Why is self carriage so difficult for some horses and yet easy and natural to others?
What is self carriage? Is it learned? Does it develop or is it created? Is it possessed at birth? Do the parents and their lineage have any importance determining self carriage ability? Does environment play a role? These are all important and reasonable questions and their answers are necessary in the equation that produces the end result, a horse's self carriage.
The very first time a foal succeeds in standing up, that foal is experiencing a very basic form of self carriage. As the foal takes its first wobbly steps it is learning the complexities of SC (self carriage) Instinctively and inherently, the foal knows how to gain its feet and move about, it just doesn't have the strength, motor function and balance to do it well at first. As the foal matures and becomes stronger, different levels of coordination and balance will be observed. Every foal is individual in its development of balance and SC. It comes faster to some and slower to others. Very athletic parents usually produce more athletic offspring. Parents that play a very active role by energizing their babies, exposing them to constant motion, help their babies develop SC faster than parents that are indifferent and lethargic in raising their babies. Babies that romp and play with other foals will develop SC and its benefits more quickly and are more likely to develop ambidexderity traits making them less likely to become one-sided.
These early months in a foals life help to determine how easy or how difficult SC will be later in life. Most foals are born with the tendency to be what we humans call right or left handed. Some are born ambidextrous, but by far, more are born right leaded or left leaded. This tendency to be one-sided can result in naturally occurring asymmetrical movement and development. This is the result of brain lateralization, a function of the split brain, In quadrupeds, this right or left hand tendency is referred to as sidedness and is commonly displayed as ipsilateral (same-side) limb dominance. This sidedness is just one of the dominant factors that produce asymmetrical behavior in the horse. One of the other influencing factors is naturally occurring diagonal orientation of the limbs. The motion required for the engagement of leads and lead changes, comes from the hind limbs, and dominance of a diagonal forelimb by its diagonal hindlimb is a natural occurance. Of the two diagonal pairs though, only one belongs to the ipsilateral dominant side, and this one decides whether the animal will be right handed/left leaded or left handed/right leaded.
This right or left handedness will first show up in a foal's grazing stance. What you will see is a foal that constantly will prefer to graze with the same front foot forward. If you watch this foal it will also show the tendency to use that forward leg as its lead leg during play whenever it has a choice. If this preference to one sidedness is allowed to continue through maturity, then that horse will always have problems with SC throughout its life, and most likely experience many of the gait faults and kenetic lamenesses that are resultant of onesidedness.
Some professionals call this the Left Lead Syndrome. That's because the majority of horses tend to be right handed and prefer the left lead. Whether it's called Left Lead Syndrome, One Sidedness, One Handedness, Diagonal Preference, Opposite Polarity, High/Low Syndrome, it's referring to a horse with an off center C.G. (Center of Gravity), and poor natural balance resulting in poor Self Carriage.
There are very few mature horses that show totally symmetrical development. There are usually slight differences in muscle tone and body mass throughout their conformation. A horse that has matured with these slight (and that's the keyword) differences has learned to live with them. They have learned how to compensate for those differences and have adapted a way of going that is comfortable and usually efficient. These horses possess tolerable asymmetry which has not affected their SC ability. They probably never were dominantly onesided or confirmed Right or Left handed. The majority of horses fit into this category.
The horses that fall outside this category will be the problem horses. Because of their onesided dominance they have exhibited extreme asymmetrical behavior and development. As a result these horses have matured without SC and continue to be unable to carry themselves. Because they have distorted muscle and bone structure they have no center of balance. Their disproportional muscle mass pulls everything out of alignment with the axial center, and almost always results in scoliosis of the spine. These horses never posess a center of balance central to their bodies, that was lost as the extreme asymmetrical behavior took over. They are like boats at sea that have been loaded on one side, listing and turning in one direction.
Horses are very adjustable though and many asymmetrical horses fulfill useful lives as non-performance horses. However, when you ask these horses to step up the level of work or training you begin to see problems. These problems will first show themselves as attitude problems with horses demonstrating resistance to work and training. Frustration and defiance to the new level of training can be the telltail signs that the horse is experiencing self confidence problems due to imbalance from onsided conformation. If forced to continue to work on this new level, they can become fearful, anxious and even dangerous. Rearing and refusal to go forward can be common with these horses. If they possess the mental stability to continue their work through the discomfort then eventually they will experience lameness and/or gait abnormalities.
To help you better understand what actually takes place when asymmetrical conformation effects a horses behavior, I'll introduce you to a horse and its case history from my files and use that horse in the following demonstration. When I first accepted Seville as a client he had a condition many farriers call High/Low Syndrome. A horse with High/Low Syndrome, so named because that's what a farrier sees when the horse is presented to him, characteristically has one foot with a low, underrun heel, and the other foot with a very high, upright heel. All of Seville's feet were quite disproportionate and distorted. He had a problem with sheared heels on both his right front and right hind. His left front foot was very low in the heel and the heel was very rununder. This foot with the rununder heel was being shod with an eggbar shoe and a large degree pad. This is the normal approach taken to correct this condition. Before and after shoeing in this manner, Seville always stood with his left front foot about a foot in front of his right front foot. This horse would not stand even in front.
His right front foot was very tall in the heel with a considerably shorter toe. The basal surface area of this foot was small, almost half the basal surface area of the left front. The right front foot also had a sheared medial heel. The coronary band on this foot was shrunken and pushed upwards at the center of the toe.
Seville's hind feet were very long in the toes. Again the left hind, like the left front, was rununder in the heel and placement of this foot was also in front of the right hind, again, one about a foot in front of the other. The right hind was sheered on the medial (inside) heel. The right hind heel was very high and thrush was present up into the sulcus of the bulbs and palpation of this area produced considerable pain.
After this initial exam of the feet and legs, the shoes were pulled and a conformational exam was given. I always like to look at these horses in their natural state. Any outside influences are taken out of the picture. After the exam, Seville was given two days of stall rest. This is done because the shoes and pads these horses are wearing are usually making them worse, not better. A couple of days stall rest without shoes allows these to normalize.
Let's assume that you're doing this conformational exam with me. To see how really distorted this horse is you will need to move behind the horse. Grab a bale of shavings and stand on it directly behind Seville. This provides you with a downward and forward view of his head, neck, shoulders, back, hips and gluteals. The stance Seville has assumed is his normal stance, with his left front foot in a forward position relative to his right front foot. If you were to try to make Seville stand square, you would find that he would be very uncomfortable and try to revert to his comfortable normal stance.
Viewing down over Seville's back, observe the way his neck is set into his shoulders. You should notice that he has a slight curvature of his neck to the right, and his head is tilted to the right, with his right ear slightly above and behind his left. All this deviation from center is a result of the incorrect placement of the shoulders in their relationship to the trunk and back. If you look at and compare the left and right shoulder blades you will begin to realize just how uneven this horse is. The left shoulder is more than two inches lower and forward of the right shoulder. The left shoulder contour is bulging outwards away from the body. This is Seville's longer leg and the leg he likes to lead with. It is more muscular and stronger than the right leg. Seville is right handed, right side dominant from his right hind ipsilateral leg, and he prefers the left lead.
Now look at the placement of Seville's right shoulder. It is flat, pushed upward and rearward, of its correct position. It is lacking muscle tone and development. The serratus cervicis muscle, one of the propulsive muscles of the foreleg, is weak and tied in at its attachment to the scapula (shoulder blade). This is Seville's shorter leg. Seville does not like going to the right.
Observing Seville's hips and gluteal muscles you will notice that his right gluteal is big and bulging while the left is flat and underdeveloped. But you will also notice that his hip bone is higher on his left leg. If you could look inside his hind end, you would see his sacroiliac is tilted and twisted diagonally with the right wing ahead of the left. It is also slightly luxated (pushed up and away). Palpation of Seville's back shows soreness along the lumbo-dorsal area in front of the hips. Seville's right hind leg is the longer, more developed leg due to its being his ipsilateral dominant limb paired with his left front. It is almost two inches longer. This length discrepancy between hind legs is the reason many of these horses develop sciatic problems in their hind ends. The sciatic pain is always tied into the back pain. These horses respond very well to acupuncture.
The first tack problem you'll notice is that the saddle won't sit squarely on Seville's back. Because the left shoulder is in front and lower than the right and because the right shoulder is placed rearward and behind the left, the saddle wants to sit twisted, with minimal pressure under the left pommel panel and maximal pressure under the right panel. As you would expect, the saddle is twisted in the direction of the twisted body. With the left pommel panel tilted down and forward the right cantle panel wants to lift and consequently will have no pressure upon it. The left cantle panel will have great pressure placed upon it due to the higher hip displacement. Look at the picture I have just described. No support under the left front/right hind panels and too much support under the right front/left hind panels. Tighten your girth, add a rider and you have the recipe for disaster. One of the areas that causes the most discomfort and subsequent lameness is the pinching of the jammed right shoulder blade. It cannot move rearward in a normal manner and adds to the horse's onesidedness. For every movement there is a counter movement. The reason a rider posts out of the saddle is to free up the horse's inside leg and allow it to move under the body for support and engagement.
Let's say you are on the left diagonal going to the right on a twenty meter circle. As you rise out of the saddle, you will experience an extra push, actually more like a shove, from the large movement of the overdeveloped gluteal muscles of the right hind. This shove is caused by the engagement of these large gluteal muscles, and their direction under the horse's body. Because this is Seville's longer leg, he needs to make a bigger effort to seek clearance under his body. At this same time you will get dumped off his left shoulder due to its forward position and lack of support under the left pommel panel. Also you should remember that Seville's left front leg is his preferred leg, mated to his dominant right hind leg. He will want to move more forward on this diagonal, making all these motions exaggerated. In this direction on the circle you will be sitting in the saddle during that time that the two highest digit points, the horse's right shoulder/left hip, are supporting weight and being compressed. You, the rider, will feel this as an abrupt jamming motion and an uncomfortable break in the horse's rhythm, as the horse cannot completely engage the RF/LH, and will move short accordingly.
This asymmetrical motion, the result of the asymmetrical conformation predisposes a horse to certain lameness problems. One of the most common lamenesses is bicepital bursitis at the point of the shoulder of the high heeled foot. Muscle spasms of the serratus and pectoral muscles, supra and intra spinatus muscles, are common. Release of these spasms is best affected through acupuncture and acupressure massage techniques.
On the right diagonal moving to the left on the twenty meter circle, the picture is quite a different one. Rising out of the saddle with the right front allows the left hind leg freedom to move under his body. The problem here is that of the higher left hip, the horse needs to bring his left leg further under his body to level out his higher hip. But Seville can't do that because of his weaker and shortened gluteal muscles and because of his rearward hip placement. At the same time, Seville cannot obtain adequate reach and extension from his right shoulder due to its weakness and rearward placement. Again for every movement there is a counter movement, in Seville's case his lack of movement RF/LH causes a greater movement with his LF/RH. The fact that the greater movement is on the shorter side of the circle causes a feeling of falling in on the circle. This falling in motion causes Seville to appear to rush or speed up and move off the circle. The rider also experiencing this falling in motion, compensates for it by leaning away to the outside of the circle. All this is very awkward and unnerving to Seville. A horse has a great fear of falling and this fear and his lack of balance, is heightened when he is asked to self carry. Engagement of the hindquarters is very difficult and also unnatural for a horse that is asymmetrically built because of a lack of natural balance.
I hope, by now, you understand the complexities associated with this debilitating affliction. The most important information I can convey to you is that each horse will be individual in the manner in which it is affected by this affliction and, in consequence, the manner of treating the horse will depend upon which conformational abnormalities are greatest and most affecting the horse. There are many horses that possess terribly asymmetrical conformation. Many of them are getting by just fine. I don't like to work on these horses unless they are showing signs of lameness or are having great difficulties performing tasks that they should be capable of performing at their level of work. Don't fix it unless it needs fixing.
When I work on these horses, the customer is always amazed that the method I use to achieve comfort is so different from that which they've seen used on other horses. An example would be that the orthotic device almost always goes on the short upright heeled foot. It rarely goes on the low, rununder heeled foot. Many times I find it necessary to use a starting point and only fix that one problem. I might not realign the entire horse at the first adjustment. Some horses need to be corrected in stages. It is usually the highest point out of alignment that I use as my starting point. Sometimes it only takes a half inch adjustment to make a huge improvement and other times I might need to use two inches to achieve the same results. I have had horses become sound immediately after shoeing and I have had horses take weeks or months to recover. It is rare that these horses cannot be helped.
Horses with asymmetrical conformation warm up faster and easier at the canter. A walking period then transition into the canter is most helpful to these horses. Leave the trot work for later after the horse has had a chance to stretch out.
If you have determined that your horse has an asymmetrical conformation that can be lived with, the most valuable tool you have to keep that horse sound would be proper padding under the saddle. These horses need room for their high shoulders to be free to move. You might have to use upward of two inches of padding material under the saddle to achieve the clearance. Try to use a material that doesn't over compress. And yet, you don't want it to be so rigid that it doesn't give relief to the rearward shoulder. You need to find the happy medium.
Do not use breastplates or breastplate martingales on these horses. Always use some sort of an elastic girth. Any kind of head restraints should be limited. These are just a few tips on making your horse more comfortable. If you have understood all that I've said, you will understand the reasons behind these tips.
If you encounter resistance to work or training that you believe is within your horse's scope, and you haven't come up with a logical reason for the resistance, then you should always look for an unseen physical problem. If that doesn't pan out then look for any unusual or abnormal changes in your horse's conformation. And remember behavioral problems are often associated with one sidedness and asymmetrical conformation.
Seville, the horse in this article is presently training and competing as an amateur horse. He is sound and as willing as a 20-year-old could be. He is presently shod with normal steel shoes, no pads or orthotics.
I see a lot of lame horses in my practice. In my opinion, about half of these lamenesses are conformationally related, and of those about half are the result of asymmetrical conformation. Normal remedies usually won't help these horses. They are helped by applying added elevation to the shorter limbs (lifts and orthotics), no tricks or gimmicks, just sound principles applied to the horse according to his or her conformational needs.
Self carriage should not be so elusive to so many horses. I hope that I have helped you to understand some of the ways that self carriage can be achieved more easily by your horse. A horse experiencing self carriage is a horse experiencing self confidence.
