Crystal Balls and Itchy Ponies

On Monday, TC saw someone I'm going to refer to as an equine physical therapist. I don't honestly know what she'd call herself, maybe just a general bodyworker, but I'd call her a magician if that didn't sound so strange. 

When I was trying to figure out what was going on with TC, Kate directed me to a facebook post by someone in our area who had a saddle fit problem and this bodyworker had given the rider lots of exercises for the horse and the change even just in the first month was shocking. The most exciting part was that the horse looked SO MUCH like TC did. That's what led to me trying the Pegasus saddle, but I also emailed the bodyworker to see if she could come out. 

It turned out that Kate already had some slots for an earlier date, so handed one to me and I kept my original slot two weeks later. The first one happened on Monday and then she will come back out in a couple of weeks. 

Before and after pictures

I have to admit, I really got my hopes up. Luckily she absolutely delivered so I didn't have to talk myself down. I'm still SO excited about it. 

The first thing we did was take some pictures to look at his symmetry. She showed them to me and wow, the horse is NOT symmetrical. His entire body is curved to the right. 

She then evaluated him, reading him like a freaking book. It was a little eerie, to be honest. 

"Is he busy in the mouth?" yes he is, he is nearly constantly fiddling with the bit, especially if it's not his turtle top, the only bit he's not constantly chomped on (he still chomps but not ALL the time). 

"Is he tough to steer?" yes he is, he's absolutely tough to steer, I joke about that all the time but let me tell you, he is absolutely not a normal horse to ride. 

"Does he tilt his head sometimes?" yes in the lateral work, especially the shoulder in to the right.

"Is it tough to get his right shoulder up?" yes absolutely, we've been working on that with acupuncture. 

"Is he hard to keep fit? Do you notice him breathing a lot?" I had to think about that... then I told her that now that I thought about it, I've literally never seen him take a deep breath. When she was done working on his diaphragm, he took a huge breath. 

I tried to take conformation pictures but he was
mostly looking like a donkey

There was way more too, just casual things she'd say, even just to him "you find it tough to push off evenly behind, don't you, those glutes don't fire at the same time, huh?" while I'm sitting there just like, wow, I wish I'd found this person way earlier in our work together. I am going to have her work on my horses forever, she's stuck with me. 

She worked on every part of him. She addressed his head (his eyes are literally off center because of... something, when she got done, his eyes were more symmetrical, I don't want to be mean but he honestly looked cuter afterward lol), his shoulders (the right one is stuck forward and down, left one stuck up and back, no wonder I can't steer him), his back (lumbar moves well, ribcage not so much, sacrum not at all), his ribcage (she noted that he had trouble breathing in, as I said above), his hindquarters (glutes don't fire at the same time, right hip is up and stiff, left hip is jammed down), and basically everything but his neck. He wouldn't let her into his neck. 

She told me that he was hiding something in his neck and that generally, he doesn't like to talk about his issues. This is why my sweet, wonderful horse starts to bite people when you do bodywork on him (it's all very gentle! No pulling, hard adjustments, anything, it's just physical therapy-like exercises with zero force, she says she only offers the stretches to the horse vs making them stretch). He was AFTER us for making him think internally. Do NOT make me think about my body, it's easier to ignore it and be a clown. This tracks with what my acupuncturist and the BEMER ladies say about him! And honestly, he's been the toughest horse to gain influence over undersaddle, he's very protective of his body.

This is the best one so we'll run with it. And honestly
he is already looking better than he did before!

We have lots of homework, twice a day exercises for before and after riding. Then she comes back in two weeks and she will evaluate how far we got and give us more things to do. She says it's good to front load these visits so she can figure it all out. She doesn't yet know the root cause because she thinks it's his neck, which she says directly relates to the sacrum, which has almost no mobility, but as I said above, he won't let her touch it. So hopefully he lets her in next time. 

I'm really excited to see how things progress with this stuff. I like that it's all stuff I can do for him, and then she comes in to evaluate and give us more exercises. 

On a kind of related note, my HSA is apparently going to start costing me money to maintain, there's not a huge amount of money in it, so I figure I'll just spend it down this year rather than pay the fee. So, I'm going to start doing my own physical therapy again because as my horse gets more symmetrical, I don't want to screw him up! 

TC's physical therapist said that the way he looks and acts, she can tell that the way I ride him helps him rather than hinders him, buuuut she also mentioned that he might have sciatica down his right leg (it's always that leg that he's itchy on and I never seem to find his spot, coincidence?) and that's the leg that I have sciatica on. So hopefully as we both get better, we'll help each other rather than potentially giving each other our problems. But it's nice to know that she doesn't think I'm doing any harm by riding him.