Helen Davies Equine Skeletal Research

About Us from another angle …

We are a private research project in South Africa, looking at the skeletal remodelling and structure of our local horses.

To start off I would like to make it clear that the specimens that I will be sharing with you need to looked at and interpreted strictly as case specific at this stage, due to the fact that we may not have enough specimens within each subsection as yet, and we have not completed owner questionnaires on many of the horses that we have, so only when this is complete will we have a bigger picture.

The basic study sub-sections in the collection at this stage include: Breed, Gender, Age and Starting Age, Nutrition, Use or Working Discipline, Maturity, husbandry and Effects of Previous Injury or illness.

With every horse we have looked at, additional questions have been raised, some patterns in the adaptive changes or modification found are appearing more and more, with some deviations at times, these give us further clues and ideas to discuss with each horses’ previous owners as well as the attending and research veterinarians who are offering us advice and information as we progress

From experience, photos and doing DVD’s don’t do the collection as much justice as it deserves, hence in this regard we suggest that focused horse lovers from all over the world, who really want to experience and really see what it has to offer, contact us with the view to coming and spending some time with us in South Africa studying our collection, somewhere in the future, but until that is possible we will endeavour to give you a taste of what we have to offer.

A point I would like to make clear is the horses and ponies that make up this study have not been put down just to get their skeleton’s, the original horses that were my school ponies, were all in pain or suffering the ill effects of serious illness or old age, some of them having worked in our rehabilitative riding program as school horses in some cases for 20 years or more. The decision to put these original horses down was made jointly by me and one of the vets supporting this project. Later when we expanded things and donation horses started joining us, this decision was made by either the said horses’ owner or in discussion with a vet.

We have in the past been asked if our outcomes are “Evidence Based”?

We don’t always have the answers, sometimes we create a pre-mature opinion often due to the excitement of our findings, very often we are forced to work off of something someone else taught us, sometimes we base our opinions on the internet and Facebook posts without realising where the info originates from, none of this is offered with any prejudice because this is the road we have travelled for a very long time

How well have we managed to substantiate that what we believe to be accurate and valid, has what we are sharing come from a reliable source, that has been assessed taking the many versions or aspects of the subject at hand into account, has medical research been used, using dissection, scans, radiographs and ultimately the assessment of actual clean bones to verify a claim, opinion or observation to be true reason, cause or effect of a condition or injury?

What I am starting to share is my opinion, derived from my observations in many cases of the specimens in our own research project’s collection, I have discussed the process of bone pathology at length with one or another of our collaborative professionals.

These opinions, causes and outcomes may differ from similar specimens in other collections, remember not all variables are known in every case especially if routine assessment and documentation was not performed throughout the life of the said horse to keep record of the changes to the said horse as time past.

Safety isn’t expensive its priceless, small amounts of exposure to a subject doesn’t give us enough knowledge and experience to call our opinion safe, hence the request to start finding collaborative partners to make things more available and accessible.

Most of our difficulties are related to finances, we have had to do almost everything with an almost non-existent budget, owners make a small contribution when our over-all costs are taken into account, this project has only survived because my husband has had faith in it and has shared the workshop takings to keep it going, and oh Boy have we learnt a lot through the process.

We don’t have finances to employ full time professionals, we rely on the volunteering veterinarians, we have not aligned ourselves with only one main clinic, we have tried to diversify to get the best of what is available to us. We have been asked to publicly distance ourselves from our faculty of Veterinary Science, and so with all of this in mind how much chance do we have of establishing the basis for “Evidence Based Outcomes” if we can’t publish what we are doing due to lack of affiliation.

I keep being asked how our project all got started so here is a very shortened version (Part 1) …
After being involved in the riding instruction and rehabilitation of many challenged individuals for many many years, the opportunity presented itself for me to become an examiner for the South African National Instructors Plan at the module 1-3 level, where I realised how little horse care and anatomy knowledge a lot of our young very good riders actually have. After a long discussion about how different actual bones look to those that we find drawn as reference in our training text books with a fellow examiner Mandé Siderfin, she helped to arrange for my first old and previously injured horse to be processed into a training skeleton, on the 27th of October 2005.
When I first started with this research program in 2005, the secondary motivation was purely self-indulgence and the need for self-enhancement of my knowledge in relation to the long-term effects that injuries and work related strain have on the skeletal system of our horses, to help promote a longer working life span of our school horses.
I started what has now become an extensive collection with some of my original school ponies and horses that had been used as rehabilitative animals by Windy Hollow Therapeutic Riding Centre, being prepared into skeletons by the OP Anatomy Dept, some of these animals having worked with us for more than 20 years. Thus giving our specimen collection added value because we have a personal working and living history of the horses and ponies, that we can compare to the donated horses that we now have in skeletal form.
When we started with this the original aim was to teach the skeletal parts of the horse to our EQASA students, (Equestrian Qualification Association South Africa) however this has now expanded to the point where we are allowing the horses in the collection to give their live counterparts a voice, to tell us, their riders and owners about things only veterinarians and osteologists are taught about their skeletons, past injury outcomes and the changes that take place. Things equestrian personalities often won’t believe because they haven’t seen the outcomes for themselves on their own horses that they are familiar with.
Our original and first aim with this, was to see what old injuries looked like, in a bid to find ways of reducing pain to our old horses as well as increasing the life span of horses in general because we would then be better equipped to understand the dynamics of the injuries and strain that we placed on our horses over the years. Additionally, this has given us a better idea of when and how to start our young horses off so as to promote better health in the skeletal structure within their older years.
My own personal horses and ponies that make up this study were not put down just to get their skeleton’s, they were all in pain or suffering the ill effects of serious illness or old age, some of them having worked in our rehabilitative riding program as school horses in some cases for the past 20 years. The decision to put them down was made jointly by me and one of the vets supporting this project. However, as time has passed additional privately owned horses have been donated to our project so that different aspects of health and osteology outcomes can be assessed and compared to create greater knowledge for the average horse owner to tap into that is generally not directly available to them.

How our Research Project all got started (Part 2) ...
At the beginning of 2024 we added our 230th Skeleton and now with the documenting of the comparisons of different aspects of the skeleton to create material for teaching at our clinics our aim is more to look at the evidence of strain, and work out ways of preventing the same fate in the horses that you our fellow equestrians deal with or ride in your own lives. To promote this we respectfully ask if you will tell your friends who love horses about us in the quest to raise further awareness, build our database and create attendance to teach “All for the Good of the Horse”.
About Us – Our Current Aims …. Teaching our findings forward …
The Aim would be to accommodate Students using Different Application Methods these will include Working Holidays, Short Course Students, Full Time Students, Intern Training Students, Online Students and Zoom Meetings. With the true value of the collection is said to be in the fact that we know and are in the process of comparing and documenting the living history to the skeletal changes found in each specimen.
Periodically and by appointment when we have an available vet, we do different dissections to show how the horse is put together to focus on the different injuries that horses may have.
In the following basic categories: Genetics, Breed, Gender, Working Discipline, Starting Age, Nutrition, Maturity and Effects of Previous Injuries etc
These Clinics are normally offered privately or in small groups by appointment, the presentation thereof being focused directly on the candidate at hand’s personal interest or knowledge requirements. When we are not forced to mix professional horse care practitioners and horse owners or riders, we are able better use either Scientific or lay-man’s terms.
Training Clinics
We started hosting clinics in 2010 to a small select audience to assess how the concept would be received, but after attending lecturers with Dr Hilary Clayton, Dr Narelle Stubbs and Gillian Higgins, we decided to take a break from clinics to increase the collection and to collect research information so that we could enhance the quality of what we had to offer.
We have been asked by numerous people on our FaceBook Group to start offering webinars so that those who can’t travel to us can still enjoy what we have to offer while learning a new perspective on horse care. We are aiming to keep things simple to start off, hence we are only going to concentrate on the basic skeleton at this stage, we are going to offer case specific details, understanding that we know the basic work and living history of most of the horses to be discussed. We do have a few horses that we don’t have sufficient data on and when those are dealt with we will state that we have insufficient info, so as to minimise confusion.
In the past we did not discuss soft tissue connection to bone, only brief effects, however in some cases we may look into basic contributing factors, which we are now disusing in depth with our collaboration partners and other private Veterinarians to gain the information and knowledge to create a bigger picture or fill in the gaps. To create this bigger picture we will be looking to collaborate with additional relevant international professionals and clinicians as time allows.

How our Research Project got started (Part 3) …
During our clinics we invite our fellow horse lovers to join us and see equine injury specimens normally only seen by vets in training, we are now able to show examples of the comparison of different breeds, starting age effects, as well as the different strain created by the different equestrian disciplines, and the effects of old injuries, understanding we have owned most of these horses and ponies for their whole working life, which has been documented in detail.
We trust that the candidates of our hands-on clinics will have a good learning experience and really hope to see more and more horse lovers at our future training dates, please remember we strive to make each clinic different and so attending other host clinics is advised even though some of the content may be repeated. These extra training dates are not a waste of time because you will see things you missed before, and other participants may very well bring other points up and ask different questions, that will offer you further learning and growth.
Growing the Collection Itself
We do take donation horses into the collection, but there are T’s & C’s, each horse’s merit to the collection is evaluated before it is accepted. We are looking for horses that have had 1 or 2 owners in their life time, who can give us a full working history of the horse with photos and vet records. We are also looking for horses that have had a long working career in 1 main riding discipline or who show drastic bone changes, additionally we are looking for an old sway-back horse.
We are not a free deceased animal removal service, we are however striving to find sponsorship to make greater things happen, although at this stage everything that is done by this project is self-funded by the project. So if you would like to donate a horse that needs to be PTS, then here are some guide lines:
• Your vet or a responsible person needs to put animal down.
• The owner has the choice of sending healthy meat to the Lion Park, and the meat from horses euthanized will be incinerated for safety reasons.
• No horse will be accepted that died of unknown causes.
• No horses will be processed that are not fully donated to the collection.
• We will collect within an hour or twos drive of Walkerville/Jhb South, charging diesel as per the distance travelled, we do not collect live horses.
• If the horse is pts or dies in its stable an additional surcharge will apply due to the time taken to extract it.
• In addition, we also currently require a R1000 cutting fee, to cover staff wages for stripping and getting the skeleton ready to go into the tank, for the horses that are dropped off at our yard by owners.
• Should you require samples to be collected to go for further testing this can be arranged with one of our vets, and charged for separately.
The remaining skeletal processing and cleaning fees are derived out of training offered and our other fund-raising projects, with time we are hoping that we can source sponsorship to assist us with additional staff wages so that we can process faster (Currently it costs close to R4000 to clean and whiten a skeleton). One of the ideas here is to host individuals on working holidays, to get extra tasks taken care of.
• Processing of a horse can take between a year and eighteen months, depending on what the horse was fed and the time of year that it passed.
Owners are welcome to a private viewing of their horses skeleton before it is used in clinics but it’s up-to owners to make appointments to do this, you will be notified when cleaning is complete, should you not take up this offer timeously the skeleton will go into display anyway.

An introduction into how our research project came to be (Part 4) …

We are now almost ready to start hosting international students on-site (hoping from around August 2024) and are busy with the upgrading of our social media profiles, to assist in getting things going.

Funding the Research Project in the Long Term - Through experience and our introduction to a few international personalities, we have come to realise that this collection offers sound practical training specimens, that can be of great value to all who want to gain a deeper understanding of the systems that keep the horse healthy.

We are wanting to see what the influences the shape and wear on the skeleton are, we have numerous questions being investigated to achieve this. These being some of the questions that we aim to answer in time with collaboration with our partner Veterinarians and Physiotherapists or Body Workers.

Disclaimer

It is to be Understood that the Research that we are busy with belongs to the Helen Davies Equine Research Project and the training material connected to this, which we are now starting to share is in no way the opinion of Onderstepoort, the South African Faculty of Veterinary Science or any of its representatives, nor any of the independent vets that have offered us guidance, the knowledge and information we share has been compiled solely by Helen Davies, yes as we have already said with veterinary consultation, and is to be seen as Case Specific at this point due to the fact that not enough research has been undertaken by us at this stage.

The only connection that this research project has with Onderstepoort is the fact that, some of the skeletons that make up this research project have been processed by the OP Anatomy Dept. The reason for this was to eradicate any chance of spreading disease, which we may not have been aware of.

Furthermore, Horse Care and riding are not without risk, and while our lecturers and the authors of our training material have made every attempt to offer accurate and reliable information to the best of their knowledge and belief, it is presented without any guarantee.

The lecturers and training authors therefore disclaim any liability incurred in connection with using the information contained in our Face Book Posts, our Clinics, our Webinars and Training Manuals.

When interacting with anyone following us on Social Media we reserve the right to censor any posts or comments, we are aiming to keep all the content of our group posts relevant to our skeletal research. Complementing and supporting information and services provided by members to assist horses stay healthy, is encouraged but needs to be posted on the relevant information requests.

In Conclusion: None of our findings are to be used as an alternative to your own Veterinarian’s advice to treatment protocol, each horse needs to be assessed on its own merits and treated as accordingly.

We wouldn't be able to share what the horse's skeleton has to teach us without the horses that make up our "HERD", so thank you to every owner who understands that without research into how the horse functions, we are all throwing a learning opportunity away

Its time to start promoting our services and training products and because we have been forced to change privacy settings on our main group, we have decided to create a more public face to our findings