I just got an email with this article and I can't wait to go home and see if it's right. I definitely have right handed horses and left handed horses. It's really easy to tell on the young horses when you are first starting to teach them to pivot or spin. And usually the good direction for them is their 'default' lead, too. This article claims that you can tell which they are pre-disposed to be by which direction the whorl on their faces goes! Right-handed horses should have clockwise whorls and left-handed horses should have counter-clockwise.
Wonder if I could use that as a training tool - teach them things their good way first? Would a left handed horse make a better head horse? Would that tell you which direction you should run your barrel pattern?
If anyone out there has a horse that is definitely right or left handed, post a comment and let us know if this holds true for your horse. I'd love to test it out.
Here is the whole article, if you are interested:
http://www.thehorse.com/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=12081
This mailing list is a wonderful source for equine industry news. Some is a bit technical, but it is definitely worth subscribing to. A vet recommended it to me, so I thin they are a pretty reliable source.
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So, the one horse who I know for a fact is very much left handed, She has two whorls, one going each direction! So I don't know if it's right or not. Anyone else have a horse that they checked?
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