The Equine Spine

The Mobile Spine A mobile spine is not always a good spine. We talk about the horse having a soft […]

I had a great question at one of my clinics about the spinal cord so I whipped this up to better show what we were talking about. Someone noticed that the foramen (hole) in the atlas (first cervical vertebrae which attaches to the skull) was very large and asked if the spinal cord takes up the whole space. And the answer is no, the reason it is very large is to allow for the large range of motion (mostly lateral) of the atlas and axis joint, without interfering with the spinal cord. The even cooler part is that the spinal cord is actually suspended in its own little fascial sling (which you can see in this cross section taken slightly lower down the cervical spine, from Essentials of Clinical anatomy of the Equine Locomotor System, by Jean-Marie Denoix), so that when rotation occurs between the atlas and axis the spinal cord doesn’t get twisted. You can imagine the implications if there is any damage to this part of the joint. An issue can be a narrowing of the foramen which can put pressure on the spinal cord, we commonly name this condition Wobblers Syndrome.