Storm Gets Fixed!

Well yesterday was VERY exciting for me. The locals around here (esp the endurance ppl) have been trying to find a good bodyworker for some time now, that would come up to our area on a hopefully regular basis. There really weren't any takers, or the few that would, wanted to fly in or otherwise make our costs go up to about 300$/horse...too rich for our poor pockets. I knew my horses were all messed up... MY body was really messed up and though I FINALLY got that fixed this September (at a ride I finally found someone that I trusted to put me back into shape...even my FACE was out of line, LOL), I had been riding my poor, tolerant ponies crooked for years! Add to that the minor kinks and misalignment that happen when you put the amount of miles on a horse that I do, or things that get out of whack when a horse trips or slips or whatnot, and I have stiff, sore, out of alignment ponies.
So yesterday we had a clinic with Cindy Schleuss out of the Petaluma, Ca area
(http://www.horsesavvyranch.com/index.html) at a local endurance rider's barn. She is absolutely awesome! And not only does she know her body work stuff, she knows and works on gaited horses and how to get better gaits! So that was a BIG bonus with Storm! I had her work on the other ponies and my little red mare Hoanna was SOOOO out of whack. I can't wait to see the results when I have time to hop up and ride her...I hope for decent weather soon, so I can go do that :) Anyway, here are pictures...












She would first watch the horse move on a lunge line at varying gaits (after getting some history on the horse about use, injuries, concerns, etc...), then work on it a bit....



Then she'd have you move the horse out some more and see how the horse changed, where it still had issues, etc. Then work on it some more, more lunging, and so on. Until she was happy with how the horse moved. It was REALLY neat seeing the change in the horses. The 20yo I ride, who had been moving fairly stiff and short behind,which I had attributed to arthritis (and he had come up with a mystery lameness at the last ride that went away), moved like he was young again by the time she was done. Sure, he wasn't perfect (arthritis can't be fixed), but he was fluid again, not way short, etc. He was bringing his back up, his head in, etc (before he just was fairly ventroflexed and high headed)...and this was on a lunge line, with no rider manioulation going on.... The little red mare change a TON too...it was bizarre...her whole topline was different and she actually has WITHERS now (her main issue was the spine). Too cool!
Anyway, so she did all this with Storm, then we started addressing the paciness. Now some of that of course is genetic as he just IS a very lateral horse, but some of that was indeed coming from being stuck in an inverted frame and then being "stuck in behind the vertical" as she called it...a lot of horses need to learn to come to the vertical...he was the opposite. He had to re-learn to go long and low and get his head back out into a relaxed frame. So instead of lunging in a rope halter (as we did with the others), she brought out her caveson so we could encourage him to bring his nose out and relax. She also agreed with me riding him long and low in a snaffle...NO leverage bits of any kind until he relearned a proper, relaxed position, THEN he could learn to come TO the vertical (not past and above it).
Added to this, he was going to get lunged over cavaletti to break up his pace into a diagonal. All we had at the barn were some small poles, so we used those. But she said to make some actual cavaletti that I could adjust height on, so he'd also have to pick up his feet, as part of a pace problem is a horse "slides" long and low to pace most the time as it is a lazy gait. If he has to lift his feet and learn to elevate his front end and tuck his rear, he will fall more into a rack.
We then began lunging him over the ground poles....


And she also showed me how to lift his back, by using the stiff part of the lunge whip (or better yet she recommends a bamboo rod...easier to handle than the long, floppy whip) to tap him on the belly, which will ask him to lift his back....


And you can tap the legs (best just above the knee...not sure why we were low in this pic) to have them lift the leg higher (resulting in lifting the whole front end better through the shoulders as well and you can determine the rhythm of the footfall that way as well)...

We also got video of some of this...it was funny, cause Storm really didn't know how to lunge well (I had done some when I first got him, but it was always in the round pen and that made it real logical for him. He never really went in "the open" before...and he was getting bored with the whole thing, so we had a hard time getting him to even GO...all the whip swishing, tossing it on him, around his legs....nadda...LOL... and then he would try and evade the poles, so we kept having to put more cones on the sides as barriers. He finally figured it all out in the end though, and it did break his pace (once he stopped trying to canter over the poles, LOL) up and he'd get praised every time he was doing well... We will be setting up cavaletti in the round pen at home and I even have a caveson I can use..
As usual, I can't get a video to upload here...it is taking hours and still no result. Soooo... here are the links to the Youtube versions...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRqUsjpRA9o
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUlk0uPKJSY