Equine Symmetry - MSFC Qualified Saddle Fitter

24/10/2026

13/10/2026

POLEWORK MAKES THE DREAM WORK! ✨⭐️🌟

I regularly recommend polework to my clients, whether their horses are in rehab, returning to work, or simply maintaining their fitness. It’s one of those wonderfully simple tools that can make a real difference when used thoughtfully and consistently.

Why do I love polework so much?

It encourages horses to become more aware of where they place their feet, helping develop proprioception, coordination, balance and body awareness. It also challenges them to adjust their stride, engage their muscles and move with greater control.

I generally prefer to start with poles on the ground and at a walk. This allows the horse time to think, organise their movements and work without relying on speed or momentum to get over the poles. It also makes it easier to keep the exercise controlled and appropriate to the horse’s current level of fitness.

Personally, I incorporate polework around 3–4 times a week. Sometimes it’s a standalone session, sometimes part of my warm-up, and occasionally I’ll finish a gentle hack by walking over a few poles.

My top tips for getting started:

Keep your horse mentally engaged. What looks simple to us requires the horse to process the exercise, judge distances and coordinate their limbs. Give them plenty of breaks when needed.

Start simple and build gradually. A few poles on the ground are more than enough. Focus on rhythm, relaxation and quality of movement before making things more challenging.

If your horse keeps knocking poles, make it easier. Adjust the spacing, reduce the number of poles or take a break. Repeatedly knocking poles can be a sign that the exercise is too difficult, your horse is tired, or they’re struggling to coordinate their movements.

Keep it appropriate for your horse. More poles and harder exercises don’t automatically mean better results. For horses in rehabilitation, polework should be selected according to their individual needs and recovery stage.

The key is consistency, not complexity. You don’t need a fancy setup or difficult exercises. Start simple, and build gradually.

29/09/2026

The width between the panels matter ‼️‼️‼️

The channel has to clear the spinous processes and the supraspinous ligament, with a margin so the panels rest on the long back muscles (longissimus) and never on the spine’s ridge. Four fingers or a fist (roughly 8 cm) is a practical average that covers most horses, but the real rule is that nothing touches the spine, even when the horse flexes, lifts its back, or bends. So you can see why 2 or 3 fingers is a problem for most horses! Wider horses can need more space too. The width should also stay consistent along the whole panel, not just at the gullet (for example this one starts off wider and dramtically narrows towards the back).

If it’s too narrow, chronic pressure will inflame the supraspinous ligament and bursae, and cause nerve irritation.

In fact it is quite common to see small fluid filled bumbs forming along the spine from popped blood vessels (might look like irritation, hives or insect bites). These are usually seen after a ride:

Permanent extra bone resulting from bone remodeling or calcified ligaments can also be experienced.

This is also an issue theorised to contribute towards kissing spines (though it’s rarely the sole proven cause) but well worth noting!

Horses also learn to brace against pain, so the behavior can outlast the saddle.

Many of these issues are treatable if caught early, but severe or long-standing cases can leave permanent changes.

Pads and half pads can narrow the channel too

Even with a wide enough gullet, the effective channel can shrink because of:

- Thick pads or riser pads that fill the gullet and press up against the spine

-Pads pulled too tightly (or not pulled up into the gullet), so they bridge or tent across the spine

-Sheepskin, memory foam, or gel that compresses inward and closes the gap

-Wrinkles or seams over the spinal area

-Extra bulk that pushes the saddle to sit tighter, which puts the panels closer to the spine

So of you wondered how bad that narrow channel or too much padding could be…well, for many devastating and irreversible.

21/09/2026

🚨No Hoof, No Horse: What Happens to the Rest of the Body When One Leg Hurts

Let’s think of a temporary lameness issue such as a hoof abcess or stone bruise. There's a moment every horse owner recognizes: the vet or farrier declares the hoof sound, the horse trots off soundly in a straight line, and everyone breathes a sigh of relief. Case closed.

Except it isn't. Not even close.

My mare recently had a severe stone bruise in her front left hoof, painful enough that for a full 24 hours she wouldn't load the leg at all, followed by several more days of marked lameness. Within a week, the hoof itself has since resolved. She's weight-bearing normally, no heat, no sensitivity to hoof testers. By the standard most people use, she's "better."

But her body tells a different story.

When she wouldn't load that front left hoof, several things happened simultaneously:

She had to actively hold the limb up. Lifting and carrying a limb rather than letting it swing and land is active, muscular work, primarily through the shoulder, the muscles that suspend the ribcage (like the serratus ventralis), and the muscles across the withers and neck (like the rhomboids) that help elevate and protract the limb. Hour after hour of this is genuine muscular labor, not passive rest.

Her base of support dropped from four points to three. Standing, shifting weight, and moving all require constant micro-adjustments from stabilizing muscles; the core, the topline, the muscles around the SI joint and pelvis. On four legs, that workload is distributed. On three, it isn't. Everything that normally shares the job of "don't fall over" had to work harder, particularly on the diagonal and same-side structures that were doing the stabilizing.

Her sound legs had to carry more. The weight she wasn't putting on the injured front left had to go somewhere, primarily the other front leg and, biomechanically, redistributed through the diagonal hind. This is very likely part of why her left hind/SI region is tight: in a normal quadrupedal gait, the hind end and the diagonal front leg work together in a coordinated push-pull relationship. When the front left is offline, that relationship gets disrupted, and the hind end often ends up over-recruited trying to compensate for a front end that isn't functioning normally.

Postural holding patterns became habitual. Pain changes movement before the animal is consciously "deciding" anything. Horses (like humans) develop guarding patterns, bracing through the neck, shortening a stride, shifting weight subtly off a sore structure. Those patterns don't disappear the instant the original pain does. Muscles that have been held in a protective, contracted state for days need time and active rehabilitation to release, not just permission to move normally again.

This is also exactly why touch sensitivity and reduced enjoyment of grooming matter as data points, not just quirks. Muscles under chronic tension are more sensitive to pressure and stretch. A horse that flinches away from a grooming routine is telling you something concrete about tissue state, not being difficult.

The Horse Is Not a Collection of Parts

The saying "no hoof, no horse" gets treated as being about hoof health in isolation; cracked walls, thrush, questionable angles, seedy toe. But its deeper truth is structural: the hoof is the foundation of a kinetic chain that runs through the entire animal. The average horse is roughly 500 kg balanced on four relatively small points of contact with the ground. Take one of those points partially out of the equation, even temporarily, and the rest of the system has to absorb the difference. There's no neutral option, the load goes somewhere.

This is the same underlying reason a hock problem can produce a horse that looks asymmetrical through the whole topline, or why a horse with a fracture in one limb has such a poor prognosis overall, the other three limbs and the entire postural system simply cannot sustainably compensate for one limb that doesn't work. My mare's case is a much smaller-scale version of the same principle.

Now let’s get to the part I am getting at; Why "Sound" Isn't the Same as "Ready"

This is the core point worth sitting with: soundness at the site of original injury tells you the acute problem has resolved. It tells you almost nothing about what the rest of the body absorbed while getting there.

A horse that's just come off even a short period of three-legged compensation typically needs:

⏰Time for chronically tense muscles to actually release rather than just stop hurting acutely
💆Targeted bodywork or massage to address the specific compensatory patterns in this case, the shoulder/rhomboid/serratus chain from limb-lifting, and the SI/hind end from altered load-sharing (and possibly some other areas I missed)
📈A graded return to work rather than a resumption of full training the moment the limp is ‘fine’, so the horse can rebuild symmetrical strength and confidence in the limb rather than continuing to protect it out of habit
🧳Reassessment of tack, saddle fit included, once musculature has had a chance to normalise, and sometimes a second check once it's normalised again after rehab
👿Attentiveness to behaviour, not just gait, touch sensitivity, reluctance during grooming, and reactivity are early, honest signals of where the body is still guarding

None of this requires anything be "wrong" in a diagnostic sense. It requires understanding that a horse's body is one continuous, interconnected system, and that a month of compensating for one sore hoof leaves a signature throughout that system that doesn't vanish the day the hoof stops hurting.

The Bigger Picture

It's easy, and common, to treat each part of a horse as its own department: hoof problems go to the farrier, back soreness goes to the bodyworker, behaviour goes to the trainer, tack goes to the saddle fitter. All of that expertise matters. But none of it substitutes for an owner or rider who understands that these systems talk to each other constantly, and that an injury in one is never really isolated to one.

"No hoof, no horse" isn't just about keeping hooves healthy. It's a reminder that four functioning limbs are the foundation everything else is built on and that when one goes offline, even briefly, the bill comes due everywhere else in the body.

12/09/2026

You had your horse checked. Ulcers treated. Saddle checked. Physio done. Chiro found nothing. So the angry face and girthiness must just be "memory of pain," right?

What else could it be? Are adverse behaviours from past negative experiences actually a thing — or do you still need to keep investigating your horse's potential discomfort?

Memory is real. Horses have excellent long-term memory for aversive events, and classical conditioning is well documented in equine behaviour. If ridden work hurt badly enough - even once - a horse can form a lasting association between the context (girth going on, saddle placement, that specific routine) and threat, separate from whether the original tissue damage has healed. This is the same mechanism as any conditioned fear response, and it doesn't disappear just because the physical cause is fixed. Extinguishing it takes deliberate counter-conditioning a slow desensitisation, positive pairing, patience - not just time.

But "memory" gets misused. It's often reached for because it's the comfortable answer: it means nothing is currently wrong, the vet and saddler did their job, and the horse just needs to "get over it."
This is where I believe Sue Dyson's ridden horse pain ethogram work really matters. Her research found that behaviours long dismissed as resistance, memory, or temperament were, in a large proportion of horses, actually markers of current, undetected pain. Often missed by standard flexion tests and routine saddle checks: gastric ulcers, hindgut discomfort, thoracic/rib or sternal pain, kissing spines, myofascial/girth-area pain, or a saddle that fits fine standing still but not dynamically under a rider.

Some of the 24 behaviours Dyson identified as pain markers:
- Repeated tail swishing (large, fast movements)
- Ears pinned flat back for 5+ seconds, or repeatedly laid back
- Mouth open, tongue out, or teeth grinding
- Head tilting or tossing above/behind the vertical
- Girthiness, pinning, biting, or reacting when tacking up
- Reluctance or hesitation to move forward, especially into canter
-Rushing or irregular rhythm at trot/canter
-Bucking, rearing, or spooking without clear external cause

Dyson’s studies suggest that a healthy, pain free horse would not show more than 2-3 of the identified ‘pain signals’ in a 5–10 minute of work.

So how do you tell memory from ongoing pain? If the reaction is mild, consistent, situational, and slowly improving with calm handling (never punishment) - conditioned memory is plausible. If it's sudden, escalating, or not improving despite good handling -"memory" is being used to stop looking, not as a real diagnosis.

And if your horse is actively displaying pain or stress behaviours during work, you can reasonably assume there's still discomfort somewhere. Owners should get familiar with their horse's subtle communication signals. Sue Dyson's 24 ridden horse pain behaviours are a genuinely accessible, practical resource to start with.

You can download Dr. Dyson's full illustrated 24 Behaviors field guide for free at 24horsebehaviors.org

I highly recommend it.

07/09/2026

I have a moody mare.

And boy, can she be moody sometimes. 😂

For a long time, it would have been easy to write this off as “just her personality” or “mares being mares”.

But living with her has taught me to look at her behaviour very differently.

Her moodiness is often the first sign that something in her environment has changed.

One of the most interesting patterns I’ve noticed is around forage and pasture quality. When the nutritional value of the forage declines, or grazing conditions change, she is often the first horse in the herd to become noticeably more irritable, sensitive or difficult.

And she doesn’t necessarily look physically different at that point.

Then, a few weeks later, I may start seeing more obvious changes in the herd, coats becoming more sun-bleached, changes in condition, or topline.

That makes her behaviour an incredibly useful early warning signal to investigate what is happening nutritionally.

And there is a physiological reason this can happen.

Nutrition doesn’t just provide calories. It supplies the amino acids, fatty acids, vitamins, minerals and other nutrients required for muscle function, metabolism, immune function, skin and coat health, and the nervous and endocrine systems.

Changes in nutritional intake can therefore influence much more than body condition.

Of course, a behavioural change should never automatically be labelled a nutritional deficiency. Pain, ulcers, reproductive hormones, stress, management and training can all affect behaviour too.

But that’s exactly why I think we need to stop treating behaviour as simply “attitude”.

A horse’s behaviour is an output of what is happening inside the horse and around the horse.

My mare has taught me that the “moody” horse is actually the horse giving you the earliest clue that something has changed.

And instead of asking, “How do I make her less moody?”

Perhaps we should sometimes be asking:

“What is she trying to tell me?”