Dr John Dunsford MRCVS. Silverback Veterinary Equine.

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Dr John Dunsford MRCVS. Silverback Veterinary Equine.

Silverback Veterinary is the successor practice to John Dunsford's Equine Veterinary Clinic Midhurst. We also have Jo, our office manager and nurse.

Silverback concentrates on Equine problems which require adequate time and experience with special skill in connective tissue and MYOFASCIAL LINES. Dunsford and Shawyer is an independent Equine practice, based in Stedham, West Sussex. We consist of two vets, John Dunsford BVM&S MRCVS – who founded the practice, and Bridey Shawyer BVMBVS MRCVS, who joined in 2024. We provide care for horses, donkey

s and ponies, twenty-four hours and a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, within Hampshire, West Sussex and Surrey. We offer care on an ambulatory basis, whilst having the luxury of our very own day-clinic, with stocks, trot up and sand school, for the more in-depth investigations. We have high-quality digital radiography systems, ultrasonography, endoscopy and reproductive equipment to ensure your horses receive the best possible care whilst with us. We have also recently invested heavily in state-of-the art dentistry equipment, as this is something we feel very passionately about. Other areas of interest that we are currently exploring are Equine Mental Health, Acupuncture and the Biomechanics of Lameness. What makes us different? Founded in 1999, John has built a reputation for high quality care with a comprehensive, joined-up, family-doctor approach with clients and their animals. We understand that by taking care of our clients, we in turn care for their horses. We know that horses are more than simply pets or athletes to people, and therefore we strive to build that same relationship with the horses ourselves. We are strong believers at D&S that if you are kind to the horse, they will be kind to you. Whilst your horse is under our care, you can rest assured that they will be treated as one of our own, whether that at your yard or our clinic. We feel educating our clients is a vital part of caring for your animals and therefore we aim to provide client talk evenings, educational social media posts and videos to ensure you know when the right time is to call us for help! We are an open-minded, confident and experienced practice who work with the latest developments and research and constantly look to feed that back into our work to improve the welfare and outcomes for our patients.

02/07/2026

DO THOROUGHBREDS GET LAMINITIS?

YES, YES, YES, YES, YES, YES, YES!!! Oh Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!

Isn’t laminitis a pony thing?

Well ponies have genes which make it more common in younger animals but all equids get laminitis. Mules, Donkeys, Horses, Hinnies, Jennets. Cows too get laminitis although in different circumstances. But all horses live with or can get laminitis.

This is important. Many horses and ponies live with laminitis and the owner does not realise. You can’t assume that your horse is laminitis-free.

These animals are time-bombs as any change in routine can change it from overlooked laminitis to very severe unmissable laminitis.

If you have a misgiving about whether your horse is laminitic don’t ask AI or a friend. Put your horse in a box immediately and feed a third of what you’d usually feed just as forage. No concentrates, no carrots, no treats. Do not give ad-lib hay as it is full of sugar. Oat straw and hay 50:50 is better. If you have a straw bed and they are eating that then reduce the hay further.

Why do this? Because it will turn off the insulin which drives the laminitis. Otherwise, you could be continuing to pour petrol on the fire.

This is first aid. Think of it as putting someone in the recovery position. It is straight forward to do and won’t hurt the horse for a couple of days. Trying to second guess it can result in disaster. Don’t take the risk, it makes no sense.

Then call your vet out. Laminitis is very expensive. Spend less money now and head it off.

Your vet will check insulin and for PPID (cushings). If your horse is PPID and it isn’t treated immediately the laminitis will just keep going.

Ask your vet to take a blood Lactate reading. If it is over 0.2 be suspicious that this is the beginning of laminitis even if your horse seems to improve with rest.

Just a thought about Thoroughbreds. They are celebrated for being footy. But this doesn’t mean that the footyness of your Thoroughbred isn’t partly laminitis. If you’re not totally sure, or the footyness is getting worse, or they are footy after the farrier then get your vet to check him, or her.

Again in my experience a blood Lactate is worth doing here. It is easy and inexpensive. I would say over 0.2 is suspicious for some underlying laminitis and 0.6 is significant. With visible laminitis you get 0.5 at first, it can then climb to 1.5 in the first week and can take three months to return to normal.

Get your horse or pony checked and don’t just do ACTH (PPID) even when it’s free. Test for EMS (metabolic syndrome) too.

Dr. John Dunsford MRCVS.

23/06/2026

HOW TO AVOID LAMINITIS IN HOT WEATHER.

Heatwaves always result in a flurry of laminitics. This can seem a bit counter-intuitive as there is no grass.

Laminitis is a very frustrating condition, stressful to nurse, manage and avoid. What owners ask for above all else is a simple set of instructions or a rule of thumb to follow and avoid disaster. And the seemingly random nature of this constant danger comes at a cost and makes owners unwell.

Wanting a rule of thumb which is both totally understandable and reasonable has produced a thriving market for them. But the reality is that there just isn’t one. Laminitis risk is governed by two complicated ‘ecosystems’ which interact together to produce the frustrating fluidity which yields the unique least-bad answer on any given day.

Rules of thumb are no good here. There is no alternative to actually getting one’s head around the factors at play. Do this and it will reduce your stress. It is not that complicated to get an overview.

Firstly, there is the grass:

Grass grows when it has light, water and nutrients and is not stressed by temperature (hot or cold), lack of water or lack of nutrients. Unlike grasses like the cereals which grow and then die having placed all their hopes and efforts into their seed, pasture grass has an underground root system. The roots store energy as sugars so if you mow it or eat it there is the energy to grow again. Cereals put this energy in the grain (seed), which is why you can make beer with it.

Plants such as grass have plumbing, do you remember xylem and phloem from school? As the grass grows new shoots the phloem pumps energy as sugars up into the developing shoot. The leaves are bright green as they haven’t developed their protective cuticle as yet. They are sweet and appetising. When the blade is mature it has the darker cuticle, and has everything in place to get going with photosynthesis.

Photosynthesis requires water, carbon dioxide, and sunlight. It results in growth and in sugar. This is by the capture of the suns energy and converting it to high energy sugars. And by taking the carbon from the carbon dioxide in the air to make leaf and stalk. Very neat.

Once photosynthesis is romping the excess sugar produced is pumped back down the phloem to the root to replenish reserves against the misfortune of getting eaten again. This means that mature grass blades have lower sugar in the leaves but higher sugar in their stems and roots.

If grass is heat stressed it will stop growth before stopping making sugar, so sugar accumulates in stem and root. It is also probably wilted and mainly stem by then. If it is too hot the heat damage will stop all normal processes and the result is akin to short, sweet standing hay which takes more of it to fill a horse or pony up so they eat more of it, all sugary and rooty.
Per kilo, hay has up to three times the sugar of grass.

It does not follow that meadow hay is better than mature grass leaves for laminitics, it could well be more dangerous. But here’s the thing, it depends on what the horse choses to eat. Some horses on mature pasture will go for the roots every time. Some will even take a mouthful and spit it out to get the roots next bite. Some will scrape the ground with their foot and ‘appear’ to be eating dirt. Some will graze in puddles where they can pull the roots like carrots.

For these sugar-seeking horses mature grass with well stocked sugary roots becomes a clear danger.

My advice would be to be suspicious of animals who are root grazers, have worn incisors, high worm egg or sand counts or will eat hay at pasture in preference to mature grass. (possible insulin disregulators).

To manage laminitic risk you have to know each animal’s grazing habits.

The second ‘ecosystem’ is the horse’s metabolism:

In most cases laminitis is caused by high blood insulin, or insulin is the main cause.

Insulin rises due to dietary sugars, but this rise can be exhasibated by any ‘insulin resistance’ the patient has.

'Insulin resistance' is when the patient’s tissues are not listening to the insulin so the body increases the concentration of insulin in the blood. Sometimes this can be to the very threshold of laminitis.

Insulin resistance can be increased by the animal’s genes, by obesity, by PPID (Cushings), by EMS (Equine Metabolic Syndrome). And often together in any combination or as the full pack.

Insulin resistance can be reduced by exercise in sound animals.

PPID and EMS are very common. Most sufferers have never been diagnosed or even suspected, but these common conditions push many animals silently to the brink of laminitis.

In a heatwave the grass is sugary and horses are not exercised.

The animals with existing high insulin are much more likely to tip over the edge due to the high dietary sugars of the scorched grass.

Laminitis is not an on-or-off condition. You do not ‘either have it or you don’t’. I imagine a clock face. The horse knows about discomfort in its feet from five-past. But humans do not begin to see that there’s anything wrong until about twenty-five to. Many horses who go laminitic in the heat will already have been a good part of the way there already, and often have been so for a long time.

So to sum-up:

What three things do we need to always consider when it comes to pasture?

What’s the grass up too? Where’s the sugar?

What’s your horse up to? How much sugar is he choosing to eat?

What’s going on with your horse’s insulin? - Something? - Nothing? - (You really need to know the answer to this).

For the heatwave:

Scorched grass will be full of sugar.

If your horse or pony eats roots be extra very careful.
If your horse or pony is old be very careful. (PPID).
If you know your horse has EMS be extra very careful.
If your horse is obese be very careful.
If your horse always craves hay be very careful.
If your horse is often a bit footy on stones and is sore for a day after shoeing be extra very careful.
If you are taking your horse out of regular exercise during the heat think about what that could mean for animals with undiagnosed insulin resistance.

If you decide to restrict the time at heatwave pasture which is sensible, do not give ad-lib meadow hay, (sugar!).
Hay/oat straw mix is better, and we all need less in the heat and when doing less.

So I hope that not only has this given some useful tools for thinking about heatwave pasture, but also those same tools can demystify laminitis and grazing in any season.

Get your vet to check your horse regularly for PPID but also insulin on a blood tests. The free PPID checks have done huge good, but because they are free and insulin testing is not, a lot of EMS and insulin resistance which such testing can pick up remains hidden.

Get your vet to do your WEC so they know if your animal is persistently high. And get your vet to do your dental inspections so they can see wear pattens and check for the caries and decay that high sugar consumers can suffer. Only vets can pull all these strands together to make sure your horse is as safe as possible.

John Dunsford MRCVS.

24/03/2026

LOCKING STIFLES. - MYOFASCIAL LINES.

It does not follow that young horses are free of troubles, and that if we buy or breed a young unbroken horse it must be perfect.

This is equally true of humans. Our local hospital has a large paediatric block with an out-patients which is always busy managing conditions identified in or developing in early childhood. Similarly, here in Midhurst we have a secondary school in the centre of town. If you are driving through town when the school turns out a wave of several hundred children washes up the main street slowing the traffic. It is fascinating to watch their feet and posture. It is unarguable that even at eleven many children already have problematic posture and gait.

By the time many young horses are broken they are already moving incorrectly. They often have upright pasterns and weak bums. When put into work these problems are reinforced and part of the youngster’s potential will be lost at that point. From then on their posture will be seen as conformation rather than acquired with the possibility of change and improvement.

With geldings one very common presentation is with awkwardness behind and under the saddle. Surgery for persistent locking stifles is more common in geldings than fillies. The 'Functional' myofascial line in horses is the rope of joined muscles which run from each elbow, crosses under the saddle and crosses in the groin after looping around the stifle. You can imagine how separate muscles can make a rope like knotted bed sheets in a jail break.

Gelding, especially castration with complications afterwards is recognised as predisposing to dysfunction in the functional lines by trauma to the groin. This causes a stiff back under the saddle and predisposes to locking stifles. This in turn causes stifle problems which tighten the 'Spiral' lines, and so affect lumbar, SI, and neck function.

All young horses coming into work should be checked for myofascial freedom, and any existing problems should be resolved. All geldings should be checked within a six months of castration to free off tight functional lines.

Myofascial therapy is not available through routine physiotherapy or massage. It is a new and rapidly developing field of Equine veterinary orthopaedics pioneered by a team of Danish research vets over the last twenty years.

The illustrations are of the path of the Functional lines drawn in blue. Where dashed it illustrates where the line runs behind when viewed from in front.

Dr. JOHN DUNSFORD MRCVS
SILVERBACK VETERINARY EQUINE
PIONEERING IN VETERINARY MYOFASCIAL.
Please contact us for treatment enquires by our email.
[email protected]

08/03/2026

SOLVING FOOT PROBLEMS.

Foot balance is a popular topic for posts and articles often illustrated by diagrams marked with degrees and brightly coloured lines.

Balance is very important. But balance is so often described as right or as wrong, therefore simply requiring corrective trimming. Few posts or lectures discuss why the balance might have become wrong, and how to prevent it from repeatedly returning to the same problem. Or why correcting it may sometimes be counter-productive or disastrous.

The growth of horse’s hooves has evolved to be stimulated by the forces applied to them. And the normal rate of horn growth evolved to be appropriate to the activity of wild herds and the abrasion of grassland plains.

For our domesticated horses in the British Isles there is also the work on hard abrasive surfaces, together with little abrasion from our soft soils. Horses not in work are likely to develop overgrown feet unless regularly trimmed.

Abrasion caused by work on hard surfaces is effectively countered by shoeing. But this also stops any natural wear, so the shoes need to be removed and replaced to permit trimming in the absence of natural abrasion.

Wild or feral horses on their original grassland plains require no trimming.

Healthy horses land their feet flat on the ground, even if they are foaled with twists in their long bones. Horses with tight myofascial lines often land their feet unevenly and are common culprits for foot balance problems. For example a non-matching pair of front feet is typical as a myofascial presentation amenable to treatment and resolution.

How a horse lands and loads on each foot is dictated by comfort or by avoiding pain, and by mechanical restrictions caused by tight myofascial lines. This is complicated by adjustments the horse makes to relieve pain or accommodate myofascial restrictions in other feet.

Shoeing has many benefits for most working horses and is invaluable to allow horses to work in comfort. When a horse is uncomfortable in shoes there is a reason behind that which needs to be explored, so that discomfort and further deterioration can be prevented.

A shod horse however has a password-protected foot balance so that the horse then cannot alter the balance itself by abrasion. This means that shod horses are put in an impossible position for comfort and freedom of movement if:

1. The balance or trim is poor.

2. A chosen, or vet-prescribed balance is inappropriate for that horse’s orthopaedic or myofascial needs.

3. The foot is not trimmed at the necessary intervals.

4. The foot is poorly shod.

5. A chosen, or vet-prescribed remedial shoeing possesses misjudged features.

Making special surgical shoes, and indeed the careful adjustments that farriers make to each fitted shoe is an art involving a lot of judgement as well as skill. And is certainly not as easy as farriers make it look. Since 1975 only qualified farriers and vets can shoe horses in the UK and this has hugely benefitted horse welfare. When I was first in practice there were still some owners shoeing their own horses by a ‘Grandfather rights’ concession, and I would not want to see some of those feet again.

In my time vets commonly prescribed shoe extensions to force the horse into what we perceived as a good action. What we were actually doing was denying the patient their choices to avoid pain and to maintain balance. These peculiarities of action are actually usually acquired, and are very amenable to combined myofascial and joint treatment. Forcing the foot into an action which is difficult and painful is not the answer.

A lot of the success of bare-foot trimming which some horses enjoy is probably just that removing the shoe allows the horse to wear it’s foot in the way it has evolved to do. This allows the horse to adjust it’s own trim, as when unshod horses repeatedly return to a non-textbook balance in cases of joint discomforts.

Many horses twist a foot after placing it. These animals will often favour soft surfaces to allow this action which they choose to avoid pain and accommodate tight myofascial lines. Shoeing these horses with road-nails which reduce the ability to twist on hard surfaces is likely to exacerbate hard surface discomfort and increase their tendency to favour the soft and verges. Again this action is acquired, is a sign of problems bothering the horse and can be addressed.

While feet grow preferentially according to how they are loaded in landing and overall growth is stimulated by work, hooves can also crush from excess, constant or uneaven loading.

An unsymmetrical foot is usually acquired, and signals changed loading caused by a problem bothering the horse which requires identification and effective treatment.

A loaded side of a foot will want to grow upright.

An unloaded side of a foot will want to grow into a flair if unattended.

A horse who flicks its toe and lands on it’s heel will crush its heel and is likely to have a rotated-back pedal bone. This rotation typically gives the horse an acutely bad back and the discomfort makes them dangerous.

Wedging the heel is effective in making these horses comfortable but is not without its associated problems. Typically these horses never return to a normal foot balance and comfort without the underlying myofascial and joint problems being effectively understood and addressed.

A horse who loads on the toe due to pain or myofascial restriction will grow a boxy foot with a high heel.

A horse with a sore lower joint it will typically favour one side of the foot which will grow more upright, and the other side may flair and spread. If such a foot is ‘text-book’ trimmed it can cripple the horse. Alternatively creating a bespoke asymmetric trim can make the horse comfortable to work.

Dr JOHN DUNSFORD MRCVS

SILVERBACK VETERINARY EQUINE
PIONEERING IN VETERINARY MYOFASCIAL.
Please contact us for treatment enquires by our email.
[email protected]

10/02/2026

MYOFASCIAL TRIGGER POINTS.

The way individual horses move, and how willingly and fluidly they do so is the product of how well their muscle bands absorb shocks and move their bones. And of the brain and spinal software which control them. Young adults and young horses generally move better than middle aged people or horses. So what changes and what can be done about it?

In most cases the muscle bands are tightened in response to trauma. This can be due to sprains or from overwork. Tightness takes the elasticity out of the band and puts the muscles of the band at more risk of injury, upsetting the biomechanics, stresses, and loading of everything else, including joints. Tight or injured muscles are prone to developing ‘Trigger- points’. These are little knots of dysfunctional injured muscle which are obstinately reluctant to heal, and force the muscle into permanent spasm. Trigger-points can also cause us a deeply unpleasant, nagging pain which often travels, although some are largely painless but still put the muscle into spasm.

Trigger points in horses are common around the neck and are often overlooked due to mane and the head pieces of head collars. But they also develop in many other locations including hamstrings, pectorals, around the shoulders and withers, and in the abdominal muscles. Abdominal trigger points can cause pain on girthing, grooming and riding. And in human medicine it is recognised that abdominal trigger points can also cause visceral problems within.

Tight myofascial muscle bands tend to seize to adjacent bands, and to the sheets of connective tissue which spread forces across and within the body. We can sometimes hear this as a crunching when we turn our heads. For successful treatment, tight bands, seized bands, and trigger points all need to be addressed at the same time, like taking three kids out together on a day out.

Trigger points take careful work to find, heal and finally resolve and can take several sessions of electro-acupuncture and laser. We are easy with the idea that tendon sprains may need a number of treatments. But this is equally true of trigger points and myofascial bands which have a profound effect on movement, behaviour, safety and an increased risk of serious orthopaedic injuries.

Successful therapy for seized connective tissues requires taut lines to have been freed off to their normal tension and trigger points need to have been resolved. Otherwise the patient will object and the treatment will be incomplete.

Currently with the coverage of the winter Olympics it is fascinating to watch the skiers and figure skaters. You can watch their myofascial lines in action absorbing shocks and kinetic energy, and re-using that energy in fabulous explosive fluid movement.

Dr JOHN DUNSFORD MRCVS
SILVERBACK VETERINARY EQUINE
PIONEERING IN VETERINARY MYOFASCIAL.
Please contact us for treatment enquires by our email.
[email protected]

03/02/2026

MYOFASCIAL ASTHMA THERAPY FOR HORSES

While we are waiting for the start of the catkin season heralding the beginning of summer asthma cases, it makes sense to think ahead. I have pinned a post which I wrote a couple of years ago on managing summer asthma which I think still holds good. But I have some further advice and exciting recent success which I would like to add.

I feel it important to stress the importance of floors and bedding. This holds good equally for patients who have asthma triggered by moulds on forage or in the environment, every bit as much as for summer asthmatics. Floors need to be flat and level. The surface wants to be hard and hard wearing. It must not have an appreciable slope on it in any direction and its surface must not have any defects which can pool liquid. This really means a nicely laid concrete floor, poured in a single pour of a suitable hard-wearing water and frost proof mix. The bedding wants to not be straw, and the bed wants to be cheap enough to replenish it continuously. Wood shavings are a good choice. All wet, and all droppings need to be skipped out every day and replaced with fresh shavings. Avoid deep beds, dirty beds and wet beds.

Floors which pool liquid in puddles or surface defects are a big problem. Urine reacts with the bacteria in droppings and produces ammonia which is a trigger for asthmatics. And a wet bed also encourages any amount of fungal growth and its associated spores. In my experience a great floor, and a shavings bed makes a huge difference to asthmatics. On the same environmental theme, keep asthmatics away from smoke, bonfires and smoking muck heaps. Even the smell of smoke on the air can trigger asthmatics. It really does needs to be zero smoke tolerance to avoid crises and welfare problems.

Many human asthmatics would expect to be using their inhaler several times a day, according to their symptoms and distress. In contrast horses tend to be treated twice or once a day at set times. This means that the patient’s distress may be insufficiently controlled, especially through the night. Effective management of equine asthma is unlikely to be achieved by medication alone. The Aservo Evohaler we had when I wrote my previous post has been discontinued. Although we can still obtain that drug, ciclesonide, as a human inhaler to use with an equine spacer device. Ciclesonide remains the best choice for equine inhalers if used pragmatically to relieve respiratory distress, even though the clicky Aservo inhaler device didn’t suit all patients.

As I mentioned in my earlier post, my daughter’s mare is a severe summer asthmatic. I have been challenged by her management through many summers, including some very serious crises where I have had to consider the welfare implications of her presentation. This last season however she needed no medication at all, compared to the previous summer when I visited and medicated her once or twice each day during bad weeks.

This astonishing change, which produced her most comfortable summer for years, was solely by addressing the myofascial lines of her respiratory muscles and airways.

I treated her respiratory lines while exploring the potential and useful applications of myofascial therapy. I was however truly astonished, and a little wrong footed by the success, as that is just not how things play out with veterinary challenges. Although, since then I have treated other asthmatics successfully using the same therapy.

It can not stop the patient being asthmatic, and my daughter’s mare will continue to live on a shavings bed. But I suspect that inadequately controlled asthmatics develop significant functional compromise of their respiratory muscles, which in turn contributes again to their asthmatic symptoms in a vicious circle.

I would like to stress that this therapy is not physiotherapy or Western or Chinese-traditional acupuncture. The term myofascial is trending, but therapies involving needling can only legally be done by veterinary surgeons, and to be effective needs to be done by an experienced and trained myofascial practitioner.

If anyone is interested in this therapy for their asthmatic horse and would like to know more, please contact us. Our email is often the most reliable place to make contact. We would be delighted if we can contribute to the welfare of horses or ponies showing asthmatic symptoms at any time of year.

Dr JOHN DUNSFORD MRCVS
SILVERBACK VETERINARY EQUINE
PIONEERING IN VETERINARY MYOFASCIAL.
Please contact us for treatment enquires by our email.
[email protected]

27/01/2026

WATER DROPWORT POISONING IN HORSES. A HIGHLY TOXIC NATIVE PLANT.

There are really only three plants which commonly kill horses in the UK, as distinct from other plant poisonings which with treatment may resolve.

They are Sycamore, Yew and Water Dropwort.

You could possibly add grass in as in some rare conditions the toxin which causes grass-sickness develops on some pasture. But this is believed to be due to the work of a bacteria or fungus rather than being due to poisons within the plant.

We recently discussed sycamore, as the danger times for poisoning are in the Autumn when most keys and leaves drop, and in Autumn gales. And then again in the spring when the seedlings emerge in the pasture.

Yew is similar although is also a risk from browsing throughout the year as it is an evergreen. We can look at yew in a future post, but the upcoming danger to our horses in the coming weeks is Water Dropwort.

As I write this it has rained for days and a lot of pasture and farm land is under water. Soon cultivation and drilling will start, but first there will be ditch maintenance to do ahead of next winter’s rain. This is commonly done with an excavator and perforated bucket as soon as the ground is dry enough to get the machinery in. The ditch is dredged and the excavated debris is laid all along the edge of the stream, which can be unfenced from the pasture. This debris can include the tubers of the native but highly poisonous plant called Water Dropwort.

Water Dropwort (Oeanthe Crocata) is one of the large umbelliferyl family of native plants such as cow-parsley and hemlock. The name of the family comes from the large flat flowers called umbels which are a common sight along summer road sides. Water dropwort however is a plant of streams, ditches and wetlands.

Many of the umbelliferae are poisonous but water dropwort is especially toxic. The plant is tall and vigorous in the spring and summer, but dies back to its underwater tubers in the winter ready to regenerate in the spring. The tubers have high concentrations of the toxin and they appear to be palatable to horses. I have known two dead horses in a single field the morning after ditch clearing. Of course not all ditches have water dropwort, but it is not an uncommon plant, and is less known of, probably because it generally minds it’s own business in places unfrequented by people and grazing animals.

Water dropwort poisoning causes muscle spasm in the face and is I believe the origin of the phrase ‘Sardonic grin’.

I have included a photo of Water Dropwort seen growing happily in a public place a couple of summers ago.

Dr JOHN DUNSFORD MRCVS
SILVERBACK VETERINARY EQUINE
PIONEERING IN VETERINARY MYOFASCIAL.
Please contact us for treatment enquires by our email.
[email protected]

21/01/2026

EQUINE MYOFASCIAL LINES.

Myofascial lines is the equine term for ‘myofascial trains’ as used in human medicine. It is the mapping of how our muscles, joints, tendons and sheets of connective tissue link from one to another in functional units, and can be dissected out as distinct bands. These bands have been described and investigated by anatomists since the 1930’s.

The myofascial terms ‘bands’, ‘lines’, ‘chains’, 'trains' and ‘meridians’ are all interchangeable and mean the same thing.

When we, or our horses move it is not like robotic dancing with each muscle contracting just after the last. It is rather in fluid, curving and flexing movements in which the whole body moves at once in one single gesture. Each time we land, these bands also act like elastic and store the kinetic energy ready to go again. They are why cats can leap, gymnasts can do floor routines, and why horses can jump combinations.

Every movement we make involves several myofascial lines, and even if we move just one arm the other lines are bracing and balancing us. Myofascial lines are a feature of movement in all mammals, and their tautness and fluidity are under the control of our nervous systems. Our nervous systems make myofascial management decisions principally to guard against injury, or to protect injured tissues; but always with reference to the horse’s mental and physical health. These lines also run through our body cavities and have a profound impact on our breathing and digestive health. They dictate our posture, our gait, our athleticism, how quickly we tire, our body language, our attractiveness.

It is probable that it is tightened myofascial bands which we accumulate throughout the rough and tumble of life, starting in childhood, stiffen us up as we reach middle age, and makes us feel that we don’t bounce like we used to. You can see such posture and gait problems already commonly visible if you watch any secondary school turn out. The same applies to young horses. All incidents and accidents, gelding and dental issues typically have a price to pay in tightened bands. And the consequence is that the individual’s potential is compromised and troubles are set in train for the individual down the line.

Our myofascial lines represent our pasts, our presents and our futures:

They accumulate restrictions from historical pressures and traumas throughout our lives from when we are young. And if they do not reset themselves, they will persist in a dysfunctional state and compromise our genetic potential.

In the present, our line health and freedom, or accumulated restrictions determine what we are able to do, and are responsible for many discomforts we may suffer both in movement and internally.

In our futures, tight or dysfunctional lines cause further damage by throwing stresses onto other lines which were not designed to carry them. They predispose to tendon injuries and sore joint problems; back, neck, lumbar and pelvic problems. Breathing problems, lymphatic problems and nerve pain.

I have illustrated this post with an engraving of a naked horse. Images of horses covered with thin brightly coloured lines seem alien and are hard to identify with. If you look at this old engraving it is much easier to pick out routes through the muscles by which you could link a hind leg to a head in your imagination. And in your mind's eye you can animate them as the picture moves for you. Put the skin back on, and you understand how our lines work.

Dr JOHN DUNSFORD MRCVS
SILVERBACK VETERINARY EQUINE
PIONEERING IN VETERINARY MYOFASCIAL.
Please contact us for treatment enquires by our email.
[email protected]

Address

Silverback Veterinary Equine. The Equine Veterinary Clinic
Stedham
GU290PS

Telephone

+441730810742

Website

http://www.johndunsford.co.uk/

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Send a message to Dr John Dunsford MRCVS. Silverback Veterinary Equine.:

Want your business to be the top-listed Pet Store/pet Service in Stedham?