Crookedness in the horse: Why your horse is stiff on one rein

Natural crookedness in the horse, or 'handedness' (left- or right- handed!), or laterality, whatever we call it... is such an important topic to understand - our horses are naturally crooked, and we need to adapt our training methods to help our horses with this issue, and train their body to be as symmetrical as possible...to help prevent injury.

There is a theory that crookedness in the horse comes from the grazing pattern they choose to adopt as a foal, and this makes perfect sense to me - their legs are too long, their neck too short to reach the grass, so they need to split their forelimbs to reach the grass. One forelimb goes forward, one comes backwards. All fine so far, but what happens when the foal continues to place his forelimbs into the same pattern each step, so that one forelimb always takes more weight than the other? An uneven pattern forms.  

There are other ways that horses can start their life crooked, problems with foaling, uneven development in the womb etc, but for now let's focus on the grazing pattern. 

If this natural pattern develops, as it does with all horses, by the time we are starting to exercise our horse, there is already a crooked pattern in the horses body and limbs. 

One forelimb has already been doing more weight carrying than the other throughout their life up to this point. So we have ended up with a horse with uneven use of forelimbs, and this cascades through the body, so we also have uneven use of the hindlimbs - one hindlimb is the stronger of the pair, and the other hindlimb is the weaker. 

Translating this to exercise, your horse will always be 'better/easier' on one rein than the other! And over the long term, if we continue to exercise a horse that is crooked in body and limbs, it's easy to see that we will get uneven wear and tear at best, and injury/breakdown at worst. 

WHAT CAN WE DO ABOUT THIS PROBLEM? 

This is the interesting bit! Straight forward training isn't enough. We need to train our horse to use their limbs symmetrically, and therefore use their body symmetrically. 

In hand exercise, groundwork, core strength training, lateral work are all more sophisticated ways to train your horse more effectively than the standard walk-trot-canter round the arena. 

Your horses body, core strength, flexibility, movement and symmetry can be COMPLETELY TRANSFORMED once you start using this type of work! I usually find that once this layer of training is established in your ongoing exercise routine, ridden work tends to take care of itself so to speak...your ridden work will be so much easier because you spent time working on your horses natural crookedness, and training him to use his body and limbs in a more symmetrical manner - for himself! 

As you can probably tell, I'm passionate about these topics, because I have 'been there, done that' with it, I have used all of these techniques to retrain my own horse, as well as horses in rehabilitation with me, so fully see the benefits of all this work!

If this section is missed out of a horses training, so their crookedness isn't addressed and improved, you are just strengthening a crooked pattern with your horse every time you exercise them, and eventually something has to 'give'. It usually presents as a one sided injury. 

So my view is that by adding more corrective training to our horses schedule, we can help them along with their natural crookedness, whether they are a competition horse, a senior, a happy hacker, or anything else! 

If you would like a copy of my FREE Ebook 'Posture, Core Strength & Crookedness in the Horse' please click here: Free Posture & Crookedness Ebook

If you would like any further help on this topic, just hit reply and email me back.

Jenny x