Horseways

24/10/2026

Enlarge and look closely, lots of details! 😊🐎

23/10/2026

23/10/2026

23/10/2026

AN INCOMPLETE HISTORY OF THE OBVIOUS

BENEATH THE SKIN

In 1756, a man called George Stubbs moved to a farmhouse in Lincolnshire with his companion, Mary Spencer, and spent the next eighteen months studying the anatomy of horses.

Stubbs was a painter, and a good one. He was particularly interested in horses, which was a sensible choice of subject at the time because Britain was full of them. They pulled carriages, worked on farms, carried soldiers and delivered just about everything that needed delivering.

The wealthy were especially fond of horses. They raced them, bred them, bet enormous sums on them and paid artists to paint them. A portrait of a favourite horse was a common commission, particularly if the horse had won its owner some money.

Stubbs had already studied human anatomy in York and illustrated a medical book about childbirth. His father was a leather dealer and currier, someone who prepared animal hides, and Stubbs had been exposed to horse carcasses from an early age.

There were books about horse anatomy, but he wanted to examine the structures for himself and draw exactly what he found.

LIFE AT THE FARMHOUSE

The village was called Horkstow, and the farmhouse had a barn where Stubbs could carry out his investigations.

Horse carcasses were suspended from the ceiling using a specially built framework, allowing him to position them for examination. He worked through the anatomy, layer by layer, drawing what he found as he went. His main interest was in the skeleton, muscles and other structures that gave the horse its shape and allowed it to move.

He drew the animals from different angles, recording the position of the muscles, the course of the tendons and the way everything fitted together. He worked right down to the bones, including those of the feet.

It was painstaking work, especially when dealing with an animal the size of a horse and without the facilities of a modern anatomical laboratory.

Mary Spencer is recorded as having assisted him, although the surviving accounts say little about exactly what she did. She remained his companion for many years.

By the time Stubbs left Lincolnshire, he had produced a collection of detailed anatomical drawings. He had the material for a book, but getting it into print would take several more years.

THE BOOK

In the eighteenth century, producing an illustrated book was complicated. Each image had to be transferred onto a metal plate before copies could be printed, and the engraving needed to be accurate enough to preserve the detail of the original drawings.

Stubbs couldn't find an engraver who could reproduce his drawings to his satisfaction.

So he did it himself.

He already had some experience of engraving, but this was a much bigger job. Around 1759, he moved to London with his anatomical drawings and spent the following years preparing the plates alongside his painting commissions.

He also funded the publication himself.

Finally, in 1766, The Anatomy of the Horse appeared, ten years after he'd begun the investigations in Lincolnshire.

The book contained twenty-four engravings based on eighteen anatomical studies, with tables explaining the structures shown. Readers could examine the horse from different angles, follow the muscles and tendons, and see how the skeleton fitted together beneath them.

It was an enormous amount of work, from the original dissections to the finished printing plates.

But the drawings had already helped Stubbs establish himself as a horse painter.

His anatomical studies attracted attention among wealthy patrons, and commissions followed. The Duke of Richmond was among his early important clients, along with other members of the aristocracy who owned valuable horses.

Among the patrons who followed was the Marquess of Rockingham, who owned a chestnut stallion called Whistlejacket.

WHISTLEJACKET

Rockingham was one of the richest men in England and had a keen interest in racing and breeding horses.

Whistlejacket had won a famous race at York in August 1759. It was his final appearance on the racecourse before being retired to stud. In 1762, Rockingham commissioned Stubbs to paint him.

The result was enormous, nearly three metres high. It showed the chestnut stallion rearing against a plain background, with no rider, no countryside, no grand house and none of the usual scenery found in sporting paintings of the period.

Just Whistlejacket.

The painting is now in the National Gallery in London and is one of the most famous horse portraits ever produced.

Despite all those years studying anatomy, Stubbs still took a few liberties with the pose. The National Gallery points out that Whistlejacket is shown with more of his body visible than would be possible from that angle in real life.

His rump and forehead can both be seen, along with his right knee and the underside of a hoof.

After spending years learning exactly how a horse was put together, Stubbs knew which rules he could bend to get the painting he wanted.

FROM THE BARN TO THE GALLERY

Stubbs wasn't the first person to study horse anatomy. People had been dissecting horses and writing about their findings for centuries.

But his anatomical drawings helped establish his reputation, and the knowledge gained in that Lincolnshire barn fed directly into his paintings.

The original studies are now held by the Royal Academy, while Whistlejacket hangs in the National Gallery.

The man who spent so long studying the horse from the inside had become famous for painting what was on the outside.

But there was one thing anatomy alone couldn't tell him.

Exactly where a horse's legs were at any given moment during a gallop.

A dissection could show the bones, muscles and tendons in extraordinary detail, but it couldn't capture the movements of a horse travelling at speed. Even watching a galloping horse offered only fleeting glimpses of what the legs were doing.

That would have to wait for photography.

23/10/2026

Fine Art Friday:

A colourful string of racehorses fills Sir Alfred Munnings’ ‘Coming off the Heath, Exercising the Horses, Newmarket’. 🐎🌅

The girl in pink on the grey horse was Virginia Selby.

Looking back at the painting many years later, she did not remember posing for this exact scene and believed Munnings had combined different observations through artistic licence.

That approach was central to his work. Countless sketches and studies allowed him to preserve the truth of a place and its atmosphere, even when the finished composition did not record a single moment exactly as it happened.

See the painting for yourself at Palace House and experience the colour and movement of morning exercise in Newmarket. Plan your visit through the link in our bio. 🏛️

Sir Alfred Munnings
Coming off the Heath, Exercising the Horses, Newmarket
1947

23/10/2026

22/10/2026

I Gilla Häst-podden berättade KAROLINA CRONBERG, utbildad specialpedagog och områdesrektor i Sydvästra Göteborg, om att våga tänka utanför boxen och hur man

22/10/2026

Can changing hoof balance influence a horse’s autonomic nervous system state?

Edited for clarity on the photo context….

Look at these two photographs. What I find fascinating is not simply the difference in posture, which still requires work. But the remarkable change in this horse’s entire behavioural presentation following a relatively minimal farriery intervention.

Before intervention, this horse was virtually incapable of standing quietly. It was constantly shifting its limbs, repeatedly adjusting its position and invariably returning to abnormal compensatory postures. It appeared uncomfortable, distressed and unable to find a position in which it could settle.

The second photograph was taken almost immediately following intervention. The horse was now able to stand quietly, with a noticeably lowered head and neck, a softer demeanour and an entirely different behavioural presentation.

And this is where the discussion becomes particularly interesting!

Firstly, some important context. This is NOT a fully rehabilitated horse, nor are we presenting this as an example of perfect static posture. At this stage, we have undertaken relatively minimal intervention, primarily addressing grossly compromised dorsopalmar and dorsoplantar hoof balance, including negative palmar and plantar angles. Who knows what structural damage has been done with these long term issues.

There are still postural abnormalities present, and we would absolutely expect that! Longstanding compensatory strategies and musculoskeletal adaptations do not simply disappear following one intervention. The overreach boots visible in the second photograph were also applied simply to protect the newly fitted farriery package.

What we have potentially achieved is not the end point of rehabilitation, but the mechanical starting point that allows rehabilitation to begin.

And the immediate behavioural response is what I want to explore.

The hoof is not simply a mechanical structure. It is a neuro-sensory organ.

Through its interaction with the ground, the hoof contributes sensory information about pressure distribution, loading, deformation and stability. This information, alongside proprioceptive input from the rest of the limb, helps the nervous system organise posture and movement.

But there is another incredibly important component to this relationship.

Comfort!

We know that pain, postural control, sensory processing and autonomic nervous system activity are intimately connected. Persistent discomfort or instability can contribute to increased vigilance, protective muscle activity and sympathetic arousal.

Equally, reducing discomfort and improving mechanical stability may allow an animal to adopt a calmer behavioural state, with less need for protective postural strategies.

This is not simply theoretical speculation without a physiological foundation.

Dr Karen Gellman’s work on equine posture is particularly relevant here. Gellman and Ruina (2022) demonstrated through mechanical modelling that different standing postures impose substantially different requirements for active stabilisation. Their model predicted that a canted-in stance requires approximately twice the stabilising stiffness of a more vertical or slightly splayed stance.

Gellman’s wider work on postural rehabilitation also explores the relationships between sensory input, compensatory posture, musculoskeletal function, emotional state and autonomic regulation.

In my own published research (Sharp et al., 2022), we demonstrated that changing dorsoplantar hoof balance could significantly influence hindlimb posture.

So we have evidence that hoof balance can influence posture, and that different postural strategies carry different mechanical demands.

Now consider the potential neurophysiological implications.

If a horse is persistently experiencing abnormal loading, discomfort or mechanical instability, the nervous system may continually respond through protective muscular activity and heightened arousal.

Those responses can themselves alter posture, which subsequently changes how the hooves are loaded.

A potentially self-reinforcing relationship between hoof mechanics, sensory feedback, postural compensation and autonomic state!

By changing the three-dimensional spatial balance of the hoof, we can alter the mechanical environment in which the horse operates. We can influence pressure distribution, joint moments and the sensory information associated with ground contact.

And if those changes reduce discomfort or the need for protective muscular activity, it is physiologically plausible that they may also influence autonomic regulation.

Which brings us back to this horse.

The remarkable observation was not that we had instantly corrected every postural abnormality. We clearly hadn’t!

It was that a horse previously unable to stand quietly appeared to find comfort and stability almost immediately following a relatively limited mechanical intervention.

The lowered head and neck are not being presented as proof of perfect biomechanics. They are part of a wider behavioural change, alongside the horse’s newfound ability to settle.

This response is consistent with a possible reduction in sympathetic arousal and a shift towards a calmer autonomic state. Of course, confirming that would require physiological measurements such as heart-rate variability. But the observation is entirely worthy of investigation.

And there is another important aspect to this particular case.

This horse was treated collaboratively by myself and Celeste. The farriery intervention addressed the mechanical conditions at the ground interface, facilitating the body changes Celeste was able to work towards through her intervention.

The two approaches complemented one another, and together we observed a remarkable change in the horse’s presentation.

This is precisely why I emphasise the bidirectional relationship between hoof balance and whole-body posture.

The hoof influences how the horse organises itself, while the posture of the horse influences how the hoof is loaded.

If we continue to leave the horse operating upon a mechanically compromised foundation, we may perpetuate the very compensatory strategies we are attempting to rehabilitate.

Equally, correcting the mechanical foundation does not automatically resolve the adaptations that have developed throughout the rest of the body.

The objective is to create the conditions in which meaningful rehabilitation becomes possible.

And this is where I think our understanding of hoof balance needs to evolve.

Balance is not simply about achieving a particular hoof angle, making the limb appear perpendicular to the ground or producing an aesthetically pleasing static stance.

Within the principle of 3D spatial balance, we are considering the spatial relationships between the internal anatomy, the hoof-ground interface and the forces acting upon the limb, alongside the consequences these relationships have for the horse as a whole.

We must also distinguish between an immediate functional response and a successful long-term rehabilitation outcome. The latter requires continued observation, objective assessment of posture and movement, and evidence of sustained improvement.

These photographs are not intended to demonstrate a finished rehabilitation. They document an immediate response that raises a much more interesting question.

If changing the mechanical and sensory conditions beneath a horse’s feet can coincide with such a profound change in its ability to stand comfortably and calmly, what does that tell us about the relationship between hoof balance, proprioception, nociception and autonomic regulation?

Many people want to challenge the principles of 3D spatial balance, and I welcome that. But we must also be willing to investigate the whole-horse responses we observe rather than reducing every discussion to whether a limb appears perfectly aligned in a photograph.

Because sometimes the most interesting consequence of changing hoof balance is not what happens to the hoof.

It’s what happens to the horse!

References

Gellman, K. & Ruina, A. (2022). Standing horse posture: a longer stance is more stable. Biology Open, 11(4), bio059139.

Gellman, K. (2015). Normal and abnormal equine posture: how PRI can help performance and health. IVC Journal.

Sharp et al. (2022). An Investigation into the Effects of Changing Dorso-Plantar Hoof Balance on Equine Hind Limb Posture. Animals, 12(23), 3275.

Bowker, R.M. (2012). The Horse’s Foot as a Neurosensory Organ: How the Horse Perceives its Environment. In Care and Rehabilitation of the Equine Foot.

The Equine Documentalist