Did you know that horse healing is really being a detective?

Why? Because it’s the questions that are important.

If we don’t ask enough questions, it’s easy to jump to conclusions.

For example, some horses hate having their head touched. Many owners assume their horse was either abused or “ear’d” as a foal.

And that’s it. They never try to fix it. They think that’s just the way it is, and they’re careful not to touch the horse’s head.

But if we asked more questions, we could figure out the options for fixing it.

(and it’s pretty easy)

More on today’s Horse Mysteries Solved podcast.

Summary:
Summary by AI:

Dr. Renee Tucker, in this episode of *Horse Mysteries Solved*, introduces a new series about how to approach solving issues with horses. Drawing parallels with real-world detectives, she emphasizes the importance of asking many questions when diagnosing problems with horses, rather than jumping to conclusions. She encourages avoiding immediate diagnoses, such as assuming a horse’s cough is asthma, and instead focusing on gathering more details about symptoms—such as the type of cough, its duration, and any other accompanying signs.

She also shares two core assumptions for solving horse mysteries:
1. **Ask more questions**: In the same way detectives gather clues, veterinarians should gather detailed information from owners and avoid prematurely labeling symptoms.
2. **Assume evil exists**: This idea stems from the belief that harmful substances (like chemicals or toxins) can affect horses, leading to health issues. Dr. Tucker stresses that these issues often aren’t accidents and encourages viewers to consider environmental factors, such as the presence of toxins or microplastics, that may contribute to a horse’s illness.

To demonstrate her method, she uses the example of a horse that resists having its head touched. Instead of assuming it’s simply behavioral, she advocates for asking a series of specific questions to determine the cause, such as whether the horse dislikes everyone touching its head or just certain people or situations. Dr. Tucker then discusses the anatomy of a horse’s head, noting that misalignments in areas like the atlas (the first vertebra in the neck) are often the cause of head sensitivity, which can be resolved with chiropractic adjustments.

In conclusion, Dr. Tucker urges viewers to act like detectives by continuously asking questions, ruling out possibilities, and taking a holistic approach to horse care rather than jumping to conclusions about diagnoses.

Transcription:
Renee (00:00:00.00)
Hello, friends, and welcome to 2025. Hey, I’m Dr. Renee Tucker. Welcome to Horse mysteries Solved. Today, I thought we would start a new series which is more about how to solve horse mysteries. Because back in the day, when I started vet school, I was looking forward to being a detective, if you will. I thought I would get all these symptoms the clients, and I’d investigate the parts of the horse, and get some blood tests, and some X-rays, and I’d take all these puzzle pieces and put them together, and then I would solve the mystery. Only That doesn’t always work out. I’ve had to learn some more things. I would say one of the most valuable things that I’ve learned is the process of figuring stuff out. Because we can have all the facts in the world. In fact, we do. We can go on the internet and we have all these facts, but we don’t know what to do with it sometimes. I thought I’d just start us out with a series of how to solve horse mysteries. Today, I’d like to start with some baseline assumptions. Honestly, I don’t really know what to call them, but it’s like this.

Renee (00:01:19.84600)
You know how detectives, like real-world detectives, say we’ve seen some detective shows in our life? Now that I’m saying I’ve seen any detective shows, but you might have seen some detective shows. You might know that when a detective is detecting, they’re looking for means and motive and opportunity. If there’s a dinner party and a piece the arts goes missing, does the detective come in and say, Oh, well, the art’s missing. Call the insurance company. We’re good. No, that’s not detecting. Does the detective say, All right, everybody here at this dinner party, you’re all guilty. You’re all going to jail. No, that would be silly, wouldn’t it? Yes. What we’re going to do is figure out what the detective does to find means, motive, and opportunity, which you probably already know. But mostly, we’re going to ask questions. The detective does not have to have all the answers. When you’re detecting on a horse issue of any kind, your own horse, your client’s horse, you want to ask the questions. That takes practice and experience. I’m going to give you some good exercises. Well, actually more of talking about my experience which hopefully will exercise your brain.

Renee (00:02:47.24300)
Does that make any sense? Okay. Our first assumption is we’re going to get all these symptoms from the client, or we’ll see them ourselves. What we’re going to do is not assume that this is a disease process. We are not going to say, Oh, the horse is coughing. It must be asthma. No, no, we’re not doing that. We are a detective. We must gather all the symptoms and keep asking the questions. If the horse is coughing, you would say, Okay, how long has he been coughing? Is it a deep cough, productive cough? Is that coughing stuff up or is it just that dry, hacking cough? Can they otherwise breathe okay or is it even a struggle to breathe? What other symptoms does the horse have? Does he have a fever, diarrhea, any other symptoms? Is it just the cough? There’s plenty of questions. I think one of the things I’ve learned is chill out. Stop trying to be the answer man for everything immediately and ask more questions. Because a lot of times, if you just keep asking questions, What about this? What about Oh, I notice here, I don’t know, blah, blah, blah. Your horse sneezes a lot, something.

Renee (00:04:05.88200)
Or has he had a running nose? All these little adjacent questions, not just about coughing, but what else is there? Those are also important questions. Our job to solve horse mysteries is, one, to ask a lot of questions and then more questions, and then not assume that we’re trying to just rush into diagnosing something. Really, we want to avoid that at all possible. We don’t need a label. As soon as you have a label, like a disease label, as I’ve spoken about in the past, people feel better. Somehow having a name for something comforts us as a human being. That’s fine. But what we really want to say is, you know what? The horse’s immune system should be fixing this. So let’s ask more questions, try to find our real culprit who really stole the art. Otherwise, all the art is going to be stolen. You don’t get the right guy. It’s all gone. You can forget about it. Insurance is going to drop you. They’re not going to pay. Okay, anyways. All right. A lot of symptoms, a lot of questions, and don’t slap a diagnosis on. Okay? The second assumption that we’re going to have going forward in this series of how to solve horse mysteries is we’re going to assume that evil exists.

Renee (00:05:26.69300)
Now, don’t hate me. I’m serious. It actually does. Yes, I’m a Christian. Yes, I believe there’s a devil. Most of my life I thought, Well, he’s too busy. Whatever. I pay no attention. And I still really pay no attention to the devil. I don’t care. However, I have acknowledged that evil exists. That there’s people or whatever trying to actually do us harm on purpose and purposely harm our animals. You don’t have to agree with me, but I am letting you know that’s my assumption upfront. Now, you may well know about all the crap that’s out there, let’s just say. But one of the things I wanted to share is when it really slapped me in the face that this bad stuff that happens was on purpose. For a long, long time, I thought, Oh, gosh, dang it. If only they had known that this food ingredient was bad for us, then they wouldn’t have put it in there. But somehow it got past the FDA. People Don’t make mistakes. They’ll get it later, and then we’ll all be happy. This was in my mind right back in the day when high fructose corn syrup was a thing.

Renee (00:06:43.66600)
Probably 20 years I don’t know. Time flies. When I had just been hearing how high fructose corn syrup is pretty bad for you. This stuff, it will cause diabetes and increased appetite, and it’s bad for your liver, and it’s really bad. It’s not It’s a healthy thing that humans are supposed to have, high fructose corn syrup. So I knew that. I was reading the back of my labels like a good girl, not buying anything with high fructose corn syrup. And then one day, I go to the store and I saw a ketchup bottle that said high fructose corn syrup free. None in there. I was like, Wow! Oh my gosh! Guess what? The FDA has figured out that that’s bad. Look at these manufacturers. Look how they love and they took it out of that ketchup. And elsewhere, you could see other products that said high fructose corn syrup free or crossed off on a label, whatever. So I’m happy for a couple of months. Then I read this article, guys? The article talks about how, well, they actually took out the word high fructose corn syrup. And I’m sure they took it out of some products, but what they actually did was label it something different.

Renee (00:08:07.27900)
In fact, they made up 30 new names for high fructose corn syrup. You can Google this yourself. By the way, don’t Google. I use the brave browser, if I haven’t already told you. Google and Big Pharma, hand-in-glove, they censor all the good stuff. Okay. Here’s just a short list. So Instead of high fructose corn syrup, they came up with 30 names such as corn syrup, fructose glucose syrup. This is one of my favorites. Glucose-fructose syrup, isoglucose-maze syrup, fruit Fructose, crystalline fructose. High fructose mayhsirup, tapioca s urup, glucose, corn sugar, natural corn s urup, light corn s urup, dark corn s urup, refiner s urup, sweetener, Corn Sweetener, May Sweetener, high fructose corn. It just goes on. It’s ridiculous. It’s absolutely ridiculous. While they say, and it’s technically true, that there’s no high fructose corn syrup, there still is. They just changed the names. When I found that out, that just slapped me across the face. You guys are actually, truly doing this on purpose, and you know it hurts us because you know you’re putting on the label that it’s not in there. I was just like, What in the hell? That really opened my eyes to thinking, You know what?

Renee (00:09:43.81000)
All this health problems, it’s not accidental. If you’re not there yet, that’s fine. Please do your own research, of course. Otherwise, I’m just going to carry on. We’ve got assumptions as a detective. One is we got to get her systems, ask lots of questions. Don’t put a label on it. We must assume evil exists. Now, what I’m talking about for evil or evildoers is mostly the crap that’s in the food or the water or the air. Such as just a shortlist of chemicals, toxins, heavy metals. It goes on. There’s microplastics, all kinds of crap. Rather than label that the horse has a disease or the horse is somehow at for being ill and give him a disease name. No, that’s not it. It’s actually that all this evil crap is affecting the horse and they can’t get it out. It’s not the horse’s fault. Why should the horse get a disease label? No. Anyway, that’s my opinion. All right, now, listen, the last thing we got to do as a detective is have some just general anatomy sometimes for certain things. I know a lot of people, well, I don’t know how many, but we do get a lot of questions at TBT University of, I don’t have an anatomy background.

Renee (00:11:09.19800)
Should I apply? Because anatomy can feel really overwhelming for people, and I understand that because, dude, science people make such sciencey names, and they’re all so Latin-y and big syllables. So I really avoid that in TBT University. I just say this lumpy thing right here, not really. I’m a little more specific. But I keep it simple. So don’t worry about the anatomy until you need to have some knowledge about that specific part. So let me start by giving you an example. I think we’ll do something pretty simple, about a horse hates having his head touched. We’re going to go through this problem and how I would solve it more or less. Hopefully, this question asking, Detective, thing would help us out. Here we are, and we’re going to talk about what if a horse hates having his head touched? Obviously, it could be male or female. I’m just going to go with the… Lots of times in my practice, I’m going to align a horse or work on it, whatever way, and the owner will say, Oh, by the way, my horse hates having their head touched, be careful. I’m like, Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on there.

Renee (00:12:34.54000)
That’s a clue. As a sleuth, I like to be a detective when I’m working on stuff, I need to ask a whole lot more questions about this hate having the head touched. There’s so many. The key is just keep asking. Here’s some. Does the horse like you touching their head, or does it hate everybody catching the head? Or just some people. Does he like the horse’s head being touched one side of the head or both sides of the head? He hates it. He makes one side easier than the other one. Does it Is it either if the horse’s head is held up or is he fine if he has a lowered head? Maybe he’s eating. Does it only happen when you’re trying to put a bridal or halter on? Can’t you actually touch his ears, but not the head? Or is it just the ears? I know some person who could massage their horse’s ears, but then as soon as they get down to the base of the ear, then they react. Then we want to ask, This son of side questions like, does the neck also hurt? Does the horse hate being touched everywhere?

Renee (00:13:52.11700)
Or is it really just the head? Have there been any recent injuries or accidents? These are the Those are the questions that I would start with. I would also ask something like, does it only happen when you raise your hand up fast? Like a startle reflex more than actually hateing the head touched. Then, believe it or not, I would ask, have their teeth been done recently by a dentist? Okay, so I would start with all those questions. Then I want to mention that I do assume that there is evil out there. Sometimes, as you guys know, I’m sure you guys know this, horses can have a history of abuse. It can be physical abuse, mental abuse even. It could be emotional abuse. You can have actual emotional energies that can be trapped around the head or simply physical misalignments from abuse. It can certainly be an accident. I do mention that, though, because I had a dog one time. She was a stray dog. I adopted her. She was so sweet. In my genius way of naming dogs, I named her Sweetie. Sweetie was perfectly fine, sweet, wonderful, medium same size, brown mut. She was so nice to everyone except guys, so it was men with ball caps on.

Renee (00:15:25.11700)
In fact, so much so that if a man did not have a ball cap on, she was perfectly fine. You put that ball cap on and that dog is out of there. She’d run in the bedroom, hide under the bed because of the ball cap. With that knowledge, I get very specific on this reactivity thing. Is it just men? Is it just guys with cowboy hats? It can be women. It can be anybody carrying a stick. There can be all history back there. I try to ask those questions in a nice way. I’m not ever accusing the person. A lot of people rescue horses, and you don’t even know what’s happened. Sometimes you do know, and maybe don’t want to mention it, but it’s good to know. Based upon these type of questions, it gives me a pathway of which way to go. Like a detective. If there was something stolen from a house, but only certain people had access to the bedroom, then I would ignore all those other people that could not have gotten into the bedroom where it was stolen. That just kicks out all that. If I have a horse and they’re fine for touching the ears, but they’re not fine to touch the head, I would zoom in on those questions, and then I would learn a little bit of anatomy.

Renee (00:16:53.5400)
By that, you’ve all seen a horse’s head. That’s what I’m thinking right now. There’s the skull of the horse, and then the first bone in the neck where the pole is, is the atlas. It’s just the first bone in the neck, called the atlas. If the atlas is misaligned, then what’s crazy is it can be so sensitive because the spinal cord runs from the back of the head through the occiput. Don’t worry about these long words, okay? Then to the atlas. If it’s misaligned, it can give horses headaches, and they sure the heck don’t want anybody touching their head. I I would say about 99% of people where they’re saying, My horse hates having his head touch. I think he was eared as a foal. I hear that so many times. It’s just that the atlas is misaligned. 99% of the time, that’s the answer. The other percentages would be the emotional stuff that I already mentioned. Then also, along the anatomy lines, the TMJ of the horse, that’s the temporal the buccular joint, the hinge of the jaw. That’s way back in the mouth. The horse’s mouth is so long. It’s really close to where we buckle the halter.

Renee (00:18:12.21600)
It’s right there. You would want to know that’s there because sometimes horses don’t want to have their head touched because their TMJ is so sore. Horses who have really bad hooks in their mouth, in the back, have sore, terribly sensitive TMJs. There’s been a handful of times where I’ve gone just to reach up and check a horse’s head or mouth, whatever, and they literally, before I even touched, turned to bite me because they were so sore, and they didn’t do that at all, the rest of their body because their TMJ can get so sensitive. If you know anybody who’s had a TMJ issues, it can get incredibly sore, incredibly, Don’t touch me, don’t touch me, that type of thing. Okay, If the horse hates having his head touched, we ask a bunch of questions and then follow the most obvious pathway. Let’s just say the person says, My horse just hates the head touch. Ears are fine. Tmj is all fine. It’s just the head. And we align the atlas. Perfect. You can do that with TBT, you can do that with chiropractic. Plenty of techniques out there will align an atlas for you. But what if he still hates having the head touch?

Renee (00:19:33.46800)
Ask some more questions. Sometimes you got to keep asking questions and then fix something. Does it work or does it not? Ask some more questions. There’s other parts, of Of course, there’s the TMJ, as I mentioned, and then there’s also the occiput, that’s the back of the skull. Sometimes you can align the atlas, which is fairly easy, but many chiropractors either don’t know or don’t quite know how to align the occiput of a horse. It’s a bit awkward. It’s the back of the skull. It’s not the atlas. There’s that. There’s all the cranial bones of the head, which can be giving them lightning jolts in their head, because if those are misaligned, it’s this tension, and then it releases, and it’s like,. There’s plenty of questions and plenty of places. But seriously, 99% of the time, it’s just an atlas misalignment. So please don’t just let your horse’s head just be something where you just tell people about it. Hey, watch out. My horse doesn’t like his head touch. And so you just work around, monking around with the haltering in the bridling because he hates it. Guys, he hates having his head touch.

Renee (00:20:44.46800)
You can fix that. All right? Okay. So that’s all for now. Be a detective, keep asking questions, and you will find the right answer. Talk to you guys later. Bye-bye.

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