Horse Tech

Dec 25, 2017 | Exercise

Tuesdays with Tony

Let me begin by saying I hope you all had a very Merry Christmas. It’s my favorite holiday. What more could a cat ask for than shiny things on a tree followed by empty boxes and wadded up paper? I realize you humans have lots of holidays, for lots of different things, but this one gets my vote as best.

Moving on to an actual topic: Horse Tech. Dr. Lacher has an obsession with technology. She may not have all of it she wants, but she sure researches the heck out of it. So without further idle chit-chat, I bring you a few of her favorite things.

FitBit for Horse

There are four or five companies working on slightly different versions of the fitbit for horses. Equisense, SeeHorse, Orscana, and Trackener are just a few. The main drawback they all have at the moment is they work on one part of your horse’s life. They either are designed for use during work, or while they are hanging out, but not really both. We all love our fitness trackers because they tell us about our entire day. It would be great to know you rode your horse for 3 miles, and he did another 7 in the pasture last night. For the record, there will never be a fitness tracker for cats for obvious reasons.

These trackers do have some pretty cool things that they track. They can tell you how “even” your horse moves from right to left, they can tell you how much time you spent at the walk, trot, and canter, how you did on take-off distances for jumpers, and even how your horse compares today to his “normal.” Using some of these features, they found that you humans are really bad at knowing how much work you’ve actually done on your horse. Humans underestimated the time they had spent on walk breaks by 50%. And you think cats lay around all the time!

Equilume

If you breed mares and want early babies, you know the struggle of mares under lights. You need them in the stall until 9:30 – 10pm every night, they think that’s stupid, and you wonder if the light is bright enough.

Enter Equilume. They did the work to prove that a blue light shining in one eye at a certain brightness for a certain amount of hours worked as well as being in a stall. Then they took that light and put it on a racehorse hood. Voila! Your mare can hang out in a field with her friends, with a light shining in one eye. Because that light is blue, and only on one eye, she can still see all she needs to see.

Bonus feature: just this year they found that mares wearing the hood who were due to foal early in the season had bigger, stronger, healthier babies than mares on the same farm not wearing the hood. Biggest downside of Equilume is the cost (around $500) for something that can only be used for one season. I imagine that like all tech it will improve and get cheaper as time goes on. I also know that some of you would pay a lot more than $500 to not have your mare in a stall.

Horsepal

Can’t decide how many clothes your horse wants to wear tonight? I’m going to tell you, it’s fewer than you think. I find you humans are always cold compared to those of us with a fur coat. I digress. Turns out there’s an App (and a sensor) for that. Horseware Ireland, being a manufacturer of some of the best blankets on the planet, found out that lots of people have that same question, so they made Horsepal.

This is a small sensor that fits inside your horse’s blanket and checks temperature and humidity. Using that information, the Horsepal app tells you if your horse is likely too hot, too cold, or just right. The App links weather from your area and compiles past data for your horse so over time you can figure out which clothes will be best for what weather. Downside: it can’t send that data to you from the field, but it does store three days worth of data for you to download and review. I’m also not sure how useful this is in Florida, but I do think it gets cool points for helping you humans know how your horses are feeling in the field at 2 am.

KurtSystems

I’m including this one simply because it’s just so dang amazing! Seriously, when you humans put your mind to something, it’s unbelievable what you can do. The inventors of this system were trying to come up with a way to pre-train baby thoroughbreds. They looked at the research out there and found that if you could put babies through a build-up fitness program before you put a rider on them, you had fewer career (and even life) -ending injuries. But how do you do that?

Their solution certainly isn’t cheap, but it is pretty spectacular. The KurtSystem is basically a big monorail system for horses. They use this to start training horses on a track-size area (so way bigger than a roundpen) with no weight. The horses start with slow speeds and short distances and work up over 6 months to faster speeds (still not racing fast), longer distances, and even a bit of weight (around 70 pounds). The goal is to create horses who have some level of fitness, and an understanding of how to do their job before adding a floppy human to the whole system. It seems balancing you humans is really hard work! While I’m certain this won’t be a feature in every barn, it’s cool to geek out on it and to see someone trying so hard to prevent injuries in young thoroughbreds.

What’s your horse tech dream for 2018? My tech dream is a button I push to open the door. Although, I’ll admit, it is fun to watch my staff open and close and open and close it for me. Now scroll a little further down the page, enter your email, and subscribe to my blog. It will make you a better human.

Tuesdays with Tony is the official blog of Tony the Clinic Cat at Springhill Equine Veterinary Clinic in Newberry, Florida. If you liked this blog, please subscribe below, and share it with your friends on social media! For more information, please call us at (352) 472-1620, visit our website at SpringhillEquine.com, or follow us on Facebook!

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Eye Injuries

Dec 18, 2017 | Eyes

Tuesdays with Tony

As we get into the Christmas spirit, it seems horses can sense the strain on your wallet from all that shopping. As a cat I’m a little more conscientious about such things, of course, but horses get some sort of evil pleasure from making their owners squirm.

Every Eye Injury is an Emergency

If you are a horse, one easy way to rack up a big vet bill in a short amount of time is by poking something in your eye. Remember that eye injuries are always an emergency, and the more time that passes before the right medication is initiated, the more expensive they can be to treat.

Corneal Ulcer

This is the most common eye injury in horses, but it can be just the tip of the iceberg. The cornea is the clear outermost layer of the eye that you see through. Puncture wounds, abrasions, and other forms of trauma can cause a break in this layer. Usually these “simple” ulcers will heal just with a few days of triple antibiotic ointment. However, any break in this protective outer layer creates the opportunity for infection. Uh-oh.

Stromal Abscess

When a corneal ulcer gets infected by any of the bacteria or fungus that exists in our lovely Florida soil, it becomes a ‘complicated’ ulcer. What often happens at this stage is the outer layer of cornea heals over, trapping the infection beneath. This is called a stromal abscess, which takes on average 8 weeks of medicating the eye 4 times a day to heal! No fun. A Stromal abscess can often be prevented by early treatment of a Corneal Ulcer. That’s why all eye injuries are an emergency! That, and….

Iris Prolapse

Certain types of fungus that can infect corneal ulcers actually cause the cornea to ‘melt.’ The fancy medical term for this is keratomalacia, which would be great to use in a game of Scrabble! Melting corneal ulcers are the worst of the worst. If left untreated, they can cause iris prolapse, or rupture of the eye. It is every bit as gross as it sounds. Basically, the ooey gooey insides of the eye leak out through the hole in the cornea, until the iris (the part that gives the eye it’s color) blocks the hole. This requires emergency conjunctival graft surgery or enucleation (removal of the eye) to treat. This is definitely not something you want to make your horse endure due to your inaction.

An Ounce of Prevention

You can’t really protect your horse 100% from everything, because they’re a lot like cats in their ability to find a way to cause mischief. However, you can go a long way towards preventing eye injuries (injuries in general, really) by doing a few simple things. First, make sure they don’t have something sharp to scratch on. Check your stalls and fences regularly for nails and broken boards. Broken tree branches are another favorite scratching point. Also, don’t put your horses out with things like rusted-out car bodies, tractor implements, falling-down structures, and things like that. Just because your neighbor’s horse made it in that type of environment for 20 years is no guarantee that yours will.

A quality fly mask can also prevent many eye injuries. Gnats and flies are a major cause of itchy eyes, so keeping them away is a huge help. The mask itself will also keep most scratching sessions from becoming eye injuries. It’s a lot cheaper to buy a new fly mask every year than it is to treat an eye injury. Do your horse (and yourself) a favor, and cover it up!

The moral of the story

If your horse has a squinty, tearing, swollen, or otherwise weird-looking eye, don’t waste any time getting one of our amazing docs to check it out! Quick treatment can make a huge difference in whether or not your horse loses an eye, and it can also be the difference between hundreds of dollars and thousands of dollars. I’m a professional risk-taking cat, and I’m here to tell you: Don’t take risks with your horse’s eyes! There’s nothing to gain, and everything to lose.

Until next week,

-Tony

Tuesdays with Tony is the official blog of Tony the Clinic Cat at Springhill Equine Veterinary Clinic in Newberry, Florida. If you liked this blog, please subscribe below, and share it with your friends on social media! For more information, please call us at (352) 472-1620, visit our website at SpringhillEquine.com, or follow us on Facebook!

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Let’s Go Horse Show!

Dec 11, 2017 | Competition Horses

Tuesdays with Tony

I hear this thing called ‘competition season’ is approaching. As a cat, I compete with no one. I am perfection, and I know it. However, I understand things are different in your world. You humans have a thing called horse shows, where you compete for who has the prettiest browband, most silver on their saddle, or most expensive outfit. No wait, that’s not true. You compete for who has the best horse! Oftentimes the most important competition, however, is the one between your current self and your past self. Can you make today’s performance better than your last one? Yep, that was a deeply profound statement from a cat. I am a keen observer of the human psyche, even if it looks like I’m sound asleep most of the time. To prepare you humans for the upcoming competition season, I have prepared Tony’s guide to getting the best performance ever.

Goals

Go find a mirror. They’re everywhere. You can even point your phone at yourself and hit the record button if needed. Now, look deep into your eyes and honestly determine your goals for the next year to 18 months. But how do I know if it’s an appropriate goal, Tony? Good question. Goals ask us to stretch ourselves out of our comfort zone. Improve upon what we’ve got now, but not go to the impossible. For example, if you and Spot are currently working on how to trot a 20 meter circle, then making the Olympic Dressage Team in the next 12-18 months is probably unrealistic. However, scoring a 65% on a training level test at a recognized show is an excellent goal. Goals must be something you can achieve, or they will annihilate your willingness to try.

I got skills!

I’ve got a goal, I’m good to go. One year from now I will have achieved my goal because I said I have a goal. Yeah, that’s not how that works. Look at your goal. For simplicity (you humans are a simple species), I’m going to stick with the dressage thing. Your goal is to score a 65%. Make a list of the skills needed to achieve a 65% at training level. What are you great at? What do you really, really need to work at? If you can nail a halt from the walk, trot, or canter, don’t spend a whole lot of time on that. If your 20 meter circle looks like something a 2-year-old drew with their eyes closed, you should spend lots and lots of time working on geometry! Making a list of what you rock, what you are OK at, and what you really, really need to work on will help you see how best to achieve your goal.

Get Help

I mean this in every sense of the word. If you are reading this, chances are you’re a crazy horse person. This means you should probably get some counseling. If you are still reading this, you have now identified some skills you need to improve. Get help to improve them. Go to a clinic, find a trainer, seek out a friend who’s riding skills you admire. Chances are good you aren’t the only one who has trouble with that skill. In our dressage example, riding round circles is really hard. Talk to your trainer (or friend) about where your difficulties lie. Tell a clinician you seem to prefer abstract circles to the round variety, and ask if they have any help for this issue. Keep your eye on that goal. Don’t get distracted and work on your already amazing halts over and over and over again. Work on the things that are holding you back. Practice what you’re bad at.

Keep the Pressure On

When I tell you this next step, I want you to remember this blog is free. That’s right, I give you all this amazing cat wisdom for free. This may be the most important step: Find someone who will hold you accountable. It can be a horse friend, a trainer, a Facebook friend, (probably not your spouse) anyone that will listen to your progress from the previous 10-14 days, your outline for the next 10-14 days, and not cut you any slack on excuses for not achieving. This person will help you ride when it’s dark, cold, and/or raining outside. This person will push you to do more that you ever thought you could. And the best part? You can do the same for them!

No excuses, humans! The weather is great for riding. We have access to amazing talent in Florida for the winter in pretty much every discipline you can do with a horse! The only thing holding you back is you.

Until next week,

~Tony

P.S. Don’t want to worry about keeping your horse healthy while you two are achieving these amazing things? Sign up for a Wellness Plan now! Save money, have a happy horse, enjoy more time. Click here before our limited slots are gone.

Tuesdays with Tony is the official blog of Tony the Clinic Cat at Springhill Equine Veterinary Clinic in Newberry, Florida. If you liked this blog, please subscribe below, and share it with your friends on social media! For more information, please call us at (352) 472-1620, visit our website at SpringhillEquine.com, or follow us on Facebook!

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Poisonous Plants

Dec 4, 2017 | Poisonous Plants

Tuesdays with Tony

Poisonous Plants

Plants are delicious. Who doesn’t love to chow down on a plant the humans have carefully placed for decorative purposes? I know I do. I have learned, however, that not all plants are safe for eating. This rule applies to cats, dogs, and horses. This week I’m going to educate you humans on the top 5 poisonous plants in the horse world.

Quick dog and cat tip before I begin: Easter lilies are deadly to cats in very, very small amounts, and Coonti palms work the same way for dogs.

Red Maple

While beautiful, Red Maple trees are very, very bad for horses. Eating as little as 2 pounds of Red Maple leaves will cause toxicity in horses. Like many plants, wilted leaves contain the most toxin. The toxin, gallic acid, causes the body to attack and kill the red blood cells. This makes the blood unable to carry oxygen. Horses are affected within about 24 hours of eating. They become extremely depressed, and may even have blue mucous membranes. They will also urinate red or dark brown urine. There aren’t great treatment options for this toxin. The Docs give them lots, and lots, and I mean lots, of IV fluids. If they make it 36 hours, it’s very likely they will recover.

Since poisonous plants pretty much all look alike to me, I have included a pictures of these various plants.

Creeping Indigo

This is one horrible poisonous plant, and ‘Creeping’ is the key word. It creeps along very close to the ground, making it really hard to find. Creeping Indigo also spreads by long, hard-to-pull roots and seeds making it difficult to fully kill in one round. This plant makes you go to full-on war. Horses need to eat around 10 pounds of creeping indigo daily for about 14 days to develop signs. That seems like a lot, but some horses develop a taste for this weed and seek it out! The toxins are 3-nitropropionic acid (3-NPA) and indospicine. These toxins attack the nervous system in many weird ways. That means the symptoms of Creeping Indigo toxicity are difficult at best to figure out. They can vary from runny, squinting eyes, sleepiness, nystagmus (this is the fancy term for eyes wiggling back and forth), gait abnormalities, and mild colic-type signs. Yep, a wide variety. To add to the joy that is Creeping Indigo, there are no lab tests to identify the toxin, and no real way to know if it’s the cause of the problem. Special tests on tissue taken after an animal has passed away can identify the toxin.

Here’s a picture of Creeping Indigo to help you identify it, with chapstick container for size reference. It will die if you spray it with Grazon, or other similar products, but you MUST pull up the dead plants since the seeds are still viable! The ways to hate Creeping Indigo are many.

Crotalaria

Crotalaria is commonly known as rattlepods or rattlebox, due to the sound of the seeds rattling in their pods. This one suckers you in with pretty flowers, then BAM! Your liver gets annihilated. This plant really starts growing in late summer. It like damp places, such as the area around the water buckets or troughs in your pasture.

It has big broad leaves with a spike of small yellow flowers, and commonly grows to 4′ in height. Luckily, crotalaria tastes very bitter, so unless animals are starving, they usually won’t eat it. Interestingly, some less-toxic strains of this plant are consumed by humans in various places around the world. It just proves my point that some people will eat anything.

This one will happily die with pretty much any plant killer, but it does like to come back every Fall.

Oleander

This plant often gets planted as a decorative hedge. Horses think decorative hedges have been placed for snacking purposes. One mouthful of this hedge is enough to cause problems! In humans, a very small amount is enough to kill. The toxins in oleander are powerful cardiac poisons like digitoxigenin, and oleandrin. They target the heart muscle and cause it to die. Horses that eat oleander can show signs from poor performance to extreme lethargy depending on how much they ate. All I have to say about this one is don’t plant it in first place. If you do have oleander, be very, very careful removing it. All it takes is some sap in a small skin wound to cause problems with human hearts!

Nightshade

Last of the horrible Top 5 poisonous plants is nightshade. This fun little guy loves to grow along fence lines. Long ago, crazy humans used the plant to dilate their eyes since they thought it looked good. The main toxin in nightshade is atropine. My Docs use it as a drug in its purified form. If your horse eats nightshade they will experience fun things like diarrhea, nervousness, irregular heartbeat, and extreme sensitivity to light. Luckily this guy also doesn’t taste very good. Keeping plenty of hay in front of your horses is a great way to keep them from checking out nightshade to see if it’s tasty. Most of the time this one can be treated with time. The easiest way to get rid of it is to check your fence lines regularly and simply pull them up.

Poisonous plants are no joking matter. The best way to know what you’ve got? Call your County Extension Service and have them come walk your property. County Extension Agents are full of all kinds of useful knowledge about plants and grass. Best of all, they are part of your tax dollars at work!

Tuesdays with Tony is the official blog of Tony the Clinic Cat at Springhill Equine Veterinary Clinic in Newberry, Florida. If you liked this blog, please subscribe below, and share it with your friends on social media! For more information, please call us at (352) 472-1620, visit our website at SpringhillEquine.com, or follow us on Facebook!

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← Fencing Let's Go Horse Show! →

Fencing

Nov 27, 2017 | Fencing

Tuesdays with Tony

The docs have seen a lot of fencing-related injuries recently, so I have been tasked with educating you humans about the best way to keep your horses safely where you want them. Cats, as a rule, don’t exactly have boundaries, so I’m not sure I’m the best one to school you on this topic. However, I do know which type of horse fencing causes the most injuries that I see here in the clinic, and I overhear a lot of chit-chat regarding the do’s and dont’s of containing your equine companions. Here are the top 3 factors I would consider when choosing fencing for an accident-prone horse (which, as we know, is all of them).

Safety

We all know that horses are constantly looking for new and creative ways to injure themselves, and often they use their immediate enclosure as a means to achieve this end. But, with a little foresight, you can interfere with their self-destructive plan. My two favorite vets agree that barbed wire is not acceptable fence material for horses. Horses do not equal cows; their skin is not as thick, and their fight-or-flight instinct is much stronger. If a horse finds himself tangled in wire, he will immediately struggle and pull until he frees himself, even if that means leaving most of the skin from his legs behind. A cow, on the other hand, would probably just sit there and chew his cud until someone came out to feed the next morning.

That being said, plain wire is the number one source of fencing-related injuries I see here at the clinic. While it may seem harmless, it is difficult for horses to see (especially when running, in the dark, away from one of those invisible monsters). Wire fencing also tends to coil when broken (or when sitting in a pile prior to installation). Horses find these coils of wire particularly enticing as holes in which to place their limbs. “Goat wire” fencing is fine, but keep in mind that small rectangles are preferable over hoof-sized squares. Tip: Horses don’t like electricity! An electric wire around the top of your fencing will make almost any fence a safer fence.

Height

The height of your fencing should be determined by the animals you are attempting to contain. For example, if you have a Warmblood stallion who has a career as a jumper, you probably want at least 5’ electric fence on all sides. However, if you are planning on confining curious foals or adventurous minis, you may opt for wooden planks that start just a few inches off the ground. In addition to the size of your equid, you must also consider his temperament. Is your horse one to stick his leg or head through a gate made from a round pen panel, or is he smarter than that? I know I am, but we have previously established that cats are the superior species.

Practicality

You are probably thinking, “that’s all fine and good, oh wise Tony The Magnificent, but I can’t afford miles of immaculate fencing like you see lining the roads of Lexington.” That’s OK! Good, safe fencing doesn’t have to be super-expensive, and it doesn’t have to be pretty. Instead of a 4-board wooden fence, consider wooden posts with goat wire between. If you want your fencing to hold up longer, try installing a strip of electric tape along the top to deter your horses from stretching over the top to graze, pick leaves from the trees, or scratch their necks. If you choose electric fencing, consider the solar powered version (with electric back-up) to save on your electric bill each month.

I know you are all going to go right home and fix your fencing now. But just in case you have one of those horses who finds ways to hurt himself despite your best efforts at accident prevention, remember that Springhill Equine is available 24/7 for your emergencies! Any day, any time, including weekends and holidays, you will reach a real live vet on-call through our emergency hotline: (352) 474-5007. Not that you will need it now, all thanks to me!

-Tony

Tuesdays with Tony is the official blog of Tony the Clinic Cat at Springhill Equine Veterinary Clinic in Newberry, Florida. If you liked this blog, please subscribe below, and share it with your friends on social media! For more information, please call us at (352) 472-1620, visit our website at SpringhillEquine.com, or follow us on Facebook!