gettin ready for showing

Hi everyone
I lease a hors named rocky and he's an amazing horse. I've been showing him this past year, but I can't seem to gain muscle tone at all.
Any suggestions?


I've also been working with him and trying to get him to where i'll be able to show in western pleasure, but his lope is reeeeally bad and I don't know how to fix it.
Please help
Thanks

I really don't think either one of these is really 'fixable'. Muscle tone is one of those things they are born with or they are not. And some horses just arent built for the slow WP lope. For WP you might want to start getting some lessons, or put your horse in training for a few months if you think the horse has a lot of potential for it.

Unfortunately I havent been involved with WP classes, so I couldnt offer any assistance there. As for the weight issue, how much are you looking at, and in what areas? Do you have apic to help. I would hate to say there is nothing that can be done for toning and building, when it may be simple, but then again, natural build plays a big part!

Just be sure, first off, that his teeth are okay (so he can chew up his food adequately to get all of the available calories out of it), and that he's free of worms (are you rotating wormers?), and then be sure that he's getting plenty of food and working out. We do a lot of long trotting of our horses in a sandy arena to get them fit. The trot is great exercise, especially if the footing makes them work hard (imagine how much harder it is to run on the beach sand!).

That's about all you can do on the fitness issue.

And on the lope issue, it's been my experience that a horse either has a pleasure-style lope naturally or he doesn't. You can train and push to develop whatever lope he has, to the best of his abilities, but it involves a lot of work that the other natural lopers won't have to endure. That may end up making your horse not too happy about having to work so hard to lope slow.

I'm a big believer in letting a horse do the events he's created for (and loves). Then you can just enhance his natural abilities and he'll likely do much better (and be much happier).

Hope that helps!

Pictures of him and even a video or pictures of you riding would help to see what he looks like and what you are talking about in his lope.