Hello Everyone!

Apologies for delay in putting out blogs.  I have had technical difficulties (computer) and now hopefully back with no further malfunctions.   When things get dropped….it is never good for electronics!

This will be short blog, maybe not depending on my flow, but the details are important.  Please watch the video below.

It is NEVER NORMAL for a horse to be unable to simply fold its front limbs and hind limbs under itself to lay down.  This young horse has to literally fall over or lean and slide down the stall wall to lay down.  WHY?  Because it is seriously injured and no one recognized that there is a problem or that the horse was painful.  Look at this horses body, the clinical signs are obvious!

Over and over again I watch this horse and many other horses night after night that are unable to lay down, get up, or stand sleeping properly.   It is an epidemic as I am seeing the clinical signs in 3-4 year olds versus 20 year olds whose parts are wearing out.   Day after day, including today, I see young horses that have severe, sometimes irreparable, damage to where the saddle and girths are placed.   It has to stop, and will stop, once I am able to get my equipment company manufacturing products.

History:  This is a young expensive show horse that passed a Pre-purchase examination (PPE).   The horse was an up and coming super star in its discipline that shortly after purchase gradually became behavioral and dangerous to ride, train and thus now unable to show.  The reality to the owner is that they spent a “shit-load” of money for a horse that had a PPE that now no one is able to ride and show.  The trainer is stuck trying to make it work.   Their job is to come up with solutions to this problem along with justification of WHY they recommended the owner to purchase this horse.   That is a hard spot to be in.   I will always  support the trainers who are under enormous pressure doing what needs to be done to get the horse into the show pen/ring, because they are not able to get ANSWERS to WHY the horse is now unrideable, thus untrainable, thus unable to show.

This included multiple veterinarians blocking and injecting the lower limb joints, along with the “SI”,  with absolutely no change in the train-ability and ride-ability of this young horse.  It is a NO WIN situation for the owner, trainer and most importantly, THE HORSE.  Lots of money spent for now an unrideable, behavioral and the most important fact that absolutely no one wants to admit:  THE HORSE IS SERIOUSLY INJURED!   Reminder:  This horse has seen MULTIPLE sports medicine veterinarians, including a PPE, before me.   The most important fact is…I am the ONLY VETERINARIAN who RODE the horse.   The trainer laughed and thought I was crazy when I said “Get off, I need to ride and feel this horse”.   Maybe I am crazy.  But my “craziness” may be this horses only chance of getting back into the show pen/ring.

Question:  What was the main complaint by the trainer?

Answer:  The horse ABSOLUTELY would not go forward.  My experience exactly riding it.  Forced to go forward it became behavioral to ride.  It had become behavioral because NO ONE was listening or seeing-observing the obvious signs of pain and injury.   The horse could go left, right, back but NOT FORWARD!

Question:  Did this horse do its job and perform at a high level?

Answer:  Yes.  Absolutely. Until it could not!

Question:  Is the training program at fault?

Answer:  Absolutely Not.

Question:  WHO IS AT FAULT?

Answer:  Number One:  The equine veterinary profession.

Answer:  Number Two:  The entire sport horse industry.  That’s a topic for later blogs.

I know that I am not going to make many friends in the veterinary world by including my own profession with the fact that WE are at fault for not recognizing this horses severity of injury and pain, as the clinical signs are obvious.  The truth is, I simply do not care what “others” in my profession think of me, because I do not matter, only the horses matter.   WE, the equine veterinary profession, are the common denominators to WHY  this horse and hundreds of thousands of other horses are dangerous and behavioral.  WE ARE THE COMMON DENOMINATOR because WE cannot give people answers!  Because WE CANNOT SEE THE OBVIOUS!  Even if we did see the obvious, no one knows what to do, because no one understands how a horse actually works.  How can a mechanic fix a car engine if he/she does not know how the engine works????  Well folks, plain and simple, this is the equine veterinary profession.

There are still veterinarians telling trainers and owners that because THEY cannot figure out what is wrong, or that “nothing is wrong”, “soundest horse I have seen” to keep riding and “work the horse harder”.  My favorite excuse for their deficits is that “it is a behavioral issue”.   Real easy to say when YOU AS A VETERINARIAN are not the person swinging your leg over AND RIDING that bolting, bucking or unpredictable behavioral horse that YOU could not figure out!  No different than this horse for this blog.   However, I DID SWING A LEG OVER AND DID RIDE THIS HORSE!    The stirrups are always adjustable, though I rarely ever adjust them.

The veterinarians before me did what I call the “blocking merry-go-round”.  Each veterinarian went round and round chasing the lameness as it kept swapping from front to back, then back to front, with no change in lameness severity.   Confused and unable to actually come up with a rational reason why the horse is unwilling to go forward, literally, the decisions were to inject the hocks, stifles, coffins and “SI”.  What you as a reader do not understand is that the veterinarians always feel like they have to “come up” with an explanation, and they will, no matter if it is rational, logical or coincides with what you have told them on where you think the problem is or how it feels under saddle.  It is hard for the equine profession to say:  “I DO NOT KNOW”!   They have to do something to justify what they are doing.

I love the thought process of injecting the “SI” by one of the veterinarians thinking it would fix this problem.   Let’s look at this logically with consideration to the anatomy of every horse.  Veterinarians treating the “SI” are “treating” a “region” because the real truth is… few veterinarians are actually injecting the actual joint as the majority are missing by a mile.  This statement alone will get some veterinarians feelers to bristle up.  I am calling a spade a spade as you know I am correct.  WHY are they missing?  Because they do not understand the anatomy, nor did I, as I MISSED BY A MILE until I did methyl blue injections on horses for necropsy!

Back to the “SI” decision.  The “SI” , or Sacro-iliac joint, is the strongest ligamentous structural attachment in the entire horses body.   It (“SI”),  is the attachment of the Sacrum to the Ilium or pelvis (i.e. Sacro-Iliac).   And the most important fact is….IT DOES NOT MOVE.  WHY does it not move?  Remember, it is literally the strongest ligamentous attachment in the body as IT SHOULD NOT MOVE!!!!!  So why would you inject this “region” thinking that it will get the horse to go forward as this structure does not MOVE AT ALL?  Logical?

Absolutely does not make one bit of sense to me and one of my thoughts goes to Einsteins quote of insanity:

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”.

Another quote by Martin Luther King, Jr  runs through my brain:

“Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity”.

Veterinarians will “defend” their position of injecting the “SI” by stating there are bony and soft tissue changes there on rectal ultrasound.  I agree there are changes and pain present to the ligamentous structures.   But WHY and WHAT is not moving to create the compensatory strain to the strongest ligamentous attachment structure in the entire body of the horse?   Common sense and the ability to logically look at how anatomical biomechanics works for movement in a horse is the largest deficit in the equine veterinary professions education.

The real question is:  What does move in that region?

Answer:  Ask your veterinarian, I bet they do not know!

If veterinarians would logically realize that IF they are playing the “blocking merry-go round” creating the “compensatory merry-go-round”, this means that WHAT the limbs are attached to IS WHERE THE PROBLEM IS!   Let me give you a hint:  THE BODY!   This horse is a prime example of Body Lameness.  Billy Jean King at 82 stated at her graduation ceremony just recently:  “Keep learning, and keep learning how to learn”.    Maybe the equine veterinary profession should listen to her wisdom.

Question:  Do marine veterinarians block octopus if they cannot use one of their eight tentacles?   No idea.

Question:  Do zoo veterinarians block elephants, giraffes, water buffalo, antelope, panthers for lameness?   No idea.

Question:  Why don’t small animal veterinarians block dogs and cats for lameness?  Good question ah?  Love to know the answer.

Would love to see a cat being blocked.  Wonder if the small animal veterinarian would survive as I am absolutely petrified of a hissing, growling cat!  Sure you can wrap them in a towel like a burrito with their leg protruding out to get them blocked, but the real question is….how in the heck or who would be willing to get a cat, any cat, to trot up and down a hallway?   Would love to see that!

Thoughts to ponder, but the answers to the questions above are “No”, because all are illogical.  One should be able to SEE the OBVIOUS!  Goes back to the simple statement:  “If you know better, BE BETTER”.

I love the movie Avatar!  When I saw this movie I felt at home with who I am with animals, the world and myself.   The world’s true interconnectedness was now in a movie.  Watch the movie if you have not seen it.  You will get to know who I am as a person including my life within the veterinary profession.  It is in complete parallel with this movie.   My discoveries with horses is the same, as Dr. Hwa Choi told me in her Korean accent almost two decades ago:   “All the answers are in your patients.”  She told me that I  just had to have the curiosity to ask the questions, then find the right tools for the answers.  The tools she taught me were my senses:  sight, touch, hear, taste, smell and to always trust my intuition and self.  Everything that I needed was within me.

In the movie the main character is Jake Sully, an ex marine, paraplegic, and non-scientist.   He was asked to take over his twin brother’s “avatar”, who was tragically killed and the scientist.   I am a representative of Jake Sully’s character, a “jar-head journeyman lineman”,  now veterinarian, with no prior academic or research experience trying to bring AWARENESS to the equine veterinary profession existing in a institutionalized culture of NON-AWARENESS.  It all starts with OBSERVATION to recognize patterns.  Through pattern recognition science occurs as hypothesis’s and theorems are repeated and verified via results.   Science is observation via sight.   Science is also hearing, tasting, touch, feeling and intuition.

The recent books I have read are about Complexity Theory, Quantum Mechanics and Helgoland.  I have come to realize that the equine veterinary profession is like the Dunning-Kruger Effect for the highly educated.   It is easy to be an armchair quarterback yelling at Tom Brady for not seeing the defender before he threw the pass, that was intercepted, that lost the game.  Those who defend their positions with limited expansion of knowledge based on “experience”, or lack there of, will continue to do the same pattern of “expert” dysfunction.  Those veterinarians who are frustrated with the lack of results and answers for their patients will come to realize that to actually “SEE” their patients, they will have to rethink and relearn what they thought they knew.  I doubt everyday what I know.  I am willing to RETHINK what I have learned as I know that I have BLIND SPOTS in my knowledge.  I am daily confronting my doubts in knowledge and RELEARNING by improving my SIGHT with curiosity and humility of self.   I am okay not knowing.  It is okay not knowing.  It is okay feeling like an imposter.  Feeling like an imposter to me is good, though people beat themselves up for feeling this way.  If you feel like an imposter, it means that you have self reflection and humility.  It means you can rethink and learn to relearn what you know to learn more.  That to me is a positive advantage to life and growth!   Be proud that you feel like an imposter, those are positive traits to work on, as arrogance and over confidence is the opposite end and what the Dunning-Kruge Effect is all about.   It is why the equine veterinary profession is in a critical position of non-growth and why we are at a deficit to find veterinarians to stay amongst all the other dysfunctional reasons the “good ole boys and girls” have created for decades.

Until the equine veterinary profession adopts a new mindset of AWARENESS, illegal drugs will continue to be used for calming or excitation, abusive training practices will continue and sport horses will continue to suffer due to my professions failures and deficiencies.  The horse for this blog is a prime example of these facts!  All I know today, right this moment, is that I hope that I can get this horse back into the show pen/ring.  I will always doubt myself and my decisions as a veterinarian as I watch this horse’s progression and regressions in recovery.  However, I do know that its best chance of getting back into performance is with me, with all my blind spots of knowledge, that I acknowledge, that I have within myself.

Be the voice.  Be the advocate.  Always put The Horse First!

Please share this blog so more AWARENESS is brought to the sport horse world!

AJD