Don't try this at home! LOL

In my last post, I mentioned that *Serenade had a shoulder injury as a long weanling - the vet said she had a "sweeney".  I had never heard of this before, but to sum it up it is an injury to the muscle and nerves and what happens is that it is very sore for a long time and the muscle atrophies.  The vet was pretty confident that given her young age she would make a full recovery... and she has.... except that she is still a bit stiff and short strided on her front legs.  When she was recovering, I did a lot of massage and also stretching of her front legs to keep them flexible.  So, now that she is being trained to ride I decided that I need to teach her to lift up her own shoulders and front legs, goodness knows she has a great shoulder angle and can do this - she just has become used to not using herself properly, which is why I decided to teach her how to do the spanish walk!  Now, I have never trained a horse to do this before and so I went to youtube looking for instructions and one of the things they stress is to stay out of the way of those front legs!  Now, you can see why - have a look!

*Serenade is SUCH a sweet girl, after just a few sessions she is really getting this spanish walk thing - we are now starting to "walk" as well as just lift.  Truth be told, I don't really care if she can do a real spanish walk or not - I just want to show her that she CAN lift her shoulders and legs up to reach out properly.  It has been my experience that if a horse (for whatever reason) learns to move incorrectly, they can be shown the correct way to move and then they can and will be observed to use that new way of moving on their own!  I have seen this happen many many times - so I am hopeful that *Serenade will learn from this to do it by herself.  Horses are athletes and they want and need to move out as best as they can - they will do it if they have an idea how to move.
So here are a couple of photos of her lunging today- not great form, but we will see how she improves in a few more weeks of working with her!

I also worked with *Flame today - she had a surcingle on for the first time today and we did quite a bit of trotting.  By contrast to both how *Serenade is now and *Joe used to be, *Flame is SO well balanced and sure of herself, she is going to be easy peasey, to bring her along.  I did get a few photos of her too - here they are:
Carrie - can you see where *Simon ATE his poor mom's tail?!!

 Having a good look at the lunge line:

 After the snow fell off the tin roof of the barn:

 So beautiful!

I also rode *Joe - he was a STAR today - I am impressed, amazed and delighted with his progress!
Shelly
http://www.curlystandardplace.com