- Aug 16, 2023
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This is because horses have barely any blood or muscles in their legs. its mostly skin, bone, and tendon.You know what they do with lame horses, right?
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Combined with the bones being huge in the absolute (lots of resources to fix), but light and tiny in comparison to the rest of the body (fragile yet must bear enormous PSI).
Then factor an absolute biological NEED to stay upright almost all the time (prolonged lying down will cause horrible damage and lead to death. Horses sleep standing up) and being too heavy to reliably do so on 3 legs... it means they simply do not heal from a broken bone. Cherry on top, the horse's instincts which will result in it rebreaking constantly as it tries to heal.
There have been many attempts. you can pour in tens of millions of dollars into a single horse, with massive amount of equipment and human labor and knowledge, invested into trying to heal a broken leg for a horse. and it just failed and the horse eventually died in horrific agony.
(there are exceptions depending on the exact nature of the injury. some injuries can heal)
However. equestrian ponies are very light, very durable, have much better ratio of legbone size to body weight, and are perfectly capable of lying down on their back to rest, and are sapient enough to understand and suppress their instincts to ensure proper healing.
All in all, they should be capable of healing a broken bone just fine
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