Resources and insights

A lot of people think finding out the horse that you’ve poured so much blood, sweat and tears into has a muscle disorder is one of the worst things that could happen. Sometimes, that’s true. Other times, it’s a relief. It’s a relief just to finally have an answer. It’s not one that I would wish on someone. It’s hard and complicated to get under control and manage over all. But it is possible. And it is possible to keep them happy and healthy… It just takes trial and error and a whole lot of patience to get there. And then some more, to keep them there.  I currently have two very different horses with MIM. One is a registered Paint Horse gelding, Scooter. The other is Warmblood mare, Verona, with a full German passport. Bless the mini mare for saving my sanity and not being a candidate…. although she does have Heaves (just as annoying to manage but SO MUCH easier). As one of my friend’s pointed out, the Horse Distribution System really just pointed at me and yelled “chronic illness for this one.” Let’s start with the Paint. Watch This Move Doc or Scooter is 19 years old and…

I’m an amateur dressage rider, Animal Reiki Practitioner, and trail enthusiast looking for my next happy, healthy trail partner. That means I’m horse shopping, which should be an exciting experience!  As of Summer 2025, I tested 19 horses for PSSM2/MIM as part of my pre-purchase process. These horses came from all backgrounds registered and grade. Draft crosses. Iberians. Morgans. Mustangs from the same herd. Even a grade Haflinger. Over half of the horses I tested carry one or more variants of PSSM2/MIM. The breeder of my affected horse, insisted the genes don’t guarantee clinical signs. Other skeptics say, “correlation doesn’t equal causation,” as if that explains away the welfare concerns many owners are seeing firsthand. Maybe if your horse is a companion, or breeding stock not in work, you’ll never know. If they’re only used for breeding, and get trimmed twice a year, the cracks in health might stay hidden. But once they’re asked to work, the signs of pain are revealed. Stiffness. Resentment. Resistance. And acting like just being a horse is hard. Many are dangerously explosive. A grouchy “pain face” might be the only clue. These horses struggle to trailer and settle into a new environment as well….

After two decades in the veterinary medical field, I’ve witnessed countless treatment protocols, diagnostic advances, and management trends. Yet nothing has transformed my understanding of equine health quite like muscle myopathies. These complex conditions—PSSM1, MIM and its variants, MFM, MYHM, and so forth—have become unexpected catalysts, revealing fundamental truths about health that extend far beyond the horses they affect. What makes these conditions so instructive isn’t their complexity, it’s their honesty. Unlike many equine ailments that respond to pharmaceutical intervention, muscle myopathies strip away our comfortable reliance on medical management. They demand something more fundamental: a return to species-appropriate nutrition, natural movement patterns, and collaborative care that honors the whole horse. When Medicine Meets Its Match In my years as an equine nutrition professional, I’ve consulted on hundreds of muscle myopathy cases. The pattern is strikingly consistent: owners arrive having tried every supplement, every medication, every promise of a solution. Their horses continue to struggle. Not because the veterinary care was inadequate, but because these conditions require something medicine alone cannot provide. This is where beauty emerges from the burden. When conventional treatments offer minimal relief, we’re forced to examine our husbandry practices and whether our convenient systems serve the…

When you’ve exhausted all your resources and drained your back account, trying to find what is wrong with your horse, then what do you do? You dig a little deeper, research longer and keep asking questions. You get told you are crazy, your horse has got the better of you, and mostly you are making stuff up. You consider euthanasia but the good days come and you are left feeling hopeful and yet still frustrated.  Here is the story of my beloved Tuned up Whiz it, aka Whizzy.  Her current diagnosis is PSSM type 2 via biopsy and n/P2, n/Px n/MYHM via EquiSeq DNA testing. I met Whizzy the fall of 2009, she was 4 years old. Her price was way out of my range due to her breeding and intense training to be a reining  horse.  Whizzy just could not spin in one direction fast enough to meet the needs of the owner. She needed to move her fast as she had already bought another 2 year old. I took her on trial and I had x-rays that revealed some changes in her right front hoof, my farrier thought it no big deal. I  made a super low offer…

Introduction This blog post explores the K1 allele of the equine COL6A3 gene, which encodes Collagen type VI alpha 3 chain. Portions of this blog post serve as additional sources of information to supplement the COL6A3 Gene Page. The K1 allele of COL6A3 carries a missense mutation, shown below. The protein model XP_014595871.3 was used to assign amino acid positions. Figure 1. Alignment of partial COL6A3 protein sequences from horse, compared to the K1 variant. The position of the amino acid affected by the substitution is highlighted in red. We present data to support the hypothesis that the K1 allele of COL6A3 is damaging. The K1 variant (G1976A) substitutes an alanine for a glycine. The affected amino acid is in the triple-helical portion of COL6A3. The general sequence of this region in all collagens is GLY-X-Y, where every third amino acid is a glycine. The X and Y amino acids are generally poorly conserved. In the formation of the collagen triple-helical region, the glycine residues are points of contact between helices. Glycine has the smallest R group of any amino acid (a hydrogen atom). Other amino acids in these positions interfere with triple helix formation to some extent. For further discussion,…