A 3-Circle Horse

I used this particular term in my last blog and I am not sure that you, dear reader, may be familiar with it, as it is a term used by an older generation of horsepeople. In the Noble blog, I embedded a hyperlink, back to a blog I had previously written concerning the straight Egyptian mare, Tameri Anisah, but you had to scroll to almost the end, in order to find the paragraph and subsequent illustration. Remember the movie scene with Frank Morgan, aka "The Wizard," in The Wizard of Oz? Where is Toto, as it's time to pull back the green curtain to reveal a 3-circle horse. 

I "Googled" the term and the answers are varied, all the way from the 3 Olympic riding disciplines to riding circular patterns you can practice, when riding your horse at home. None of these answers really explain the conformational use of the term, so it was back to Google, where I found the following:

I'm not so sure anymore that Carl Raswan actually coined the phrase but he did use the term frequently and perhaps, he was one of the first to use the term, as applied to Arabian horses. Over the years, this term has been attributed to him. I have written this many times, over the lifetime of this blog. The term 3-circle horse, I believe, was used by the rugged old horsemen in Raswan's time period, to explain a horse whose body was balanced, not too long, not too short, but equally proportioned to his height, weight and structure. 

If you were to divide the body of a horse into equal thirds, from the point of chest to the wither, from the wither to the hip and from the hip to the point of buttock, imagine 3 equally-sized circles, fitting within each section. Makes sense? However, "balance" is a little more than determining whether 3 equally-sized circles can be drawn on the side of a horse, because additionally, you also need to draw a horizontal straight line (east to west) starting at the point of the shoulder and running across the horse's body, all the way back to the point of the buttocks.  Then, compare the length of the horizontal line with the vertical line you drew at the withers, running from the withers to the ground (north to south). The length of the vertical line should equal the length of the horizontal line. Imagine a horse whose back is too long or legs too short, no matter that 3 circles fit perfectly, side-by-side, the vertical and horizontal lines don't match and therfore, despite the 3 circles, the horse is still not in balance. Below, is an excellent drawing which further illustrates the circles and lines used to measure balance: 

The Pyramid Socety's Standard of Excellence, published 2012 

In summary, "3-circle horse", as Raswan used the term, was an attempt to explain, in an easy-to-understand way,  a concept that is challenging to describe with words and may be better understood visually. Remember that a 3-circle horse is never angular in appearance, rather, a 3-circle horse's body is comprised of rounded or better yet, curvey lines, each part of the horse's body in proportion with the other parts of the body, working together to form an overall pleasing picture of a horse we will never forget, despite who coined the phrase.