Massage

Walker bit me last night.  The massage therapist told me that when she is massaging them that sometimes the endorphins cause them to be nippy.  Well, I don't think it was the endorphins.  I think he was just getting cranky that we had him standing there for over an hour, and he tried to take a chunk out of my arm.  I was less than impressed.

Other than that, the massage went pretty well.  Walker was super stiff.  She could tell within seconds of me walking him down the hall so she really had her work cut out for her.  She is going to come back again in two weeks to see if she can help improve him some more. 

It turns out that he has natural bad posture.  He stands in his stall (and in the aisle and whenever no one is asking him to move) in a way that relieves some pressure from his back but in fact just makes it worse.  Kind of like my own bad posture.  Apparently we have that in common.  My massage therapist calls it "parking".  He just parks himself.  I guess you don't notice these things when all you see every day is the same horse, but this explain why my old barn owner always said that he seemed to stand weird.

She also suggested to me that he might always have soundness issues due to his conformation and breeding.  Great. 

She showed me a few different stretches, some of which were ironically in EventionTV's new video this week.  For some reason, Blogger is being fussy and won't let me embed it in the post. 

As for the barn search, I'm still working things out.  I haven't been able to find any other barns that have openings (or are decent) other than the one I mentioned already.  Depending on a few different things, we may even end up staying at our current barn for another month or so, but at least it will be an informed decision. 

Today the massage therapist tasked me with lunging Walker to encourage him to move correctly.  I'll be interested to see what kind of effect the massage had overall.