Why does my heel horse crowd the steer?

A heel horse crowding the steer — drifting its body toward the steer's hind end and closing the distance past the point where the heeler has room to swing and deliver — creates a delivery angle that is too tight and too close for a clean loop, and risks the horse making contact with the steer which disrupts the run entirely. The cause is almost always a lateral control problem: the horse does not respond reliably to the outside leg pushing it away from the steer, either because that response was never specifically installed or because the horse's cattle instinct is pulling it toward the steer faster than the rider can correct it with the outside leg alone. The correction begins in flat work away from cattle: install a clear outside leg response — the horse moving its body away from outside leg pressure while continuing straight forward — until that response is confirmed and light before it is asked at speed next to a moving steer. In the roping pen on slow cattle, position the horse correctly and use the outside leg actively to hold the lane when the horse begins to drift in. The correction must come the instant the drift begins, not after the horse has already crowded to contact distance. Some heel horses crowd because the heeler has inadvertently taught them to by consistently delivering from too close — the horse has learned that the correct delivery position is tighter than it actually is. In this case both the horse's lane and the heeler's delivery habits need to be corrected simultaneously, since fixing one without the other will not produce a lasting change in the horse's positioning.