Thanks. The con WAS fun :)
I have come to think turnout in big spaces is vital to horses. When we bought our Cyn almost a year ago, she came from a home where she had a really nice, but small paddock to herself, and they had no pasture at all there, just a home and three horse paddocks on maybe an acre. She had grown up there.
When we bought her we thought she moved like a clutz, but she has a super bomb-proof personality and we thought she'd be good for my husband, who was a beginner. "she's not a pretty mover like Bay is" we said about her as we watched her thud around the pasture.
She's still isn't graceful by any means, she has these enormous feet and a chaotic kind of tangled gallop, but she's gotten so much better! I think growing up in small paddocks and then riding trail or an arena, she never learned how to move. Now she has a pasture where she can run 'full out' with the others, and I think she'd learning how.