Our clients 'head shaker' Biscotti is doing fabulous. We discovered that there is not only tension mentally and physically in the neck/poll, but also too much weight on his left front shoulder. Moving slightly off balance, he used to put his head tilted to the right when moving, developing the weirdest muscles to compensate this funny posture. He is incredibly clever and here is some impressions of his first session. We started with relaxation: just going easily in and out of 'grazing mode', with a low head, chewing, doing nothing. This was very hard for him. His lips and mouth muscles were twitching like crazy, not finding the 'let it go' mode. Afterwards, we started our way of liberty work, helping him move the best he can. He found a great physical sweet spot, and stayed there in all gaits. Then we did some 'in hand riding'. Once the bit was in his mouth, there was twitching and stress again. I spent some minutes on relaxation with the bit and he discovered that chewing and licking on the nice sweet iron bit was actually amazing. We then set into motion. Whenever I felt him doing the slightest head tilt to the right, I just moved some weight from the left shoulder over and immediately his head comes down and straight again. We worked on understanding to yield to the slightest impulses, backing up and some easy shoulder ins. More updates to follow, but so far very pleased.
