The Initial Horse’s Postural Response to the First Session of the Dorsal, Ventral, and Dorso–Ventral Massage Techniques

Monika Balcer, Aleksandra Śnieg, Urszula Sikorska, Małgorzata Maśko () and Małgorzata Domino ()
Additional contact information
Monika Balcer: The Scientific Society of Veterinary Medicine Students, Warsaw University of Life Sciences (WULS–SGGW), 02-787 Warsaw, Poland
Aleksandra Śnieg: The Scientific Society of Veterinary Medicine Students, Warsaw University of Life Sciences (WULS–SGGW), 02-787 Warsaw, Poland
Urszula Sikorska: Department of Animal Breeding, Institute of Animal Science, Warsaw University of Life Sciences (WULS–SGGW), 02-787 Warsaw, Poland
Małgorzata Maśko: Department of Animal Breeding, Institute of Animal Science, Warsaw University of Life Sciences (WULS–SGGW), 02-787 Warsaw, Poland
Małgorzata Domino: Department of Large Animal Diseases and Clinic, Institute of Veterinary Medicine, Warsaw University of Life Sciences (WULS–SGGW), 02-787 Warsaw, Poland

Agriculture, 2023, vol. 13, issue 3, 1-17

Abstract: Since interest in equine manual therapy and rehabilitation is constantly growing, the need for quantification of the horse’s postural response to used alternative therapy has increased. This study implemented geometric morphometrics (GM) for a dorsal profile comparison between the horse groups. The dorsal profile was represented by the centroid size and the centroid shape. The horse groups were defined using four classifiers: horse’s age, height at the withers, time lap in the massage session, and technique of the massage (dorsal, ventral, and dorso–ventral). Out of a total of 900 photographs of 20 horses, 180 photos were analyzed using GM, including thirty landmarks. Variation of the principal components (PCs) representing consecutive dorsal profiles were reported for the first three PSs as 59.50% for PC1, 14.36% for PC2, and 9.01% for PC3. The dorsal profiles differed depending on the classifier ‘height’ in terms of centroid size ( p < 0.0001) as well as classifier ‘time’ ( p < 0.0001) and classifier ‘technique’ ( p < 0.0001) in terms of centroid shape, but not depending on the classifier ‘age’ ( p > 0.05). GM allows visualizing the differences in the horses’ posture resulting from the selected manual rehabilitation techniques. The quantification of the horse’s body posture in the studied protocol indicates horses’ body posture after being warmed-up and massaged using the dorso–ventral technique is the most desirable.

Keywords: massage; geometric morphometrics; manual therapy; horse (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q1 Q10 Q11 Q12 Q13 Q14 Q15 Q16 Q17 Q18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/13/3/529/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/13/3/529/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jagris:v:13:y:2023:i:3:p:529-:d:1077359

Access Statistics for this article

Agriculture is currently edited by Ms. Leda Xuan

More articles in Agriculture from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().