Muscling

When I commented in the last post about Nates muscling showing how poorly he had been ridden  my mom sent me a picture of her gelding Smoke and asked what I could tell by his muscling.

While I admire the nice side shot at a good angle, it is a bit hard to tell a whole lot with saddle and rider. Not that I am any kind of an expert anyway. But I definitely like his neck. Even if it is a bit cresty, but that is well known problem and completely lacking in relevance.He is reaching beautifully into the bit making his neck look even better muscled than it is, which is very nicely muscled. I understand he was mostly just mad about having to stand for silly games. The muscle is all on the top with a complete lack of development of the muscle on the bottom of the neck. If you look at Nate it is nearly the opposite, looking worse here in the picture than it was in real life, I hope, because he is fighting the draw reins.

But back to Smoke, I like him, it’s hard to be unbiased about a horse you know.  His neck is nicely set, coming high out of good withers. The shoulder angle is average not horribly steep but not a lot of slope. I just happen to know his back is nice and short, the way I like them at least, paired with a good long underline, making for that incredibly fast walk he can perform when he wants to. Front legs are straight with good short cannon bones, hind legs set pretty square under him. I happen to know that he goes soundly barefoot, so I’ll say his hooves are nice without being able to see them. All in all he’s a good horse with a quirky personality. Quiet but not and strongly opinionated. I had the pleasure? of starting him and he is definitely one of a kind. He has come a long way from that spoiled, incredibly ugly, rotten, little, orphaned colt the the big pretty boy he is now.