23/11/2025
Thought provoking post from Morgana's physio who attended a dissection this week. Horses are so complex and often stoical. Too often nowadays we are sidetracked by "gait analysis", x-rays and nerve blocks. Joints are routinely injected without as much of a thought for what is actually the source of an issue.
Working fundamentally with Fascia, I get to feel how horses are compensating through their body often at a visceral level. Acupressure points relate to structures both superficial and deep inside the body again flooding me with information from within. I'm not sure I am emotionally strong enough to visually see what I know I am feeling. So well done Bev for being brave enough to witness the dissection of this horse, let down by humans but still honouring us by providing us with so much valuable insight and education.
🐴 This week I was lucky enough to attend a full horse dissection as part of my professional training.
It was incredibly interesting and really brought home how complex, interconnected, and able to adapt the horse’s body truly is.
I have noted a few interesting observations below but I feel like I could chatter on about this for hours so if you want to know more please feel free to ask, comment, or message.
One of the points we looked at the effects of unnatural postures on the horse. We put the horses head into a natural position and unnatural positions to see how the tissues were affected. The effects of unnatural postures was noted in the horses soft tissue adaptations. We saw thickening of c2 (cervical vertebrate 2) bursa and associated thickening of the Nuchal ligament over the same area, suggesting the horse had been worked in an overbent posture causing irritation to the tissues rubbing against one another. Interestingly the horse also had thickening of the nasal bone - suggesting a tight nose band had been worn.
Sadly the horse dissected had extensive bowel and kidney necrosis along with systemic synovitis (joint inflammation), and calcium deposits in most joints, thyroid, and perotid gland. Although it can not be linked through dissection it highlighted the link between gut dysfunction and systemic inflammation. This has always been a topic of conversation so being able to see it with my own eyes has solidified alot of my beliefs.
In the photo below is the lens from the horses eye, you can see how it magnifies the writing on the paper. This lens should be clear, but as you can see it is quite yellow, the retina was also very greyed, suggesting this horse would have had trouble with his eye sight - especially in dusk / dark environments. Interestingly I often hear ‘my horse has gotten more spooky as they have gotten older’ in these circumstances pain.. or as demonstrated eyesight should be considered as a cause to changes in behaviour.
We did not know the history of this horse so could not relate behaviour to anything we saw. We discussed another horse Beck has dissected who had displayed behavioural discomfort, had had lots and lots of investigations, including scintigraphy amounting to approximately £15,000 in vet bills with no findings. On dissection the horses spinal cord had dura haemorrhaging (bleeding) likely causing huge discomfort and causing the explosive behaviour the horse had developed!
Always, always listen to your horse if they are uncomfortable they will tell you! We just have to listen.
Lastly the effect of working young horses was observed and discussed, including fused bones (SIJ in this case), bicep tendon lesions, and growth plate damage. Further discussions reported these are extremely common findings in the racing industry and once damage is done it cannot be undone 😞.
Experiences like this help me look at the whole horse, and appreciate how stoic horses are and how strong their will to live can be
- despite the internal and musculoskeletal dysfunction the horse died with a full stomach. Having an understanding of the horse as a whole supports my ability to support horses and owners more effectively through rehabilitation and performance care.
Always learning for the benefit of the horses I get to work with 🐴 🩵
