Monthly Archives: July 2008

Gene Therapy for Equine Joints May Help Humans

Posted by Liz Goldsmith in Commentary, equestrian, equine, Equine lameness, Horse care, horse health, horses, joint supplements and tagged with , , , , , , ,

Research in gene therapy to help heal joint injuries in horses may provide breakthroughs that can be applied to humans. According to Dr. Laurie Goodrich, a veterinarian that specializes in equine lameness and surgery at Colorado State University, horses have a very similar joint anatomy, biochemical and molecular makeup as humans, and joint injuries in horses often respond very similarly as humans to treatments. The Federal Drug Administration has recently recognized that the horse is an excellent representative study model for cartilage injury and osteoarthritis in people.

Goodrich and her team of researchers have received a $678,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health to investigate the success of treating joint injuries with a protein injected into injured joints within a virus-like agent called a viral vector. The hope is that gene therapy will help heal cartilage and will also prevent the development of osteoarthritis in horses.

Cartilage heals only on a limited basis there is just not as much growth factor ( a specific type of protein) available in the joints and cartilage as in other parts of the body. Growth factors signal the body to heal because they are responsible for a number of cellular functions, such as those that produce healthy tissue or matrix around the cells within cartilage to help heal injuries.

Studies show that the growth factor, called insulin-like growth factor, or IGF-I, helps cartilage develop and  promotes healing of injured cartilage. However, researchers have not been able to develop a way to maintain enough IGF-I in an injured joint to help it heal. Goodrich and her team hope that using a viral vector to deliver DNA that increases production of IGF-I, a protein, will increase healing in damaged joint tissues.The researchers will test the concept in a laboratory setting before beginning clinical trials on horses with joint injuries.

In comparison, current treatments for osteoarthritis in horses such as Adequan and Legend alleviate the symptoms but do not enable the cartilage to heal, so if this treatment is successful, it will represent a major breakthrough for horses — and maybe even their riders.

The Horse in Motion, Courtesy of Eadweard Muybridge and Occident

Posted by Liz Goldsmith in Commentary, equestrian, equine, equine art, Equine photography, horse racing and tagged with , , ,
Traditional Conception of Galloping

Great race between Peytona & Fashion, for $20,000!!! On the New York Union Course, May 13, 1845. Lithograph by J. Baillie, 1845.

Back in 1872, there was considerable debate over whether all four of a horse’s hooves left the ground at the same time when galloping. Conventional wisdom at the time either thought this was impossible — that the horse always was anchored by at least one hoof — or a horse took on a “rocking horse” stance, with its fore and hind legs outstretched, which was how popular artists at the time depicted it.

Enter former Governor of California Leland Stanford, a businessman and race-horse owner, and photographer Eadweard Muybridge. The story was that Stanford bet Dr. John D. Isaac $25,000 that at least one foot of a horse stays in contact with the ground at all times. He hired renowned photographer Eadweard Muybridge to take the photo that would prove him right and lost the bet. The horse that made the first image was Stanford’s prize trotter, Occident.

That, however, is just a story. In truth, Stanford’s real interest was in studying horses closely enough to understand their behavior in motion. By doing this, he hoped to improve his breeding and training methods for horse racing.

To prove Stanford’s claim, Muybridge invented the technology that allowed photography to capture the

Muybridge's Photographic Set-up for his Motion Photos

Muybridge's Photographic Set-up for his Motion Photos

sequence of motion (through increased shutter speeds). While Muybridge achieved a single image in silhouette relatively quickly, it took five years for him to develop the technology that allowed him to produce the sequence of motion photographs that he is know for.

Muybridge and a team of engineers built a track and a bank of cameras at Stanford’s stock farm in Palo Alto, Calif. As you can see from the diagram, the horse “tripped” a series of wires that caused each camera to take a photograph. The set up used 12 stereoscopc cameras placed 21 inches apart to cover the 20 feet taken by one horse stride. The shutter speed was 1/1000 of a second! Not only did this achieve frames showing individual motion, but it also set the stage for motion pictures.

Muybridges Horse in Motion

Muybridge's Horse in Motion

One thing was very clear from Muybridge’s pictures: No painter had ever gotten the position of a horse’s legs correctly. In fact, many contemporary painters disputed his findings when they were first announced as it meant that their paintings were all incorrect. He also debunked the myth that a horse uses its legs the same way in an amble, canter and gallop.

The images here show several sequences that Muybridge did as part of his Horse in Motion series. The really cool thing is that if you animate the individual pictures, they do look like a movie. WordPress doesn’t support animated Gif files, but here are links to the Galloping Horse and the Jumping Horse.

Muybridges Horse Jumping Series

Muybridge's Horse Jumping Series

Australian Report on Eventing Safety Points to Rider Error

Posted by Liz Goldsmith in Commentary, Competition, English Riding, equestrian, Eventing, horse back riding and tagged with , , ,

In the search for answers on how to improve the safety of eventing, a report released by the Australian Government Rural Industries and Research Council offers a good start. Safety for Horses and Riders in Eventing is based on data from 1732 rider falls that occurred from 2002-2006 at 444 Australian events that were affiliated to the Equestrian Federation of Australian (EFA) and the world governing body, the Fédération Equestre International (FEI). Riders who fell were asked to fill out a questionnaire after the event.

The report was prepared by Ms. Denzil O’Brien and Dr. Raymond Cripps, both from Research Centre for Injury Studies at Adelaide’s Flinders University. O’Brien and Cripps said eventing had long been viewed as a sport in which risk of injury to riders is high, but little work had been done on measuring the extent of the risk, nor on establishing rates of injury to riders or horses. Until this report there has been no central database with information on falls and injuries.

The information gathered on falls was entered into a database called SHARE, which stands for Safety for Horses and Riders Eventing. The database enables information on falls to be cross-referenced across a raft of criteria, such as the experience of the rider, the type of jump, the nature of the fall, the weather conditions, the injuries suffered by horse and rider, even the rider’s perception of what caused the mishap. The events covered in the data involved about 12,000 individual starters each year and more than 1,700 falls.

Bottom line? The majority of riders who responded to the survey blamed their own riding for their falls. It also highlights which types of fences cause the most accidents and the most serious accidents (rotational falls).

The link below shows the number of falls that occurred at events between 2002-2006 in Australia.

Horse & Rider Fall Data 2002-2006

The data shows that the accident risk was higher for step-in and step-out water obstacles and for rounded top obstacle (like logs) and post & rail fences (the latter two are the most common obstacles on Australian courses). It also showed the danger of rotational falls.

The report documents 1,732 individual falls; 374 riders reported at least one injury, ranging from abrasions and bruises through dislocations to concussion and fractures. By far the majority of injuries reported were minor, with 90 reports of abrasions, 154 of bruising and 88 of inflammation.

The SHARE database gives a clear indication of the number of times a particular body part was reported as injured, the type of this injury, the treatment received for the injury, the effect on the rider’s daily life, and the duration of pain resulting from the injury.

For example, there were 61 reports of fracture or suspected fracture, 14 of these as a result of a rotational horse fall, and 58 reports of concussion or loss of consciousness, 7 as a result of a rotational horse fall. There were 12 cases in which the rider reported both a fracture and concussion, 2 of these as a result of a rotational horse fall. Interestingly 6 riders who reported concussion and/or loss of consciousness actually continued riding, with none of these 6 attending the Emergency Department for diagnosis or treatment. Twenty-three riders reported being admitted to hospital, and 39 indicated that their injuries had a limiting effect on their daily activities for more than 21 days, with 3 indicating permanent limitations.

The questionnaire asked riders whether their fall had been preventable, and if so, how it could have been prevented. 873 riders answered this question, with 611 riders indicating that the fall could have been prevented. Of those 611 riders, all but 60 of them said their riding caused the fall, and they were specific about their fault, such as riding too fast, getting ahead of their horse, and such. Forty-two riders blamed their fall to outside factors, such as poor course or jump design, inappropriate jumps at a particular level, interference or distraction by spectators, the weather, and equipment failure. Only 18 riders blamed their horses.

The data also highlighted the risks of rotational falls. The researchers found that of 25 rider deaths around the world in the sport between May 1997 and September 2007, 18 were the result of a rotational horse fall. Seventeen of the 18 died as a result of being crushed by the horse. Since the report was written, another seven riders have died, six of them in rotational horse falls.

Horse fatalities were shown to be low during the five-year period: four horses reportedly died during competition out of over 58,000 individual starts during the five years of the project. All four of the horses fell and were euthanized, three as the result of fractures (or suspected fractures) and one for unknown reasons. One of these fatal horse falls was on the flat between jumps and three were rotational falls at jumps.

So what in this data can help future eventers and organizers make the sport safer? The researchers believe that reducing the number of horses falling is the single factor most likely to reduce the number of injuries to riders and horses. They recommend that a horse that falls should be eliminated, even if the fall is not related to a jump. This rule has recently been adopted in Great Britain.

The US and Canada have also recently strengthened their safety rules: in both countries, the first fall by a competitor at a fence now results in elimination. Certainly it’s a step forward, although not nearly so large a step as what has been adopted in the UK.

I think that for this sport to survive – and thrive – the United States Equestrian Federation must take all steps possible to ensure rider and horse safety. Stricter rules, the use of frangible pins, and the ongoing collection and analysis of data needs to be utilized to continue to make the sport safer.

Fitting a Loose Ring Snaffle

Posted by Liz Goldsmith in Commentary, equine, horses, Tack and tagged with , ,

I was sorting through my bit box last week, as I’ve been selling off some of the bits that I’m unlikely to use again. Since I went bitless with my Trakehner, I have a lot of expensive bits that are now gathering dust!

It got me thinking about bit sizing. There is a lot of discussion on horse forums about saddle fit, but very little about fitting a bit. The irony is, that if you look in tack catalogs, you’d swear that most horses in the world must wear a 5” bit as that’s the predominant size. Looking at my box full of 6” and 5 ½” bits, I’d beg to differ.

In fact, I suspect that many horses are wearing bits that are either too small or too large, probably because so many owners reflexively buy a 5” bit.

The length of a bit depends on the width of your horse’s jaw and the type of cheek and mouthpiece. You can buy a bit fitting tool, or you can start by putting a piece of string through your horse’s mouth and marking the edges of his lips.

Generally, you want about 1/8” of the bit to protrude on either side of the horse’s mouth. If it’s too narrow, it could pinch the sides of his mouth, but if you have too much extra bit, it will move around too much in your horse’s mouth and not act as a good communications tool in your horse’s mouth.

However, you also need to take into consideration the style of the cheek piece. With a fixed cheek piece, like an Eggbutt, a Dee or a Full Cheek, ¼” clearance will work just fine. Not so with a loose ring.

This bit is not long enough for Kroni. The movement of the rings would pinch his lips.

This bit is not long enough for Kroni. The movement of the rings would pinch his lips.

Because the ring rotates on the mouthpiece of the bit, you generally add an additional ¼” to the length of the mouthpiece (so, ½” total); otherwise the bit will pinch the horse’s lips as the ring rotates.

The same bit fits Freedom quite well. It is long enough.

The same bit fits Freedom quite well. It is long enough.

The extra length in the mouthpiece of a loose ring also serves another purpose: the extra length helps the bit to stay centered in the horse’s mouth; if it is too short it can actually be pulled through when the rider pulls on a rein.

Looking through my bit box, I found a 5 ½” loose ring snaffle bit that I used on my old Quarter horse. As you can see, the mouthpiece is not wide enough for my Trakehner gelding, who wears a 5 ½” bit. But it fits my TB gelding perfectly. As a matter of fact, he goes quite well in it!

Thinline Hoof Pads Help Give Relief to Sore Feet

Posted by Liz Goldsmith in Commentary, equine, Equine lameness, hoof boots, hoof care, horse health and tagged with , , , , , , , ,

For the first two weeks that Kroni was barefoot, I was pretty optimistic. His front feet were holding up and while looked ouchy when walking over the gravel driveway, he seemed okay when on grass. I was treating his soles with Durasole and even took him for a hack while wearing hoof boots.

Then he got really sore. To the point where he didn’t want to leave his stall or pick up his front feet for treatment. Even putting the hoof boots on him didn’t give him much relief. I know that to encourage hoof growth, he needs to move. So not only did it make me feel horrible to watch him standing in his stall in  pain, I also knew it was counter productive.

I live about 20 minutes from both SmartPak and Dover, so I got on the phone to find out what kind of hoof padding they had in stock. Dover had nothing and the only solution at SmartPak was the Hoofsaver pad from Equifit that cost $45 and didn’t look like it would work for my needs; you aren’t supposed to ride with it, for example.

Thinline Hoof Pad

Thinline Hoof Pad

An internet search revealed that Thinline manufactures hoof pads from the same material as their pads at a cost of $7 per pair. That was the right price! Even better, it is a pad that is recommended for riding use; it can even be put under a regular hoof pad and used with shoes.

In the meantime, I looked around my tack room to figure out what I could cannibalize for a good cause. First I tried cutting pads out of thick felt (taken from my Mattes pad). Definitely made him feel more comfortable, but the felt  compressed paper thin over night. Next, I cut some pads from an old Cashel seat saver. These also seemed to offer relief and they didn’t compress quite as much. They lasted until my Thinline pads arrived (very quickly shipped, I might add).

Kroni has been wearing his Easy Boots with the Thinline pads now since Wednesday. They are not compressing the way my jury-rigged pads did and he’s even started trotting out when I turn him out in our big field to graze. I am continuing to treat his soles with Durasole, and am keeping my fingers crossed that those front feet grow out soon so I can put shoes back on him.

What is a Rotational Fall? And How Can They Be Prevented?

Posted by Liz Goldsmith in Commentary, English Riding, equestrian, equine, Equine photography, Equine Safety, Eventing and tagged with , , , ,

There has been a lot of discussion among the eventing community about how to prevent rotational falls — a fall where the horse hits a fence with its front legs or chest and its body somersaults over the fence with the fence acting as a pivot point. In a rotational fall, the rider usually is thrown out of the saddle and goes over the jump before the horse. In a worst case scenario, the horse can land on the rider.

Until recently, it wasn’t clear to me what a rotational fall involved. It’s not that easy to find photos but I have found an example int the YouTube video below. The fall shown at 1:07 in the sequence is clearly a rotational fall. I believe that fall at 1:55 is as well. I understand that Darren Chiaccia’s fall was shown as part of an interview with wbz in New York state, but I’ve not been able to access the footage.

An example of a rotational fall is on this YouTube video, at 1:07 in the sequence; there’s another fall at 1:55 that also looks like a rotational fall.

There is also an excellent sequence that was shot by photographer J.C. Dill. Her work is copyrighted, so I will not post them here, but there is a link to her portfolio on this thread on the Chronicle of the Horse. The horse and rider in this series were not injured and the photos are amazing.

There have been several high profile rotational falls in the past few months among high level riders, Darren Chiacchia being perhaps the most well known. After his horse suffered a rotational fall in March, Chiacchia was in a coma and ended up with a traumatic brain injury, broken ribs and a collapsed lung.

But the debate started long before that. Back in 2001/2002 the British Horse Trials Association studied all incidents involving horse and rider during that eventing season. The Transport Research Laboratory (TRL), the UK’s center for research and advice on all methods relating to transportation including crash testing, got involved and analyzed film of 100 jumping accidents. TRL found what caused most fatalities was the somersaulting of the horse over the fence and onto the rider who was either still in the saddle or lying on the landing side of the fence unable to avoid the falling horse.

Rotational falls occur when a horse hits an upright, solid fence between his knees and his chest. Horses that hit below the knees typically were able to scramble over the fence, but when a horse moving at speed hit a jump with his chest the rotational fall was inevitable.

Crash testing by the TRL showed that  when a horse’s front legs were pushed backwards he turned from a small horizontal force sliding over the fence to a vertical downward force. If the jump didn’t collapse the horse would somersault causing a crushing injury to the rider. If the top rail was able to collapse when the

Frangible Pin by Willis Jumps

Frangible Pin by Willis Jumps

horse hit it from the knees up, he would fall straight down instead of flip. As a result, the TRL designed a breakaway device that wouldn’t collapse only collapse if the critical weight position was reached. It is called a frangible pin. The image to the right shows a jump constructed by Willis Jumps, cross country course builders to Badminton, Gatcombe Park, the Atlanta Olympics and many other events throughout the UK and the world.

Unfortunately, the frangible pin has not yet been widely adopted yet in the US. Cost is an issue (approximately $70 per fence) and the pins were not mandated for course design because they were not yet widely available. There is renewed interest now.

Results from testing in the UK were positive. During the 2002 eventing season, there were two instances where frangible pins were broken and, on both occasions, neither horse nor rider was seriously injured.

The first instance occurred Weston Park where a horse tried to jump the first rail of a rail-ditch-rail combination from a standstill. Momentum carried the horse over the fence to the critical position of downward pressure on the rail. The pin sheared at the point when downward pressure reached the pre-determined maximum. The rider was thrown free; horse stayed on the take-off side of the fence. Neither horse nor rider were injured and the fence was repaired in minutes.

The second break was at Boekolo CCI***; a tired horse failed to make the back rail of an oxer. Both pins broke and both horse and rider escaped unharmed from an incident that eye-witness accounts suggested would have resulted in significant injury has the pins not been in use.

Collapse of a frangible fence is 70 penalties and a mandatory withdrawal.

Let us hope that the current focus on safety translates to the use of course building techniques that help build safer fences. It seems that the frangible pin is one such tool that could save the lives of both horses and riders.

Equine Massage Techniques to Try at Home

Posted by Liz Goldsmith in Commentary, equine, equine massage, Horse care, horse health, horses, Natural remedies and tagged with , , , ,

I wrote before about the bodywork that Gary Severson (the Saddle Doctor) did on my horses when he came to fit my saddles in the spring (part of an article about the impact of poll pressure from bridles). It wasn’t traditional massage; rather he released tension in their backs through a form of trigger point massage.

Gary showed me two releases and promised to show me more when he returns in the fall, but I didn’t want to wait. I’ve been searching for more information since he left.

Reading on the Internet I found a therapist named Jim Masterson whose practice addresses many of the same ideas. It’s not “massage” in the traditional sense; it’s more along the line of acupressure or cranio sacral therapy. It centers around the idea of releasing stress and tension in your horse’s body. I read some of the articles that were on his Web site and ordered his DVD. When it came last week I was inspired! After watching the first couple of chapters I dragged my daughter to the barn so I could try the introductory techniques on my horses.

First of all, the DVD is an excellent training tool. The instructions are clear and well illustrated. I find it much easier to use than a book because you can see how Masterson works with a horse – the amount of pressure used, how he moves his fingers, the lines that he follows on the horse – and how the horse responds. The mantra of Jim Masterson’s approach is search, response, stay, release. You search for the areas where the horse is holding tension, feel the response, then stay with the horse until it releases. Signs of release can be subtle, like the softening of the eye, or more direct like chewing, licking or yawning (this fits with what I wrote earlier about why horses yawn).

The first exercise outlined in the DVD is to trace the line of the Bladder Meridian along the horse’s side from the poll to the coronet band on the horse’s rear hoof.

I was amazed by how well my two horses responded. I tried it on Kronefurst, my Trakehner, first.  He’s a very steady horse that responds well to massage and I feel confident that he will accept almost anything that I try calmly. Using just a light touch (he describes it as the pressure you would use to crush a grape), I found some tension near his poll, and over his withers. Over his sacrum, he was quite tender, visibly flinching, and required a very light touch. Very quickly he started licking his lips and chewing; eventually he yawned.  Once he released, he started to lean into the pressure of my hand and seemed to really enjoy the experience.

My Thoroughbred gelding, Freedom, is a much twitchier horse. He’s always been sensitive about being touched at the poll, which I’ve attributed to the fact that he wears a cribbing collar. The challenge with him was to get started. Using a very light touch (described in the DVD as an air gap), I was able to start the sequence. It became clear very quickly that Freedom is holding in a lot of tension. He was very fidgety and difficult to stay with, but he did start to relax after a few minutes. His eye softened and he started to chew. He didn’t give me a real yawn until after I’d stopped, but at that point he yawned repeatedly.

I can’t wait to try the techniques described in the next chapter!

 

33 Truths About Horses

Posted by Liz Goldsmith in Commentary, equestrian, equine, horses and tagged with , ,

This landed in my Inbox this morning and many of these statements do ring true!

  1. People who don’t take care of their own horses will be the first ones to tell you how to care for yours.
  2. You should never buy a cheap girth!
  3. A handsome horse who’s badly behaved will become a lot less attractive in about 15 min.
  4. People who think they have nothing more to learn about riding, hit the ground the hardest.
  5. Children and ponies are natural allies and often have identical dispositions.
  6. The richest horse people often look the poorest.
  7. The closeness of a horse is one of the sweetest smells in the world.
  8. A solitary ride through the bush is more beneficial then six months with the best psychiatrist.
  9. The worse a person rides the more likely they are going to blame it on the horse.
  10. The best thing about going to the barn first thing in the morning is that horses don’t care how you look.
  11. If a dealer insists a horse is worth twice what he’s asking he’s usually worth half that much.
  12. The best way to appreciate how another person rides is to get on their horse.
  13. I can recognize another horse person no matter what town, city, state, county or country I visit.
  14. You can never have too many hoof picks.
  15. It is not wise to argue with something that outweighs you by 1,000 pounds.
  16. I’d rather have a horse with a perfect mind then a perfect head.
  17. Eight hours is not too long to be in the saddle!
  18. If you think you have left the water on in the barn you have, if you think you have closed the pasture gate you haven’t.
  19. When someone asks you if you like their horse always say yes.
  20. The happiest people I know own horses, dogs, cats and at least one deranged goat.
  21. If you ‘re looking for the perfect horse you will never own one. (VERY TRUE!).
  22. Owning a horse can either make a marriage or break it.
  23. I’d rather lose my Chap Stick than my curb chain.
  24. You shouldn’t talk about your first place ribbon to someone that came second.
  25. If someone says that horse has a little buck, it has a BIG buck.
  26. If we need rain, schedule a show.
  27. I’ve never warmed up to someone that didn’t want to walk down to the stables.
  28. A clean stable and a sparkling horse are among life’s great pleasures.
  29. Even free horses can be too expensive. Especially free horses.
  30. No matter how badly behaved you are, your horse always gives you a second chance.
  31. A more expensive horse doesn’t make a better one.
  32. I can’t stand to have an empty stable.
  33. Losing a horse can break your heart, but it will have been worth it.