09/23/2025
Look at this Picture - What Do You See?
(A long post for those with resilient attention spans)
The Problem with Only Seeing the Problem
Be honest - your eye went straight to the dot, didnāt it? You zoomed in on the flaw, the mistake, the tiny blot that interrupts the clean page. Thatās how most of us are wired. School taught us to circle errors in red pen, work taught us to obsess over weaknesses in performance reviews, and riding horses taught us to fixate on heads, hocks, necks - the āproblem.ā
The black dot ā«ļø
But hereās the thing: your horse isnāt the dot. Your horse is the whole bloody rectangle.
And the sooner we stop dot-hunting, the sooner we actually start seeing what our horses are showing us.
1ļøā£ The Seduction of the Black Dot
We humans bloody love a black dot. A lame step here, a sticky joint there, a hoof angle that looks like it was filed during happy hour. We cling to that single āwrongā thing because it gives us something to blame. Something to circle, name, and throw money at.
But horses arenāt black dots. Theyāre the system - the muscles, tendons, ligaments, fascia, organs, hormones, biochemistry, posture, motion, behaviour, and more... including yes, the attitude they give you when you turn up late with the feed bucket.
2ļøā£ When the Black Dot Doesnāt Show Up on the Scan
š Hereās the truth: sometimes the X-ray machine or ultrasound wonāt find the black dot. Not because the horse is faking it, but because the problem isnāt a neat little lesion hiding in a diagnostic pixel. Itās the entire system thatās overloaded, crooked, or worn down.
And that disappoints people. We love a dot we can circle in red and say āAh, thereās the villain!ā But clinging to dot-thinking blinds us to the obvious. The evidence is etched in the horseās muscles, posture, and behaviour. The horse is telling the truth with every wonky step, every over-developed muscle, collapsed core, or sour expression. We just have to stop dot-hunting long enough to believe them.
3ļøā£ Compensation: The Bodyās Survival Party Trick
Horses are world-class compensators. If something hurts or feels tight, or one sideās stronger than the other, or the saddle fits like a torture device, the body doesnāt stop. It adapts. Thatās compensation: the bodyās way of staying upright, moving forward, trying to feel comfortable and keeping you from landing face-first in the dirt.
Itās clever. Itās essential. Itās also a ticking time bomb. Because when the horse leans on the same compensation strategy, step after step, day after day, tissues designed for variety and balance start waving little white flags. Eventually, something gives.
4ļøā£ Load Transfer (a.k.a. Force Transfer for Nerds)
Every step a horse takes is about load transfer - how weight and stress move through the body. Biomechanics nerds call it force transfer, but itās the same idea.
āļø If the ground reaction force (thatās the push from the earth every time a hoof hits the ground) doesnāt travel through the joint in a neat, balanced way, the soft tissues have to fight like mad to stop the joint twisting into oblivion. A little of that? Fine. Every damn step, every damn day? Hello tendon injury, fast-tracked arthritis, anxious horse or much more.
5ļøā£ The White Rectangle View
The rectangle is where the truth lives. The posture, the history written into muscles, the way they stand, move, swing, bend, and rotate. The way a horseās behaviour shifts when its body isnāt coping: the refusal, the napping, the agitation at the mounting block.
See the rectangle, and you stop playing endless whack-a-mole with symptoms. You start seeing the story. And thatās where prevention, longevity, and actual soundness live.
6ļøā£ So What Do We Do About It? (Spoiler: Stop Thinking Like Accountants)
This is the part where someone always asks: āYes, but what can we do?ā As if thereās a neat checklist, a black dot solution to the rectangle problem.
The answer: stop thinking in silos. Start thinking holistically.
Hooves: A foot isnāt just a foot. Itās a bloody foundation stone. An unbalanced hoof torques everything above it. Farriers arenāt trimming toenails; theyāre managing load transfer.
Teeth: That uneven wear isnāt cosmetic. It twists the poll, skews the neck, derails the front end. Teeth give the brain important data. If the teeth are out of whack, the data is faulty ā and the whole body pays.
Saddle fit: A saddle that pinches or slides doesnāt just annoy the horse. It rewrites posture, one compensation at a time. Youāve just trained asymmetry, not to mention damaged tissues.
Gut health: Fascia, muscle tone, and behaviour all go to hell when the horseās internal chemistry is off. A cranky gut = a cranky body.
Bodywork & training: The right hands and the right exercises donāt āfixā the horse. They give the system options. They remind the body of pathways itās forgotten, instead of forcing it to hammer the same old crooked groove.
No single guru, gadget, or injection is the magic dot preventer. Itās the collaboration ā vet, farrier, dentist, saddle fitter, nutritionist, trainer, bodyworker, and your impact in the saddle ā that keeps the rectangle intact.
7ļøā£ Believe the Horse
Hereās the take-home message: stop waiting for the X-ray fairy to conjure a black dot so you can finally ābelieveā your horse.
The horse has already told you. Itās etched on their bodies and itās shouted through movement and behaviour.
Believe the horse š“. Believe the rectangle.š²
Because once you stop dot-hunting and start rectangle-seeing, you donāt just fix problems ā you PREVENT them. You donāt just āmanageā breakdowns ā you stop them happening in the first place.
Thatās how horses stay sound, willing, and alive in body and spirit. Not because we circled the right dot, but because we finally had the insight to see the whole bloody page.
RESPECTā: To Tami Elkayam Equine Bodywork for opening my eyes and teaching me to see rectangles and not black dots. Canter Therapy Podcast just released a full discussion with Tami on this exact topic. We also discuss some seriously important insights about mares - link belowā¤
