Best of Insight to Equus Book

A couple months ago, I read the new book by Tomas  Teskey, DVM–Insight to Equus: Holistic Veterinary Perspectives on Health and Healing. Having worked with Dr. Teskey some in the past, I knew the book would be great, and it definitely didn’t disappoint. He has a unique perspective on horses and healing and with this book, he’s passing much of his knowledge on to us so we can hopefully make better choices for the horses entrusted in our care.

Insight to Equus contains in-depth discussions on the horse’s environment, holistic hoof care (which is rare to find in a book by a veterinarian), holistic dental care (maybe even rarer than holistic hoof care), as well as vaccination and parasite control.  Dr. Teskey also provides several personal case studies (including some super interesting data on hoof and dental findings from a group of over 1000 horses) as well as loads of invaluable photographs to illustrate his discussion points.

Aside from being extremely knowledgeable in matters of holistic horse care, Dr. Teskey is also a great writer. As someone who owns several veterinary textbooks, I can safely say this book does not read like one of those. It’s entertaining, informative, and thought-provoking. With Dr. Teskey’s permission, I am sharing a list of my twenty favorite short excerpts from the book (though there were many more I underlined!) These were pieces of information that I considered especially invaluable and which made me pause and really think. Hopefully, they will do the same for you. But just a heads up, they’re even better within the context of the entire book. 🙂

My favorite lines from Insight to Equus:

1.) “I can’t overstate how valuable it is to keep your horses moving all the time–lack of movement causes or worsens nearly every ailment, and movement is protective against nearly every ailment we see.”

2.) “I’m very much in favor of providing all kinds of healthy food sources, with appropriate vitamins and minerals, but providing these every day throughout the year overwhelms the liver and makes for a very lazy metabolism.”

3.) “Alfalfa (Medicago sativa) should be considered an herbal supplement, not the base of a complete diet.”

4.) “Everything at ground level on a hoof bears weight, is well-adapted to bear weight, enjoys bearing weight, and needs to bear weight.”

5.) “The biggest culprit causing hoof collapse is carbohydrate sugars and starches and peripheral loading, setting off a series of hormonal problems in the whole body.”

6.) “Metal shoes between a foot and the earth effectively cut off this connection and promote slow and certain disease–every time, without exception.”

7.) “When you resort to continued shoeing, pharmaceutical drugs, injections, or surgery to ‘heal’ horses, you will continually disrupt maximum healing potential, because such practices are human-contrived for a one-sided short-term agenda, uniformly antagonistic to how the body is defined  to recognize and remedy imbalance or disease.”

8.) “Boots are honestly protective to hooves, while steel shoes offer the illusion of protection.”

9.) “There is an epidemic of heel sore horses on this planet for ONE MAIN REASON: CONFINEMENT.”

10.) “In equines, any kind of physical, emotional, environmental and/or nutritional stress that increases cortisol, the body’s own steroid, increases the risk of laminitis and founder.”

11.) “An abscess is the body’s way of dealing with infected and /or damaged tissue. Getting this tissue to a liquefied state and out of the body is nature’s goal.”

12.) “Veterinary schools spend less than one week discussing equine dentistry, sometimes even less than this, and there may or may not be any time taken to actually work on horses’ teeth.”

13.) “Veterinarians such as myself that take a special interest in dentistry, spend hundreds of hours back in school and at many different continuing education meetings, work alongside the equine dentists from different schools, and have their hands inside a few hundred equine mouths per year, are better equipped to address and positively assist with dental issues.”

14.) “Make no mistake, the shape and performance of the equine dentition is directly and inextricably connected to the form and function of the rest of the body.”

15.) “This single procedure (creating a ‘bit seat’) can reduce chewing surface area by over fifteen percent, reducing the ability to chew as well as altering normal tooth pressures, producing loss of muscle tone, abnormal neuralgic function and physical imbalances throughout the body.”

16.) “Always give the animal the benefit of the doubt and look for physical reasons for behavioral issues.”

17.) “By keeping incisors balanced, I’ve noticed that less work is needed on the chewing teeth because they work more efficiently and self-maintain better.”

18.) “You can massage, adjust, acupuncture, red light, magnetize, inject, vibrate, do craniosacral or physical therapy, and feed herbs, homeopathic or anti-inflammatory drugs all you want, and you will still be stuck with foundational imbalances perpetuated and progressively worsened by the treacherous ruts of living with imbalanced and uncomfortable feet and teeth.”

19.) “During exercise, a horse’s mouth is intended to be closed, with a ‘lip seal’ that allows negative pressure to exist inside the oral cavity and rear throat area underneath the soft palate.” (on bit-induced suffocation)

20.) “Frequently we are rehabilitating animals with metabolic, hormonal, and nutritional issues where adding a vaccine, or multiple vaccines, will put them over the edge with their already challenged bodies.”

There is a wealth of invaluable information in this book, but of course, I can’t share it all here! I highly recommend Dr. Teskey’s book to every horse owner with even the slightest interest in holistic health. If you’re ready to read more, you can get your copy here.

Ta-ta,

Casie