Finding More Explanations

Thursday of last week was TC's second time being worked on by the bodyworker from this post. I've been doing his exercises twice a day whenever I'm down there, but I have been taking more days off from the barn since he moved into his pasture so that I could work on my burn out. So while I'm sure they'd be more effective if I'd done them every day, I was hoping that 4-5x a week was good enough. 

When she got there, I was nervous though. I hadn't seen massive changes in him, but the things she'd found were kind of subtle anyway. Plus, I'd had a setback with the saddle situation realizing that while he loved the butterfly saddle, my back hated it. 

Riding this horse bareback is horrible

Turns out that she did see some progress, so that's good! 

The one thing I definitely noticed was that the clicking in his jaw is now gone. She said that it would go away with his exercises and it FUCKING DID. Amazing. Still getting the vet out for a dental though. 

His right hind was much improved and so we got to work on his left hind. He has a tough time straightening it behind him, meaning that he, I dunno, probably doesn't use it as much as he uses his right hind. He also stands a little weird when he pees and she got to see that. I asked her about it and she said it was all related to his left hind. So now, for the next month, we work on that. 

I seriously cannot sit his trot to save my life without
the structure a saddle provides

Just like in my last post, he got a bit itchy on his right hind leg as he usually does, but for the first time, he also got itchy down his left hind as she worked on him, so that was interesting. I've seen less itchiness from him overall, which I'm hoping is good? 

TC also was a little nippy as he usually is with bodywork. But this time he transitioned between being nippy and yawning a bunch! So that was surprising, I know he's yawned a bit with acupuncture, but it's not his go to behavior. I'll be curious if he yawns more at his next acupuncture appointment (next Sunday!).

Another interesting moment came when he started taking big deep breaths and snorting. She thinks that he's got some issues with tensegrity that leads to some problems with his breathing. She pointed it out to me last time and I've noticed that he really doesn't take deep breaths ever and he's very prone to holding his breath. This time he finally let go enough to take two or three really big breaths and he snorted a lot, so that was fun to see. 

My back gets quite round riding him bareback
because I'm protecting it pretty aggressively with
my abs, too much of a crunch but whatever

She thinks he has some gelding scaring, I guess? I haven't read much about it but I don't doubt there is something going on in his hind legs that the vets don't see other than the surface "he doesn't use his left hind in the same way as his right hind but he's not lame" so I'll run with it. We are just getting his hips and hind legs more mobile and hopefully that helps. 

This time she did also get to work on his neck a little bit. He was VERY concerned about her getting near his neck and the way he reacts makes her think that there is something going on in there that he doesn't want to "talk" about. She finally got in a little bit, but had to be quick and light to make sure he didn't tense up again. I think I'll work on some behavioral stuff in the cross ties for this, teach him to lower his neck on command so I can get him more comfortable being in that posture in general. 

I love this posture though, this is what I'm after
all the time and when we get him confident here,
we will start lifting the front end

Once again, we got a good list of exercises to do. She wants me to continue with all the work we're doing but add in two exercises for the left hind and another exercise for his shoulders. Then she comes back in a month! 

I'm really excited to see the changes. We have a saddle trial coming up from EQ Saddle Science, so hopefully that gives me a solid two weeks with a saddle that fits him (and then I'll either start the buying process or give it back and say thanks but no thanks) so I'm curious to see how much I can start feeling undersaddle. 

Currently we're doing a lot of clicker training with the long lines and bands, trail riding, and then some short bareback rides. I don't really want to use my saddle until it's seen by a fitter. But it's all good because it's giving me more time to do his exercises each day that I'm down there!