Getting to Know Schooling Needs of your Horse by Observing the Shape of His Hooves

Let’s say your horse or pony is heavy in your right hand…or jumps to the right of the jump most of the time…or finds it difficult to leg yield away from your left leg…what if you could tell many of your training issues by observing your horse’s feet? What if you could reflect on your training and adjust it by understanding the shape and angle of your horse’s hooves?

The exciting thing is, if you wanted to, you could 🙂

When I run my virtual coaching programmes I always ask for several photos of horse’s feet at pre-described angles. This helps me understand the basic biomechanical challenges the horse has and in turn helps me enormously with putting together training plans for the riders.

I also ask for rider’s description too of course but seeing horse’s feet first allows me to compare what the horse “feels” with what the rider thinks that the horse “does”…

 

I noticed that my notes on this caught a lot of attention among horse owners who bought my training so I thought I would elaborate a little on the subject.

Let’s chat about the front feet…

Shape of the hoof

The horse’s foot changes throughout its life. All four feet of a horse are different from each other, due to environment, exercise, trimming and active stimulation of the foot. And even wild horses’ hooves are all different, which makes it impossible to use them as a gold standard.

Source: Robert Bowker VMD PhD. Professor of Anatomy and Director of the Equine Foot Laboratory at Michigan State Univ. College of Veterinary Medicine