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I thought it was a silly idea, but I was always curious to learn other peo-
ple's ideas and opinions about horses. I wanted to understand horses better.
My horseshoeing instructor taught me how to shoe horses, but not how to
get horses to cooperate. Learning to understand and control horse behavior
was a big part of my job. I didn't understand why it is so hard to teach
horses something as simple as standing still for shoeing. In any event, what
the woman told me was interesting, and I wondered if there was anything to
it. I was shoeing 20 or more horses a week. It only took seconds to look at
the whorl, and I dealt with horse behavior every day. The position a farrier
works in while holding a foot off the ground is close-up and personal.
Cooperation is necessary. I thought that if a relationship exists between hair
whorls and behavior, I'd know before too long.
I noticed right away that horses with high hair whorl(s) were more likely
to resist shoeing . Horses with low whorls resisted less. At first, the relation-
ship was not very strong, but strong enough to keep me interested. I began
to value what I was seeing. Looking at the hair whorls on a horse before
starting to work made my job a little safer. When I approached an
excitable horse with a high whorl, I learned to avoid making quick move-
ments or fighting with them if they resisted. Instead, I learned that a quiet
and gentle approach worked better with excitable horses. Using this approach
allowed me to finish the job without a fight, and without getting hurt. I was
in a unique position to observe hair whorls in many horses. I was shoeing
about 20 horses per week, 80 per month. In the first year alone I looked at
more than 1000 horses. Even though I handled many horses more than once
a year, the number of different horses I worked with far exceeded that of
most professional horse trainers. I was learning about whorls from a variety
of unfamiliar horses. I handled horses from all the major breeds, ranging in
age from six months to 25 years. I still considered it just a curious phenome-
non, but I found the relationship between whorls and behavior useful.
It was the behavior and hair whorls of my own three horses that started
to convince me to take whorls seriously. Murphy was a 10-year-old
Appaloosa gelding with a hair whorl well below the eyes. He was as calm as
any horse I knew. I bought Murphy for my nieces and nephews to ride when
they came to visit. Murphy had a carefree expression and an independent
nature—he only worried about where his next meal was coming from. My
other Appaloosa gelding, Dell, was just the opposite of Murphy. His whorl
was well above the eyes. Dell was flighty and reactive. He would jump
10 feet if a mouse crossed the trail, and he was insecure and became very
nervous when separated from the other horses. He was big and strong, but
timid, reactive, and alert. He held his head high and oriented toward any
unusual sight, or sound. On the trail, he spotted deer on hillsides long before
other horses. He would stop and point with his ears and eyes. My third horse
was a race-bred Quarter Horse mare. Jenny had two high side-by-side
whorls. Her behavior was similar to Dell's, but less nervous: Dell's vigilance
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