On Mon, Mar 05, 2007 at 10:36:54AM -0800, Judy Ryder wrote: > When a horse racks too much, his shoulder muscles hypertrophy, his pectoral > muscles atrophy, and he looks muscle bound laterally, yet narrow in front.
his pectoral muscles are pretty big but stiff, and i'd say the same about his shoulders. overall he has a kind of "bodybuilder" thing going on, where his muscles are well-developed but not very flexible. we're working on this with massage. > Maybe what you are looking for is lift of the front legs, timing-wise, to > get out of the way of the hind legs? yes, that's about it :) > When Stjarni is at liberty, does he naturally lift, or reach, with the > front? at the trot, yes -- he has a very high-stepping trot. less so at the tolt at liberty, so it may be a timing thing of getting his front feet out of the way and keeping them that way. when his tolt is at its best, he leaves one track left and one track right in the snow; at its worst the back hoof print (bare) is noticeably behind the front (shod) print. sorry if this is confusing -- i get my information about stjarni's gaits from how it feels in the saddle, and how the prints look behind me, and i know it's hard at least for me to translate that into how it must look... --vicka
