Whorls
This is Harvey. Harvey is an eight-ish year old grade Morgan? type gelding. We like to call him Harve, or Harvester.
Harvey is my horse and as such has a rather unusual skill set. He rides a little but does a mean Spanish walk and great side pass from the ground.
His whorl is a high center and he fits it perfectly, hot, energetic, a bit spooky. and very smart. That’s not what I want to talk about though.
Harvey has rather interesting whorls on his chest. Above the usual and very normal whorl above each front leg the hair feathers up clear to his neck. His left side farther and more pronounced than his right.
As I said, Harvey is great at Spanish walk. Before we ever started work on that he pawed constantly. There is great emphasis on his front legs in anything he does. Even more with his left front than his right. The leg with the biggest whorl is the one he wants to lift up and move around the most.
When there is a whorl on one side of the body and not the other a horse will usually want to curve towards the whorl and has trouble bending away from it.
Harvey does a beautiful liberty sidepass to the left, the direction of the bigger whorl, and has a very hard time going to the right, away from the whorl.
Because this is my horse I can do this one a little differently than normal. I have a video of his whorls instead of a picture, sometimes it’s just easier that way. When I was trying to get the video he went to pawing, like he likes to do with his left leg. Thank you for showing us how that goes Harvey. Then a bit of him doing Spanish walk. He steps higher with his left leg than he does his right. Last the sidepass to the right is so much harder and less coordinated than it is to the left. We’ve been working hard on going to the right and he is getting better. Just because a whorl shows that something will be harder for a horse doesn’t mean it can’t be improved with work and attention.
It is fascinating to watch and learn about the effects of whorls all across a horses body. There is so much more to learn!