How much translation is needed?

I've been working on a tantrum lately about how little the animal body therapy world is doing to develop itself as a unique industry. Rather than approaching the quadruped's body and mind as unique and requiring it's own approach, we too often just take the work being done with humans and assume that they'll work with animals--by this I mean animal quadrupeds.
In the past I worried that animal massage therapists were simply taking human techniques and applying them to animals without any translation for the structural and nervous control differences of between the species. Anthropomorphism in body therapy if you will. This even goes so far as to have the ridiculous measure of time--a marketing measure, not a therapeutic one--applied to the animal in the same way it is to the human. I mean where did 1 hour come about as anything more than a possible way to sell oneself? Chiropractors don't sell their services by time! Neither do medical doctors or dentists or farriers... but the animal therapist copying the human therapist sells their services by the hour, rather than the benefit or by surface area of the animal. OR, perhaps more appropriately the animal's ability to remain focused on the work.
The latest contribution to my tantrum is an article I read on "Pilates" for horses. This was a report on how one of my favorite researchers has fallen into the trance of thinking that work developed for humans--in this case core stabilization, which I'm not sure about--can be used with horses with translation. This requires that the quadruped's transverse abdominus acts the same in both species. The the quadrupedal "core" is the same as the human "core". (It seems to this simpe Rolfer that standing on two legs is more difficult than standing on four, and that human back pain may be caused by a completely different action than bi-pedal pain is.)
I'm really concerned that unless we animal therapists start to do our own research and develop our own methods that we'll be marginalized.
It's time to feed the horses and walk in the mud.

Caution Pay Attention

I just finished instructing an basic myofascial equine course. We worked with horses at the Colorado Horse Rescue (CHR). The staff at CHR picked a number of horses, two per student, for us to work with, when I spotted one that I actually liked the look of. It turns out that this horse was a "surrender", which means that the people the had it previously gave it up voluntarily for some reason. The horse had a very bad wind sucking addiction, the horse would crib on every wooden post in the pasture. When I inquired about the horse to the manager of the day I was told he had a vicious habit of biting people.
In the fifteen years I've been rolfing horses I've drifted towards wanting to work with horses, or dogs, that are more "challenged" in their relationship to humans than to those that are simply having performance problems. So, the next day we brought out this troubled horse to work with him. When working these kinds of horses it's imperative that one be fully aware of what is happening. I like to work with them alone, in a round pen is best, with the handler outside the pen so I can fully concentrate on the horse.
I worked with the horse for two sessiosn with no real attitude problems. There were a couple of minor bucks when I tried to work around a vertebral subluxation, but nothing too dramatic.
By the third session the horse came up to the pasture gate to meet me when I went out to get him. I was really confident that he was sooo much better that I stopped paying attention to him as a potentially dangerous horse and worked on his back. It happened with lightening speed, all I felt was the teeth racking my back. Luckily--this is actually a terrible thing to say--the horse had cribbed so much that he had worn his teeth down to knubs and what I felt on my back was the knubs scratching my back. It was actually kind of pleasant. There was no aggression in what this horse did, it was just his way of protecting himself, and when it was over I, assisted by one of the students who is very fine horseman, was able to continue to work with the horses back, no more trouble.
Ok, a little more trouble came when I decided to work with the horse's adductors in a way I never work with them and I got a lightning face kick to the lower leg. It sounded horrendous, but didn't really hurt that much and in fact I don't even have a mark on my leg--thick boned Italian.
The point I want to make is that horses are fast and their size relative to us makes them dangerous. We need to always be aware of where we are with them and what they are telling us.
In 15 years I've been bit twice now and kicked twice, by two horses not a bad record, but I would prefer that it was still at one time instead of two.
Be aware and be careful.

Playing Hooky

I'm feeling a little guilty, since I'm supposed to be finishing an article for a magazine and instead I'm writing here. But that's not the only thing that's keeping me away from the article. I've been working in a number of animations for the online course, which leads me to what I wanted to write about.
One of the things I like to do, to get inspiration for doing the animations, is look at the work of other people. I was having a problem with a "particle system", which I'm using to illustrate an embryology concept--this is one of those things that Rolfers seem to all do when we are explaining fascia, that being we resort to embryology to show that the body is not made up of "parts"--and searched the net to see if anyone else had solved this problem. What I found was a great website for a film/media school that had a montage of their work. www.brandnewschool.com
At the beginning of the montage the video had a roll of welcome text in different languages. Each language was in a different color and each sentence was on it's own line. So, the first line in each language came first. Then the second line in the paragraph...so that the languages were interspersed and you had to pick yours out of each paragraph. At first this was really confusing to me, but soon, within one or two lines my eye was locked on to the white english text.
This really interested me, so I ran the montage again and tried to not read the english but the concentrate on the german. Again, my eyes locked on the english.
Now I'm fascinated and wonder if this is indicative of how we see things we "know" but don't see things we don't know. You know?
Do any of you know if there's research into this kind of thing--beyond "what the blib do we know..."?
Ok, back to the article.

How much should we "dumb-down"?

When I decided to leave engineering for health care, I took a year long anatomy and physiology course at the University of Colorado. Since I was late in applying to school I had to get on the "wait" list for the class. There were 300 people in the auditorium when I went to the first class!
I asked the professor after the first lecture if there was any real chance to get in the class. He, told me to wait until after the first exam and there would be plenty of room. He was right. After the first exam over 50% of the class dropped since it was so hard.
When the professor was challenged about how difficult the exam was he responded " So many of you want to be doctors. If I ever have to go into surgery and one of you are the surgeon I will be very comfortable knowing you know your A&P.".
This is how I run my classes, they are for people who are willing to push themselves to learn what they don't already know.
It seems like we--this is the collective we of people who instruct others--try to dumb things down so much that I wonder if we know what we are talking about. This will only harm the field of animal body therapy.

What to do?

These days people are all trying to figure out how to make ends meet. This may mean that they won't be spending as much on their and their animals alternative health care. This will be mostly true if they don't perceive a direct relationship between the therapy and they achievement of some goal they may have.
When I worked for Hewlett Packard as an engineering manager the country went through another recession, companies weren't buying our products. During this time I heard about the strategy that Intel Corporation had for these types of economic downturns; they spent more money on the research and development to be able to produce better products and lead the market once there was a turn around in the economy.
We can and should do something similar to Intel, by investing in our own training. By gaining a new skill or, better yet, improving one we already have, we'll be poised to help our clients when they are able to afford our work again.
Spend time keeping in touch with your clients so they know you are still out there and that you are continuing with your development. You want to be on the "top" of their mind when they think about alternative therapies for their animals again.
Take time to get together with your colleagues and share our knowledge with them. If you belong to a discussion group participate in it. I recently started a discussion forum on www.animalsi.com please feel free to join it. I am asked every week for referrals to good body therapists, this is a way to make yourself known.
I like to spend my down time going over my course notes from my previous trainings, re-reading books, and looking for new ideas.
The most important thing is to stay involved with your work, keep your hands tuned up and let people know you're still out there.

The 10,000 hour rule

When we look at the performance of horses in sports like racing, or sports that have a definitive measure rather than a subjective one, horse performance has not improved much over the years. This lack of performance enhancement becomes even more pronounced when we compare it to the advances in human athletic performance. I used to think that this discrepancy was caused by the fact that the coaches of a human athlete can communicate more effectively--verbally--with their athlete than a horse trainer can with theirs. I think this is a factor. But two things have happened in the last week to make me aware of two other possible causes: reading Malcolm Gladwell's book "Outliers" and watching Dr. G. Heuschmann's video "If Horses Could Speak" for the umpteenth time.

In Gladwell's book he dismantles our long held myth that high performing individuals--from athletes to the Beatles--are born with a natural talent that pre-disposes them to sucess. This myth leads many of us to believe that we'll never be extraordinary--except in our Mom's eye--because we weren't born with "natural" talent. Rather than natural talent being the deciding factor, Gladwell suggests that the opportunity to practice that thing that we'll be noted for. In the case of an athlete it's practicing their sport. For the Beatles it the opportunity to play music together. He further suggests that the amount of the time--therefore the opportunity--has to equal 10,000 hours; this is the magical number of hours we need to apply to become an "expert" in our chosen art. (I won't spend more time on the book; you can read it for yourself.)

The second event in my transformation was watching Dr. Heuschmann's video. I was asked to attend a showing of the video to a group of dressage riders by one of our local trainers, to help answer any anatomy questions, a very nice opportunity. While I watched the video I was struck by a point raised by one of the interviewed trainers on the difference in the way we train a dressage horse today and the way they train at the Spanish Riding School. At the Spanish School they wait until the horse is ten years old before starting them in any real training. This allows them to develop mentally and physically for the demands of riding. In the world of modern competition horses are started as 2 and 3 year olds. I have certainly bought 3 year old horses with 90 days of training on them thinking they were ready to move on. Has the Spanish School somehow learned the 10,000 hour rule?

Is this rule the reason Sea Biscuit did so well? In his early life he was used as a training aid to other horses, racing against them and forced to lose. The number of these races he ran could have gave him the hours he required.

The 10,000 hour rule doesn't just apply to rock stars and horses; it applies to dogs and body therapists. If you wish to become world class you need to put in the time in practicing your chosen art. But this is not just elapsed time, it has to be time with a feedback mechanism to assure you are on the right track. The Beatle's had their fans and the music critics.

Something to think about.

Are we stretching into injury?

Those of you who know me or have read my book, know I am not a big fan of strain and hold type stretching. One problem that occurs in the stretching of animals is the "anthropromorphic" view that they are the same as humans and will not allow us to harm them. I've seen photos on the covers of books where the animal's legs are being levered into an anatomical barrier.
Even without that the idea the we can simply stretch our muscles into some type of opening without engaging the nervous system is seriously flawed. This why I advocate for PNF stretching or Muscle Energy or what I called myofascial stretching in the book.
A study done by the Australian military--12000 army recruits in the study--where one portion of the study stretched before exercise and the other did not, resulted in a higher injury rate for those that stretched.
This article in the New York times suggests that same type of problem. So, the next time you think you want to stretch ourselve, dog or horse before a competition you may want to re-consider.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/02/sports/playmagazine/112pewarm.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=stretching&st=cse