Lessons Learnt From Lives Lost

Today I write to you as myself, Ané Lloyd, and not as Onlinepethealth – mostly because I want to share my personal observations and views when it comes to dissections, and my experiences during a particular dissections I was able to attend and participate in. But also because I have to admit to shortcomings in my memory and knowledge when it comes to anatomy!

As I write this, I am transported back to my days at college. The first dissection completely freaked us all out. The strange smell, the lecture hall suddenly stifling. Trying to wrap our hearts and minds around something that felt so wrong…

And after the first few … the feeling changed, and there was a sense of anticipation and awe. In the third and fourth year, I remember walking past the first years doing dissections, and desperately wanting to join them again.

For some time now, I have been following Helen Davies Equine Research Project, and when I had the opportunity to join Helen in a dissection, I had to take it. I want to share a few thoughts from that dissection with you.

But first, let me tell you a little about Helen Davies Equine Research Project.

 

Helen Davies Equine Research Project

Helen provides a service borne of love and curiosity, and a need to learn more about the horses who serve us so faithfully and so well.

What is perhaps most striking is not just the work itself, but the breadth of it. Each dissection feeds into multiple areas of research, often in collaboration with professionals across the world.

Here are just some of the ways these horses continue to teach us:

 

1. The dissections are open to attend. If you are in the Gauteng area of South Africa and would like to attend and learn from a dissection, get hold of Helen and try to join in the next one.
2. The lamellar portion of the nuchal ligament is photographed and documented for Sharon May-Davies.
3. The presence or absence of threadwork within the nuchal ligament is examined for Kharon Nakielny (so far, none have been found).
4. Ongoing collaborations on hoof conditions are done with Lindsey Field from NZ.
5. X-rays are collected in relation to pedal bone position, contributing to work exploring the relationship between trimming practices and internal hoof health for international student research.
6. The connections of the first rib, including malalignment, are examined for April Love.
7. Research projects are being developed into saddle fit through international collaborations with Shellea Ripley from Saddlefit4Life and independent fitters.
8. DNA and bone analysis is done on each horse to identify the presence or absence of Equine Complex Vertebral Malformation (ECVM), contributing to an international database together with Pamela Eckelbarger and the Equus-Soma Equine Osteology and Anatomy Learning Centre, under supervision of Sharon May-Davies.
9. To help cover the costs of these dissections and research projects, regular clinics are run in collaboration with independent veterinarians.
10. Owners of euthanised horses are offered the option of histopathology, providing reassurance and clarity around end-of-life decisions.

There are currently approximately 380 horses in the collection.

Over time, the hope is that this growing body of knowledge can be shared more widely – supporting education, informing practice, and ultimately improving the quality of care for horses everywhere. There is even a vision of building a space where these findings can live on, allowing others to learn from them long into the future.

 As you can see, the Helen Davies research project is vast, impacting and contributing to multiple areas of study in the equine field.

 

My Dissection Lessons Learnt

My anatomy knowledge is not as rusty as I thought it was, but far from where I want it to be!

I made a new friend and connection in the equine multidisciplinary team, in a saddle fitter 🙂

I got to look through the eyes of a saddle fitter, an owner and a researcher at the body of a horse, and discuss the convergence of our observations.

I was able to begin to answer some of the questions I had been accumulating over years of practice and attending CPD webinars!

 

Here are the areas that I focused on during the dissection, and that I would love to share my thoughts and observations on.

 

🚩 The Cutaneous Trunci Muscle

After attending a webinar series with Tuulia Luomala (Everything Fascia, in the Equine Members Portal), I became really interested in her observations about this muscle. Since the webinar, I have been observing this muscle in my own horses, and here is what I have seen:

🤨 Bateleur, my gelding, has a very strange movement presentation. I have wondered if he has a presentation of Shivers affecting his forelimbs instead of the back limbs, and more recently I have wondered about the possibility of ECVM, or potentially a presentation of hypermobility… Needless to say, there is abnormal neuromotor control of the forelimbs, he has a hard time shifting his weight back, and doing a few other things that ‘normal’ horses have no problems with. 

🧐  Bateleur has a very prominent cutaneous trunci muscle. Always present, but more defined when he is going through a ‘bad’ spell. In chatting to some trainers, I learned that they have noticed a sharp definition of the cutaneous trunci muscle in horses that are on the forehand and struggle to find balance. I have observed the same thing in some young horses who are more on the forehand. 
🤨  The saddle fitter I met at the dissection referred to the definition of the cutaneous trunci muscle along the abdominal wall as a holding line. When it is defined over the scapula as well, this can be a sign of pain or dysfunction in the horse. This was such a valuable insight!

 

It seems that the cutaneous trunci is far more than just a muscle in the skin that chases flies, and that perhaps it plays a role in compensatory movement patterns or adaptations in the event of chronic pain or dysfunction, just like Tuulia suggested in her webinar.

As Tuulia said: Muscles will activate in the way that they can, not in the way that they should.  

 

🔁 The Thoracolumbar Fascia

It has been a long time since I looked at this area under the skin. Looking at the fascia from the fresh perspective of having completed the fascia series with Tuulia, I was blown away. The thoracolumbar fascia has connections and fibres going off in every direction, in layer upon layer – it is quite beautiful.

🤚 I could put my hand in and gently separate many of the layers, following a strong fascial connection from the dorsal spinous processes to the tuber coxae, to the abdominals in two or three different layers, cranially to the longissimus, cranio-distally into the latissimus dorsi. Just … wow.
🤚 Not only is this area primarily fascial in the superficial layers, palpating more firmly and with less give than the more muscular sections cranially and caudally, it also connects strongly in almost every direction, to a multitude of different muscles! No wonder we see signs of pain and hypertrophy in the lumbar region first when there is a dysfunction anywhere!

O, and apparently, I scratch and stroke the horse throughout the dissections just like I would do live animals after a particularly ‘invasive’ palpation. I was thoroughly made fun of. 😅

 

🚩The Iliopsoas Complex

Well, here I was put to shame, and I’m not afraid to admit it. I can’t believe how rusty I had become at identifying the separate pieces of this puzzle and putting them together in the horse.

Here are some of my eye-openers from this dissection coupled with some recent webinars:

🥸  The iliopsoas complex is huge; very strong, and in terms of fiber type, very muscular throughout its length (as opposed to being more tendinous).
🥸  Nicole Rombach showed a very interesting image in her webinar Equine Spinal Dysfunction: Motor Control in Rehabilitation of the muscular support that the equine spine has. Along the whole dorsal length of the spine, there is muscle. But along the ventral spine? There is muscular support cranially along the cervical spine, and caudally along the last thoracic and lumbar vertebrae, but in the whole thoracic region where a rider sits, there is no muscle on the ventral aspect of the spine. Of course, I knew this, but I had never seen it shown in quite this way.
🥸  While the iliopsoas and quadratus lumborum is indeed a large mass of muscle, it doesn’t compare in size to the bulk of muscle on the dorsal aspect of the spine. Of course, the actual skeleton does provide a great deal of stability in this region, but it is still worth thinking about and considering the why, how, and what does it mean of this. I regret now not spending a little more time looking at the abdominal muscles too! 

 

🔁 The Omentum

What did I know about the omentum before? Nothing.

Here is what I know now:

👩‍🏫  In each horse, the omentum is in a slightly different place and has a different size.
👩‍🏫  Apparently, the omentum will wrap around an organ where there is a dysfunction, forming an essential part of the immune system and aiding in healing of that organ.
👩‍🏫  It is, without a doubt, absolutely beautiful.

 

To the Lives Lost… 

And with that, I think my biggest revelations are shared, and I hope that what I have done today is to inspire you to attend dissections regularly. If there is one thing that was repeated over and over again on that day, it is that every horse is different, and that with each dissection, something new comes to light. So I will be doing my utmost to attend as many as I can, to stimulate my thinking and my learning, to expand my network of colleagues and, at the end of the day, the team that I work with.

And hopefully, from the loss of beautiful souls that walked this earth with us, we will improve the lives of those that stay behind.