The Well Adjusted Horse: Equine Chiropractic Methods You Can Do Review

As background to this book review, I have recently taken a class in equine chiropractic from one of Dr. Kamen's friends, Dr. Bill Hampton (see www.EquineSpine.com) who is a retired human chiropractor and previously taught at Palmer College of Chiropractic (www.Palmer.edu). Dr. H. does all the work on Pat Parelli's animals (www.Parelli.com) as well as many other 6-figure horses. (Unfortunately Dr. Kamen no longer teaches these classes on a regular basis.) Dr. Hampton's two day class applies the Gonstead technique & philosophy (www.Gonstead.com) to horses and that course material is paralleled almost exactly in this book. The class comes with two other lab books by Dr. K. (neither are as good as "The Well Adjusted Horse") as well as DVD videos showing the chiropractic techniques and equine anatomy, plus a Parelli DVD. This book does NOT come with the class.

While I disagree with the reviewer who was aghast at this book (mainly the idea of adjusting your own horse) and rated it a 1 (based on their review I doubt they have bought it & read it!), I would agree with them in that you should not just skim over this book and go try it. It is well worth every penny of the $450 for the class, performing each technique on your own horse under an expert's tutelage. I read this book before taking the class and practiced some of the set-ups, but I did not actually adjust a horse until the class. Equine chiropractors in my area tend to use the long-lever technique which can be quite brutal. I had the atlas (C1) of two horses adjusted by a local vet, and he first doped the horse, twitched the lip, used the twitch to leverage the chin over the withers, and impulsed using the twitched lip! It cost $100 per horse for a licensed vet to bloody the lips of my animals like that (although it did fix the subluxation). Beside the fact that with my 5 horses this class will pay for itself in a week, this book and that class teach a much gentler, humane and drug-free method of restoring skeletal and neuro-muscular balance to a horse.

This review really is about this excellent book, not the parallel class, but I believe it's wisest to practice what's in the book after taking the class. Anyone simply interested in learning about equine chiropractic, from human chiropractor to veterinarian to equine masseur/acupuncturist to horse owner, should buy this book and read it! (And yes, Dr. K has corny humor as one reviewer complained - most of it actually is at least marginally funny, but I'll let you read about the pregnant dog yourself). If you want to learn the skills of equine chiropractic, definitely buy this book, but also definitely take the course from Dr. Hampton (www.EquineSpine.com). And tell Bill that Kevyn from Magnolia sent you!

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Buy it here now!