Body Soundness
Body soundness is the true and complete health of an individual horse’s body and mind as an entire harmonious unit. Going far beyond if they are lame to a complete picture of health as an athlete.
Why look beyond the legs and look at the body?
The body has a majority of the weight, joints, ligaments, muscle, fascia and bone. It controls the movement of the legs. Thus we believe we need to look at the body before the legs. That the body becoming dysfunctional often leads to chronic leg conditions. These leg conditions get managed by conventional sports medicine, but when the body does not get addressed the horse never reaches full soundness. This leads to chronic disease and conditions, increased behavioral concerns, and an increasing cycle of dysfunction that usually worsens with elderly horses. Breaking this cycle is critical for solving difficult conditions and maintaining a top athlete.
Our “Results Based Practice” Mindset
We are often on the cutting edge of treatment modalities. This means there is not always published data to support our techniques and services, be it a new horse care product or a treatment method. However, our goal is ALWAYS your horse. We work for you and the welfare of your horse and will continue to strive for better results for your horses’ conditions. Our care team works hard to brighten the lives of our hooved friends by solving their health issues and helping them recuperate from injuries. We are working through Rexos to collect, document and produce more research on body lameness conditions. We do not wait for the universities to solve problems, we are solving them in the field with some of the top sport horses in the country.
Common Conditions
We work with horses that have unblock-able lameness, who aren’t lame but have pain or other performance concerns, shivers/stringhalt, performance concerns, head shakers, idiopathic hoppers, sleep deprivation, and overall are difficult to diagnose/”not right” horses.
Services
We offer rehabilitation therapy services and a wide array of service options you can choose from. At Denali Equine, we provide a holistic approach to solving your horse’s problems. Starting with our thorough evaluation, this involves looking at every detail of the horse’s body, the way they move, how they stand, how equipment might affect them, their environment, nutrition and training to provide a complete treatment plan for your horse. The mainstay of our treatment protocol are specialized deep nerve, muscle and joint injections to the axial skeleton via ultrasound guidance.
Modalities
There are countless modalities that uniquely provide their own benefits to help in the rehabilitation process. Horses are athletes and their care should be of that top level. Other modalities we suggest to help the horse before, during, and after treatment are: shockwave therapy, laser therapy, bodywork, tensegrity, massage, magnetic, myofascial, kinesiology, chiropractic, acupuncture, stretching, and other physical therapy.
Follow-Up
Without the follow up of physical therapy, potential equipment changes or whatever else needed horses will not be successful in healing. There’s no need to worry about a horse’s recovery phase because we offer instructions and guidance for horse owners. Often these horses have large compound body injuries, these can be complex in nature and require several months of rehabilitation. This period of physical therapy is needed to allow the body to heal without tension. After the completion of rehabilitation, when training is resumed, the horse is balanced, stronger, and overall will be easier to take through the training process.
Most of the injuries we see are some combination of muscle, bone, fascia and nerve damage. These injuries are often the hardest to treat because of their complexity and difficulty to specifically diagnose. It becomes a delicate balance of letting the body heal, helping the horse through setbacks and understanding when they need to be pushed through. Rehabilitation becomes critical here, the close attention to detail in our employees’ experience hands provides the best and quickest road to complete recovery.
Our experience highlights our dedication to animal care and equine veterinary medicine, and we want to be a part of you and your horse’s wellness journey.
