What’s More Important, Correction or Cause?

When something goes wrong, we always want to know why. In a mechanistic model, think a machine such as a car, your bike, or your air conditioner, it’s easy to figure out the why. Why did my fan belt snap in my car? Well, because it was old, your car has 2 million miles on it, and it was never changed out when it should have been. Why did my bike get a flat tire? Because you ran over a nail (see, there is a nail in it right there). Why did my air conditioner stop blowing cold air? Because your thermostat is broken. Then the repairman shows you the bad thermostat. It’s very simple in these types of systems to show, and often prove, cause and effect. It’s human nature to want to know the reason something happened, so that that we can prevent it from happening again down the road. So it makes perfect sense for people to often ask why their horse has a “twisted pelvis”, or why it all of a sudden stopped taking a left lead. When I adjust an area of a horse’s body, people will often ask what happened to make that area need to be adjusted. When I am asked, I often refer to it as the million-dollar question. In reality, there are a million potential causes for something to need attention in the body. Hocks get sore, even when x-rays are clean. Low backs get sore, even when there has been no trauma. We put horses on regular injection schedules, even though we have no idea why they are sore in those areas…