Freedom has been off the past week. He’s not lame. At least he’s not off at the walk or the trot. Nope, he looks just fine until you ask him to canter. Then you get a discombobulated mess. And he’s not happy. It’s particularly bad going to the left.

I massage him regularly so it wasn’t hard to find what’s bothering him. His hamstrings are very very sensitive. The “don’t touch me or I’ll kick you into New Hampshire” kind of sensitive. And he’s reactive over his sacroiliac joint.

Right now I’m really, really hoping it’s not an SI problem. I’m hoping he has as soft tissue injury caused by running like a maniac and tweaking something. I’m hoping that some anti-inflammatories, massage, rest and long walks will show an improvement soon, or else I’ll need to bring the big guns in.

I decided to do some body work on him and see if I could

help him feel better. The tough part is that he’s a twitchy, sensitive horse at the best of times. If he never got groomed again, that would be fine with him.

I started slowly and with infinite patience and the lightest of touches, finally got some really good releases out of him. Then we finished it off with a half hour of walking under saddle and a bit more massage at the end.

As I’ve said here before, I use The Masterson Method on him. These are some of the techniques that seemed to help: