Dr Tomas Teskey

Interview with this top holistic vet

By Christine Pinna of Caballo Barefoot Trimming

Dr Tomas Teskey is native to Arizona, USA, and the second oldest of five siblings in a six generation ranching family. He received a Bachelor's degree in Botany from Northern Arizona University in 1991 and a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine degree from Colorado State University in 1995. He has practised large animal medicine and surgery in Arizona since graduation, with most of his work focusing on horses.

He lives on the family ranch in Arizona with his wife, Csenge, and four children.

CP: Having recently read your book 'Insight to Equus', which I found absolutely fascinating, I wanted to reach out. Please tell us about yourself and what led you to become an equine veterinarian.

TT: I'm from Arizona in the southwestern United States, where I have lived all of my life, as have the five generations before me, dating back to the 1870s. We are a ranching family, and so I was brought up in the cowboy life with a ranching and agricultural background. My dad is a small animal veterinarian, so there was an introduction to veterinary medicine from an early stage. I made it into veterinary school quite easily, being a good student and test-taker; I came across as pretty smart with book learning and whatnot.

By the time I got into veterinary school, I wanted something different from my dad, so I followed a large animal track, learning about cattle and horses. I wanted to do that instead of being exactly like my dad. The cattle market really fell out of favour when I got out of veterinary school in 1995, and I had to make some money, so I had to start looking at horses, and that's actually how I was funnelled into developing more insight and expertise with the horses. Personality-wise, from there, I found myself unsatisfied with traditional answers and traditional teachings because they didn't work or didn't work long-term. They were germinated from thought patterns that involved using horses strictly as tools rather than as partners. Even if the people claimed to love horses, I could demonstrate that that really wasn't the case given the management practices. I simply wasn't satisfied with what I saw, and that made me determined to do things differently. It was dishonest for people to claim they loved the horses and yet keep them as they did because it really gave the horses, and ultimately the people managing those horses, a raw deal; it's not just the horses that suffer when the humans are not managing them correctly.

CP: Was there a turning point in your life that led you to look at more holistic approaches to veterinary medicine? What was this turning point, and what results did you find?

TT: There wasn't a defined blinding flash-of-the-obvious turning point; I'm more of a philosopher, contemplative type. I try things out. I try new things and take to heart what I see with the results. I have a lot of conscience around wanting to do the best job possible, whatever I'm doing. It doesn't matter if I'm doing veterinary medicine, building a fence, or digging a ditch - I want to give it my best. Within five years of getting out of veterinary school, it became apparent that something would have to give, or I would quit because I was surrounded by tradition and convention, which was deep set. What made it even more challenging was that many of my colleagues would talk a certain way but didn't 'walk' that way. They would talk a good talk about being progressive, being on the research and trying new things, but that was rubbish for the most part, so I started to call them on it. I would call my old teachers and ask them about certain therapeutics and what to do next, and I pretty much had them at a loss at quite a few turning points. That's when I thought, "I'm going to start focusing on what can be done and how to make the changes, follow through, and follow up and not lose track of these horses with owners who will get on board with a different approach". We found some very cool stuff and started doing things that convention would say are impossible. So it was good to have a personality and philosophy that allowed me to break through. Ultimately, it's about your moral character, how much you can take personally, how much you can see of what's happening, and how to differentiate what's about you versus what's not about you.

CP: What are some of your most profound success stories?

TT: My first case after finding out about the healing powers of the horse from within was a founder case in a gelding. I literally had the euthanasia solution in my hand. Then I heard that somebody was visiting who would try something with this gelding whose coffin bones were coming through the bottoms of his hoof capsules. Her name was Martha Olivo, and she had studied with Dr Strasser in Germany. Dr Strasser is a veterinarian who specialises in looking at the hoof, how it works and what to do with it. This was an aggressive approach, but

I was like, "Okay, show me what you can do." And boy, she did! She showed me some things that made sense, and I watched that horse improve consistently despite my beliefs at the time that this wouldn't work. That horse made a grand recovery and was quite sound.

Then there have been other cases, like broken legs and fractures –devastating injuries that a veterinarian would prescribe confinement for, i.e. "Keep that horse in a stall so that we can bandage and not have it get worse, and not have it self-destruct". I just handled these differently. I cared for several, where I just said, kept in stalls get worse after injury, spinning, rearing, and reinjuring themselves. Then after that rest period, the owners would let the horse out, and he'd have reinjured himself in minutes. I decided, "Why don't we quit all of that and try something else and just let him heal from the inside out on his own and let's quit pretending that we know much of anything about how a horse heals". We simply continued providing what we knew the horse needed to heal from within. So with fractured limbs, they didn't heal straight, and there was definitely a hitch there, but these horses were happy and alert and alive and not

These are all individual cases that stick with me, but there are other medical cases that are also significant. For instance, horses with Cushing's Syndrome which are met with such a defeatist attitude by veterinarians. The vets just prescribe drugs, and I haven't found that needs to be the case. I rather do things that help the horses just honour their 'horseness', and they improve. The top of the list in honouring 'horseness' would be movement. You'll hear me say that a lot. I have a list of things horses need, and near the top are friends and movement. These are magical.

CP: Please tell us about what your wife does. Do you often find yourselves working together?

TT: My wife is Csenge Bakos; she's Hungarian, and I met her several years ago when I was invited to Hungary to do a clinic, and she was very interested in learning more about horses and coming to America to check it out. After pestering me for quite a while, she came, and we developed a friendship through that. I ended up going back to Hungary the following year, and she came to the clinic again, and we started hanging out more and more. She is a human physiotherapist trained in Hungary, and so she has a keen eye for biological form and function in people and animals, and she is also just keenly she's always my go-to person to help with that because she just has that body language, that understanding and that dance that occurs with horse handling. So now we have a family of our own with four kids.

CP: Who and what got you into natural hoofcare? Do you ever find it necessary to shoe a horse, and if not, why not?

TT: So I mentioned Martha Olivo earlier on and how I met her with the foundered gelding, and I ended up taking a 10-day immersive course with Martha; I'm talking about 12 hours a day for ten days straight dissecting just complete immersion into hoofcare. This really got me focused, and it was a great lesson on how you need to focus for more than just a few moments on something if you really want to drink it in. You need to learn and observe and just sit with it and let it enter your pores.

It was transformative, and given that my understanding of form and Equus form and function is that I do not employ rigid materials on horses, whether that it is a bit in their mouth or steel on their feet, there's no indication for shoes in my work. That's not going to be true for other veterinarians and other people, but when it comes to me, I have a plasticity and an understanding and expertise around what else I can do. So this is personal, and I'm just wildly successful with it because of my level of focus and understanding and honouring the dynamic nature of Equus. Therefore it does not make sense, nor would I entertain for long, the idea that I would apply a shoe or use a bit in a horse's mouth given my current level of understanding and the current state of the world. We don't use horses for war or agriculture nearly as much anymore. If that were to turn around, I'd still bet you that I can come up with other ways and use other materials that would not be rigid, deforming and damaging.

CP: What does a typical non-emergency appointment with you look like?

TT: A typical appointment with me involves a whole horse and a whole human/owner assessment. What's the relationship? What's the intention? What's the feel? What are we looking at? What do we want to do here? What's our agenda? Is there no agenda? What are the expectations? Are there no expectations? I try to feel into the whole spectrum of the humanhorse relationship.

On the human side, there is understanding, willingness, a sense of responsibility, and accountability for doing the best possible job with the horse and continuing to learn about it. If you're interested in that, I want you on my team. If you're not, then let's not start.

Once we get past that, I assess the horse's feet and legs and movement and body and eyes and ears and posture and attitude and all of the other stuff too – heart sounds, belly sounds, presentation, level of alertness, appetite, how they move, what they prefer, what's their posture, why do they keep doing THAT? Why don't they ever try this? Noticing these little things keeps these ticks going in my brain. I like to play this game with myself where I make myself a little bet, and I'm getting better and better, so that 4, or even 4.5 times out of 5, I can tell you what I'm likely to find in a horse's mouth given what their feet glimpse like, how they move, how they hold their head, how they hold their body, how they move off, what lead they prefer – those sorts of things. Yes, it's all professional but you've got to have some fun too. So that's one of the little things I do to keep myself engaged and interested, and you know, if you see a thousand horses, you want to keep it exciting and keep it, so you maintain not only professionalism but an ongoing interest in learning.

I also have a way of working with a horse, with calmness, confidence and humour. If a horse goes to bite me or kick me or do aggressive sorts of things, I'm more likely to laugh at them in a confident way so that they know I get them. I just let them know that I'm figuring them out, and I'm not leaving until I do. And that goes for timid horses too. I have a similar confidence and am happy for them to run around and do what they need to do. Liberty stuff is also important in my consults. We have horses on leads with their owners way too much when trying to assess them, and I don't think that is appropriate. They need to be at liberty in a big enough space to express themselves and do and stand and behave the way they want. You're much more likely to see cool things at liberty. Then I might do some trimming, and I might work on their teeth, and I might do some stretches. I might show the owner what I think would be helpful with this side of their body, or that and what to watch for in their teeth, what to watch for in their feet, how to take a picture to send me in three months so that I can see what the horse looks like. So my sessions have a lot of owner education; I am a teacher with all of my clients, and I think most of them like that.

CP: What form of dentistry do you follow, and please tell us how this differs from ordinary dentistry?

TT: My equine dentistry would probably be best labelled as a natural balance type of dentistry. It's very biodynamic. It's a sculpture in progress. It is always approach and retreat with regards to working on dental balance, and so right off the bat, how it differs from conventional dentistry is that I need to see the horse move. I need to see him walk, trot, and turn, and I need to watch his posture. I need to watch him nibble something, and I need to see him look at me out of each eye. I also go through many manipulations and physical body exercises with their head and neck, and jaw as I'm working their teeth, trying to work out restrictions, and working out TMJ habits that these horses get into.

Approaching teeth is a passion of mine. A lot of equine veterinarians don't enjoy doing feet or teeth, so I'm one of the weird ones, not the only one, but one of the weird ones. It requires some elbow grease, sweat, and tears, but it's the most satisfying for me. It's the most interesting and life-changing for horses, but of course, we are also always talking about diet and movement and friends alongside this. Regular dentistry usually involves taking your horse to have his teeth floated. Floating improves comfort with the chewing teeth in the horse's head so that their points are not poking their cheeks and tongue, and that's definitely a worthwhile thing to do. So floating is one aspect of what I do, but before I do any of that, I balance the horse's front teeth because this is their 'rudder mechanism' up frontwhere the jaw goes, the horse goes, and the feet follow.

Foundational structures – feet and teeth - lead to postural compensatory type changes in the whole body, and so you need to recognise that and see how things are slanting and what the angles are like with their teeth and their feet. It's like a concert going on between the structures. It needs a marriage between my tools and my understanding. I look at how they move, make a change and watch them over a season or a year to see how it worked out. I then go back and look at the pictures and check we're going in the right direction. I'm always talking with the owner – "What do you notice? Tell me everything. Give me feedback because I need to know to keep learning".

Equine dentistry is a big subject, but that's a little bit of what it looks like.

CP: What changes would you like to see in the horse world amongst professionals?

TT: It's not within my power to change; I realised that probably about 15-20 years ago. It isn't personal, but what I did find out was that I needed to come at my colleagues and professionals in a different way. I need to increase the level of competence that horse owners demand, and that is done through education. What this means is empowering owners to ask intelligent questions, which will ultimately lead towards an improved profession that considers a holistic perspective because these horses will keep coming back, and the owners will get more and more unhappy if the vets don't look at other approaches.

There will never be a shortage of horses that need competent help, so vets will always have a job. The only exception is vets focusing solely on vaccinations and treating colicky horses. My goal would be to put these vets out of business by educating people about diet, exercise, movement and having friends so that they're never going to need to see the vet because they are so darn healthy. They're not going to colic, and their immune systems are so robust they're not going to be coming down with every little bug that comes down the barn aisle.

CP: What changes would you like to see more horse owners making to the management of their horses?

TT: The changes I'd like to see empowered horse owners make involve space and habitat. After this, I would like to see changes to diet, how people show up for their horses, considerations around tack, and decisions around what kind of job a horse should have (and whether or not they should have a job at all), but these are secondary to the issue of space and habitat. We are headed towards legislation and laws that will prohibit keeping horses in less than half an acre per horse or that will require a track system. I want to see horses have the ability, should they desire to employ it, to run at full gallop without having to come to a screeching halt within three strides. Of course, horses can gallop in a 40-foot round pen, but only for two strides, and that's inappropriate. The nature of the horse demands that they have space and friends with them to be healthy. That's not debatable; that's not negotiable. We can demonstrate using as much science as you would like (cortisol measures, stress hormone measurements, health parameters) that what is more humane and more healthy promotes better welfare and ultimately is essential to promote human welfare because humans who are not taking proper care of their animals have a myriad of psychological and physical issues that show up in their life. So, it is about the animals, and it's also about us. So as we continue promoting the welfare through space and habitat and having herd dynamics around horse management, everybody is going to win. That's how you save the world through horses.

CP: You have worked in and seen many different environments across the world. In your experience, which environment yields the healthiest horse population, and what can horse owners in less-than-ideal situations do to mimic those environments?

TT: So the healthiest horses in the healthiest environments are high desert horses, and the palaeontologists will agree with me. Look at the steppes of Mongolia, the Sahara in Africa, the zebra in the Serengeti, the southwestern mustang or the wild ass in China; you will see how healthy these horses living in desert areas, sparsely populated with forage really are. In other words, these environments demand movement to find your calories and demand vigilance for predators because these equids are out there in front of God, and everybody is trying to find a bite to eat. But you're fast enough and/ or camouflaged enough and/or adept enough on your solid hooves with swiftness to easily outlast pressure from predation.

The challenges you have in wet or green environments where the calories just drip from the fences because the moss is growing there and the rain comes continuously is getting enough movement to burn those calories that seem to work their way by osmosis into the pores of the horse. These horses stay fat, insulin resistant, and laminitic because of stress from overnutrition or inappropriately balanced nutrition. Calories are not bad in themselves but combined with inactivity, domestication, and an inability or lack of need to move, you have a recipe for failure from the start. You just need to respect where horses came from and understand that that's why they are shaped the way they are, so when you put them into a domesticated environment and expect them to be otherwise, there will be problems. They're still shaped exactly the same way they were 10,000 years ago, even 10 million years ago.

We have very little respect or understanding for this in a lot of these places, where we think that we are loving our horses or taking care of them, and we're not. What we're doing is not love and care.

Your horse wouldn't be in this environment unless you put them in it. Ultimately it's inappropriate for them, but you can still be successful even in these conditions. How do you do it? By helping them move, by providing reasons to move, with food and water and minerals and fencing and helping the terrain be less muddy, like getting some rocks and putting them down in a strip so that they can get some good action with their feet. Interestingly, I have totally self-trimming horses in the wet Pacific Northwest and Europe because you bring in enough gravel and provide the movement over it, and their feet trim themselves. As another example, if you put that water trough through a circuitous track system half a mile from where you feed the horse, that will be wonderful. The horse has to walk half a mile, and he'll love it, and you will be rewarded for that in so many ways. So change your perspective and ideas around what love looks like in these environments.

CP: What do you get up to these days outside of normal veterinary work?

TT: Besides normal veterinary work, or in my case, holistic conventionally abnormal veterinary work, I make a conscious choice to be home with the kids. I spend summers in Hungary with Csenge's family so the kids can get to know their grandparents and greatgrandparents and the culture there; they're already bilingual.

I did write the book, but that was before the last three babies were born, so I haven't had time to write the next book or two, which I would like to. I have ideas to write a holistic veterinary text on my approach to hoofcare and dentistry with more specifics. There's a lot of that inside 'Insight to Equus' but not to the level of specificity with the pictures that would be more of a teaching tool, and so I'd like to do that; it's on my horizon.

I still get to ride my horses to go and check on the other horses. My family ranch here is 5000 acres in the high desert, and you need that kind of space because to keep one horse fed out here on this desert landscape per year takes about 50 acres. In Florida, you could probably put four or five horses on a single acre and produce enough forage for them for a year. There's a big difference there in how my world looks. So when I go out to check horses, it's so rough and vast that it's best to ride a horse.

I also like to garden, grow trees, and water things because I've lived in the desert my whole life, and if you don't provide water to things, they die, so I have a keen sense of moving water around and conserving it, placing it and being strategic with it to survive.

CP: You have contributed so much to the horse world with regard to research and education, which the natural hoofcare providers, as well as many horse owners, greatly appreciate. What can we expect to see from you in the future?

TT: I mentioned previously the books I plan to write in future about dentistry, hoofcare and holistic care, and I'm open to feedback on what would be most helpful for horse owners to continue that education and empowerment in the hopes that they might ask the most intelligent, thoughtful, non-egoic questions possible. What questions can people ask their trimmer, farrier, bodyworker or veterinarian, trainer or barn manager? You find the next best thing by figuring out how to ask the right question.

You can ask the most intelligent questions when you have the most focus, understanding and interest in what you are seeing. If something isn't on your radar, you can't ask a question about it. Once you see it and recognise it, you may not know exactly what is happening, but you can ask the questions. What is the relationship between the horse chewing in that direction and standing that way - why do they do that? Five years ago, I couldn't tell you exactly why, but every year since then, I've gotten closer and closer to understanding through physics and fascial studies, postural studies and biodynamics. I can give you a lot better reasons to help you understand why that is and why it's important. Because if you don't do something to improve on what you are seeing, it will get worse. Nature doesn't care and isn't able to intervene in this case because that horse is food for the cave lion or the sabre-tooth tiger. That's nature's idea of what to do with that horse that's getting that off balance, and it's not personal.

We claim to be in love with our horse, but what do we do with him? We corral him, we bit him and shoe him, we confine him, and we jump on his back without caring whether there should be some considerations made beforehand. Where's the partnership in that? Where's the love in that? That's not love; that's owner and slave. So, future stuff for me would be to find the words to educate around that and why it's important. We are an egoic enough species that we need to devise ways that point out why it's important for us humans to pay attention to this because our welfare is also at stake.

CP: What do you expect to see in the future of the general horse population? Do you see holistic management and veterinary care increasing?

TT: There are improvements in the general horse population and general horse management issues worldwide. Our natural hoofcare movement has a life of its own now, and the number of people interested in having their horses trimmed has outpaced the supply, and that's great. I would rather have it that way than the other way around at this point because it just keeps pushing our level of competence and focus and passion, and willingness to share and get the word out that this is more than just a passing fad or fashion or hobby; you can make a good living working with horses and helping people learn how to respect their nature so that their horses and they can be happier, so I definitely see positive changes happening in the general horse population in the world.