I just dissected a horse!

Kokopelli

Kokopelli

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It was pretty cool :)

I was learning about the muscles in the back and the spine it was so interesting, if anyone ever has the chance to do this get over your squirmyness and get in there its very interesting!

Anyone ever done this before?
 
Not a horse, but I have sat in on a PM of a chicken - I know sounds daft, but it amazed me how all the organs etc fitted in that weird shaped body! I also did snout scores on pigs and lung scores of cows! Im a sales rep now - how boring!
 
Yeah did lots of dissections at uni it was pretty good. I always thought I could never dissect a horse....because it's a horse!

For dentistry we each had a horses head and had the same head for about 4 weeks! 4 weeks of freezing then defrosting certainly doesn't help the smell. We had to name our horses for identification...I had a black shetland stallion called Sparta :)

...Never never open up a cow or sheep digestive tract!
 
Thanks for the warning about the cow and sheep :) It was very interesting you learn so much more than what you can learn from a picture but it definatly smelled bad!

I was worried about it at first but then I thought it wasn't like I was the one who killed him so kind of got over it.
 
dissected a human but not a horse. i find all this sort of thing very interesting but all the names of things are very difficult to remember!
 
jenhunt said:
I did a couple at uni - horses, dogs, cows, pigs and sheep - was fascinating and realyl enjoyed it once I stopped thinking about them being someone's horse! :(
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Thatsd what I was thinking about someone elses horse, can they do it with anyones horse or do they have to get permission off the owner?
 
Yes the horse must be donated from the owner. We had a lami dissection and the horse's owner actually sat in and she was very proud to be part of educating other horse owners on a horrible disease.
 
Pigs, sheep , cows, horses, you name it we chopped it up at uni! Usually if horses are euthanased at a university to be used in dissection or for teaching purposes, obviously the owner has given permission (!). Generally, the relevant 'bits' are collected from the nearest abbatoir, with several tonnes of paper work. The number of owners consenting for their horse to be euthanased and used for teaching or research is quite low, unfortunately but understandibly.
 
Horsecrazy- Oh rather exciting :) Its very interesting just try and think its not a horse and you don't feel to bad :p

tobys- No way an actual human, what was that like?
 
I did a horse's leg if that counts?

Was very interesting, but the smell made me gag somewhat. Doing reproductive tracts next time - I'm reliably informed these smell 10 times worse! :eek:
 
When I'm at uni, I think dissecting greyhounds is going to bother me more than dissecting horses for some reason. Just hate the idea of all the ex-racers ending up on their tables :( At least the majority of horses used will have led better lives.
 
Think thats amazing to dissect a horse, just think how it will help you self diagnosing injury etc. I know its gory but would love to sit in on autopsy, person or horse, like to learn and find it fascinating. Fav programme Silent Witness!! :D
 
with a human i found that there had been that much preservation done that the skin & that no longer looked normal so it didnt look like they had just died which made it easier (my body had been dead about a year when i got him). The time it hit me that it was a real human was when we had to go to his funeral at the end of our dissection. We had had him for a year so seemed strange to say good bye to a person i had only known since death. was strange to hear his real name though, nothing like the one we had given him! i think it is a really honourable thing to do.
 
I've done a pigs digestive tract and a horse - well the front leg of a horse. All very interesting, and to my surprise I got over the smell quickly and got 'stuck in' - excuse the pun.
So, if I wanted to donate my horse to ''science'', how do I go about it and would it cost me? (Iam talking future here, not now.)
 
like Sally87, it's been well preserved so isn't quite like seeing a 'fresh' one like on silent witness!
It was weird at first but in hindsight, having been in theatres now, it's not at all bad!
Alot of respect to be had to the people who gave themselves to research along with horse owners too, it's a worthwhile and thoughtful thing to do.

Makes me laugh that my cat brought in a dead mouse today and I screamed the house down and ran away!
 
No, but the other year I was at a big equestrian expo here in Berlin and they had a horse's digestive system in a water-filled paddling pool, complete with bubbling water filter and fake bull rushes at the edge – nice touch, that. Bleeuuuuurgh!
 
It's most interesting isn't it??!! I sat in on a post mortem of a 4 months gone pregnant mare - turned out she died of a brain anuerysm, but a fascinating insight. I also sit in on chicken PM's too...!!
 
sally87 said:
The time it hit me that it was a real human was when we had to go to his funeral at the end of our dissection. We had had him for a year so seemed strange to say good bye to a person i had only known since death. was strange to hear his real name though, nothing like the one we had given him! i think it is a really honourable thing to do.
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That is good, and respectful. I can understand it being odd - I mean, you can't exactly swap memories with the relatives, can you!
I've supervised and assisted at countless human PMs - found them fascinating, especially the more "unusual" shall, we say, deaths. I found the only time the smell was really grim was the digestive system etc, or if the body was old/unpreserved when we got it. I used to keep Karvol capsules on me, always, just in case - they work wonders on a bit of tissue discreetly held under your nose. Or Vick. Or breath through your mouth, not nose.
Having done humans, I think I could deal with horses, as long as it wasn't one I knew.
 
i dissected a mouldy horse leg once so it smelt even worse and where it had gone off it was impossible to just slice with the scalpel so i had to hack away at the poor thing!!
 
Naturally said:
I did a horse's leg if that counts?

Was very interesting, but the smell made me gag somewhat. Doing reproductive tracts next time - I'm reliably informed these smell 10 times worse! :eek:
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Yep reproductive tracts smell vile, even our lecturer had to cover his nose. We did a horse head dissection as were studying brain function which was very interesting. Unfortunately I came over all queasy half way through, went outside to throw up, then came back in and watched the rest. most unlike me!

Its great when you get to dissect legs and play about with the muscles and tendons to see how the actually work.
 
I've done both front legs of a horse - and prepared both for mounting as comparative specimens. One was prepped by leaving it in the open to be "cleaned" which took ages, I parked it on the caravan roof up at my field where the people going past on the train could see it. One morning I found it lying in the field, heaven knows what managed to get up there and take a leg down!

The other had to be prepped by boiling. Boiling elderly horse smells revolting so I chopped up a couple of onions, some carrots and bunged them in with it together with some bayleaves, peppercorns and juniper berries and left it simmering on the Rayburn for a couple of days. It didn't smell good but it smelt a heck of a lot better than it had done.

We've also dissected - well, butchered- a number of sheep, pigs and cows in the kitchen at home under the supervision of our butcher. I've had various kids who wanted to be vets or doctors come in to see what the inside of a body looks like, how it all fits together etc and they've all found it fascinating. The latest in the piggy "volunteers" hits the kitchen this Sunday!
 
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