14/08/2024
11 years ago a horse with wobblers introduced me to Sharon May-Davis.
Her knowledge of anatomy, biomechanics and form & function through her dissections and research (she was the first to identify what is now called ECVM) has often supported the quite thoughts I've had about horses, but more importantly my journey in that time has provided me with some very powerful shifts in questions and understanding.
The lessons I've learned along the way (highlights pretty much shared in this post) I share with clients, and with people at large if I'm invited to give a talk. Granted, I know I'm not a viral, big follower number social media platform (that's just not me) but my hope is that I'm raising the alarm in my own small way, and as the saying goes.....1% over 100 days is 100% difference ๐ช
Sounding the Alarm.
Recently, I had a day at work where two clients, back to back, announced to me that their horse was just diagnosed with ECVM. ECVM is a genetic disorder of the lower neck bones (C6-C7) and the first thoracic (T1). Early indications point to an extremely large population of domestic horses, have this. It is a proven post-domestication event. Meaning, created by in-breeding. If early researchers are correct, we could be facing a reality that 40-60% of all domestic horses, are living with dysfunctional bodies that are difficult to diagnose.
Dysfunction in the lower neck causes severe pain; nerve, muscular and fascial, it causes major problems with movement. Inability to be trained without HUGE pressures "holding them together". Behavioural issues in some of these horses correlate to aggression, some to apathy and anxiety. It is a very serious diagnosis.
I just got off the back of chatting with Dr. Temple Grandin, one of the world top Animal Scientists. Her primary concern; poor breeding practices creating non-functional animals. That good handling doesn't matter, if the horses cannot be handled (Or trained) because their bodies are sore, or they are lethargic from being born into a broken body.
If Temple is concerned, I am terrified. The ramifications are huge.
We are facing a potential reality, where our horses are non-functional, and it will be hard to find functionally bred bodies. We are facing dysfunction in a region of their bodies notoriously difficult to scan, and even harder to diagnose even if the vets know what they are looking for.
Inattentional Blindness; a scientific phenomena where you will not find something that you're not looking for.
I am concerned that once we start looking for it, we are going to find it everywhere.
That we are going to see a slide backwards towards inhumane handling, training and treatment of animals as persons who are either unaware or uncaring of the animals protests, escalate to force compliance on animals who are trying to tell us that they WANT to, but they just cannot.
I am concerned that we may lose a generation of Horse Sense. As able bodied, resourced, passionate and kind hearted horse people step back from developing their higher equitation skills and instead become full time nurses to equine disease and dysfunction. And it is barely the fault of anyone we know. It is the result of a slow, multi-generational mistake, as we over select horses for size, early maturity and hyperextension, we also accidentally bred ticking time bombs. Horses who not only don't have collarbones like humans do, to stabilise their enormous torso's, but now don't even have properly formed spines these torso's hang from... and that we want to sit on.
The tsunami is here. Sounding the alarm.
I want to lead on this issue. Not by becoming an expert on the diagnosis of this issue. But an expert in long term management and support of owners who steward horses with chronic health issues for whom "correct" training... no longer applies.
Because with these horses, it rarely does. Do not decompensate these horses. Their compensations are holding them together. Our classical ancestors, had healthier horses to train... they could stick to firmer rules and stricter protocols. Not all of these rules apply now. We are going to need to be flexible, adaptable, smart. We need to outsmart the sh*tty genetics these horses were cursed with and find ways to help these animals not just survive, but thrive. While we also double advocacy work to spread awareness of genetic malformations and poor breeding practices, and start breeding these problems out.
A few of my podcasts guests who have been sounding the alarm for years;
Becks Nairn, Unbridled LLC with Kim Hallin, EQ Therapeutics, Plateau Equestrian / Caballo Holistico la Meseta just to name a few.
Recently my colleague Mills Consilient Horsemanship has been retroactively going through her past client horses, and announcing the physical diagnosis that informed their behavioural problems, one by one.
Actually, all my podcasts guests have been sounding the alarm for years.
The horses have been too!
It is time we listen and we start implementing real on-going support and leadership for the owners (stewards) of horses who through no fault of their own, are born to bodies that fail to thrive.
