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Published Equi-Ads February 2008
Equine Manipulation Matters
By Liz Jones Dip ITEC Dip MCAM EBW and Claire Barnes Dip MCAM A horse in top shape is happy, eager and comfortable. However, a great many horses suffer physical discomfort and worse, sometimes chronic discomfort. This impairs their performance, and is very unsatisfactory – even distressing – for both the horse and the rider. Equine Manipulation and Equine Sports Massage are complementary therapies that can remedy these discomforts. They are not an alternative to veterinary care but with your vets permission both therapies have an important part to play in the physical well being of your horse. We will explain why they are so important in this article. Because the horse is large and heavy, and cannot lie down for any great length of time, almost all of its activity and relaxation is spent upright and in movement. If for any reason it cannot stand or move squarely from some injury or discomfort, the horse starts to compensate by shifting mass away from the point of discomfort. This then causes double trouble, because now there are at least two areas of its body that are working outside their natural alignment and function. Compensation If your horse cuts its leg, for example, in addition to a tear in the skin the surrounding tissues and muscles could be bruised and inflamed. While this may not be enough to cause the horse to be lame, there could well be enough discomfort from the injury to cause the horse to compensate by shifting its weight. The body’s way of protecting an injury is to limit movement to that area by tightening the surrounding muscles to form a ‘splint’. Therefore, other muscles and joints have to take on more weight and concussion than normal. The longer that this goes on, the longer the compensating muscles will learn to continually take a higher load than they should. This can lead to an awkward, if only fractionally evident, misalignment of the whole frame. Once the horse has learnt to cope in this way, and after the original injury has healed, the muscular system does not necessarily return entirely to ‘normal’. The habit of compensation often becomes ingrained and the muscles need to be retrained back to their natural position. It is important to recognise that the compensatory distortions and misalignments can be very small but nevertheless may have a big effect on the horse’s behaviour and performance. With accurate assessment and gentle skilled manipulation and massage, the muscles can be evoked into releasing the compensatory tension therefore allowing the body to retrain and realign itself for a natural, healthy and comfortable performance. Manipulation is especially beneficial because muscles are attached to bones via tendons and therefore manipulation influences all of the muscles connected to the bone being targeted by the practitioner. Thus manipulation releases muscles that could not be reached by massage alone. A Common Compensatory Effect One common compensatory effect is a ‘pelvic rotation’ or ‘pelvic tilt’. What does this mean? If the back muscles tighten on one side of the horse to pull the point of the hip (tuber coxae) towards the head, it is known as a pelvic tilt. If they tighten on one side to pull it upwards, it’s a pelvic rotation. This can be assessed by standing the horse square, and feeling on both sides whether the tuber coxae are level. There are so many potential causes for this but generally it is secondary to a problem elsewhere, which may or may not be observable or even still present. A number of horses are known to carry slight misalignments and it may seem that they do so without apparent ill effect (how many of you have horses that perform better on one rein than the other?). These pelvic tilts and rotations can be easily and gently remedied by manipulation, which can result in a marked improvement in movement, suppleness and health. After manipulation sessions it is important to incorporate strengthening exercises, which the practitioner can offer advice on, into the horse’s routine to maintain the new balance and to stop the muscles from reverting to their old compensatory state. If the pelvic tilt or rotation returns after a short period of time this may mean that the original source of discomfort is still present. This could be a low grade lameness, an ill-fitting saddle, an un-level rider, unbalanced feet or even a sore tooth, to name just a few of the possible causes. Further investigation would then be needed. Most misalignments do not occur in just one area of the body. When there is no longer equilibrium the whole body is affected. For example, if the pelvis is not level then this can in turn create tension in the long back muscles and stiffness in the shoulders, neck and head. All of these can occur first, last or simultaneously. This is why a McTimoney-Corley manipulation session is a whole body treatment every time, as the area that seems to be showing the most obvious discomfort may not necessarily be the original source of pain. Maintenance Horses are wonderfully strong, willing and obliging animals, and are keen to do all that is asked of them despite any injuries and discomfort they may experience. Therefore, they regularly work hard to overcome any physical impediments that may afflict them. They are often so good at this that by the time the rider notices any change in performance the problem has already been there for some time. If these are overlooked and remain untreated, problems will continue to build up and the horse will eventually become unsound. This is why maintenance sessions become important to keep up sustained top performance. McTimoney-Corley practitioners are trained to discover these subtle muscle tensions and imbalances and correct them. The longer any problems are left untreated, the longer it will usually take to restore natural performance. Case study one: Blackie is a 13yr old Throughout her career she has always been stiff on the left rein but she could be pushed through this. Eventually it started to take longer to work her in and so her owner decided to give her a year off. After her year off Blackie’s owner started to bring her back into work but the problem was still apparent. In fact it seemed to be no better at all. With her vets permission she was assessed by a McTimoney-Corley practitioner. She was found to have a noticeable pelvic rotation with the left side tuber coxae being much higher than the right. She also had a pelvic tilt with the tuber coxae being pulled towards the head on the right side of the horse. This had resulted in the back muscles on her left side being much more developed than on the right. As well as the pelvic rotation and tilt she had tension and spasm through her long back muscles and compromised movement through her left shoulder. After the first session, which levelled the pelvis and freed a lot of the tension through her back and shoulders, there was a dramatic improvement in her suppleness on the left rein. Because of the years of compensatory movement it has taken several months of rehabilitative training, manipulation and sports massage to strengthen the muscles correctly and to make the muscle tone even on both sides of the horse. We will never know why she put these compensatory measures in place (although after a visit from her equine dentist she was found to have a large step on her lower left molars which looked to have been present for some time. This could have caused her to try to avoid contact which then had a knock on effect throughout her body) but we do know that they got progressively worse over time and would never have disappeared without help. This would almost certainly have been the end of her very successful dressage career. Case study two: Queenie is a yearling Welsh cob filly. She is very inquisitive and puts her head through the gate of her paddock. On one occasion, while her head was through the gate, she got frightened by one of the farm dogs and pulled back sharply, catching her poll on the bars. Her owner noticed that for three or four days she was standing very awkwardly with her head and neck stretched out. The vet was called and confirmed that there was no fracture but she was very bruised and sore. Once the bruising and swelling had been given time to reduce and with the vets permission she was seen by a McTimoney-Corley practitioner who found that the muscles on the right side of her neck had tightened, pulling the wing of the atlas forwards. With gentle manipulation and massage this muscle tension was released allowing the wing of the atlas to return to its natural position. After just one session, Queenie was back to her old self. Because the problem was treated promptly and the original source of discomfort was known, only one manipulation session was needed. If Queenie had been left untreated, the muscle tension could have remained and gradually moved down her neck and through her back to her pelvis as the yearling started compensating for the compromised movement in her head and neck. Many treatments would then have been required to get Queenie’s body back to equilibrium. LIZ JONES is a qualified McTimoney-Corley Animal Manipulator and Equine Body Worker. She is a member of the Association of McTimoney-Corley Spinal Therapists and is the Scottish representative of the International Equine Body Workers Association. She works throughout CLAIRE BARNES is a qualified McTimoney-Corley Animal Manipulator and is a member of the Association of McTimoney-Corley Spinal Therapists. She will be attaining her Equine Body Worker qualification in April 2008. She works throughout Powys, Monmouthshire and Herefordshire and can be contacted at www.aran-cob.co.uk or (01873) 890230 |
