I came across horsey blog, Everyday Rider, It caught my attention, not as a Pisstaker, but as someone whose wife is getting into horse training. I should point out that I too am happy to participate in the merry dance being led by the most frustrating smart and obstinate Arabian horse unhung. Or to be more accurate, hung! His knackers are intact only by the grace of me not knowing how to castrate the bastard.

Anyway, I was happy to read Everyday Rider. and my ears pricked up at a post entitled Needles, herbs and Horses - about acupuncture on horses. Bloody mad, I hear you whinny? What is wrong with good old Western treatment?

Western medicine 0 Eastern 1

Well, firstly, good ole vet wannabes with access to all the medication under the sun, couldn't cure a horse's bad back. And neither could all the drugs in the cabinet cure another dodgy horse's eye. But the acupuncturist cured both conditions!

Just because we don't understand why a hot liver would make a horse's eye go bad, doesn't mean it isn't true. And when an alternative practitioner pokes a load of Oriental needles on a horse's face to back up the liver treatment, who are we mere Westerners to argue with needles and herbs? Even the horse with its back feet wrapped around its face believed that whacky treatment was worthy of praise, so I am not going to argue against acupuncture and co. But most people in the West do!

East v West - neither is best.

Alternative medicine is by default different to the norm, else it wouldn't be called alternative! And why do we turn our nose up at so called whacky practices anyway? Can 4 billion Easterners really be wrong. If it was an unhealthy way to care for folks, there wouldn't be 4 billion of them.

As someone whose doctor nearly ex-communicated me for asking for homeopathic asthma treatment (that had worked!), and then prescribed some years later a totally brilliant asthma drug, I suggest that we should just accept that everything has its place, noone can cure everything all the time.

I should just point out that stallions are lovely animals that only misbehave when they are confused by humans or aren't being treated like stallions. And no animal was hurt in the writing of this article.