07/14/08 Whorls away

How handy is your horse? I'm Jeff Keane, stay tuned after the break to learn how you can tell just by looking. Did you know that the hair on your horses head can help you determine it's personality. Here is Susan Allen with more on whorls and swirls. Jeff, horseman throughout the ages have used swirls or whorl patterns in the horses facial hair to determine their trainability and talent. Many, including the clinician Linda Tellington-Jones discovered that horses with a single swirl in the center of their forehead tend to be less complicated than an animal with several whorl patterns on it's face. Tellington- Jones has established a method for determining personality traits using whorls not to discount certain horses but to better understand how to train temperamental types. Most recently though, Irish researchers have found that whorl patterns can serve as a guide to whether a horse is right, left handed or well balanced. The handiness of a young horse could mean the difference between future success or failure in aggressive disciplines like jumping, or tie down roping. The Irish study concluded that left handed horses had more counter clockwise whorls and the well balanced horses had radial hair whorls. Susan it is also interesting that hair patterning in horses occurs in the embryo at the same time as brain development, so the Irish team feels that further studies could unlock more keys to understanding horse behavior. I'm Jeff Keane.