Manual medicine has always existed – in fact, it predates today’s classical medicine. Hippocrates himself, to whom all doctors and veterinarians refer, was already talking about it 2,400 years ago. The beginnings of equine osteopathy were met with aggressive scepticism from the many people in all professions who claimed that the horse was too strong and large an animal to be handled by a human. Experience proves that it’s not a question of strength, and that virtually all manipulations are possible with the patient’s consent. Some critics say that you can’t move or replace a horse’s vertebrae, and they’re right. They simply don’t understand that it’s a question of unblocking vertebrae that are held together by spasm and are therefore painful. What are the secrets of equine osteopaths? How does osteopathy work on horses?
The work of the equine osteopath
The foundations of osteopathy were laid around 1850 by A.T. Still, an American physician. Still, but it’s only in the last twenty years or so that this form of medicine has finally been applied to horses, which is why it’s classified here as a modern procedure. Increased osteopaths and veterinarians are turning to this medicine, and the only problem at present is to be selective and not entrust your horse to just anyone…
If he understood that any loss of mobility in a joint interferes with blood circulation and the sympathetic nervous system, this has the effect of disrupting and weakening the organs or functions that depend on them. He also verified that this process works both ways, and that a diseased organ causes spasms that restrict the mobility of joints located in its nerve pathways. The principle of osteopathy is therefore to enable the patient to regain balance, and therefore health, by restoring mobility to the skeleton.
The main joints concerned are those of the spinal column, since all the nerves in the body originate from the spinal cord or brain.
However, true osteopathic treatment involves the whole body structure, including limb joints, tendons, ligaments, and fascia. For the osteopath, the spinal column is not responsible for all illnesses, as is all too often claimed, but it participates in them like the rest of the body. The spine is a means of diagnosing and treating imbalances in the body. It should also be pointed out that it’s never a question of “displaced” vertebrae being put back into place, but of vertebrae blocked by spasm being released.
The osteopath’s diagnosis is not made by reasoning or by observing symptoms. It’s by means of very subtle manual palpation, which takes a long time to acquire, that he looks for mobility restrictions in the skeletal system and can then deduce the disorders affecting the horse. From this examination flow the manipulations that will be performed, but which will not be imposed: the gestures aimed at releasing joint spasms are made by feeling, by “manually listening” to the patient’s agreement and reactions.
Osteopathy is not just a technique in which the basic mechanical gestures can be learned; it is a complete medical method, with its own rationales. It can’t be learned in a few days, and we mustn’t forget that we’re talking about health: life is a serious matter that can’t be taken lightly. Human osteopathy is a five-year full-time course, or a three-year course for those who are already physiotherapists or doctors. It is also thanks to this that a true osteopath knows where his or her limits lie and can, with full knowledge of the facts, refer certain patients to a doctor or veterinarian when he or she knows that the case will be better treated classically.
As horses are used for sporting performance, their results will be better if they have ease and lightness of movement. As far as the mechanical aspect alone is concerned, it is therefore very useful to monitor them on this level in competition, as is now the case for human athletes in all disciplines. In equitation, problems of bending or transition of gaits are mechanical difficulties for which such a medical approach will always be the method of choice.
When should you call an equine osteopath?
However, we must be careful not to become obsessed and call the osteopath for every technical difficulty we encounter. Let’s not forget that no individual is symmetrical. In the high jump, no human athlete can achieve the same performance if he changes his take-off foot, and few people can write as well with both hands. We must be wary of jumping to the conclusion that riding problems are medical in nature. Knowing that equine osteopathy exists is no excuse! Without even mentioning competence, sometimes a horse’s bending problems can be attributed to its rider and his own problems. Osteopathy may be the solution when there is a clear change in the horse’s locomotion, but it is not there to solve riding problems, nor to improve the performance of a horse that lacks suppleness by constitution or is simply not gifted…
As osteopathy is a form of medicine, it can treat not only locomotor disorders, but also behavioral problems, as well as chronic internal urinary, hormonal, digestive and other disorders.
It is in fact a holistic medicine, which means that it considers the organism with its own balance, and not as the sum of separately studied organs. It cannot therefore be said to treat this or that disease. To be more precise, in the case of a recurrently colicky horse cured by this method, we wouldn’t conclude that the osteopath cured colicky horses: he just cured this horse because, for this patient, he was able to find and resolve the imbalances that were his at the time and that translated into colic.
This is a completely different way of looking at medicine, one to which conventional Western medicine has not accustomed us, but the results prove that it has its place in the therapeutic arsenal and that no method is exclusive or should take the place of another. Osteopathy is not a panacea, but an additional weapon to be included in the means at our disposal to restore health to the horses we use for pleasure. The ideal will be reached the day we can really direct each patient towards the method best suited to the problem he presents.
The early days of equine osteopathy were met with aggressive scepticism from many people in all professions, who claimed that the horse was too strong and large an animal to be handled by a human. Experience proves that it’s not a question of strength, and that virtually all manipulations are possible with the patient’s consent.
Some critics say that you can’t move or replace a horse’s vertebrae, and they’re right. They simply don’t understand that it’s a question of unblocking vertebrae that are held together by a spasm and are therefore painful.
When faced with a patient and the various means of treating him or her, it’s important to respect an obvious hierarchy, and to start by using methods that don’t prevent you from trying others if you’re unsuccessful. If you start with infiltrations or even surgery, you won’t know whether this would have been possible without disturbing the organism by substituting its own means of regulation.
When you catch your finger in the door, common sense dictates that you open the door, not cut off the finger or inject a painkiller. The finger is dealt with afterwards, if necessary. Classical medicine is an increasingly precise and indispensable weapon that I know well and respect, but it must be used when we know that other methods don’t work.
Holistic medicines are often wrongly called complementary: when I see the results obtained by these methods in so many cases, I dare to say that it’s conventional medicine that’s complementary!
