08/18/2026
Did you know that I started out as an equine veterinarian?
Yes. For the first 10 years of my vet life, I drove around in a big truck that was full of medical equipment. I went from farm to barn, doctoring the horses and helping their people.
I even started out working in the large animal clinic as a vet student. After graduation, I did a year-long medical and surgical internship in Lexington, Kentucky, at a huge equine referral center that has by now tripled or quadrupled in size.
Not long after I arrived in the Catskill region, I developed back pain that inspired me to see an acupuncturist. She changed my life, and the rest is history.
I studied and got certified in Veterinary Acupuncture and then Veterinary Spinal Manipulation, aka Chiropractic. Pretty quickly, that's all I wanted to do.
Friends in the dog agility world, where I competed with my spicy JRT named Jersey, quickly imposed their dogs on me for chiropractic manipulation. This, despite my protests that I was a horse vet, not a dog vet.
That was close to 20 years ago. At this point in my career, the overwhelming majority of my patients are dogs. I see very few horses, and the reason is not only because farm calls take a lot more time than office appointments.
It's also because it is so incredibly rare for horses to receive the kind of care that their biology needs to thrive. Lots of loving and enthusiastic horse owners fail miserably on most counts.
It's not their fault. (It's not your fault)
What is considered acceptable and even good horse management rarely takes into account the foundational needs shared by all horses, The Three F’s: Forage, Friends, and Freedom.
Horses who get The Three F’s are consistently healthier, stronger, happier, more compliant, less likely to get injured, and overall better partners for the humans in their lives. So then, why is it rare for horses to receive them?
I can guess. I can name some of the reasons. One is that humans crave convenience. In our ever more complicated world, we need for things to be simpler, easier, and faster. Many of the strategies that we use to improve The Three F’s make things a bit more complex — at least, in the beginning.
Long term, horses who receive The Three F’s consistently are going to be easier to manage. But this promise of "hard now, easy later" is a challenging concept for most of us.
100% I include myself in that statement.
Domestic horses are very, very similar to wild or feral equids in their anatomy, biology, physiology, and biomechanics. Breeding practices that brought about broad genetic variations and resulted in hundreds of domestic dog breeds have not changed the domestic horse all that much.
While it may or may not be appropriate to compare your pet dog to a wolf, it is very appropriate to compare the horse in your yard to a feral horse living in the wild.
Those horses are almost constantly on the move. Estimates vary, but let's say that they cover around 5 miles of ground on a daily basis. They graze, they forage, they browse.
They consume different kinds of food with different head positions. They look off to the horizon. They are exposed to natural sunlight. Their bare feet are in contact with the earth.
The ground they cover is varied. There may be hills, rocks, ravines, rivers, trees, fields, plains, and grasslands. Traversing this uneven terrain requires stability and strong feet.
They live in herds, and that companionship is incredibly important to them. They trust their herd mates to keep watch for danger. They develop special relationships with offspring and other relatives, and with non-relatives too. They groom each other, which I think of as horse cuddling. They play. They joke!
Yes, horses tell jokes, at least some of them do. I’ve met many horses with a sense of humor.
While inclinations to athletic activity surely varies among individuals, a wild horse must be able to run from danger. Occasional frights and manageable stresses keep the system in balance.
This is more or less the kind of life where a horse is designed to thrive. The further away a horse gets from this lifestyle, the more they must do to manage the deficiencies and excesses.
Rather than acknowledge the inadequacy of their human management, many people choose instead to accuse horses of poor design, poor intelligence, and mental illness. How often do we hear horse people describe a horse as crazy, idiotic, stupid, or poorly designed?
Too often.
If I’m honest I see similar problems with people and dogs, but that’s a topic for another day.
I’ll write more about The Three F’s in another post.
