I did not put the stud chain on him today, and he did well. We have gotten back to the "coming in is good" headspace. I might put it on still sometimes, just to remind him, but it is a good sign.
So after his feet got picked and his grain got eaten, I took him out to the little pea gravel arena to do his stretches.
Now, yesterday he learned to do the stretches but doing each one twice. Today I pulled a carrot out and said "okay we're going to stretch-" and he immediately rocks his legs forward off his heels and onto his toes, stuck his head between his legs, and opened his mouth. Hahaha! "hurhurhut!" he said when I wasn't quite fast enough with the carrot. Damn he's a smart horse.
The head-to-stifle stretch was harder because it was more work, so he kept trying to cut corners. 'Course the trainer I know best there walked past while I was chasing his butt in circles. We did manage it pretty quickly though. He had a harder time stretching on his right side than his left. Hmm. I'm hoping with stretching the work he got done with "stick."
After the stretches he let me pick up all 4 of his legs and move them around. He is way more chill about it, though I could have sworn he was a little disappointed that I didn't pop anything! I don't want to try to without knowing how to do it properly, though he did pop a couple things doing the stretches, which I think was good.
I tried to get some good photos of his spine. I need to also get some back tracings. Keeping him squared up by myself was not possible, however, and the pics I tried to take of the top of his back mostly came out like this:
I kind of like this one though:
Look at those hills!
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