Aka Dr. Brian McLaren:
“Within equine acupuncture, there are a number of different systems. Traditional equine acupuncture concentrated more on individual points by name, location, and function, and did not associate such points with the meridians with any certainty. The transpositional system widely used in Western countries is that adopted by the International Veterinary Acupuncture Society (IVAS) prior to 1992. There is also a zone system that is totally different again.
Some senior members of IVAS seem to want to relocate various points from time to time, so the points and names I provide to you may occasionally be found to be named differently in different publications. However, knowing how acupuncture works scientifically, the name becomes largely irrelevant, except as an identifier that is common between us.
The meridian system is the simplest method of learning acupuncture, as less than 1/3rd of the points on the body are on meridians (O‘Connor and Bensky 1981), and we may transpose the anatomic location and function of the human points onto the animals. This means that if a point e.g. Large Intestine 11, is in front of the end of the elbow crease in humans, the same point may be located in horses, cattle, pigs, dogs, or birds. By identifying a number of points that may be considered to be anchored at certain anatomical locations, everything else can fall in between such points. This overcomes the problem that humans have 12 ribs whereas horses have 18. If we find two points, one on each side of the last rib (regardless of the number of ribs, or species) we will find that they have the same function in all species. A point (ST 36) is located lateral to the curve in the Tibia (Schoen 1994), regardless of the fact of the rotated leg structure in all animals, when compared to man.”