I’ve been seeing her posts a lot on Facebook and curious on coth thoughts. Many people seem to swear by her work and a lot of it makes sense, but is it misinformation or damaging? What do you think about conclusions being drawn from dissection? Any other info from reputable vets on this topic?
Never heard of her, had to Google. New Zealand amateur dissectionist, doing classical dressage with Andalusians, trained as a taxidermist.
Can’t see any more without joining Patreon.
I did follow another New Zealander who dissects hooves until most of her stuff also went behind a Patreon paywall.
My feeling on the ammie dissection crowd (feels like a crowd!) is that you can always learn something by watching (or doing) a dissection. My vet once put on a lower leg dissection clinic at the college where I teach. Totally fascinating.
Now when these ammie social media dissectionists who have no medical or vet training start to draw any controversial conclusions, is where you need to stop and start verifying what they are saying with other sources.
I suck at dissection it turns out, compared to all the college kids in biology heading for vet school!! So I love watching someone with the mathematical precision to slice a hoof and explore inside cracks. I know enough about a hoof to know if the dissectionist is talking us through in a generally correct manner.
Does that mean I credit the dissectionist with the skill to actually trim my live horse, suggest care options, suggest diet, suggest rehab? No. I felt like the hoof dissection person started out knowing less about trimming than I do (I know a lot about trimming theoretically but don’t have the skills or physical strength to do anything much beyond rasp. Yup there’s a pattern here!).
From former posts sounds like you have the worry of a horse with cervical arthritis and my guess is this person has some original ideas about how to treat that. However I don’t have access to her material and don’t see any reason at the moment that she’s compelling enough to follow.
What is it that she’s proposing that you care enough about fact checking?
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Becks never gives advice on treatment. She is gifted horses with issues to dissect, and points out issues or irregularities. If she doesn’t know, she will give her findings to vets or scientists for second opinions
Her Patreon is awesome. She gives a bit of a history on the horse, and then tries to see what the body says to explain the behaviour/s seen.
Amanda Wilson (Vicki’s younger sister) had one done and the results were very sad. It gives peace to owners.
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Are you saying she essentially does amateur necropsies, then? Or just looks at specific structures, like limbs? Not familiar with this individual at all.
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That sounds really interesting, very much like the hoof person who is good at precise description and observation and doesn’t over interpret what she sees. The OP was asking whether there was damaging misinformation which made me think there was wacky treatment theories like Celeste Lazarus the Traveling Horse Witch.
Curious then what OP was worried about.
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I just see her posts on Facebook, there is a lot of free information on her page there. I haven’t been on the patreon.
I think I stumbled on her page maybe a year or two ago? Yesterday just randomly thought of the page and took a look again. I saw a lot of praise for the work she posted, but a couple outliers worried about the conclusions she was drawing being damaging to the equestrian world. Through her work she has suggested all racehorses have skeletal damage from being started so young, and hypothesizes that most behavioral/training issues in ottbs are due to this damage.
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/153imFzTFG/?mibextid=WC7FNe
This is the general theme I see there. Obviously a lot of issues with that survey, just sharing the general consensus she tends to post about. The dissections sure are interesting, if you dig through her posts enough there are a bunch of free posts about si dysfunction discovered from dissection in the racehorse that limit performance.
Oop, I did not expect to be so interesting that my post history was worth digging through XD. Thankfully my horse is doing great, no cervical issues haha. I hope it’s ok to genuinely be curious what coth thinks about a topic without it being personal 
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Well, I think it’s generally accepted that pain issues are often behind behavior issues like bucking or balking or bolting even. But there are lots of ways to manage and heal pain issues. And many many horses that never raced get hind end issues, especially lesson horses with their awful hunters bumps
Where I live, OTTB are the affordable choice for a sport horse. Some trainers are smart about choosing a horse, about decompression time, and about riding a potentially hot young horse through basic retraining. But because the horses are affordable they can end up with juniors or ammies unable to do this well themselves but unable to afford good help. So the success rate of OTTB is lower than it could be.
Lots of “modern” horse people and animal rights activists want to condemn TB racing, which is also a sunset industry now that there are so many other ways to gamble. I myself don’t think it’s inherently the worst thing people do with horses, lots of horses retire off the track functionally sound.
One thing about dissection is that except in the case of a pasture accident, the specimens are going to be unavoidably biased towards horses with severe long term pain issues that were euthanized.
I honestly don’t think the findings of an amateur dissectionist on FB are going to disturb “the equine industry” that much, and are likely parallel to what actual vet research finding.
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I linked a post of hers in another comment if you want to check it out!
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I don’t follow her, but I’ve seen people share some posts of her that have some pretty wild leaps in logic.
Sharon May-Davis or Equine Anatomy in Layers are all better educated, more thoughtful choices, IMO
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I wonder how many sound working (second career) racehorses she has dissected to make this broad generalization.
It sounds like a conclusion that was looking for evidence to prove it.
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