What's Up Docs? Doctors' Notes: Shoulders
Mar 3, 2026
Kate Haynes, a chartered human and veterinary physiotherapist who treats people and horses, discusses shoulder health and rehabilitation. She compares human and equine shoulder anatomy and how equine work shaped her whole-body approach. Practical topics include manual therapies, muscle balance, safe overhead work, and building trust with anxious patients and animals.
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How Horse Cases Changed Human Treatment
- Kate Haynes treated both humans and animals and shifted her human practice after working with horses.
- Seeing a horse with a right hind leg problem revealed core and thoracic posture issues that affected the limb, so she treated the whole chain.
Unusual Patients Recovered With Physio
- Kate described treating small animals including a chicken and a goat with physiotherapy techniques.
- She rehabilitated a chicken with a hamstring contracture back to full mobility and helped a goat with a badly fractured hind leg.
Animals Mirror Clinician Physiology
- Horses rapidly sense human physiology and change behaviour within seconds, so practitioner's breath and heart rate matter.
- Research shows horses can pick up your heart rate within about two seconds because they are prey and herd animals.