Alternative therapy for horses
Manning combines acupuncture with conventional medicine

November 13, 2009

By Lynne Gunville

While Dr. Steve Manning is intrigued by acupuncture, the large animal veterinarian’s fascination for the alternative therapy and its use in horses has always been tempered by a healthy dose of skepticism.

“I’ve seen a lot of acupuncture done in equine practice but could never really find any evidence in the western veterinary literature to show that it had been well studied from our point of view here in the western world,” explains Manning, an associate professor in the Western College of Veterinary Medicine’s (WCVM) Department of Large Animal Clinical Sciences. 

In 2008, he decided to satisfy his curiosity by taking Medical Acupuncture for Veterinarians, a 140-hour continuing education course offered by the Colorado State University (CSU). Manning chose CSU’s training because it’s taught from more of a science-based, western perspective than from the traditional Chinese medicine approach.

His goal was to become more knowledgeable about acupuncture therapy so he could make informed recommendations about incorporating it into the college’s equine practice and including it in the WCVM curriculum. After Manning completed the course last year, the WCVM Veterinary Teaching Hospital began offering equine acupuncture as one of its specialized services for horse owners.

According to Manning, veterinary acupuncture is commonly practiced mainly as an alternative therapy. Right now, the most common use for the therapy in horses is for pain — as a treatment or as an adjunctive treatment in combination with other therapies. 

Manning sees its value as an addition to a pain management protocol: “You may use fewer drugs, and you may get better response than with drugs alone. You may be able to get animals off pain medications earlier or perhaps get them moving sooner.” He adds that acupuncture may also be useful along with physical therapy.

Acupuncture is also used for behavioural problems and for reproductive issues such as infertility problems in mares and stallions. Manning, a board-certified theriogenologist, is particularly interested in the potential of acupuncture for treating reproduction issues. This past summer, he conducted a research trial investigating the use of acupuncture therapy in mares with persistent post-breeding endometritis.

When Manning performs acupuncture therapy on one of his equine patients, he uses the channels or meridians that have been identified in the human body by traditional Chinese medicine. “In the animals, they’ve just taken those human points and transposed them onto the horse or the dog or whatever animal in what is the right location compared to a person,” he explains.  And because the treatment is non-invasive, there is minimal risk and few signs of discomfort in the animals.

“The acupuncture is pretty well tolerated,” says Manning, who used no restraints on the mares in his research trial. “I had to stick needles on the inside of their hind legs so I just tied the horses to the fence and they were very good.”

A down side to the procedure is the fact that acupuncture is both labour intensive and time consuming. An average treatment for each research horse required at least 30 minutes to complete. “In practice, I’m not sure that you would do it on a whole group of mares every day. A reproductive practitioner just wouldn’t have enough time.”  

Manning believes that acupuncture therapy will continue to play a role in veterinary medicine. “I think it’s always going to be some kind of adjunctive therapy that we use on cases that are maybe resistant to our other treatments that are long standing and may just require some other pain management therapy.”

But he emphasizes the importance of diagnosis, saying that western-trained veterinarians rely on diagnostic tests and equipment that are highly sophisticated, and their expertise should always be used before making decisions about the best avenue of treatment, including acupuncture therapy.

Manning looks forward to honing his skills in acupuncture, conducting research to come up with other possibilities for its use and ensuring that veterinary students are exposed to it during their training.

He believes that further research will enable him to help clients make informed decisions about using acupuncture. “I want to be able to take the results to our clients. I don’t want to replace all that’s good about western veterinary medicine with acupuncture, but I’d like to try and incorporate it into our practice.”

Lynne Gunville is a freelance writer and editor who lives in Candle Lake, SK.
Originally published in Horse Health Lines. Reprinted with permission.