It’s no secret that redheads have sensitive skin. But the interesting thing is that chestnuts also have the most sensitive skin in the horse world.
As everyone knows, the skin is the largest organ of the body. (Somehow this never seemed to make sense intuitively, because to me an organ is an organ, and skin is skin, but there you have it!) That’s why creams are so readily absorbed into the blood stream and can quickly work how and where they’re supposed to. The skin is also the first line of defense against painful pressure and the skin is subject to changes that can be assessed in the evaluation of pain.
It is known that the fascia of the thoracic region (the region where the saddle is placed also referred to as the saddle support area) is extremely sensitive to pressure and pain due to a richly innervated connective tissue web associated with the spinal cord. This is in contrast to the fascia overlying the lumbar region, which is generally more pliable and less sensitive to pain and to excessive pressure.
It is not always easy to assess the health of the skin of the thoracolumbar region. Healthy skin should be soft, contain adequate moisture and be freely movable from the underlying cutaneous muscles and be able to respond to stimuli. One can be readily fooled by horses that tend to respond less to stimuli and be convinced that those horses are not sore. However, most of those horses’ fascia is less responsive because the horses are under muscled and underweight, old and/or suffering from chronic diseases and degenerative conditions such as kissing spine or impingement of the dorsal spinous processes. In other words, the skin has become numb due to chronic pain. I have sometimes come across clients who don’t want to let me assess their saddle fit until they have ridden for about 20 minutes – at which point their horse’s skin has become less sensitive and they can therefore ‘prove’ (and insist) that their saddle is not causing excess pressure.
Horses that suffer from chronic poor saddle fit usually have skin changes that lead to chronic skin dryness and nerve tissue atrophy with the resulting lack of response. Read the full article here.
~ Jochen Schleese CMS, CSFT, CSE, courtesy of Saddlefit 4 Life
