Description
Background: To improve detection of equine back-related disorders, it is important to establish how movement dynamics in horses' thoraco-lumbo-sacral spine are normally affected by intrinsic and extrinsic factors.Objective: To quantify how discipline, activity, gait and surface impact rotational upper-body movement in horses from the military and police forces.
Study design: Cross-sectional.
Methods: 106 owner-sound horses were walked and trotted in-hand in a straight-line at walk and trot over hard and soft surfaces. During exercises, inertial sensors (XSens MTw) were mounted with double-sided tape to the poll, withers, thoracic vertebrae-13 (T13) and 18 (T18), lumbar vertebra-3 (L3), sacrum (between tubera sacrale) and caudal sacrum. Linear mixed models assessed whether horse discipline (load pulling or non-load pulling), activity level (active or retired), gait (walk or trot) or surface (soft or hard) influenced rotational differences among adjacent sensors (significance at p < 0.05).
Results: Horses used for pulling loads had significantly reduced axial-rotation between withers-T13 and T13-T18, by 2.3–2.6°, and reduced flexion-extension at poll-withers and T13-T18, by 1.3–1.5° (p ≤ 0.009). Active horses showed instances of reduced axial-rotation (at T18-L3, L3-sacrum, sacrum-caudal-sacrum, p ≤ 0.002, 2.7–3.8°), flexion-extension (T18-L3, L3-sacrum, p ≤ 0.006, 0.8–0.9°) and lateral-bending (withers-T13, sacrum-caudal-sacrum, p ≤ 0.002, 1.0–2.0°), but also had increased axial-rotation at withers-T13 (p = 0.02, 1.7°) and increased flexion-extension at poll-withers (p < 0.001, 2.7°). Trotting increased axial-rotation at all sites by 1.9–7.6° (p < 0.001), except poll-withers, but reduced lateral-bending at all sites by 0.4–8.3° (p < 0.001), except L3-sacrum. Soft surfaces increased rotational range of movements, by 0.2–2.4°, in the 12/18 significant surface comparisons (p ≤ 0.03).
Main limitations: Walk and trot speeds varied.
Conclusions: These data will help to develop an equine back dynamics reference framework, to which individuals may be compared. Further work will explore these data in the context of horse movement asymmetry, age, stride duration, breed and objective surface properties.
Ethical animal research: Approved by the Royal Veterinary College Clinical Research Ethical Review Board (URN 2021 2025–3).
Informed consent: Participating horse owners provided consent.
Competing interests: T. Pfau is the owner of Equigait, a provider of gait analysis products and services.
Funding: The Horse Trust, project code 5793, 2000RES5793.
Acknowledgements: We thank horse owners and Zoe Allen, Rachel Smith, Christina Stuart, Anastasia Vialov, Rachele Hart, Nicole Larkin, Katie Selhorst, Kylie Miller, Eleanor Bloor and Amber Shaw.
| Period | 24 Sept 2024 |
|---|---|
| Event title | British Equine Veterinary Congress 2024 |
| Event type | Conference |