking on wood.  Short term goal is to have #17 galloping the course within 7 days and #148 walking under tack without protest.