How To Deal With Your Horse's Natural Asymmetry
Does your horse seem to have a "good" and a "bad" side? Is he somehow easier to ride in one direction than the other? Is it hard for you to make your circles to the left match your circles to the right--or for any of your circles to be perfectly round?
The effect you're noticing is caused by his natural asymmetry. In other words, one side of his body is not exactly like the other, and so doesn't move and respond in exactly the same way. That means he's stiff and resistant to bending in one direction (his stiff side), while he tends to bend too much in the other (his "hollow" side).
As if this asymmetry weren't enough to deal with, "magnets" also pull your horse out of alignment when you're trying to ride precisely. Magnets are things (such as the barn or a pasture full of buddies) that attract your horse's attention, causing his body to bulge or drift that way.
In this article, I'm going to explain exactly how asymmetry and magnets work to complicate your riding. Then, I'll give you an exercise to help you learn to compensate for, and eventually overcome, these effects. Once you do, you'll be able to ride your horse equally well in both directions and make beautiful, perfectly even circles--as well as consistently straight lines.
The Enemies of “Going Straight”
What we're talking about here is achieving a fundamental goal of riding: getting and keeping your horse straight--whether he's on a straight line or not. What do I mean by this? Let's consider some definitions.
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Straight: Your horse travels with his hind feet in the tracks of his front, with his neck and spine aligned to allow this. This means he'll be straight on a straight line and curved on a curving line, or circle. (Trouble is, his asymmetry and the pull of magnets make it challenging for you to keep him that way, as we'll see.)
Hollow: Your horse bends or softens excessively in one direction. Horses tend to be hollow when traveling to their right. When you lope your horse to his hollow side, it will feel as if he's bending much more than the arc of the circle requires. That's because his natural asymmetryis causing his hindquarters to drift to the inside of the circle to avoid carrying weight, which in turn causes his neck, shoulders, and ribcage to drift to the outside of the circle.
Stiff: Your horse resists bending or softening in one direction. Horses tend to be stiff when traveling to their left. When you lope your horse to his stiff side, he resists bending on the arc of the circle. His nose won't be properly tipped to the inside, nor will he have a soft bend from poll to dock. He'll feel as if he's always cutting in on his circles when going this direction. You'll usually feel more comfortable loping on this lead (to his stiff side), as he's tracking straighter and will usually stop better, but that doesn't make it his better side. It's as challenging to supple the stiff side as it is to straighten the hollow side.
(By the way, if you're wondering how horses get asymmetrical in the first place, see "‘Stiff' vs. ‘Hollow': The Eye Has It?," below.)
"Stiff" Vs. "Hollow": The Eye Has It?
Theories abound as to why horses tend to be stiff going in one direction (usually to the left, in my experience) and hollow or "too bendable" in the other (usally to the right). These include the way foals lie in their mothers' bellies; the asymmetrical distribution of horses' internal organs; and/or the fact that we handle horses more from the left than from the right.
But the hypothesis that makes the most sense to me has to do with eye dominance. Most horses become left-eye dominant as they mature, meaning they prefer to see things predominantly through their left eye. This requires a slight tweak in their atlas vertebra (at the base of the skull) to tip the head fractionally to the right, bringing the left eye more into play. That's balanced by a slight "S" shape to the neck, followed by other offsetting corrections in their shoulders, ribcage, and hips, all of which wind up making them stiffer to the left.
Sounds plausible, but who knows? Ultimately, it doesn't matter why horses tend to be this way, what does matter is that we do our best to get them "evened up"
Magnet: Anything that attracts your horse's attention and therefore draws him to it. A horse's body goes where he looks, and he looks where his mind is. Predictably, this is the gate, the barn, the trailer, where his buddies are, and so on. Magnets are what make straight lines (such as rundowns in a reining pattern) and symmetric circles problematic.
