What Does It Mean When a Horse Toes Out?
If your horse toes out, you’ve probably heard one of two things: either it’s a conformation flaw he was born with, or it’s just how he’s built and there’s nothing you can do about it.
I’d like to offer a third option.
In a significant number of toed-out horses — I’d estimate around 70 to 80% — the real cause is a misaligned sternum. Not the feet. Not the legs. The sternum.
And that’s actually good news. Because a misaligned sternum can be fixed.
What Does It Mean When a Horse Toes Out?
Toing out means the horse’s front feet point outward rather than straight ahead. When you look at the horse head-on, the toes angle away from the centerline of the body — sometimes just slightly, sometimes dramatically.
Most people look at those feet and assume the problem is in the feet, or in the legs, or in the way the horse was put together. And sometimes that’s true. But more often than you’d think, those feet are just doing what the rest of the body is telling them to do.
To understand why, we need to talk about the sternum.
The Sternum: The Foundation Nobody Talks About
The sternum is the center bone of the horse’s chest — the foundation of the entire thoracic cavity. It runs from the front centerpoint of the chest to about a hand’s width behind the elbow.
Here’s something important that most people don’t know: horses don’t have a collarbone. That means their entire barrel can swing side to side, and the sternum is the anchor that holds everything together. Think of it like the foundation of a house. When the foundation is level, everything built on top of it sits correctly. When the foundation shifts — even slightly — everything attached to it shifts too. And then the rest of the body compensates for that shift.
That’s exactly what’s happening in your toed-out horse.
How a Forward Sternum Causes Toing Out
When the sternum moves forward — say, from a fall, an awkward landing, or years of accumulated tension — a chain reaction happens through the entire front end of the horse.
Here’s how it works, step by step:
The point of the shoulder lines up with the front of the sternum. When the sternum pushes forward, it pushes the point of the shoulder outward with it. The humerus — the lower bone of the shoulder — gets pushed out as well. When the humerus goes out, the elbow drops inward, closer to the body. And when the elbow drops in, the leg rotates outward from the elbow down.
Including the feet.
That’s your toed-out horse. Not a foot problem. Not a leg problem. A foundation problem.
Toed-Out Horse Problems
Left unaddressed, a toed-out conformation — especially when it’s caused by a forward sternum — creates a cascade of secondary issues:
- Uneven loading — When the leg rotates outward, the horse doesn’t load the hoof evenly. Over time this creates uneven wear, joint stress, and can contribute to lameness.
- Shoulder and elbow strain — The structures around the shoulder and elbow are working in a compromised position with every single stride. That adds up.
- Compensation throughout the body — The horse adjusts his way of going to accommodate the rotation. Those adjustments show up as stiffness, resistance, poor collection, or unexplained soreness elsewhere.
- Hoof imbalance — Your farrier can balance the hoof, but if the sternum is still pushing the leg outward, the hoof will keep trying to compensate. You’ll be chasing a problem that starts somewhere else.
Can You Fix a Toed-Out Horse?
Yes — if the cause is a misaligned sternum, absolutely.
This is the part I really want you to hear, because too many horse owners have been told their toed-out horse is just built that way and nothing can be done. That’s simply not true for the majority of cases.
Now, could you theoretically just push the sternum back into place manually? A chiropractor might try this, and sometimes it helps temporarily. But here’s the thing — if the body hasn’t self-corrected already, there’s a reason. Horses roll, shake, move, and stretch. If the sternum was going to pop back on its own, it would have. The fact that it hasn’t means something is holding it forward. That something is what I call the primary problem.
The primary problem could be anything — a tight muscle, a fascial restriction, scar tissue, a nerve issue. You name it. Until you find and fix the primary problem, the sternum will just drift forward again.
Toed-Out Horse Treatment: What Actually Works
This is where TBT — Tucker BioKinetic Technique — comes in.
TBT energy work is designed to find the primary problem — not just the symptom you can see. Once we identify why the sternum isn’t self-correcting and address it at the source, the sternum can return to its correct, balanced position. And when the foundation is right, the leg rotation resolves on its own.
That’s not managing the problem. That’s fixing it.
If your horse toes out and you’ve been told it’s just conformation — it’s worth looking deeper. The answer is usually in there.
Cheers, Renee Tucker, DVM
