Why not take a cheap pair of readers from the Dollar Store ($1.25) pop the lens out of the corrected eye and paint black to other lens. Then again, you could just be a pirate with an eye patch.
You will nave mono-vision but the brain won’t go into overload.
After my cataract/astigmatism surgery it has taken me a long while to adapt my eyesight to perusing equine anatomical drawings. After my first operation where the eye doctor implanted a lens for long distance seeing I started having problems reading the labels on the anatomical drawings. I also could not read paperback books, the print just would not focus for me.
With my second eye operation he implanted a lens for reading/computer/close up work. I can read paperback books now (YEAH!!!). I can make out the labels on the anatomical pictures, sort of. I am having an easier time reading coated/shiny paper, sort of. It is somewhat hard since I seem to start off with double vision, but after a few minutes my eyes align better, sort of.
I see my D.O. next week. The cataract doctor told me I would need new glasses especially for my distance vision. I hope I can come out of that appointment with glasses that will make it much easier for me to see the anatomical drawings and labels a lot more clearly too!
The good news is that all the anatomical studying I did before my cataract operations is paying off. I re-started reading “Understanding the Horse’s Back” by Sara Wyche and I did not have to look up the muscles she discusses in my anatomy books, I actually now have a rough idea where these muscles are, which bones &/or fascia they connect to, and some idea of how these muscles work in aiding horse movement.
My earlier anatomical studies are also helping me with my mood. When I get overwhelmed with the constant disasters nowadays I no sit back, close my eyes, and call up a picture of an equine scapula in my mind’s eye. I can even rotate it a little bit! I much rather visualize an equine scapula than go down the rabbit hole of how the whole world is going to Hell in a handbasket faster and faster.
Next the humerus.
The “sling” apparatus of the forehand is still utterly fascinating to me, probably why I am now so fixated on the scapula, humerus and sternum and certain associated muscles.
Since I am not doing this for school or to try and get a certificate or diploma I can take my time doing this. Not having a deadline for learning something is making it much easier on my brain to remember stuff. It is so nice to be able to take all the time I need to compare six or seven drawings/photographs or the same bone, and this takes me a lot of time before it all makes sense to me.
At least when it starts making sense to me I can sort of visualize it in my mind. Previously visualizing something in my mind has been HARD. Looking at lots and lots of pictures has made visualizing a lot easier for me.
I finally got both my reading glasses and my distance vision glasses.
Yeah, I can look at stuff and see the same picture with both eyes, so long as it is really near to me or far off.
In between, not so good. In between I can see pretty well without my new glasses, but then I go back to getting more tired than I need to because my brain is dealing with two focal lengths. I will probably order and try the adjustable focus eye glasses available on-line. I they don’t work well for me they are not very expensive. If they work for me CELEBRATE!!!
So I celebrated my improved vision by getting 2 horse anatomy books and studying the pictures. I am still hung up with the scapula and its associated muscles. I can see the pictures more clearly up close. On my 3-D Horse Anatomy program I have the scapula magnified so it fills most of the viewing field. Newsflash, the scapula is not a smooth bone.
Unfortunately I probably should have built up to studying stuff closely since my left eye was mildly aching last night. But never fear, right now I have 4 horse anatomy books piled up on my bed. I am going to have FUN today!
Did your eye surgeon tell you to limit your reading with your bionic eyeballs? Mine did, and I wasn’t very successful at limiting it. He wanted me to only read for 20 minutes at a time, then do something that required looking at a distance. But reading is what I do most of the time. Audio books would make me want to kill someone; they are just too slow. So I kind of ignored the instruction to limit my reading.
Evidently I haven’t done any damage.
Rebecca
If you want to bring anatomy to life you want to know about Ivana Ruddock Lange. She has a Patreon page and puts up photos and videos on a regular basis. She is passionate and does a fabulous job of explaining what she is doing and showing and why it matters.
Her Facebook page was hacked or I’d post that too.
It looks like she recovered her Facebook page:
As well as the cataract surgeries and then the two root canals I had to go through, THEN it turns out I had a lurking infection at the bottom of the last molar. It spread. My jaw got sensitive then my jaw started hurting more and more. I finally got the ododontist to listen to me (I had my husband call them) and he prescribed me some antibiotics.
So I finally stopped hurting so much all the time. When I hurt I just was not able to concentrate when I got bored and picked up a horse anatomy book, it was like the pictures and the information went into one eye and immediately out the other eye. Then I would have to sleep for hours because I got so dang tired trying to compare pictures.
I am better now. Yesterday and today I studied the horse anatomy a little while and did not get totally exhausted. Maybe it helped that I limited myself to the 3-D Horse Anatomy computer program and one book “ABC of the Horse Atlas” by Pauli Gronberg. I did not last for long but hey, 10 minutes is better than 0 minutes as a study session (at least it is for training a horse.)
A note on the book I used today. This one has the honor of being the first horse anatomy book that I picked up a few months ago. This is the book that inspired me to get the computer program and all the other horse anatomy books I now own. I sort of wish that the pages were larger so that the pictures would be easier for me to study closely.
I am entranced.
I found the book “Equine Photos and Drawings for Conformation and Anatomy” written by the research staff of Equine Research, Inc., Veterinary Editor Juliet Hedge, DVM, Editor/Publisher Don Wagoner on-line and I bought it after reading positive comments about the anatomical drawings. The title does not drip easily off the tongue and the title could be a bit more impressive, but this is a decent book and I am learning new (for me) stuff in it.
Among the staff of researchers there had to have been horseback riders. The conformation section is related to function, then they go down to the skeletal, ligament, muscles, etc. to show how what is under the skin affects how the horse looks and moves.
So far this book seems to be an excellent supplement to my many books on static Horse Anatomy. In some places it gets into more granular detail than my other anatomy books, especially with how the build of the horse affects movement.
It has decent anatomical drawings though there could be a lot more labeling. Somewhere in the book the muscle may be labeled, but in other drawings the same muscle is just drawn and not labeled. As I said this book is a supplement to my other anatomy books.
I am still plugging away at learning horse anatomy.
I stared coloring in some muscles in my coloring books and in the anatomy books that have room for added color in the black and white drawings, right now 5 books. I have to go back and forth between the books to make sure that I am coloring the right muscle. Then I have to CONCENTRATE to keep within the lines of the picture. I get tired doing this, one muscle in the 5 books I get a little tired, but if I go up to coloring in 2 different muscles I get TIRED.
Yesterday I got the best book of the over 20 horse anatomy books I’ve bought. It is “An Atlas of Equine Musculoskeletal Anatomy for Physical Therapists–with human comparative anatomy, Volume I, The Thoracic Limb, 2nd Edition”.
This book has large pages, around 380 pages long, with over 800 illustrations. The pictures in this book are the BEST, most are in color, the individual muscles are shown by themselves and in relation to other muscles. and from several angles, many with comparative human anatomy pictures, some of which are in the same position (like 4-legged.)
She has chapters on Osteology (bones), Myology (muscles), Arthrology (joints), Neurology, Angiology (blood vessels), and one on the Connective Tissues, all these chapters are profusely illustrated so I have a chance of being able to figure it all out.
THIS is the first horse anatomy book I will read from cover to cover because when I finally make it through this book I will have a decent basis from which to compare all my other horse anatomy books.
AND it cost me around $40.00 US, much cheaper than a lot of my other horse anatomy books which have a lot fewer pages and a lot fewer pictures.
She has two more books that she is working on, one for the pelvic limb and another one on the horse’s head, neck and back. I can’t wait! I WANT the other two books!
After I finish this book I will have a good knowledge base about the horse’s front legs from the shoulder down to the hooves.
THIS book is worth every penny and I am so glad I bought it!
I had not bought “Clinical Anatomy of the Horse” by Hilary Clayton back when it was in print, mainly because of the price–I wanted a bigger variety of horse anatomy books for that amount of money back then. Then it disappeared, with no copies for sale.
So now I am over my desired goal of 20 horse anatomy books, I finally found a copy for sale on Amazon, I had the money, so I went ahead and bought it. It does have a wonderful picture of the spine of the scapula jutting up from the scapula that comforts me, I have not seen a picture like that in the other horse anatomy books in my bookcase. But three hundred dollars for one book still hurts, but with this book my horse anatomy book collection is nearly complete.
With my MS and my bad memory I was expecting a lot more problems learning and remembering what I learn about horse anatomy. Fortunately my brain has decided that my new horse anatomy knowledge deserves to be remembered. To test myself I look at my 3-D Horse Anatomy computer program every day before I get off of my computer and I can name all the muscles I have colored in the 5 horse anatomy books I am coloring in, slowly, oh so slowly.
So I am at the point that studying horse anatomy and coloring in my horse anatomy books is really, really tiring to me. At least I am remembering all this stuff right now which I was NOT expecting at all since normally I do not remember stuff when I study it when I am tired.
Maybe in a month or so I will finish studying the horse’s scapula and the muscles attached to it. Then it will be on to the humerus!
Otherwise I am studying the three books I have that deal with horse anatomy for the various fields of equine body work. Since two of these books are rather thick I am also getting my weight bearing exercise in when I carry them all in a stack, a side benefit for me studying horse anatomy.
Very cool and inspirational!!! Like you💗
I finally colored in all the muscles attached in any way to the scapula, at least I think I got them all.
And I find that the scapula is such an interesting bone! I always knew that a long, sloping shoulder was important for ease of riding but not more than that. Now I have what I call a “nodding acquaintance” with the shoulder muscles, I can name them, I have some rough idea of what they attach to and an even rougher idea of how they move the horse. It will take an enormous amount of time before I feel like I KNOW the scapula of the horse.
I also try to read the little descriptions that the anatomy books have, and I have found out that not every reference refers to the same muscle with the same name. So while it is rather easy to find some of the muscles in the older anatomy books some will take some deeper study for me, unless I run into a list of the modern muscle name with every single other name that muscle has been given by anatomists through the past few centuries. The only book I have found with such a list is “The Anatomy of the Horse–A Dissection Guide” by John M’Fadyean, first published in 1884, not exactly a list of modern anatomical muscle names.
I was sort of naive when I started all of this, I assumed that muscle names were given early in the study of anatomy and kept throughout the centuries. Well I was wrong about that. At least in modern times there is some standardization of muscle names.
Not only that but modern equine anatomists do not necessarily depict/name some muscles the same way. In some books the Omo transversarius muscle is separate, in other it is considered part of the brachiocephalic muscle.
When I have enough energy I will have to go back to the older anatomy books, look at the description closely and at the pictures, if there are good pictures in the book, and get it all straightened out in my mind. That will probably go slower than coloring in the muscles and will be more tiring. At least when I get all that translated between the books I should have a chance of remembering that muscle, origin, insertion, and the way it moves the horse. Maybe, my memory is not the best in the world that is for sure.
Oddly I have noticed that selecting the color pencil I use (I have 180 different colors!) and filling in the muscle greatly improves my mood. My brain seems to feel starved of color, why I don’t know. Gradually at least my eyes and brain will be able to “see” the differences in colors that look the same to me right now, like a lot of the blue colors. At least my color pencils have the name of the color on them.
Right now when I do my anatomy studies I have eleven horse anatomy books on my bed to use for comparison, 5 that I color in and the other six to make SURE I have the right muscle and to make sure I color in the full extent of the muscle.
After coloring the muscles of the scapula/top of the humerus in 5 Horse anatomy books I needed a break. I took a break, and then I got BORED.
So I decided to start on the back muscles, from the lowest/deepest to the surface muscles.
I got really hung up on the Multifidus muscle complexes of the thoracic and cervical spines.
Wow. I had no previous idea of how closely the muscles ON the spine knit the vertebrae together since a lot of my anatomy books do not get into these muscles at any depth and these muscles are hidden below big, powerful back muscles. Who but a total nerd would get interested in these muscles unless they are studying to be an equine veterinarian or an equine anatomist?
I did find a lengthy article on line on this muscle that had an actual photograph of a multifidus muscle in all its glory, and it looked just like the line drawing from the 1920s I have in one of my anatomy books. This is good, I like to have something verified. Gee, a muscle that sort of looks like a squishy feather, repeated over a lot of the spine.
So now I have two burning questions:
do the many multifidus cervicis muscles have any involvement in kissing spines? I read that one of them in the series up the spine can atrophy, and cannot these multifidus muscles go into spasm? To my mostly uneducated eye they look ideally placed to have an influence on the slant of a spinous processes of the thoracic spine.
How does the C6-C7 vertebral malformation affect these muscles. Yes, I know the multifidus muscles are on the top of the cervical vertebrae, but how does this vertebral malformation affect how the multifidus muscles when the affected vertebrae move in the wrong way?
I KNOW that the answers to these questions might be buried deep in all of my horse anatomy books but it takes me a long time to digest all the information in them. Thinking that hard (visualizing and all of that) makes my brain TIRED, and when my brain gets that tired it is hard for me to read these books rapidly to find answers to odd questions such as these.
I’m sorry I missed this thread @Jackie_Cochran! Equine anatomy is fascinating. Upthread you mentioned fascia which I agree, we have only recently begun to truly understand how important it is. I am dealing with some personal fascial adhesions after hip surgery and have been headed down the rabbit hole of human anatomy and the intersection with equine anatomy as a result.
According to my yoga teacher training class (also undertaken because of my hip issues), the multifidis muscle in humans has a role in aiding prioperception as well as providing spinal stabilization and unilateral bending. I have often wondered whether that muscle is responsible for equines that appear almost neurologic with vague hind limb lamenesses.
And on a more fun note - I bought a cute anatomical 3D model of a horse awhile ago that you can take apart and put back together. It’s designed for children, but my adult boarders enjoyed it! I found it on Amazon for like $30?
Would anybody like to adopt my Visible Horse kit that has been in a closet for 20 years? Jackie Cochran has first dibs. I will mail it to you in continental u.s. at my expense.
Thank you @HPFarmette!
I’m sending you a PM.
I used to have one, in the mid 1960s. It disappeared over the decades. I have a hope that yours might be more accurate. Either way it will help when I finally get to the equine viscera.
The Visible Horse was missing 3 pieces. We found one for pretty cheap on Ebay that had lost its instructions. When that one comes we will combine the two and hopefully end up with a complete Visible Horse, plus I will have spare bones and visceral organs to play with.
I have continued coloring the 5 horse anatomy books. Right now I am concentrating on the muscles that are intimately associated with the spinal column. Some of these muscles are so deep that they do not show up on the 3 gory clinical anatomy books I have, or if they show in these books it is a rather small glimpse through a “window”. The really, really deep spinal muscles are also not included in many of the other anatomy books. I am getting deep into esoteric, possibly “forbidden” knowledge (just kidding.)
I started re-reading the book that started this new hobby of mine of studying horse anatomy, “The Rider Forms the Horse–Function and Development of the Muscles of the Riding Horse” by Udo Burger and Otto Zietzschmann. In the Foreward written by Klaus Balkenhol he has two paragraphs that I have underlined in my book.
On page 4 “What is absolutely essential for the training of the horse is an understanding of the links between muscular function and the skeleton working in combination during the different phases of training and exercises. This applies to whichever type of equine activity has been chosen.” How many horse trainers in the world study horse anatomy?
On page 5 “Riders often resort quickly to auxiliary ids such as, for example, draw reins, to make their task easier. This is unfortunately the case even in well-known dressage yards. Very few people realise that this is in fact incompetence on the part of the rider as well as abuse of the animal. Vets, chiropractors, osteopaths and acupuncturists are then called in to treat the injuries which have been caused. Auxiliary aids of every sort should be superfluous in correct training.”
I really lucked out by picking the Forward Seat/Fort Riley cavalry seat as my basis. These systems ARE based somewhat on the anatomy of the horse, and the FS originator Caprilli actually LISTENED to his favorite mare when trying to figure it all out. The only “auxiliary rein” we use is the lunge line, attached to a lunging cavesson.
Forward seat training is not based on the bondage of the horse with reins, including side reins when lunging.
Encourage the people you know who train horses to get this book and study it. They could also profit from several horse anatomy books. The horse anatomy coloring books can help a good bit, if one colors the muscles with different colors it is easier to see or imagine what is going on beneath the horse’s skin, plus they are MUCH cheaper than the horse anatomy text books.
Reading Udo Burger’s books have made me a much better rider even though I do not ride dressage at all, a lot of it fits seamlessly with what Vladimir Littauer wrote about riding and training the Forward Seat even if it is at a more technical level.
Ever since I fell off a horse last mid-May my nervous system was too “jangled” to concentrate on anatomy. I also got hung up on one view of my 3-D Horse Anatomy computer program, the deep skeletal/ligaments view of the shoulder joint (scapulohumeral joint), both medial and lateral views.
The 3-D program has TWO ligaments attaching the scapula and humerus, labeled lateral glenohumeral ligament and medial glenohumeral ligament. These ligaments are shown as completely separate from the glenohumeral joint capsule, and the lateral and medial glenohumeral ligaments are to each side of the front of the glenohumeral joint capsule.
My big problem is that Septimus Sisson wrote that the glenohumeral joint has ONLY the joint capsule ligament, and that there are no other ligaments for this joint. He does mention that in the front of the capsule it is reinforced by fibres passing from the coracoid process to the inner and outer lips of the bicipital groove.
This is repeated by the more modern horse anatomy books, the shoulder joint’s only ligament is the joint capsule ligament. They all say that the tendons that cross the glenohumeral joint serve instead of ligaments to hold this joint together.
Two days ago I got my latest serious Horse Anatomy book, “The Muscel (sic) and Bone Book–Horse Anatomy”, 2nd edition by Katja Guhring, published in 2025. The written description on page 22 is "The shoulder joint Articulatio humeri, does not have any articular ligaments, Ligamenta articularia, located on the outside of the capsule. Capsula, like most other joints…The ligamentum glenohumeral laterale, ligamentum glenohumeral mediale and ligamentum coracohumerale serve as elastic, collagenous fiber reinforcements of the capsule wall. The pictures of the shoulder joint in this book are the only ones that sort of resemble what I see on the 3-D Horse Anatomy program.
In “The Anatomy of an (sic) Horse” by Andrew Snape (1683 edition) he calls the scapula the “Shoulder Blade”, and he calls the humerus the “Shoulder Bone”. In his description of the scapula he writes “It has five Appendixes about its Neck, three of which do afford an original to some Muscles, and from the other two do spring Ligaments which join the Shoulder-bone to the head of the Blade,”
I have some burning questions going through my mind about this. joint:
Do SOME horses have lateral and medial glenohumeral ligaments apart from the joint capsule?
On SOME horses are the capsule wall reinforcements more prominent/stronger that with other horses?
What affect could either scenario have on the horses’ movements and gaits?
COULD these variations be part of the puzzle when the horse is NQR on the forehand and thousands of dollars of veterinary scanning for a diagnosis come up with no firm answers?
I have been puzzling over this for over a year. Does anybody have any answers to these questions?
For the record I consulted 13 horse anatomy books, books by professors of horse anatomy and horse veterinarians, while typing this.
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