How much translation is needed?

I've been working on a tantrum lately about how little the animal body therapy world is doing to develop itself as a unique industry. Rather than approaching the quadruped's body and mind as unique and requiring it's own approach, we too often just take the work being done with humans and assume that they'll work with animals--by this I mean animal quadrupeds.
In the past I worried that animal massage therapists were simply taking human techniques and applying them to animals without any translation for the structural and nervous control differences of between the species. Anthropomorphism in body therapy if you will. This even goes so far as to have the ridiculous measure of time--a marketing measure, not a therapeutic one--applied to the animal in the same way it is to the human. I mean where did 1 hour come about as anything more than a possible way to sell oneself? Chiropractors don't sell their services by time! Neither do medical doctors or dentists or farriers... but the animal therapist copying the human therapist sells their services by the hour, rather than the benefit or by surface area of the animal. OR, perhaps more appropriately the animal's ability to remain focused on the work.
The latest contribution to my tantrum is an article I read on "Pilates" for horses. This was a report on how one of my favorite researchers has fallen into the trance of thinking that work developed for humans--in this case core stabilization, which I'm not sure about--can be used with horses with translation. This requires that the quadruped's transverse abdominus acts the same in both species. The the quadrupedal "core" is the same as the human "core". (It seems to this simpe Rolfer that standing on two legs is more difficult than standing on four, and that human back pain may be caused by a completely different action than bi-pedal pain is.)
I'm really concerned that unless we animal therapists start to do our own research and develop our own methods that we'll be marginalized.
It's time to feed the horses and walk in the mud.

Caution Pay Attention

I just finished instructing an basic myofascial equine course. We worked with horses at the Colorado Horse Rescue (CHR). The staff at CHR picked a number of horses, two per student, for us to work with, when I spotted one that I actually liked the look of. It turns out that this horse was a "surrender", which means that the people the had it previously gave it up voluntarily for some reason. The horse had a very bad wind sucking addiction, the horse would crib on every wooden post in the pasture. When I inquired about the horse to the manager of the day I was told he had a vicious habit of biting people.
In the fifteen years I've been rolfing horses I've drifted towards wanting to work with horses, or dogs, that are more "challenged" in their relationship to humans than to those that are simply having performance problems. So, the next day we brought out this troubled horse to work with him. When working these kinds of horses it's imperative that one be fully aware of what is happening. I like to work with them alone, in a round pen is best, with the handler outside the pen so I can fully concentrate on the horse.
I worked with the horse for two sessiosn with no real attitude problems. There were a couple of minor bucks when I tried to work around a vertebral subluxation, but nothing too dramatic.
By the third session the horse came up to the pasture gate to meet me when I went out to get him. I was really confident that he was sooo much better that I stopped paying attention to him as a potentially dangerous horse and worked on his back. It happened with lightening speed, all I felt was the teeth racking my back. Luckily--this is actually a terrible thing to say--the horse had cribbed so much that he had worn his teeth down to knubs and what I felt on my back was the knubs scratching my back. It was actually kind of pleasant. There was no aggression in what this horse did, it was just his way of protecting himself, and when it was over I, assisted by one of the students who is very fine horseman, was able to continue to work with the horses back, no more trouble.
Ok, a little more trouble came when I decided to work with the horse's adductors in a way I never work with them and I got a lightning face kick to the lower leg. It sounded horrendous, but didn't really hurt that much and in fact I don't even have a mark on my leg--thick boned Italian.
The point I want to make is that horses are fast and their size relative to us makes them dangerous. We need to always be aware of where we are with them and what they are telling us.
In 15 years I've been bit twice now and kicked twice, by two horses not a bad record, but I would prefer that it was still at one time instead of two.
Be aware and be careful.