Jenny Creak PhysioVet

14/06/2024

I've just had the most fantastic 2 days at a conference by ESMA hosting the world renowned Professor Jean Marie Denoix.

Prof Denoix is an equine vet with a special interest in anatomy, biomechanics, ultrasonography and trying to rehabilitate horses using shoeing and noninvasive techniques. It was wonderful to bring vets and therapists together and catch up with friendly faces.

What a legend. I have brain ache now!

02/05/2024

I'm very excited to be a part of such a fantastic referral hospital team!

13/03/2024

A novel idea to combat stable boredom demonstrated by Goose!

Not sure what will happen if it pops though!

26/02/2024

Forwarding from a colleague at Nottingham University..interesting topic! I'll look forward to the results.

For those of you that do look after horses, would you please consider completing this survey regarding how well you trust your horse vet and what they could do to improve their trustworthiness.

https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=7qe9Z4D970GskTWEGCkKHoLvHkI6311Cnn52z_LORqxUMjhIMUtMQzhEWTlGVUdUUjRUOTlWV1VFUy4u

11/02/2024

It's been fantastic working with you too Wendy and Helen ###

31/01/2024

Getting messages like this make me so happy!

"Had a fabulous lesson today, he was super. He didn't feel uneven or anything"

This is Marty. He is a young ex racer being re trained by Jenny. He's not the easiest horse has a few struggles but he responded really well to our physio session this week. Here he is on his lesson a few days after treatment.

Using AI gait assessment I could track the changes in his movements before and directly after his physio treatment. His symmetry of movement markedly improved leading to a more even feel in his ridden work.

26/01/2024

Phew! A busy week with physiotherapy and vet work!

Just wanted to say a big thank you to all the vets and clients who have recommended me recently. I've had a lot of bookings through word so THANK YOU for your support!

Here is one such client, Tia, who I caught napping today when I was visiting her pal Pirate in Warrington. She looked very surprised to see me!

25/12/2023

Merry Christmas everyone! I hope you all have a lovely day. Wishing you all lots of love and thanks for all your hard work over the past year.

Here is one such hard working pair in action!

22/12/2023

Duke, or Ducky as he's known, is a much loved 21 year old TB. Still moves beautifully and is schooled and hacked. Absolutely loved his stretches and certainly got the most out of his treatment. Treating horses like him is an absolute joy.

Thanks to his owner for permission to post.

18/12/2023

Sleip in Action!
I'm sure a few of you are wondering what this Sleip stuff is all about...well here is an example.

Look at these plots. They show a horse who has had a long standing RH lameness that I have been working with. He has also showed a lameness LF. He has trouble taking R canter lead. Is it the front? Or is it the hindlimb?

These data plots show pre and post physio treatment from 1 session.

Purple plot is for FL symmetry
Blue HL

Green=good symmetry/sound
Grey-yellow-orange-red= progressively greater asymmetry/lameness.

Here we can see resolution of the forelimb lameness after treatment.
The length of the grey line indicates the degree of asymmetry, longer =more asymmetrical.
The lameness RH has also decreased post treatment.
No drugs, no blocks, just physiotherapy.

How does this help? My interpretation of these results along with what I found on the horse's body and the way he functions leads me to believe that he is lame in front as a result of tension in the thoracic sling due to overloading. He may need help from the vet to move forward with the RH pain but physiotherapy is helping to improve the lameness.

I will now share these with his vet and we can make a plan to focus on the RH.

Thank you to Janet, Jo and Paul with Bear for allowing me to share this data.

11/12/2023

This is why I love being a physio.

You just don't get this kind of a "thank you" as a vet.
Henry, pictured here has had a long period of lameness but is now well on road to recovery.

Here he is really leaning into a stretch of the forelimb, showing that lovely feeling of release and telling me how much he's enjoying it.

The feedback you get from horses is something I've learnt through training and working as a physiotherapist and it is an absolutely essential part of the job.

I believe I am a better more sensitive vet because of it.

01/12/2023

It's coming!!!!

I'm super excited to announce that from January I will be able to offer my clients bespoke AI objective gait assessment at each visit!

You may recall my post about a fabulous new technology that assesses symmetry of movement in horses on a straight line and on the lunge, the Sleip app. The data produced can be sent to other professionals such as vets and farriers to enable a more informed and coordinated approach.

This technology will be used to assess horses pre and post treatment, as part of monitoring rehabilitation following lameness issues, and in my vet job as part of lameness investigations equine vets.

I am really keen to make this as accessible as possible to anyone interested in more accurately assessing their horse at their physio appointments so I've chosen a price point of £35 per session.

I am getting in early with this! Its not caught on yet in the UK but has been developed in Sweden and used extensively in Europe.

Exciting times ahead!

30/10/2023

Following on from your comments about the Sleip technology (and thank you so much for these), can I ask for your opinions of how much you would expect to pay per session for the reading and analysis? I could offer one per session of before and after treatment..

Thoughts?

30/10/2023

POST EDIT: whilst I would love to purchase and use this technology, I need to crunch the numbers on whether I can afford it! Could you help by giving me some feedback
On what you would be willing to pay for the readings?
PM me if you don't feel comfortable putting it out there!

Please could I ask your opinion on a new technology I'm thinking of bringing into my practice?

It's called Sleip and it's Swedish gait assessment software that I can use to look at symmetry of movement before and after treatment or to identify possible low grade lameness in horses that are having issues but don't look obviously lame. It will also be a great way to monitor the progress of cases as they recover and are going through rehab.

It will allow problems to be picked up early and for progress to be assessed quantitatively and more accurately. I can also send data reports to vets to improve communication within the team.

Please comment to let me know what you think. Would you like to have access to this?

Thanks very much!

26/10/2023

One of the amazing people I get to work with on the vet physio team at Nottingham University.

Well done Matthew.

28/09/2023

So hard to keep the weight off, but do keep this research in mind.

PONIES CAN EAT HALF THEIR DAILY INTAKE IN JUST 3 HOURS 😳🐷🐴🍏

In research trials investigating pasture intake, ponies over-compensated for restricted turnout even when fed ad lib forage whilst stabled, off the pasture.

They seem to learn they will be restricted in time so compensate by eating grass at a much faster rate.

Ponies can eat up to 1% of their bodyweight in dry matter (equivalent of 5 kg for a 500kg horse) in just 3 hours of turnout on free-access pasture.

Unfortunately this shows that restricted turnout time is not a useful method of restricting grass intake. Strip grazing and/or grazing muzzles are proven methods of limiting grass - and therefore WSC (includes sugar) and calorie intake.

Research has also showed that ponies can eat up to 5% of their bodyweight turned out for 24h on good pasture, which is double a normal appetite.

It really is no wonder that some horses and ponies can get so overweight on grass pasture!

Feel free to share...
😳🐷🐴🍏

25/09/2023

I was lucky enough to attend 2 days at BEVA Congress last week. Caught up with a few faces and learnt a lot. It was interesting to see some new topics included this year.

I will post a few snippets that I've learnt over the next few weeks!

24/09/2023

Yes!!!!!
Imagine being trapped in your coat all day despite feeling too hot! That would feel like torture to me.

*** FOCUS ON RUGGING ***

Continuing our focus on rugging, this figure illustrates quite nicely what happens if we "over-rug". The image shows the air temperature in blue on a fairly typical autumn day similar to those many of us are experiencing now.

The horse has a 50g turnout rug on and the horse is clipped. The morning starts cool but it warms up to between 15°C and 20°C for much of the day. We can see that the horses's surface temperature measured under the rug follows a similar pattern BUT by 11:00 in the morning the temperature under the rug is already above the horses upper limit of its thermoneutral or "comfort" zone. And it stays above the 25°C line until later afternoon when the sun starts to get lower in the sky and the temperature starts to drop.

So once again, the message ISN'T DON'T RUG, the message IS DON'T RUG TOO EARLY, DON'T RUG ACCORDING TO HOW YOU FEEL & DON'T OVER-RUG.

Your horse covered in hair, is ~7 times larger than you but only has 2-3 times more skin surface. Most heat is lost at the skin surface. Your horse loses heat much more slowly than you. They won't feel the cold when we do.

In this example, this horse would likely benefit from a 100g rug overnight but doesn't really need one during the day if it stays dry.

For more information and resources on rugging, including rug testing and rug user surveys, please check out our website https://drdavidmarlin.com/rugging-round-up/

12/09/2023

If you have time to participate! Posting for a student at Nottingham University:

I am a 4th year veterinary medicine student and have been working with The British Horse Society and The University of Nottingham to generate resources helping horse/pony owners to recognise lameness. I was wondering if you could share my survey with all students and staff in the university? If so please could you attach the following message:

'Lameness is a common problem in the horse. However, it can sometimes be difficult to identify.

The University of Nottingham and The British Horse Society are working to generate resources to help make it easier for owners to recognise lameness in their horses.

We are looking for horse and pony owners/ carers over the age of 18 to complete this short survey, telling us about how they recognise different types of lameness.

https://q85bzek6b5v.typeform.com/to/kvXX1BM4

The survey takes between 10-25 minute to complete and includes a section where participants are able to watch videos of horses and write their own interpretation of the lameness and how they would manage it.

10/09/2023

Thank you so much to everyone at Pegasus and North Cheshire Equestrian Centre for a great afternoon!

Beautiful and informative demos from amazing horses and their people. What a fabulous event!

And thanks for giving me the opportunity to speak. I really enjoyed it!

10/09/2023

Absolutely

CAN YOU FORCE A HORSE TO DO SOMETHING THEY DON’T WANT TO?

I often hear "If he didn't want to, he wouldn't do it”. There seems to be a growing number of people on social media saying that you can’t make a horse something they don’t want to do. These comments could, for example, be in response to a film showing a horse displaying behaviours that indicate they are stressed (rushing, nipping, fidgeting, licking and chewing, showing the whites of the eye etc) when they are asked to jump, load, stand still or hack out alone.

It is clear many people don’t recognise the subtle (or even not-so-subtle!) signs of stress or fear in horses and they believe that if their horse didn’t want to do something there is no way anyone could make them, but it is not that straightforward.

It is actually very easy to make a horse do something they don't want to do. That's one of the reasons we can do so much with them, they are very tolerant of us and more often than not do as we ask. Therefore it's extremely important that we consider whether what we ask is right for them or not, that we learn to read our horses behaviour and body language and make sure they are confident and well-trained before we ask too much of them.

How a horse behaves in any situation depends partly on his past experiences. For example, a frightened horse who tried to escape being clipped for the first time could have been hit, then been tied fast in a pressure halter. So now their fear of experiencing pain is greater than their fear of clippers and so they stand still – they freeze.

Sadly, this is an all too common way of training horses. Rather than teaching the horse the clippers aren’t going to hurt by introducing them gradually and rewarding them for trying, increasing pressure is applied to force them to stand still.

The result is that the horse is still frightened of the clippers, but they are now also frightened of the pressure halter, the handler and perhaps even the environment they were clipped in. They will also have learned that their attempt to escape meant they would be hurt, so they may be less likely to try that tactic again in future and instead put up with the situation. The horse may actually end up in learned helplessness and give up trying to escape from other difficult situations too.

If we humans are frightened and don’t want to do something, surely we understand that adding extra pain, discomfort or fear to force us to face that situation won’t magically fix our original fear? So why do we believe it will fix a horse's fear?

Learning to recognise the early signs of fear/stress/anxiety/discomfort in your horse is vital. Potential Indicators of acute stress can include a raised head and neck position, tail swishing, pawing at the ground, shying, whinnying, increased oral behaviours (eg. mouthing the leadrope when led), the four Fs (flight, fight, freeze, fidget), tension in the facial muscles, showing the white of the eye, triangulation of the upper eyelid or an inability to concentrate.

If your horse starts to perform an unusual behaviour, take note! If the behaviour occurs because of something you do, does it stop when you stop, and then start again when you resume your behaviour? Watch your horse to see when it happens, notice what you are doing and what is going on the environment.

Always consult a vet if your horse’s behaviour changes suddenly and if they are clear of any physical issues then a certified behaviourist can help you.

04/09/2023

Hi everyone
I've been asked to do a talk/demo at this fantastic charity event to raise money for Pegasus riding for the disabled.

Open to suggestions about topics to cover if you have any thoughts!

Search North Cheshire Equestrian Centre to book a ticket, scan the QR code, or this link might work!🙏

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1054234614599948/permalink/6719822261374460/

01/08/2023

Canter Problems!

An interesting finding I've noticed during my work as an equine vet:

Over the years I've seen many horses that are having problems with canter. Disuniting, choosing the wrong lead, failing to correct, over bending, falling in, falling out you name it! The most obvious thought was that there may be a hindlimb, sacroiliac or back issue.

Whilst this seems logical, a thorough lameness exam has occasionally thrown up a forelimb lameness. Following blocking this lameness, canter issues have resolved.

Case 1: Warmblood frequently disuniting in canter with inconsistent balance. No forelimb lameness visible on straight line and lunge but obvious when lunged on a hard circle. Nerve block to desensitise the foot resolved the lameness. Canter was then correct with better balance.

Case 2: Welsh B that takes the correct canter gait pattern but cannot sustain canter and falls back to trot. Mild forelimb lameness noted on exam on straight line and soft lunge. Nerve block to foot and pastern resolved the lameness and pony was able to canter multiple laps on the lunge.

It was really interesting to consider how a horse adapts their gait to cope with pain. Its not always as you would expect!

23/06/2023

Geriatric horses!

I'm always really happy when I get asked to treat older horses. As a vet, I remember advising people with older retired horses to turn them out and "let them be a horse". Since qualifying as a physiotherapist, I think of older horses much like older people: if you don't use it, you lose it!

In my role as a vet, I've put many horses to sleep in their later years because they could no longer get themselves up. I believe that if we performed gentle, stretches, pole and bending exercises with them, we could keep them stronger and more flexible for longer, in conjunction with appropriate veterinary care.

Here is a wonderful example of one of my older patients, Classy. She is 27 years young and still in ridden work! Her owner, Norma is totally devoted to her as you can see from her fantastic jumper!

02/05/2023

A hip replacement in a horse!