Since September

When Chemaine was here in late February, she said that each time she sees Izzy he looks bigger. She didn't mean taller, although that is a horrifying possibility and one that I hope does not happen. We've sticked him at 16'3, but Chemaine flippantly refers to him as 17 hands - she doesn't get hung up on the details. What's another inch? In any case, she meant bigger around - not necessarily taller.

Izzy seems to be the exact same size to me, but that's what happens when you see the same brown face day after day. It wasn't until I was sharing media of our last lesson that I noticed one picture in particular. It was the one where I asked in the caption if he was getting bigger. As luck would have it, the photo was sitting right next to Izzy's "About" photo over in the side column. Visit the link here if you want to see what I saw - you'll need to scroll down a bit.

Late September, 2015

Late February, 2016

Izzy has grown! Maybe not up, but he is certainly getting thicker throughout his entire body. In the upper photo, he looks leggy, and when it was taken, I remember thinking he looked rather elegant. In the bottom photo, he looks like a tank crammed onto four legs. The dude's an absolute war horse. Maybe I don't need to lose a few pounds. Sitting on him, I look a lot smaller!

Izzy is definitely filling out. He has a lot more muscle than he did last summer. Now that I've helped him build all that muscle, I need to really make sure that I help him by elasticizing and suppling it.

When I bought him, I was searching for a diamond in the rough, something that I could polish and (hopefully) develop into a fancy schmancy dressage horse. Looking at him right now, I am thinking I might have just got super lucky!

Now if only his brain would start muscling up ...