In today’s Horse Mysteries Solved podcast, I talk about how horses should NOT be backsore.

Why?

Because their back muscles are at rest while they are standing.

Yes, at rest.

So why do they get sore? And, if sore, why don’t they heal?

Hear some reasons and what to do about them.

Links mentioned:
Rib checkup video: https://wheredoesmyhorsehurt.com/how-to-videos/
Sternum checkup in this video series: https://www.tuckerbiokinetic.com/#taster
Recommended selenium: https://dynamitespecialty.myvoffice.com/ShoppingCart/index.cfm?FuseAction=CategoryShop&OwnerID=8155&CategoryID=94
Recommended Liver product: https://shop.tuckerbiokinetic.com/

Summary:
Summary by AI:

Dr. Renee Tucker discusses back soreness in horses, particularly focusing on “cold-backed” horses that arch away when first ridden. She introduces two fictional cases: Arnold, representing simple muscle soreness, and Columbo, representing more complex issues. For Arnold, she emphasizes checking saddle fit, ensuring regular exercise, and monitoring selenium intake, which is crucial for muscle health. In Columbo’s case, she explores potential causes like sternum and rib misalignments, as well as kissing spine, which can lead to chronic soreness. Overall, she stresses that while muscle soreness is common, understanding the underlying issues can help in treatment.

Transcription:

Renee (00:00)
Hello, everyone. Welcome to Horse mystery Solved. I’m Dr. Renee Tucker, holistic equine veterinary for over 30 years. Today, we are talking about horse mysteries of the backsore horse, including the cold-backed horse. For our international listeners, we refer to cold-backed as horses that arch away when you get on them, when you first start riding, and then they warm up and they seem fine. Those are included in our back soreness. Now, for today, I’ve got two different case studies that are completely made up. And one is named Arnold because he’s got lots of muscles. And the other is Columbo. If you’re not familiar with Columbo, it’s a very old TV series about a detective named Columbo, and he always had to ask a lot of questions. The first thing I wanted to mention is that when we’re talking about back sorenesses, let’s be clear and say it’s muscle soreness. Nothing else. We’re just talking about muscle soreness when we talk about the back soar horse. That’s like most of them. The other thing that’s super interesting about the horse being back soar at all is because they shouldn’t be. Check this out. I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but horses, they’re not like us.

Renee (01:30)
When we have a sore or tired back, what do we want to do? Sit down, preferably lay down. Because when we’re sitting or laying down, then our back muscles can relax. Now, for the Of course, they are biomechanically entirely different. When they’re standing up, if they just use their stay apparatus, so they turn on a little bit of muscles in the tricep area, They don’t use their back muscles. That’s the only muscle that’s turned on is in the tricep area, and they stand there. Then they’re a thousand pounds or more, and they’re using no effort other than that one little tricep muscle. Therefore, While they’re standing, they should be resting their back muscles. So then how can they be sore if they have that much time to rest? We don’t. When we’re just standing or sitting, we use our muscles all the time, particularly in our back, and particularly when we’re exercising. Of course, horses use their back muscles when they’re exercising, but lots of the time, they’re standing still and they should be resting those back muscles. Okay, let’s explore why that could be. First, I’d love to talk about Arnold. He’s got so many muscles, and I’m named this case Arnold because it’s just the muscles.

Renee (02:53)
The muscles are the primary reason the horse is sore. So if you have an Arnold horse, simple muscle soreness, the muscles are the only problem, you’re going to check three things. Of course, your saddle fits. If your saddle doesn’t fit, even in one little tiny spot, even a dime-size spot, so like one centimeter, the horse is going to arch away from that pressure point, which is using all the muscles in the back then incorrectly, which will make them sore, even if you do a really light ride. So we want to check our saddle fit. The second thing is, I just want to mention this one because I have run into this quite a bunch in my career. People who tell me the horse is back sore, but they’re actually weekend warriors, as we call them. People who mostly ride and ride hard on the weekends. We all got schedules, right? But if the horse is really not ridden at all during the week, and then you only ride on the weekend, They don’t have enough muscles, enough muscle cells, enough muscle development to keep what you’re asking them to do happy. And again, the muscles get sore.

Renee (04:13)
So keep that in mind. If you have to do Weekend Warrior, I totally get that. But maybe you can find someone to ride midweek or something. The last thing I want to mention for the Arnold horse is Selenium. Selenium It is a mineral, and it lives in the muscle cells. It’s also in the hair, so the main, the tail, and the feet, the hips. But it lives in the muscle cells, and It lets them stretch all the way, totally flex and stretch all the way. What that means is if they don’t have enough selenium, the muscles cannot work properly. They don’t stretch enough. They’re tight, they’re rigid, and they get sore. So check your supplements. You want to make sure horses get 2 milligrams per day of selenium. Now be careful because I’ve had a lot of people look at their bags or buckets of selenium and they say, Oh my gosh, mine has 20. Well, that 20 milligrams, that’s for the whole bag or the whole bucket. So you want to make sure you’re looking for the amount per day. The other thing people worry about sometimes is too much selenium. Now, that is certainly a problem if you live in the Potomac River Basin, which is the only place in the United States that I’m aware of, where we have high selenium in the soil, and so there’s high selenium in the hay or grass that they’re on.

Renee (05:51)
And of course, then you would not need selenium. So do check with your vet if you live anywhere with high selenium. The problem is most of the country in America, and also most of the countries I know of, do not have enough selenium getting uptaked into the hay. I don’t know why that is. I have theories, but they’re only theories, ladies and gentlemen. So the point is they’re not getting enough selenium. And what happens is the muscles are hard. You go to massage the horse and they’re hard as rocks just all over. And I’m not talking about the lumps and the bumps and the gritty tissues. I’m not talking about that. That’s a problem in itself. But they’re just too hard. The muscles all over the horse’s body should be massageable. They should be smushy. Even Arnold Schwarzenegger, he had super big, tight muscles. But when he relaxed his muscles, they’re massageable, right? So in the horse, whose muscles should all be relaxed when they’re standing, they should be massageable. So if you can’t really squash them at all, likely low selenium. I know many people recommend magnesium. That’s fine. Just find a lot better luck with the selenium, 2 milligrams per day.

Renee (07:19)
Okay, so that’s our simple direct muscle soreness case. It’s just the muscles. That’s Arnold. And you want to check saddle fit. Make sure they are strong enough for what you’re asking them to do, and check your selenium levels. All right. Likely, if you have a sore back, you’ve already checked that for your horse. So let’s talk now about Columbo. Columbo is our next case. So these are the next level trying to figure out, well, what is making the muscle sore? So we’ve already checked things that would be the muscles themselves or not have enough muscles. What else could be making the muscles have a problem with soreness? Well, got three things for you. The first thing is going to be the sternum. The sternum is the breastbone of the horse. It’s the bottom of the barrel. So as you may know, the horse does not have a clavicle or collarbone. So that barrel, it swings side to side. It’s supposed to swing. The whole ding thing swings. If you watch a horse walk from behind, you’ll see it swinging right and left, side to side. It’s supposed to do that. When that sternum is misaligned, it stops doing that.

Renee (08:45)
It will only go one side, not the other. So for the horse to balance itself when the sternum is not centered, that takes extra muscling, that using those muscles all the time. Even when they’re supposed to be resting. So the horse is just standing there, everything should be relaxed, but not if the sternum is misaligned, then the horse has to compensate. For that misalignment, and it’s overused, and they’re chronically sore muscles. So back soreness, typically we’re going to see the sternum misaligned. And also you can see chronic back soreness when you have the ribs misaligned. So back in the day when I was a veterinary, like a young veterinary, before I went to chiropractic school, I would hear from people and they said, Oh, my horse’s rib is out. I’m just like, What? It’s clearly right there. What do you mean it is out? Where is it gone? When are you bringing it back in? I don’t know what they’re talking about. But the thing is, when people say their horse’s rib or anything is out, it’s just a shorthand. It just means it’s misaligned. In chiropractic terms, it’s subluxated, but that’s a big long story.

Renee (10:14)
What I’m just talking about is misaligned. If it’s misaligned, then compensating muscles get turned on to help hold it into alignment. Now, there’s going to be a link below that you can see my rib checkup, where you yourself can check your horses and see if the ribs are misaligned. It’s pretty simple. If you push on the rib head, as I call them, the horse says, Ow, I don’t know if you’ve been to a chiropractor and they’re checking your back, and if they check you and you have a rib out, they push on your back. And they’re like, Does it hurt here? And you’re like, Ow. And does it hurt here? And does it hurt here? And you’re like, Would you stop pushing on it? Because it hurts. Those are ribs that are misaligned and the chiropractor fixes them. So check and see if your horse’s ribs are misaligned by doing the rib checkup. So when we’re doing Columbo, we’re doing a rib checkup to check for rib misalignment. On the sternum checkup, I also have a video for you there that is within my Taster series, and that’s also linked below. The last thing that I’m mentioning today is if your horse is chronically back sore, it could be kissing spine.

Renee (11:34)
Now, I don’t want to freak people out because people get freaked out about kissing spine. I don’t blame you. Kissing spine is when the vertebra of the back are getting squished. They’re starting to squash together, and the body develops extra calcium to protect itself. And on the X-ray, it looks like the vertebra may have been touching at some point. And so I’m cute little veterinarian named that Kissing Spine. It was not me. It’s not a bad name, but I’d call it something better to work on that. Anyways, the point is that it could be kissing spine because the horse is all the time using the back muscles to prevent anything more painful from happening with what’s going on in their vertebra. So that you want to call your vet to check, and you’ll gently do an X-ray. But personally, I would really start with selenium. That would be simplest. If you do have a kissing spine issue, you want to start with a liver cleanse, because what’s happening is the body is not getting the right groceries, if you will, from the liver to make really strong ligament elements that hold the vertebra of the spine in the correct spot.

Renee (12:51)
I have other videos about the whole kissing spine thing, so take a look at that there. That’s Part of what I wanted to cover for today. This is just for the back sore horse, where the muscles are sore, and they’re dang sore a lot all the time. I’ve had people say, I’ve got her this special brush from Europe, and it’s got the best brishels, and it was like $50, but she’s still back sensitive. What’s wrong with her hair? They think the hair is sensitive. It’s not the hair or the skin. It’s the muscle. Okay? So if you have a simple direct muscle soreness like Arnold, you’re going to check for selenium. You need two milligrams a day. You want to make sure your horse is getting enough use to have strong enough muscles. If you can’t get your horse ridden, I really suggest trying to have a track system. That’s also referred to as the Paddock Paradise Track System by Jamie Jackson, where your horse has a design of the paddock or pasture that they can move all the time. It’s fantastic. Do you know horses in the wild move 20 miles a day on average?

Renee (14:06)
That’s a lot of moving. Because why? If they’re moving, they’re barely using their back muscles. Talk about cheating. I wish I could do that. Anyways, okay, so you’ve got your selenium, you’ve got your horse strong enough, and you’ve checked your saddle fit. Next, the three most common things when you’re trying to figure out the Columbo method of why are those muscles sore, You’re going to check the sternum for alignment, the ribs for alignment, and check for kissing spine. I do have more ways to check for kissing spine in my reverse diagnosis book. I’ll try to link that below as well if I remember. That’s obviously not all-inclusive. There’s many things that can be affecting the back that affect the back muscles. Just a few things would be pelvic synthesis and lumbar misalignment, as well as liver issues, as well as other toxins and chemicals themselves being in the muscles. There’s plenty of choices, but hopefully these will get you started with what can be sore for your horse’s back. Remember, everything can be fixed. Just keep looking for that reason why. Thanks for listening. See you next time. Bye-bye.

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