Hippotherapy

What causes the muscle over a horses eye to get sunk in?

I have heard that the muscle above a horses eye starts to sink in when their teath are not floated correctly. Is this the cause? What else will cause the sunken muscle? Is there a way to correct it?

Public Comments

1. the older they get the more sunken in it looks. There is nothing you can do to stop it or make it not sink in.
2. Ya know I don't have a for sure answer for you...I can say though that when I had older /aged horses the muscle above their eyes were alot more sunk in then younger horses I had. So maybe it has something to do with age??? How old is your horse?
3. I asked a vet that once. He said; it was from lack of muscle. Old age, under weight, etc...
4. That is not a muscle exactly - it is a fat pad. There is a muscle underneath the fat pad, but the part that sinks in is the fat pad itself, not the muscle. There are a lot of reasons that it can look sunken in- age can be a big factor, since when a horse ages, they tend to loose fat & body mass in general. Improper care, or just natural lack of fat there - not every horse will develop that particular fat deposit in the same way as other horses.
5. From what I can remember from university, its called the supra orbital fossa, which is simply a nice name for "hole above the eye". [Well, I think so, otherwise I'll look a complete moron :P] So all horses have them, I think it just depends on conformation. It's like us humans, we all have hip bones, some people just have more padding around those areas than others...
6. i have not heard that before. it is caused by old age as far as i know. no, there is not a way to correct it.