Lameness

Peter Gray. 

Paperback, second hand, photos and illustrations.

The purpose of writing a book on lameness is to create a greater awareness of the subject and to present to everyone who rides or keeps horses the idea of the prevention of lameness. We who are in daily contact with horses are privileged, despite the drudgery involved and the material demands of a cost-consuming luxury. The prevention of lameness is, therefore, owed to the animal, but we also benefit from the potential elim-ination of the cost of treatment, or even the mere loss of use.

Prevention of lameness is not a new subject, but one broached repeatedly. It may well start with good shoeing and dedicated supervision of foot care, but it proceeds through understanding of conformation and anatomy, appreciation of the demands of physical development, the influence of concussion, and the working of systems such as the muscles, bones and particularly the spinal skeleton.

All of these aspects are highlighted in this book and it is my hope that they will become more widely understood. If that happens, the horse will also benefit and the whole exercise will have been worthwhile.

The basis of lameness prevention is as follows:

1) Foot and limb balance are essential to the prevention of sprains, strains and conditions such as angular deformity. Shoeing is an essential element of this.

2) The correct approach to concussion absorption can prevent the development of ringbone, sidebone, splints and spavin.

3) Constitutional lamenesses are prevented by proper feeding and an understanding of diet management (e.g. over-feeding of young animals may lead to osteochondritis; improper diet management can lead to azoturia).

4) Understanding the muscular system is a means of preventing not only muscular lameness but also secondary lameness resulting from it. It is also a significant factor in tendon injuries and is closely allied to lame ness of spinal origin.

5) Early diagnosis and proper care of spinal origin lameness is beu achieved on a regular preventive basis, especially in known sufferers.

6) Good shoeing is a basis for preventing a whole range of common modern lamenesses.

Approaching equine lameness from the viewpoint of cause and effect is a move away from the standard approach, which has been almost uni-versally based on the hypothesis that the vast majority of lameness occurs in the areas from the knee to the ground in the forelimb and from the hock to the ground in the hind limb. Modern clinical experience, objectively assessed, has to take us to a wider understanding of the problem particu-larly as it affects the athletic animal. While no statistics are available to refute the old idea, there is adequate living proof that other sources of lameness (e.g. the muscular system and the skeleton) are all now common enough today to challenge that status.

Under the Veterinary Surgery (Exemptions) Order 1962, treatment of an animal by physiotherapy is permitted by a non-veterinarian as long as the animal has first been examined by a vet who referred it for such treat-ment. Physiotherapy, in this context, is taken to include all forms of manipulative therapy and there are no stipulations as to the qualifications to be held by such therapists. That there are is not good enough and it leaves the door open to all forms of clinical abuse; many people who attend horses unsupervised under the guise of 'physiotherapist' are with-out a basic understanding of the subject. Animals are made to suffer through human exploitation, and the situation demands redress.