20/07/2024
Meet Peggy.
Peggy is the skeletal remains of a polo pony mare that was euthanized due to dangerous behavior. It was said that she, and I quote, "was trying to kill people".
The first image is of Peggy's thoracic spine. The spinous processes of her vertebrae directly under where the saddle would be not only have no space between them, but have rubbed so hard against each other that they wore holes in the adjacent bones. Attachment points for tendons and ligaments further down on the vertebrae are spiky and sharp and feature errant bony deposits where her body was trying to support soft tissue structures that were under tremendous abnormal strain.
The second picture is of the ventral aspect of Peggy's lumbar spine. This is the view you would have if you laid down on the ground on your back underneath skeleton Peggy and looked up towards the sky. Not only does she have areas where the vertebrae are trying to fuse to stabilize her back, she has an enormous 1.5" bony growth jutting out, right into a channel where long muscles of the back run and attach.
The reason I got to meet Peggy is because she was given to a friend of mine, and the reason she was given to them is because the horrific pathologies her skeleton exhibits are run of the mill at the institute her body was donated to. She is not unusual, she is the norm.
This mare did not become this way overnight - this took years and years of poor biomechanics to manifest to this degree, undoubtedly with signs along the way. The longer I work with horses, the more I recognize that they are extraordinarily willing to tolerate immense discomfort to do what is asked of them until they simply can't anymore. They always find a way to tell us - it then becomes of matter of whether we know how (or care) to listen.
The horse that starts out stiff every ride is not "cold-backed". Something is going on.
The horse that throws a buck after every jump is not just "quirky". Something is going on.
The horse that pins its ears while being groomed, the horse that consistently can't hold the left lead canter, the horse that swishes its tail when you put your leg on...
Something is going on. If we can't put empathy before ego, we have to ask ourselves: who are we in this for, us or the horse?
Many thanks to Saxon Alexandra of Actuality Equine LLC for sharing Peggy with me.
