May 31, 2016 | Exercise, Heat, Sweating/ Not sweating
I know my adoring fans are used to hearing me talk about blood, manure, urine, and infections. But today I am going to discuss one of the lesser blogged about bodily fluids of horses: sweat. I often see horses come through the clinic that are as sweaty as Steven Avery in Ken Kratz’s fake murder narrative (yes, I watched a lot of Netflix over Memorial Day Weekend). Sometimes I hear owners complain about their sweaty equid, questioning whether he could perhaps be sweating too much? The answer is a resounding NO! Remember folks, if you are a horse, sweating is definitely a good thing!
Horses need to sweat to cool off (another bad design in my estimation). We cats, being superior and well, clean, never sweat. We simply pant if we get overheated, or preferably just lay in the air conditioning all day. Where horses run into trouble is when their sweating mechanisms fail. This usually occurs due to chronic over-stimulation of sweat glands in warmer climates (i.e. Florida). Stress is also thought to play a role, but the source of stress can be as simple as hot weather! Ironic, right? Hot weather causes horses to stress out which makes them stop sweating which makes them even hotter. NOT the smartest species, obviously.
If you have a horse with anhidrosis, the technical term for non-sweating, you probably already know it. Look for signs like dry skin after a hard ride, sweating in patches instead of all over, increased breathing rate, and acting slow or lethargic in hot weather. If you suspect your horse may be a non-sweater, give our docs a call so they can check him out. Anhidrosis can lead to overheating. A temperature over 102.5 is always abnormal, and once it gets much higher horses are at risk of heatstroke and thermal damage. Yikes!
So, what can you do if your horse becomes a non-sweater or partial non-sweater? Most importantly, cool them off! This should go without saying, but if your horse is unable to sweat, you probably shouldn’t ride him for an hour outside at 2pm in July in Florida. Even a cat knows that. Try to ride in the early mornings or late evenings during the summer months, and if your horse begins to get overheated, cool him off as soon as possible with a bath, fans, shade, and cool water to drink.
There are several supplements available to treat anhidrosis as well, such as One AC, Platinum Refresh, and beer (yes, the alcoholic kind). Talk to the docs for their recommendation on what would be best for your horse. Hopefully horses will someday see the wisdom in my ways and learn to pant to cool off. Until then remember, sweat may be gross but it is more crucial than evidence in the Making A Murderer trial! Sorry, the Netflix…
Until next week!
-Tony
May 24, 2016 | Abscesses, Lameness, Leg issues
Ah May…It’s hot and dry, then we get rain, then it’s beautiful out but dry. Last year was weird with all the rain. This year seems more like the days I remember as a young kitten. Turns out this weather is fantastic for making hoof abscesses. And while those are fun for the Docs (they have an unnatural love for pus), they are no fun for you or your horse.
I realize I talk about the stupid design of horses a lot, and here I go again. That hard hoof wall is great for walking on but it makes it extremely painful if there is any swelling of the soft tissues inside. Hoof abscesses form when a tiny bit of bacteria get between the hoof wall and those soft tissues. The body reacts to the bacteria by sending white blood cells to kill the bacteria, and, Voila!, pus. The white blood cells also release some chemicals which cause swelling and pain all on their own. All that extra stuff stuck underneath the hoof wall hurts worse than whacking your thumb with a hammer. I do love when humans do that. I laugh every time.
Abscesses usually make their presence very well known. Much like when I sleep on the computer keyboard, you can’t help but notice your horse is not right. It may start as a limp on one leg, however, they always progress to “Holy Cow I can’t stand on my foot!” Once they reach the Holy Cow stage they are ready to be opened. You can get them to this stage faster by soaking the foot daily in warm Epsom salts for 5-10 minutes. This often goes about as well as bathing a cat so may I suggest the baby diaper method. Take one baby diaper (Newborn – size 3 depending on the size of your horses hoof), place a small amount of Epsom salts in the baby butt area, add enough water to make it pasty, place diaper on foot, securing convenient tabs around the pastern while you grab duct tape, run duct tape across the bottom and around the hoof to secure the diaper. Change this daily.
Our Docs can help the whole abscess process get done and over quicker. The closer your horse is to the Holy Cow it hurts stage the more likely they are to open the abscess. Dr. Lacher or Dr. Vurgason will start by cleaning the bottom of the hoof, then applying hoof testers. Hoof testers are these incredibly barbaric pinchy things that help the Docs find the sorest spot on the hoof. Once they find it they will use a hoof knife to pare the hoof away and open up the affected area. They will dig a bit but don’t be surprised if they stop before they open up the abscess. This can be tricky thing. If you dig too deep you can create more problems so the Docs tend to be very conservative. Like I said earlier, they do love to pop an abscess so rest assured they are going to try as hard as they can to get it opened.
The good news with abscesses is that, almost always, once they are opened and drained your horse will return to happy and comfortable. And now back to napping in the sun in the handicapped parking spot. Pretty sure they put that there for me.
May 17, 2016 | Vaccines
Brief activity announcement to start this week: There will be a meet Tony opportunity on Thursday beginning at 6:30pm at the Clinic. Once everyone has seen me, there will be a talk on horse food. You may continue to pet me during the talk, in fact I encourage it.
This is a cat on a soap box. Literally, and figuratively. A report came out this week about a horse with Eastern Equine Encephalitis (EEE). This was a young, happy, healthy horse that never got vaccinated. Now it is a dead horse. Horses look for expensive ways to die every day. They get their feet caught in wires and require thousands of dollars in repair and bandaging. They colic and need surgery. They decide to become lame for no apparent reason.
EEE is not one of these things. This vaccine costs $20. I went on the internet (thank you again to Aaron Vurgason and Oakridge Electric. It’s very quick!!) and looked up some things I could buy for $20. Amazon had a label maker for $15.99, a gun and target alarm clock for $19.62, bacon toothpaste for $6.61 so I could get three of those, a Lifestraw that lets you drink nasty water safely for $19.99, and a pop up hot dog AND bun toaster for $19.99. While all these things are amazing, the only one that might save your life is the straw. So $20 to keep your horse alive and well! It’s a no-brainer.
Now we all know you can find vaccines and give them yourself. Here’s my top 5 reasons that’s not a great plan:
- Our vaccines are carefully managed from the time they leave the manufacturer to the time they arrive in your horse. Our distributers are very careful to follow all label directions for temperature management of the vaccines, our staff does the same once it arrives at our door, and we carefully monitor vaccine handling while drawing up and waiting to give them. This is especially important in the summer around these parts.
- More than just a vaccine happens when one of our esteemed Docs shows up. They are doing WAY more than you realize. From the moment they pull in they are evaluating your farm and your horse for any potential health issues you may not even know about. Just having them look at your horse is totally worth $20.
- The vaccine maker will stand behind any vaccine given by our Docs. Nothing is 100%. If you horse does get sick or has an unusual reaction to the vaccine, the manufacturer will pay for treatment if we give the vaccine.
- Is your horse bad about shots? There is no one better than our Docs and technicians at making shots an enjoyable experience for your horse. We go through 50 pounds of horse treats every 2 weeks around here!
- Our vets will choose the right combination of vaccines for your horse’s lifestyle.
Horses in Florida are particularly susceptible to EEE and West Nile Virus since we have mosquitoes all the time. Foals can be even more vulnerable since their immune system depends on mom’s milk for the first 4-5 months. Once they reach 5 months of age foals should start on a series of vaccines to get them well protected. Trust me when I say you really, really want Springhill Equine to give your foals their vaccines. They are squirrely little suckers!
Get those horses vaccinated! Until next week…..
May 10, 2016 | Competition Horses, Events, Exercise, Leg issues
This past weekend was my opportunity to thank a select group of my fans: Our Wellness Plan Participants. Every year, on the first Saturday in May, we gather around a shrine called a TV to watch some horses run around in a large circle to the left. There is much fanfare, wearing of some very strange hats, good food, good times, and adoration of Tony. After all the partying died down, I hit the computer on our new faster internet connection and researched this crazy thing called Thoroughbred racing.
As someone who is not very fond of exercise, I found this running thing a bit much. When I found out these horses are only three years old, I thought that seemed like a bad plan. Then a rare thing happened: I was wrong. It doesn’t happen often in the cat world, but if you felt a shudder of the earth, or a sudden chill on Saturday evening around 10pm, that was a cat being wrong. I found numerous well-designed research papers on the influence of early exercise in thoroughbred racehorses. Training as a two year old was directly correlated with a longer career as a racehorse. The horses didn’t necessarily have to race, just being in race training was enough to cause a positive effect. Based on my research, this effect is due to remodeling of lots of structures in the leg due to exercise. The cannon bone, tendons, and ligaments were all found to be stronger when exercise was started at 2 years as opposed to 3 years. In fact, there are studies which show that exercise started as early as 21 days of age didn’t cause developmental issues. I will say that these horses were exercised under very exacting schedules designed to allow the tendons, ligaments, and bone to adapt. Another aspect I found interesting was that the comparison group of foals were allowed free range pasture access. This wasn’t standing in a stall compared to exercising. This was turnout compared to exercising. Made this cat think….
While researching the young horse exercise thing, I found a lot of discussions about racehorses breaking those ridiculously-designed legs they run on. I mean, who designed the “run fast on four sticks” system? Just by its very nature it is bound to break sometimes. I did find out that there are some very interesting reasons racehorses break their legs the way they do and learned about research by veterinarians to try to prevent these fractures. One of the biggest issues trainers, riders, and veterinarians face is the horse’s love of the job. Unlike cats, especially black ones named Tony, horses love to run and do a very bad job recognizing pain when running around a racetrack with eight to ten friends. This means that if the leg starts to fail while the horse is running they are unlikely to demonstrate a lameness or give the jockey any indication of a problem until the leg actually fails. So, veterinarians are working to use standing MRI, CT scans, bone density scanning, x-rays to assess joint geometry, and ultrasound to try to identify early changes in bone and tendon that indicate a problem is coming. There are also programs in many States that perform in-depth post mortem exams on any horse who suffers from one of these serious injuries. As a difficult-to-impress cat, I was impressed by the level of dedication the racing industry has to keeping the horses safe!
Coolest fact I learned while playing on the internet: During each stride a racehorse takes the heart beats once and they take one breath. Here’s how it goes down: front leg of the lead they are on hits the ground, intestines push forward on the diaphragm, this pressure collapses the lungs causing a breath out, and compresses the heart. As the weight is transferred back to the hind end, the intestines slide back, opening the lungs, and allowing the heart to expand and fill with blood. How amazing is that?!?!!?
It may be difficult to admit but I have a little more respect for the athleticism of horses. I have lost a bit of respect for my staff around here after all those funny hats, but since they provide food I will keep them around. Until next week, may your litter box be clean and your food bowl overflowing.
May 3, 2016 | Heat, Sweating/ Not sweating
Summertime, and the livin’ is easy (if you’re a cat)! I do love summer. I lounge around in the A/C, sleep on the porch bench in the shade, work on my tan in the parking lot. It’s a good time. Of course, life is always good when you are a cat. Now if you are a horse it’s a whole different story. I hear horses have to do this thing called sweating. It sounds dreadful. Not only do they get hot and stinky, it happens because they are working for you humans.
Sweating is one of the reasons horses are amazing athletes. Let me be clear here, cats are better, but horses are still pretty good. Sweating comes at a price though. Sweating causes a profound loss of electrolytes and water. Horses have to have a way to replace those losses or trouble comes fast. Horse sweat is different than human sweat in a few ways. First, it has a different electrolyte make up. Horse sweat is made up of potassium, sodium, and chloride, in that order. Human sweat is sodium, potassium, chloride. Small amounts of calcium and magnesium are also present in sweat. This means electrolyte supplements for horses need higher potassium concentrations than those for humans. It also means that while Gatorade tastes delicious, it is not an appropriate electrolyte replacement for horses.
Next, have you ever wondered why your horse lathers when he sweats, but you don’t? That is because horses have a protein called latherin in their sweat. I sometimes marvel at human scientists. You named it latherin. Seriously, couldn’t come up with something more original than latherin? Turns out latherin has a very important job. This protein helps the sweat move from the skin, though the hair, and out to the surface where it can evaporate as quickly as possible. Since humans aren’t lucky enough to have fur, they don’t need latherin.
Because horses have to be weird, some of them decide to stop sweating. This is known as anhidrosis. Anhidrosis happens when heat and humidity hits a certain level. Here in Florida we experience lots of heat and lots of humidity. So if it’s July, you are out riding, and your horse isn’t sweating, get them back to the barn and hose them down quickly. The brilliant human scientists aren’t sure why this happens but there are several products out there that help some horses. I would recommend talking with our Docs about treatment options. Management is really important with these guys. They adopt a cat-like attitude about life. They want to be in front of fans at all times and only work in the coolest parts of the day. Unlike yours truly, frequent hose downs will help them stay cool.
While I have no desire to experience this sweating thing myself, it is pretty amazing from a purely cat-curiosity standpoint. And as a cat, I know quite a bit about curiosity. To help your horse deal with all that sweat, be sure they are drinking and replacing electrolytes. Know what is normal for your horse and be ready to stop exercising if something seems off. And most important, if in doubt, take a nap on the porch.
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