There is little more frustrating than getting ready for a big show and finding out your horse is not moving or feeling quite right. LEGISequine.com, the insurance company with horse sense, wants to bring you stories that provide useful information about horse care and valuable developments in technology to keep our horses in top condition.
Use of acupuncture to treat lameness in horses
Typically, a horse has primary lameness and secondary lameness with multiple layers of pain and by using acupuncture, it can be determined just how lame the horse is and where that lameness originates..
This month, we learn about diagnosing lameness early and accurately to keep our horses feeling good and performing great. If you ever have questions about these stories or insurance in general, give us a call and we’ll be happy to talk to you. We like talking horse to fellow owners and riders.
Getting to the bottom of lameness or movement that is “not quite right” can be difficult, time consuming, and expensive. Throw in a dose of frustrating due to inconclusive results, and you are probably like many horse owners at one time or another. Dr. John Matthews of Ramona, California, knew this all too well when he was growing up on his family's farm, which bred Thoroughbreds for the track.
"Lameness was a real problem for our family and caused a lot of conflict because the horses were never really sound enough to earn the money we needed them to make," he recalls. "Figuring out how to solve the problem was a quest of mine from an early age.
I wanted to be able to quickly and accurately diagnose painful joints, and I knew I had to find a way to let the horse tell me where it hurt. I felt like I needed something that was more accurate and quicker. The traditional approach can take hours to determine where a problem is and you get a lot of false positives, so it's not very accurate."
Dr. Matthews spent 20 years developing a highly accurate diagnostic system for pinpointing painful joints. "I can do it relatively quickly while watching a horse under saddle or on a longe line," he explains. "I have diagnosed and treated as many as 18 horses in one day. It started as a hobby, and I developed it through trial and error.
I was an art major in my undergraduate work in college before going to veterinary school, so I looked at diagnosis as an art form. I look at a horse that is not moving optimally and use energy balancing and manipulation to maximize his beauty and way of going. It's a creative, artistic approach to lameness evaluation, which is completely different from traditional methods but faster and more accurate."
Dr. Matthews found that horses will often be written off and sold because they are not performing well: jumpers will pull rails or refuse, racehorses won't run, and dressage horses will lose quality of movement. Often, because these horses are equally lame on both front or both rear legs, they will appear to move squarely and the typical person won't see lameness although there may be some general stiffness. However, Dr. Matthews has learned to see through this.
"Typically, a horse has primary lameness and secondary lameness with multiple layers of pain. What I can do is remove pain selectively to show not only myself but the owner and trainer just how lame the horse is and where that lameness originates. By the end, I have a list of all the problems and treatment protocols for each to make the horse sound."
Dr. Matthews's success comes from a lifetime of studying how horses move and using that knowledge in the diagnostic process. "I can look at a horse and determine, based on his conformation, what his optimal way of going should be and compare that to how he is moving now," he says. "Based on that, I notice patterns of compensation that tell me where the pain is coming from.
Unlike typical acupuncture or some other diagnostic techniques, my approach is not a static procedure where the horse is standing still. I never do acupuncture until I see the horse move so he can tell me where the pain is coming from. Once I identify the problem joint, I typically inject it with hyaluronic acid, which is a typical treatment. If it's a problem with the skeleton, I adjust it chiropractically, and if it's a muscle injury, I'll treat it with chiropractic, acupuncture, or in some cases with typical Western techniques."
Team McAllister, a hunter/jumper barn located at Flintridge Riding Club in La Cañada Flintridge, has had great results with Dr. Matthews's techniques. "When LEGISequine.com’s grand prix horse Columbus came to us a year ago, he had multiple small issues that built up," recalls Jenni Martin-McAllister. "He was sullen and not happy about working; he'd have this sour look and pin his ears. He didn't want to do anything or even have me on his back. He jumped OK, but I could hardly ride him around a 1.30M course.
If I collected him too much, he'd stop in the corner. Columbus had a lot of traditional vet work before that wasn't successful, but the combination of chiropractic and balancing acupuncture Dr. Matthews uses has helped to balance him and make him happy. We were able to really look at what specific things to treat, and over the course of the past year, he's slowly improved and become a totally different horse.
It's been a combination of a lot of things, including training, but Dr. Matthews was a key component because he relieved the horse's soreness and made him happy. Each time Columbus sees Dr. Matthews, he gets a little better and I as his rider and trainer can do a little more with him." Success was verified when Columbus placed in several major grand prix events this past fall.
This East-meets-West approach to veterinary practice is becoming more common. "It's interesting that it's cutting edge in one way, yet ancient in another way," Dr. Matthews muses. "It's kind of like going back to the future. We're dredging up 2000-year-old traditional Chinese medicine and combining it with modern Western techniques.
Acupuncture was imported to America from China during the cultural revolution of the 1970s. Acupuncturists were chased out of China at that time, so even though the practice was developed there, it was lost to them. I've been asked to go to China next year and work on the emerging jumper industry there, so the art is now being exported back."
Chinese medicine focuses on energy issues in the body, which may be in different forms, such as deficiencies or excesses, heat or cold. The practice strives to promote health and prevent disease by bringing the body into balance.
Specific pressure points, or acupuncture points, on the meridians of the body (called “energy highways”) point to problems in specific areas of the body. For example, a pressure point may indicate stomach distress, liver problems, or pain in the upper or lower hocks.
Although this approach is still out of the box for many horse lovers, Dr. Matthews finds it to be more accurate than traditional methods because it pinpoints the problem areas more quickly. "What your traditional Western equine doctor does with a diagnostic nerve block is actually acupuncture and they don't realize it," Dr. Matthews explains.
"When they do nerve blocking, they inject Lidocaine into a meridian, which relieves pain in a distant part of the body. Because they don't really understand all the ramifications of what they're doing, they get a false positive. This practice sets people up for frustration; the owner is not satisfied, and the vet is perplexed that the horse is not responding."
During the traditional diagnostic session, the vet does a nerve block and the horse appears sound, at least for a while. The vet attributes this improvement to the direct nerve block and therefore treats the blocked area – say a pastern joint.
However, that particular meridian may not have been related to the pastern joint at all but the stifle or another area of the body entirely. Since the root area of soreness was missed and therefore not treated, the horse quickly reverts and becomes sore again...and the cycle continues.
Until the ancient Chinese methods become more mainstream, there will be skeptics. However, Dr. Matthews has convinced more than a few owners when he was able to help their horse. "I saw a pony someone was going to sell because it was stopping and throwing the girl into fences," he explains.
"They felt the pony was not safe anymore for the girl to ride, so they wanted me to make her sound enough to sell. The girl was heartbroken. It turned out both front legs had problems and were equally painful, so the pony moved squarely and there was no evident lameness.
I discovered a lower knee problem on the left leg and a fetlock problem on the right. I treated those joints on a Monday, and the following weekend they took her to The Oaks and won the pony championship. She was willing to jump and didn't stop. What was going to be a throwaway pony turned out to be worth a lot more money and a safe mount with what was really a quick, easy fix.
Another mare's career was supposedly over, and after I got through her many layers of pain and treated her, she went to Spruce Meadows and won the $250,000 grand prix on opening day and four days later won a $175,000 grand prix. She hadn't won a grand prix in three of four years before that. Once I worked through her issues, she went back not only to where she had been before, but beyond."
"It's like a downward spiral when a horse is in pain," Jenni adds. "When they have soreness in one area, it ends up putting pressure on another part that gets sore, which puts pressure on another area, and so on. Getting to the bottom of it is like peeling back layers of an onion. Each time we peeled back a layer on Columbus, he would feel better, happier, and more forward, and then we would find something else and he'd get even better. His whole demeanor has changed.
When you walk in the barn, he looks kind, happy, and fun. When we first got him, he was very distant. In the beginning, I don't think it mattered what I did training-wise. He wasn't happy and didn't want to perform. Horses get behavioral issues because they're trying to tell us something, and if they're in pain you have to get to the bottom of that before they'll improve.
You need both kinds of medicine--Eastern and Western--to help them, and Dr. Matthews has a knack for combining the natural methods with traditional vet work. It's been a great experience. Columbus was the most obvious case, but we have younger horses we take to Dr. Matthews when we feel they aren't performing quite as well as they should. It's a neat thing to be able to take care of a small issue right away before it's a real problem. Plus, Dr. Matthews is just generally a really nice guy. I feel very fortunate to have found him and have him on my team."
It's hard to argue with the results seen by Dr. Matthews and others with similar practices. With horses that stay sounder and recover faster from injuries thanks to more accurate diagnostic methods, owners can use their dollars more wisely and have horses that are happy and willing to perform.
Additionally, by addressing small problems early, owners and trainers can reduce bigger problems down the road. This is a benefit for LEGISequine.com insurance clients as well. Investing in preventative work will keep your premiums lower and you can spend more time riding and enjoying your horse.