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Conformation Clinic Part 6

© Patricia Celley

Like everything else dealing with horses, learning to see good conformation takes a lot of practice. Now it's time to get out a tape measure, find some horses and have some fun. You could even incorporate these activities into a lesson plan for students using measuring, geometry, physics and good observation skills. If you have difficulty with the names of the parts of the horse or conformational terms, you can easily find and review information on that area of the body by looking at the descriptions of each clinic session we have done.

Begin by looking for geometric shapes. If you look at the horse from the side, you should be able to make a perfect square beneath him. The sides consist of the front and hind legs, the underline of the horse across the bottom of the barrel, and the ground. If the horse is too long in the back, the shape will look more like a rectangle. If the horse is wasp-waisted, your square will have one side taller than the other.

You should also be able to make a trapezoid on the horse from this angle. The top of the trapezoid will go from the withers bone to the hip bone. One side of the trapezoid will connect from the withers to the point of shoulder, or the furthest point on the front of the horse's body where the shoulder bone ends. The other side of the trapezoid will go from the point of hip to the point of buttocks, or the furthest point on the buttocks of the horse, before it starts curving down into the hind leg. The bottom of the trapezoid will connect the two sides through the middle of the horse's barrel. In a horse with good conformation, both of the bottom angles inside the tapezoid will be equal to each other and about 45 degrees. If a horse is steep in the shoulder or croup, these angles will be greater than 50 degrees.

You should also be able to make a square inside of this trapezoid by taking the sides and making one drop from the withers straight down to the elbow (the joint where the front leg meets the elbow) and the other side drop straight from the hip bone straight to the flank (the soft, thin skin at the end of the barrel just in front of the hind leg). If the horse is too short in the back, the shape may still look like a trapezoid. If the back is too long, it may look like an upside-down trapezoid or a rectangle.

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