Complementary Therapies for Horses The Horse – TheHorse.com

Five reasons to use these modalities on your equine athlete and the research behind them

Is your equine athletes performance a little off? Is he stiff in the hindquarters, choppy in front? Perhaps you find him to be underperforming, sluggish, or sore?

You might consider coupling complementary therapies with conventional treatments to boost your horses overall well-being and performance. Once called alternative and shunned for lack of scientific support, complementary therapies such as chiropractic care, acupuncture, and massage are rapidly gaining ground in sport horse barns as veritable complements tonot replacements fortraditional veterinary medicine.

If youre new to complementary therapies or just want to learn more, heres the latest information from veterinarians trained in these techniques.

Does your horse need these approaches? He might. Read on to find out whether your performance horse fits into any of these categories.

Orthopedic problems are often par for the course for any athlete, animal or human. Horses musculoskeletal systems, in particular, face the additional strains of carrying a riders weight, sometimes over high jumps and difficult terrain. Thus, performance horses often need extra attention to, and therapy for, their bones, muscles, and connective tissues, says Tiffany Snell, DVM, certified veterinary acupuncturist and chiropractor at Old Dominion Equine Associates, in Keswick, Virginia.

The goal of standard veterinary and complementary therapies for equine orthopedic issues should always be to address pain management, proprioceptive (awareness of body positioning) deficits, stiffness, weakness or fatigue, and neuromuscular control issues, explains Kevin Haussler, DVM, DC, PhD, Dipl. ACVSMR, of the Orthopaedic Research Center faculty at Colorado State Universitys (CSU) College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, in Fort Collins.

Although therapists carry out their complementary treatments on the horses exterior, the inner organs could benefit as well, says Brett Robinson, DVM, an associate veterinarian from San Dieguito Equine Group, in San Marcos, California. Complementary therapies (particularly acupuncture) can help with a variety of other conditions, such as respiratory illnesses, allergies, neurologic disease, gastrointestinal disorders, and more, she says.

Owners often know their horses well enough to identify when somethings not quite right or when theyre facing life challenges, say Snell. Those might be stresses related to travel, learning new things, fighting off illness (even with no clinical signs), adjusting to new management or diet, new (or lost) equine companions, or physical stresses associated with learning new skills.

Complementary therapies really improve the nervous system function, which connects to everything, she says. Any stress on the horses body or mind, any kind of challengewhether physical, emotional, or medicaltakes its toll on the body, which can affect their physical well-being, soundness, and performance. Horses might cope better with such challenges with the help of various kinds of complementary therapies, says Snell.Thisarticle continues in the February 2021 issue ofThe Horse: Your Guide to Equine Health Care. Subscribe now and get an immediate download of the issue to continue reading. Current magazine subscribers can access the digital edition here.

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Complementary Therapies for Horses The Horse - TheHorse.com