Equine Rehab Can Be Tough! Wendy Vaughan Part II

Equine Rehab: You won’t want to miss this if your horse suffers from back issues!

Registered Veterinary Physiotherapist, Wendy Vaughan returns for Part II of her column this month to discuss how Ori is getting on in rehab, alongside giving valuable insight into the horse’s back following recovery of a back injury and/or ongoing issues.

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Rehab can be tough. Let’s face it, we are usually in a situation where we are trying to rehab our animals because something bad has happened such as recovering from an injury surgery.  

It’s an emotional time when we are ultimately concerned for our furry friends, and rehab is never a straight line.

Being a professional doesn’t make it any easier in this sense.

When Equine Rehab Plans go to Pot

Last time in this column I spoke about starting to work with Ori, and how I like to make a plan, consider all the facilities, plan out the graduated exercises etc.  Well, so much for the plan, that went out of the window almost immediately! 

Ori was just not coping with the move and being away from all that she knew, she was finding life on a busy yard a bit too stressful.  

This made it very difficult to crack on with my carefully designed plan of treatment and hand groundwork.  And I’ll admit, as a result, I too got stressed.  “I’m not getting on with the plan”, “I’m not doing the best for my horse”, I thought.

Yep, rehab is tough, and it’s emotional, and it’s also hard work.

Adapting the Plan

Anyway, having pulled myself together and regrouped, with the support of some good people, I have adapted the plan.  However, no matter howw well-designed the rehab is, it must be adaptable.   

It’s great to have an equine rehab plan laid out, a direction of travel, but sometimes you have to change the speed, or sometimes even change the direction completely. 

This is why it’s important to work with your team of professionals and have regular reviews and check-ins.  It’s important to not just follow the blueprints blindly.  And do you know what, it’s OK to find it hard, physically and emotionally.  Reach out to the people around you for support if you need to.

So in the short term, I have had to switch my priority to getting Ori settled into a routine.  Although she found the busy yard a bit mind-blowing, she was perfectly settled and happy out in the field. So rather than trying to bring her in for treatment, I focused on some in-hand work that I could do in and around her field and in particular, working on core conditioning.

Core Conditioning in Equine Rehab Plans

I mentioned last time that an important first step in any equine rehab plan is to consider core conditioning, but what does that actually mean and why is it so important?

When we experience an episode of back pain (the same is true for people and animals), some of our deep core stabilising muscles become less effective.  

This means that other muscle groups have to try and take over, essentially ending up doing jobs they were not designed for. In particular, we know from the research that the multifidus muscle, a deep muscle which sits close to the spine, becomes less effective and if it is not doing its’ job of stabilising the spine, the longissimus dorsi (the long muscle of the back we often think of as “topline”, the one we can feel, and essentially the one we sit on) has to contract to try and take over.  

Longissimus dorsi in tension/contraction actually arches (or “extends”) the back, the exact opposite of what we are always working towards! 

It’s very difficult to persuade the back muscles to relax to allow the back to lift, if they are purposefully doing the opposite.  So, to allow the longissimus dorsi muscle to relax, we have to get the multifidus back to work. If we miss out on this step, we can find all our other efforts in terms of groundwork, poles etc can all be frustrated.

I mentioned previously that Ori had previously been diagnosed with a mild kissing spine.  She’s not been in work for three months, so has lost a lot of muscle and strength generally.  So it’s really important that I start rebuilding her with strong foundations, a strong core,

Secondary Back Pain

We also know it is extremely common for horses with any degree of lameness to develop secondary back pain. I start all my equine rehab plans assuming that multifidus requires attention, I never assume that it’s OK and functioning correctly.

So how do we persuade mutifidus to get back in action?

Dynamic Mobilisation Exercises and Baited Stretches

All of the research says what are known as Dynamic Mobilisation Exercises and Baited Stretches are key. 

The humble carrot stretch has been shown to be very effective in activating mutifidus, using a piece of carrot, or other “bait” to encourage the horse to move and stretch towards the bait.  A simple and inexpensive thing that we can do every day.

There are lots of opinions about how to do carrot stretches, but I like to try and keep things simple.

The few stretches I concentrate on are:

• The first exercise is to ask the horse to reach around to the side, aiming at around hock height, keeping the bait a little bit away from the body (to quote Dr Gillian Tabor, “low and wide to the side”). This stretch can also be done by asking the horse to wrap around your body.
  
• The second exercise is asking the horse to reach down between their front fetlocks.

For both stretches, I am aiming for a slow and controlled movement, not a quick snatch, and ideally with the horse holding the position for 5-10 seconds, and ideally, as I perform the exercise, I can see the back lift up.

These are generic exercises that are generally considered to be helpful for most horses, however, always ask your therapist to show you which stretches are appropriate for your horse.

In the next installment, we take a look at other Dynamic Mobilisations Exercises.

Anyway, it was all worth it when she came over to me in the field the other day, nuzzled me, put her head on my shoulder and just had a cuddle!

Unitil next time,

Wendy x

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