Miss Josie and body work

Josie turned one year old on March 19th. She is in a growth spurt, and I've put her back on grain to go with her grass hay. This year will be a fun year with her, as our focus will be on ground work and manners, and getting her used to all the things she will need to know about as an adult horse- like trailering, leading and standing square, lightness on the leadrope, sacking out, obstacles, etc.
Yesterday, Shayla worked on her feet and she is doing quite well- although she did try to nip Shayla at one point... or was it twice... bad Josie! A quick correction and she didn't try it again, though.

I think this was just after the "correction"....

I'll be good! Honest!

She also had body work done on her for the first time, and there were several places that needed adjustment; her wither, first ribs and elbows were adjusted, and it was pretty cool to hear the elbows pop into place after the ribs were done. We also did stretches with her front legs, crossing them in front of the opposite leg and she did well with that.
 Rio also got some body work, and there was something really interesting there; several times I had to square him up as Shayla checked him, and I thought his right front looked toed out a little; what was way cool was that during another adjustment the pastern popped and straightened out- so it must have been out of alignment- and then when I squared him up again, that leg looked perfectly straight. Conventional thinking would be that his feet were out of balance which we know they are not, and just that little adjustment made such a big difference.
So the point here is that horses need body work to be at their best, just as we do- even the babies like Josie can really benefit and it will help them to grow correctly and not develop compensatory physical habits.