What is more detrimental to a horse staying sound, toeing in or toeing out?
A. I think that toeing in is fairly uncommon and not particularly significant. The sort of toeing in I don’t like is when a horse puts his foot down and all the weight is falling on the outside of the foot as it hits the ground. If he is toeing in, but putting the foot down with the weight evenly distributed across the bearing surfaces, I don’t mind that at all. Where you get the sort of horse that’s toeing in and the outside of his foot hits the ground, and then the rest of it, those are the ones that are hard to train because all the strain is going up to the outside of the limb. Toeing out isn’t a particular problem as long as it is not too extreme-provided again that the horse has good joints, good ankles, good knees, and good bone and if he is allowed to mature and not put under pressure before his limbs and his skeleton are mature, set, and finished growing. I think a lot of the problems arise from putting these things under stresses and strains while they’re still like a young t
