I am a horse with some physical limitations because of my broken neck. I do carry my head a little tilted and I cross my left foreleg over my right when I walk.
I developed this way of moving to help me to balance myself because the right side of my neck is missing part of a major bone called the Atlas and it structurally weaker than the other side.
My lady was told that it was extremely important to keep my teeth and my hooves balanced as it would help me to live a pretty normal life. It does work. My body is evenly muscled on both sides from mid-neck to the dock of my tail.
I can be ridden and even at a lope. Sometimes I don't go perfectly straight but if I try very hard I can do it. I am sure that if I was ridden more often, I would become fitter and stronger which would help me to remain straight.
It is very important for all horses to have a balanced mouth and hooves. A hoof that is not level can affect us all the way up our leg and into our major muscles and spine. It can change how we move even when our hooves are out as little as a quarter of an inch.
It can cause us great pain and in some cases it may cause behavior changes like bucking, hollowing our backs, or not wanting to move under saddle. We are expected to do very athletic feats, carrying ourselves properly and trying to carry the weight of a rider on our backs.
It is difficult to do so because most people are also crooked and don't sit perfectly balanced in the saddle.
So please help us as much as you can by making sure that the people that you hire to trim our feet and do our dental work are doing the best possible job.
It will pay off in our performance. We promise.
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