09/23/2025
This is what I mean when I talk about taking a holistic approach to horsemanship— I mean working as a team to see the whole horse within its relationships and environment and supporting from that perspective. In my rehab work, we have to be so careful not to fixate on the pieces we know are in dysfunction— we have to see the whole horse to find our in. What is working? Where can the horse balance themself? What can we do to empower them in mind body and spirit so they can heal?
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, didn’t it? You zoomed in on the flaw, the mistake, the tiny blot that interrupts the clean page. That’s 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 “problem.”
The black dot ⚫️
But here’s the thing: your horse isn’t 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.
1️⃣ 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 “wrong” thing because it gives us something to blame. Something to circle, name, and throw money at.
But horses aren’t black dots. They’re 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.
2️⃣ When the Black Dot Doesn’t Show Up on the Scan
💔 Here’s the truth: sometimes the X-ray machine or ultrasound won’t find the black dot. Not because the horse is faking it, but because the problem isn’t a neat little lesion hiding in a diagnostic pixel. It’s the entire system that’s overloaded, crooked, or worn down.
And that disappoints people. We love a dot we can circle in red and say “Ah, there’s the villain!” But clinging to dot-thinking blinds us to the obvious. The evidence is etched in the horse’s 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.
3️⃣ Compensation: The Body’s Survival Party Trick
Horses are world-class compensators. If something hurts or feels tight, or one side’s stronger than the other, or the saddle fits like a torture device, the body doesn’t stop. It adapts. That’s compensation: the body’s way of staying upright, moving forward, trying to feel comfortable and keeping you from landing face-first in the dirt.
It’s clever. It’s essential. It’s 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.
4️⃣ 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 it’s the same idea.
⚖️ If the ground reaction force (that’s the push from the earth every time a hoof hits the ground) doesn’t 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.
5️⃣ 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 horse’s behaviour shifts when its body isn’t 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 that’s where prevention, longevity, and actual soundness live.
6️⃣ So What Do We Do About It? (Spoiler: Stop Thinking Like Accountants)
This is the part where someone always asks: “Yes, but what can we do?” As if there’s a neat checklist, a black dot solution to the rectangle problem.
The answer: stop thinking in silos. Start thinking holistically.
Hooves: A foot isn’t just a foot. It’s a bloody foundation stone. An unbalanced hoof torques everything above it. Farriers aren’t trimming toenails; they’re managing load transfer.
Teeth: That uneven wear isn’t 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 — and the whole body pays.
Saddle fit: A saddle that pinches or slides doesn’t just annoy the horse. It rewrites posture, one compensation at a time. You’ve just trained asymmetry, not to mention damaged tissues.
Gut health: Fascia, muscle tone, and behaviour all go to hell when the horse’s internal chemistry is off. A cranky gut = a cranky body.
Bodywork & training: The right hands and the right exercises don’t “fix” the horse. They give the system options. They remind the body of pathways it’s forgotten, instead of forcing it to hammer the same old crooked groove.
No single guru, gadget, or injection is the magic dot preventer. It’s the collaboration — vet, farrier, dentist, saddle fitter, nutritionist, trainer, bodyworker, and your impact in the saddle — that keeps the rectangle intact.
7️⃣ Believe the Horse
Here’s the take-home message: stop waiting for the X-ray fairy to conjure a black dot so you can finally “believe” your horse.
The horse has already told you. It’s etched on their bodies and it’s shouted through movement and behaviour.
Believe the horse 🐴. Believe the rectangle.🔲
Because once you stop dot-hunting and start rectangle-seeing, you don’t just fix problems — you PREVENT them. You don’t just “manage” breakdowns — you stop them happening in the first place.
That’s 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.
RESPECT✊: 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 below❤
