Righty vs. Lefty

Have you ever taken your horse past a scary object and gotten him used to it only to pass it from the opposite direction and your horse acts like he has never seen it before?

Well that is because "lefty" saw it but "righty" didn't.  

http://americashorsedaily.com/left-brain-right-brain/

http://www.jonathanfield.net/index.php?p=1_51

Unlike humans, horses don't have a highly developed corpus callossum, the thick band that runs from one side of the brain to the other.  In humans it is developed and allows us to use both sides of our brain at the same time.

The horse isn't equipped to share information received from one side to the other, hence why horses are lateral thinkers.

Even thinking about the physical appearance of the horse,  his eyes are set in such a way that he can see everything from almost in front of him to his hind end.  He does have a blind spot right in front of him so for safety's sake, please don't position yourself directly in the middle of his face and expect him to see what you are doing.

Because of that eye placement what the left eye sees and what the right eye sees are two different things.

Our eyes are placed in the front of our faces so we essentially see the same things out of both for the most part.  

Because of this, you should teach your horse how to do everything on both sides and by that I mean, saddling, mounting, grooming, desensitizing and all forms of work on the ground.  It also makes your horse far more physically balanced if you do equal mounted work on both sides.  Just as people are right or left handed, so are horses.

Have you ever noticed that your horse always goes better in one direction than the other? Some horses will even struggle in picking up one of their leads when loping because it is not their dominant side.  If I am riding a horse with a very noticeably dominant side, I will make sure that I start with their weaker side first, then go to the dominant side and return to the weaker side.  In time it becomes easier and easier for your horse to become well balanced physically, but like anything it takes time and lots of consistency.

I remember working with some minimally handled broodmares.  In the beginning, many of them wouldn't even let me touch them on their right side.   If I went over to that side they would run away as though they had never seen a human before.  It took a very long time but with lots of patience, they now have a right and a left side.  

It is wonderful that our knowledge of horses keeps on growing because the more we learn, the more we can apply to have a successful relationship with our equine partners.