THE BODY - Body Whorls
Body Whorls (also called a swirl, crown, or cowlick)
In a horse world steeped in convention, it is difficult to conceive that conformation not only affects a horse's physical balance, but his emotional and mental balance as well. The art of personality analysis is an ancient one, traditional in a number of cultures that held horses in high regard as individual beings. They developed methods for evaluating personality by analyzing a horse's swirls and other physical characteristics.
A whorl, is where the hair grows in the opposite direction from the hair surrounding it. Most horses have one somewhere on their face, although the position and shape varies. The whorl can be high, between the eyes, or low on the horse’s face and be big, small, round, long, messy...some horses can even have two or more.
Types of whorls include:
• Simple, where the hairs converge from different directions into a single focal point.
• Tufted, where the hair seems to converge and piles up into a tuft.
• Linear, where hair growing in opposite directions meet along a line.
• Crested...same as for linear, but the hair merges to form a crest.
• Feathered, where the hair meets along a line but falls at an angle to form a feathered pattern.
• Sinuous, where two opposing lines of hair growth meet along an irregular curving line.
About 78% of horses have one of the above facial whorls, while 16% have double whorls and only 6% having three or more. You have a hair whorl on top of your head (check it out) and about 2-5% of people have TWO whorls and it’s thought the direction of your hair whorl...clockwise or counter-clockwise...indicates if you are left or right-handed. Whorls can be found on other areas of the horse's body such as the neck, chest, belly and in front of the stifles. Part of the breed standard for Exmoor ponies lists facial whorls as being desirable as they help divert water away from the eyes.
I hope that this awareness will give you a fresh way to look at horses, a way to judge them with a radically new vision.
There will never be another horse exactly like yours. You know better than anybody that he's an individual with a distinctive personality and characteristics with little quirks and endearing habits. He's the product of a unique combination of influences: heredity, upbringing, training and living environment. And these differ for each horse, making our equine friends diverse and our relationships with them personal and special.
Still, you can generalize about horse temperaments and use these generalizations to strengthen your relationship with your horse. Once you develop a better understanding of your horse's basic nature—the good and the not-so-good—you can tailor his training to best meet his needs. Perhaps even more importantly, you can develop realistic expectations for him. You can recognize and eliminate goals that are too lofty, freeing both you and your horse from the stresses of unattainable expectations. It's a win/win situation.
