'Back' question??

[carrie]

Not exactly sure what you mean by hop towards her! Do you mean lifting a hind leg? this can sometimes be used to adjust the pelvis by lifting the hind leg higher in order to mobilise the sacro illium (joint at top of loins). I pick up the fore legs to watch the horse is able to stretch through his whole back happily.

[jaffaandme]

She looked at and treated the first horse and I heard her mention something about hopping. When she worked on the second mare I had a look over the stable door. She had lifted one of the front legs and asked the mare to walk (or hop) towards her.

[annahindley]

I feel that it is impossible to comment: just think about the number of joints between the hoof and the pelvis that are affected and make your own mind up.

[PD]

Commendable response Anna, much respect.

[carrie]

must say it's not something i've ever used!!
anna, in response to your earlier post re the number of hours studied: without getting in to a debate i feel i should point out that 25 days at college does not mean 25 days studied. Personally I put in hundreds and hundreds of hours of practice and written work. My final coursework was tens of thousands of words long. We had to study every aspect of animal anatomy and physiology at great depth in order to qualify. By doing so much theory at home it meant our class time could be largely devoted to practical experience.
I will not put down any modality as i really do believe every modality has it's use and place.
If a modality wasn't safe it would be impossible to get insurance.
At the end of the day we are all working to a common goal, and that is to help horses (and animals/humans etc)to achieve peak health and happiness.

[emmac]

Carrie....It's Emma with Cracker will you email me at emmajuliaclayAThotmail.com as I have lost your number, Crack could do with a look at and it would be good to go for a beer!!!!

[carrie]

hiya!! I'll pm it to you

[Polly1]

i have been reading the posts about how this treatment works with great interest as i am one of the many who work full time and have missed seeing my horse being treated. Thankfully her last check up she was absolutely fine but the first time she was checked (we use a McTimoney lady) her pelvis had not only rotated up on the left but also forward towards her head!! I now know thanks to this thread how the upward tilit is corected but how on earth do you correct the forward tilt? I was also wondering how you know the pelvis has gone up on one side rather than down on the other (hope that makes sense!).

[carrie]

forward tilt has to come with a rotation which means that it will move up on that side, think of it as one big object. so by correcting the upward tilt you correct the rotation and vice versa. You can tell which side is misaligned by the tension in the surrounding ligaments and muscles, and also by watching the horse move.
To be honest most 'rotations' of the pelvis are actually where muscle is more developed on one side than another, thus giving an optical illusion!!

[annahindley]

To visualise this linked movement, make a cross out of two pens. Hold them in your fingers, and tip them away from you. Can you see that the pens move both "anterior" and "superior"? Or maybe this just makes you more confused! (This is just a model to show how rotation can link to a move forward or backwards; in the horse, the actual shape of the ilium makes the side that looks high the side of the short leg, unlkie the pens....hard to explain unless you have a horse's pelvis to hand!)

These movements are part of normal physiological mechanics, (that is the lovely swaying rise and fall of a normal horse's walk) but it when the pelvis becomes "stuck" in one part of these movements that the appearance is different. What you may see viewing a horse from behind is that one "hip" appears fixed and high and doesn't move much, whereas the other will move much more and appear to drop down much lower.

I would disagree that this is an optical illusion. Some horses have a long-standing problem and may have an asymmetry in muscular development, but in my experience, the vast majority (although not all) of the asymmetries in the pelvis (ie one side being high and immobile) disappear immediately after treatment. Further work may be required to produce a perfectly symmetrically muscled horse, but the obvious difference in movement can correct very quickly.

Deciding which side is fixed comes from feeling the quality and quantity of movement in the joint itself, something which takes years of feeling and appreciating "normal" joint play and spring, knowing the normal patterns of movement, comparing side to side and examining the other tissues in the area.

[sal4]

Just read through this very interesting thread and i have a question...........! If, like my mare, you are called out to treat a very large cob type and you find a pelvic rotation how do you adjust thrusting on the tuber sacral if they are difficult to feel? My mare has a huge round bottom end and i can't feel the tuber sacrals at all let alone be able to get a contact on them to thrust. Do you have other methods if this is the case that will be just as effective? I realise that this technique is only used if the pelvis has tilted/rotated upwards on one side. Hope my terminology is ok!!!!!

[carrie]

well you can do an upwards thrust by lifting the hind leg by the gaskin, although most of us avoid this if possible incase of any potential effects on the hind leg ligaments! Believe you me, even on those 'well covered' horses it is possible, even adjusting over the area will still haev some effect despite not feeling much. When I trained we had a shire to treat!

[annahindley]

The tuber sacrales are rarely unpalpable, but if they were I would contact the tuber coxae or ischium, depending on the direction of rotation. Trying to find the tuber sacrale with a "pokey" finger is often difficult, but if you put your flat hand on to the horse, and move gently from side to side, they will jump out at you....(probably, unless you have a real grossly fat horse?!? ) The contact does not have to be large. I also treat people, and believe me, their "tuber sacrale" (actually called the PSIS in peeps) is MUCH smaller and often very buried! I would never adjust the SI joint using the leg - there are lots and lots of joints in the leg - even if you lift at the gaskin, you have the hip joint in the way. As this is a very mobile joint, I fail to see how you could effectively move the SI in this way. However, IMO you could damage the round ligament of the femur quite easily using this huge lever to try and effect a distant joint via several others.

[Casper]

Anna, what areas of the country do you cover please? Thanks.

[annahindley]

I'm based in Staffordshire, but I travel. How far depends upon how many horses there are to see in the farther flung places.