Horse Chiropractor

9 minutes long

watch at 2 minutes. was expecting to see a flying doctor.

My question does this treatment help?

A horse can carry a full-grown man over five-foot jumps and still buck him off afterwards. I'd like to see same man try to ruk and pluk same horse's spine into place! Wotta daft idea.

When a chiro works on a horse, you can hear the bones click into place. And they do move a lot better. Often a bad temperament is due to them being sore, and after a chiro session they are like new horses.

A chiro called Jonathan Perkins also uses 2 mallets that he hits against each other to adjust the bones. It's most amazing to watch

Thanks Sylvester !

There are lots of different physical therapies for horses and all of them are effective in some way, shape or form.

The trick, as with most things, is to match the ailment to the correct treatment as all can produce good results if they are applied appropriately. Usually the mark of a good practitioner is to tell you what they can and can't do for your horse and to be able to recommend someone else if they feel you need a different therapy. As Mav points out, adjusting bones the size of a horse's is quite a skill, but it can be done. However, one needs to bear in mind that like the song goes, bones are connected to other things - like muscles! And a misaligned bone can cause muscle spasms. Equally, a damaged muscle can pull a bone out of alignment. So sometimes you need to combine different things for the best result and it is really useful to have a decent team of people who are all happy to work together for your horse (quite often things like physiotherapy and farriery go together, or veterinary work and physiotherapy, or even dentistry). Finding the cause of the problem is usually half the job and once you've got a decent handle on what's wrong, it's easier to map out a way to fixing it.

There is most definitely a place for good chiropractic work and I've seen it work very well on some horses.

I have a preference for soft tissue therapies, mainly because I studied them and understand them a little better than some of the others, I guess, but I'm happy to use what or whoever my horse needs and just keep working my way down the list until I get a result. I had a great Bowen-type therapist who treated my horses for a long time on a maintenance basis - she did wonders for my Warmblood mare in particular - the difference in her temperament and way of going - even the feel of her muscles after a treatment was quite astounding. She was also able to pick up small injuries and niggles and things that had happened to my horse without my having to tell her.

Lately, I have had best results with a Winks Green practitioner who uses a Faradic machine. While it's a little less on the esoteric side, I find it very effective and my horses really like and respond to it. I also like to use it as a maintenance therapy and try and have my horses treated on a regular basis. Barring the odd unavoidable injury, I I tend to have very few soundness issues so I'm pretty happy that it's value for money. I have used chiropracters as well (Jonathan comes very highly recommended and is a thoroughly nice bloke), Dr Jan Still gets good results with acupuncture - there are lots of options !

I'm dead against chiropracty and acupuncture, both of them ... they are both based on some pretty weird theory that has nothing to do with real anatomy. You should read some of the things I've read!

But the main thing that sets me against them is their use - with humans and animals - for all sorts of things that really, truly should go to a proper doctor or vet. Like cancer, diabetes, heart problems, snakebite, malaria ... even laminitis in horses.

Anyone who tells me that acupuncture will cure laminitis and they don't need to take their horse to a vet, I personally will report them to the SPCA.

Hmm, there will always be quacks about. That's why I said there is definitely a place for GOOD chiropractic work (or any other treatment / therapy for that matter). And of course they need to be applied appropriately. Everything has its place.

We have a bit of an odd system when it comes to treating animals here. I trained in the UK, where every practitioner has to have some sort of professional insurance cover and you generally need to belong to some sort of umbrella organisation/regulatory body. Owners are a lot more educated and discerning and will insist on using a qualified practitioner and insist on checking your insurance details (usually because they can then claim these back off their animals' insurance). You are also not allowed to treat a horse without the prior knowledge / consent / recommendation by the animal's vet. And once you have treated the animal, you needed to write up a report of the treatment which needed to be copied to the owner, the veterinary practitioner, the insurer and obviously one for your own records.

Here in South Africa, more or less anything goes. Other than the veterinary profession, very few things seem to be properly regulated and I know very few practitioners who carry any professional insurance. Recommendations usually come by word of mouth and therefore one can easily burn your fingers a few times before you find the right person for the job.

I'm talking mostly about horses outside of the racing industry (although I use body workers on my race horses as well) but I don't bother telling my vet every time I call the physio because a) you never know which vet may or may not be treating your horse from one day to the next and b) the majority of local vets (again, this is only in my experience) are not interested and don't particularly care for alternative therapies anyway.

With horses in training, your trainer will make most of the health / medical decisions and the owner is usually only informed when the bill arrives (and then it's usually in vet speak listing medications and costs, so not terribly informative).

The problem is that healthcare is not an exact science. Horses can't talk and vets and other medical / health practitioners are only human and occasionally mistakes / misdiagnoses are made. Also, because we seem to treat horses in such isolation, each practitioner can really only judge each case on what they see (ie there doesn't seem to be a case file listing things like farriery visits, dental visits, previous medical history, physiotherapy treatments, etc) so each person is trying to assess each horse more or less cold and without any additional background information. Makes life a lot harder IMHO, but that's the way things seem to work.

I know it's not practical for most, but as I am the only common link between all the various practitioners I use, I try and be present whenever anyone else works with my horses (this is obviously easier with my riding horses who are closer to home than my race horses). I need to understand how / why my farrier trims hooves a certain way and give feedback if my horse is still brushing / overreaching / not striding out, etc. Same with the dentist (is my horse not chewing properly, lost weight / gained weight, harder on one rein than another, having trouble turning to one side, etc). Same with the vet, physio, chiro, etc. If the problem persists, then we know we've not got to the bottom of it. Also then something my vet may have noticed may be relevant to my physio or vice versa, but unless I pass it on, the other person might not have access to that information which then makes their job a little harder (and which usually ends up costing me more money).

Anyway, I have found that the key to success is matching the treatment to the ailment. Depending on the issue, one usually starts with a vet, who will either recommend surgical intervention, dispense medication or advise rest. Moving on from there, if you're not having results (ie my horse is still lame or not moving symmetrically), then you either accept things as they are or you look around at the other options available and see whether those make any difference.

In my experience, if you get the right match(es) then alternative therapies are very very effective.