Often when we ask about what we can learn from some piece of a horse’s conformation the answers we get are completely opposite. Sometimes this is because the lore is just plain contradictory. But most of the time it is because the descriptions of exactly what we are looking at aren’t clear or the names …
Author Archives: Noche Miller
Eruption Bumps
Horses between the age of two and a half and four and a half are in the process of growing in their adult teeth. They have 24 baby teeth to replace in all. We can tell about this process by looking at, or feeling, the bottom of the jaw. As the adult teeth come in …
Lines of Blaschko
Have you ever heard of them? I hadn’t, but we’ve all seen them. Whether we knew what they were or not. These lines will appear as marks in the coloring, other times as lines in the hair growth, stripes across the rib cage or neck. In most animals they are not visible, but occasionally they …
Foal Hair Waves
By looking at whorls we can have a clue about temperament from the time of birth. There are limitations. One of those is the distortion of the whorl caused by the foal hair coat. Foal coats do all sorts of interesting things. From colors no where near what the adult color will actually be, to …
The Baby Bump
Horses are born with the whorls that they will have for life. That can give us a good clue about temperament from birth. Head shape can get a little more complicated. Foals are born with a bump over the forehead. This is the horse equivalent of the soft spot in a human babies skull. As …
The Shredded Collar
According to superstition large wheat whorls, sometimes called a shredded collar, down the base of the neck are bad luck. Especially when combined with double whorls. The ultimate bad luck whorls. There is seldom any more description of the whorls than that. A whorl like a wheat sheaf down the base of the neck. Although …
Horse Pain Face
Horse’s faces are far more expressive than we often give them credit for. Capable of 17 separate facial expressions they fall a little short of the 27 expressions humans can manage. 17 is still a good amount and perfectly adequate to show us how they feel. A happy relaxed horse will have a soft muzzle, …
Thick vs Thin
Some people like ’em thic. Others prefer long and lean.. Maybe our preference for body type is subconsciously based more in a preference for temperament type than build. More than we realize at least. Studies in cattle have long since shown that the size of bone directly correlates to temperament. The smaller the bone the …
A Science And An Art
Science is beginning to prove that whorls really are connected deeply to temperament. Which we have known all along. Between finding the genes behind the whorls and temperament, and clinical studies showing strong similarities between reactions of animals with matching whorl types they have covered correlation and causation. We can be sure that whorls are …
Equestrian Author Podcast
I have some rather exciting news and something a bit unusual to announce. I had the pleasure of interviewing with Carly Kade a while back for her wonderful podacst, Equestrian Author Spotlight. It’s such a fun podcast to listen, all sorts of great authors to hear about and a fun place to find new book …