Rehabilitation and Injury Prevention

Katie works along side your vet, body worker, physio and farrier to devise a plan of exercises to rehabilitate your horse back to work after injury, illness or surgery. 

The key to this work is to build the strength in weak areas and improve the horse's overall posture, so that they can carry themselves in way which is healthier for their joints and muscles. At the end of the day, prevention really is better than cure. 

Joint Medications

Medicating joints is an increasingly popular veterinary treatment, and due to the advances in science the products are getting better and better, but a lot of people have their horse's medicated thinking "that's it"! Wrong.... there is so much more you can do and need to do once the joints have been medicated to help your horse going forward. 

Joints are filled with synovial fluid. This is a thick liquid that cushions and lubricates the joint and basically stops the cartilage rubbing together. You know the saying "use it or lose it" well that comes into play with this... Gentle movement and use of the joints is essential to circulate the synovial fluid and keep the cartilage well-nourished.

Katie uses carefully considered exercises and stretches to maintain good joint health, being mindful of any injured areas on the horse. 

Kissing Spine

Firstly you need to eradicate the pain, either using pain relief, medication or as a last resort surgery. Then the most important part comes, the rehabiliation. How can we expect the horse to learn a new way of moving if the pain it still there? It is crucial to improve the horse's posture and build strength, this is done using in-hand work before moving on to careful ridden work. 

Sacroiliac Pain

Another very common problem in horses, this is usually caused by a lack of correct mobilisation and is often a secondary problem. Katie would usually work with a vet to ensure the primary causes have been dealt with in these cases. 

The most important thing to do with SI pain is gently and carefully mobilise the joints using in-hand walk poles and correct stretching. 

 

Whether you are rehabilitating your horse or just want to give them the right start from the word go, please get in touch to see how we can help. 

 

Terms and conditions can be found here.