ridecamp@endurance.net: Re: my horse's visit to the dentist

Re: my horse's visit to the dentist

Truman Prevatt (truman.prevatt@netsrq.com)
Sun, 13 Apr 1997 12:57:36 -0400

>>Any time the distance from the treatment site to the area of soreness must be
>>measured in units larger than centimeters or inches, the probability of a
>>solution is remote. You can't treat a misshod foot with a tooth file.
>>

The following is a true story as relayed to me by a top notch endurance vet
(veted the ROC several times) who was looking at my horses left front
shoulder to try to explain a problem he was seeing in the right rear. It
turned out her problem was in her misalignment in left knee. With the knee
fixed every thing else fell into place.

There was a good endurance horse that started to have problems with its
right rear. When the vet watched the horse trot out he noticed the horse
was carring his head slightly cocked. He asked the owner to put in the bit
and trot out the horse. The head was even more cocked and turned silghtly
to the left. Upon farther examination, the horse had an abcessed tooth -
which was being aggreviated by the bit. The horse was compensentating for
the pain the way he held his head. This put streses on the horses left
front and he was compensating with his right rear. The right rear showed
the stress.

Clearly fixing the tooth did not immediately fix the legs - it took time
for the legs to heal. But if the tooth had not been fixed, it would have
done no good to fix the legs.

In the endurance horse if you don't fix the root cause - you don't fix the
problem. In the case of the horse above the distance between the root
cause and the soreness was about four feet as was the case with my mare.

Truman

Truman Prevatt
Sarasota, FL

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