Equine Acupuncture

I belong to an equine association in our community that has monthly meetings. Speakers of interest to horse owners are invited. The group also has an ice cream social in the summer and a Christmas party with an auction in December.  They also host fun horse shows. This week we had two veterinarians and a technician present information about acupuncture. 

While folks were socializing one of the vets put sticky dots at acupuncture points on Hilo. 

He is beautiful.

But, he apparently became bored with all of the blah-blah-blah!

Don't you love his ears pointing East/West?!

Here you can see the dots. 

The veterinarians talked about the different meridians, or paths, where needles are inserted.

They explained that those pathways impact different functions in our bodies,

and balance energies. 

Most interesting, to me, is the red dot/point on Hilo's neck (if you zoom in you can see it)

That is the "permission point"

The vet will begin there to see if the horse will allow her/him to use more needles elsewhere.

If they get an adverse reaction, a "no way!" from the horse, 

then they don't proceed. Some horses will not tolerate needles!

They performed the actual acupuncture on Charlie.

He looked somewhat like a porcupine!

The vets talked about a condition they see in Florida called anhidrosis. Horses with this problem don't sweat. Sweating is critical for horses as that is their body cooling mechanism. They don't pant as dogs do. I came home and did some reading about it. In the southeaster states where it is so warm and humid, it is important for animals to be able to cool themselves.  If the horse can't cool down it causes the internal temperature to rise, which would impact organ function and the animal can die. Oddly, a horse with anhidrosis won't drink water, so dehydration is a concurrent problem. 

There is no known cure.

However, several articles I read said that acupuncture seems to work to stop anhidrosis, at least for up to a month, when hopefully another session would continue the positive effect. How interesting, especially for folks like me who tend to be skeptical of alternative medicines.