Dec 8, 2015 | Ailments, FES, Leg issues
Tuesdays With Tony and FES Awareness
The weather outside is perfect. I love nothing more than to lie in the middle of the driveway, soaking up the sun, and watching the humans drive around me. Good times. I have noticed that my favorite weather coincides with more work for the horses we see here. It seems the humans like being outside more when it doesn’t feel like some horrible gym sauna that got the worst Yelp reviews ever. This means it’s time to get those equine athletes fit and ready to go. Best way to get your horse feeling great: FES
Want even more information? Read this article about an Olympic Event Horse
FES. What the heck is that you ask? This cat says it’s pure amazingness. FES stands for Functional Electrical Stimulation. This magic machine sends electrical pulses into your muscle causing it to contract and relax. But the feeling!! FES feels like one of those massaging chairs turned on inside your muscle. As the power goes up, the feeling goes deeper and the muscles contract harder. When the session is done I am left purring, making biscuits, and maybe, just maybe, drooling a bit on my pillow. Any muscle soreness I had, is gone. That pesky left hip pain is a thing of the past. The best part is the next day: I can leap from the counter to the top of the dryer and on to my favorite spot on the cabinet with ease.
What does all that mean for horses? Well like me, most horses have done something less than smart in their lifetime. I said something mean to Teannie once and she broke my leg. This left me weaker on my left side. I was supposed to do special exercises to strengthen the leg, but I didn’t and it left me a little uneven behind. We all know our horses can do the same thing. Ok maybe not break a leg, but get a small injury or strain and end up a little crooked. This FES thing fixes all of that.
Does your horse regularly put their hip or back or ribs or neck or poll out? You can fix the bones repeatedly but until the muscles will hold them there they won’t stay. The FES retrains the muscles on a cellular level. It tells them they need to stop spasming and go back to normal. Once the muscles are back to pulling evenly on the bones: VOILA!! They stay where they are supposed to.
I have been listening to Dr. Lacher talk about lameness a lot recently. Veterinarians, human doctors, and researchers are shifting their ideas about how injuries work. There has long been a focus on finding the arthritis and treating it. But there’s a better way. Arthritis is the end of the process not the beginning. The problem starts when there is a small injury causing the horse to travel crooked which loads the joints unevenly which strains the supporting structures causing them to lay down extra bone to shore up the connections. That extra bone is arthritis. Injecting the joint treats the final stages but doesn’t address the problem that got it there. FES is one powerful tool Dr. Lacher uses to treat the crookedness that eventually leads to arthritis.
Get rid of sore muscles, get more sit, more power, and more straightness. Sign up for FES sessions today!
Nov 3, 2015 | Ailments, Feed, Leg issues
Tuesdays with Tony – November 3, 2015
Ok, I am all for summer. Really I am, even as a black cat. Sunshine until 9pm, green grass, afternoon thunderstorms. It’s all great. Then Fall is supposed to come. Even in North Central Florida there is a season which is less hot and humid than the one called Summer. Some people call it Fall, Winter, or Spring. Around here, it’s really just not Summer but at least it’s not Summer and that doesn’t seem to be happening. Luckily, as the smart species, I just hang in the air conditioned office where I can kick Renee out of her chair and sleep in comfort.
Horses, not being as smart as cats, are stuck outside in this heat and humidity. Even worse, many of them think that they should grow a winter coat. Mother Nature gave them an internal clock which says come August 15th it’s time to get ready for winter. This worked fantastic on the steppes of Mongolia
(horses evolved there) where summer was often a balmy 65 degrees but here in Florida where it is 90 degrees on November 1st, not so much. All this adds up to some very hot horses.
What’s a horse got to do to stay cool around here? Well, as a cat, I recommend moving in to the house, supervising the humans, and demanding food at all hours of the day and night. However, if you can’t move inside have your human get out the clippers. Just like us cats, especially Teanie, my cohort in crime at Springhill Equine, horses have more than one layer to their coats. When they grow a winter coat they not only grow longer hair, but they grow more undercoat. Undercoats are awesome…if you live somewhere with Winter! Undercoats hold on to body heat, offer water resistance, and puff up your upper coat making even more insulation. None of that is good if you are trying to cool off. Clipping removes the long hairs and shortens the undercoat so the heat can leave the skin. The trade-off is no more waterproof layer. The answer: the ever-artistic trace clip. Trace clips take off the hair where most of the body heat needs to leave. Most commonly this is the underside of the neck and belly, and up the flank a bit where horses sweat the most. Depending on what your horse does you can increase or decrease the size of the clipped area. This leaves hair, and thus waterproofing, on the top-line. Most horses in Florida can get through an entire winter without a blanket with a trace clip.
Having really embraced domestication I find the temperature controlled environment of the clinic to be ideal for this cat. Horses just haven’t quite moved in to the house and are stuck outside in the weather (eww, I mean all that nature). Need help sorting out if your horse is sick, hot, or lame? Give us a call. Oh, and Baby Vurgason, you can get here any time now 😉
Sep 29, 2015 | Ailments, Leg issues, Pythium
Pythium:
My regular clinic duties usually consist of monitoring dentals, vaccines, ultrasounds, sometimes suturing lacerations or medicating eyes. On the contrary, the surgery I was forced to witness yesterday is unlike anything I have ever seen or hope to see again in my 9 lives. We had to lay down a horse with two wounds on her pasterns that were infected with something called “Pythium.” It looked repulsive! As I understand from the doctors, Pythium is a fungus-like organism that lives in standing water, especially in Northern Florida (lucky me). Horses (or dogs or cats) become infected by either drinking water containing the organism, or by standing in puddles, mud, or wet grass laden with the fungus. Fortunately, cats hate water, so we wouldn’t be caught dead in such a situation.
Dr. Vurgason saw the wound last week and immediately took a biopsy and debrided (scraped off) as much as possible with the horse standing. When the results of the biopsy came back positive for Pythium, I could tell it was bad-news-bears. Apparently Pythium is approximately 50% fatal, even with treatment. But the doctors have formulated an aggressive treatment plan including vaccination, debridement under general anesthesia, and regional limb perfusion with a powerful anti-fungal medication.
All I know is, yesterday’s surgery was very unpleasant to observe. The wounds were full of these gross things called “kunkers” which serve as a source of infection and a place for the fungus to hide out, undetected by the horse’s immune system. The kunkers were surrounded by grayish goo, and there were probably a dozen of them! The deeper the doctors cut, the more kunkers they found. It was all I could do not to cough up a hairball.
Anyway, the surgery went well and the horse woke up fine, thanks to my supervision. Check out the attached pictures if you have a strong stomach! Hopefully the rest of my week will be less gory.
Prior to surgery.
Beginning of surgery when we found the first set of “Kunkers”
First step of removal of the “Kunkers”
Final removal of “Kunkers”
Sep 15, 2015 | Ailments, Leg issues, Pests, Skin Funk
Tuesdays with Tony
AS a black cat I must say I am excited that cooler weather came for a visit even if it was brief. It was excellent napping weather after a very busy week of routine health care. Dr. Lacher and Dr. Vurgason were very busy with vaccines, dental, fecal egg counts, and general health checks this week. On the farm and in the clinic it was definitely jam packed. They seem to like these healthy horse checks. It offers them a chance to address minor issues they see before they compromise your horse’s health. There is nothing our Docs like better than giving your horse a happy healthy life. With all this rain it has been very difficult keeping ahead of the Florida Skin Funk. Frequent baths can help but with as much rain as we have had this year you would have to be bathing 24/7. In most circumstances a mixture of chlorhexidine, mineral oil, and dish-washing detergent can be sprayed on affected areas, left to sit overnight, and bathed off in the morning to removed really bad crusts. I have no idea why a horse would tolerate all this bathing, and spraying. I just lie on the pillow when it’s raining out and stare forlornly at the porch wishing I could be outside. For the worst cases the Docs use special medicated shampoos, and ointments that work like a charm.
I have been extremely busy delegating Open House tasks. It falls on the cat to be sure everyone has just the right job given to them. I then closely supervise the computer and phone items from my perch in front of the screen. I find it especially helpful to surreptitiously put my paw on the alt or ctrl keys while the humans are typing. The reaction when the computer begins having random responses to typing is priceless and keeps this cat entertained for hours. I do hope to see everyone at the Open House this year. We have some great prizes and the chance to meet me so I really see no reason not to come on out October 10th between 10am and 2pm.
Sep 9, 2015 | Ailments, Cushings, Disaster Preparedness, Laminitis, Leg issues, Pet Pigs
Well Tuesday was so crazy I didn’t manage to catch up until Wednesday! The day after a long weekend is always hard on management. I have spent the weekend ensuring sunbeams are properly tracked across the floor, making sure the chairs don’t move in the office, and knocking any stray papers off the desk. Meanwhile, Dr. Lacher was busy seeing emergencies all weekend. Actually you guys were pretty nice to her and she only had to see a few. Dr. Lacher and Dr. Vurgason don’t really mind emergencies when they are true emergencies. The only time I hear them upset is when the horse has been very sick for a while and the humans wait until 10:30pm on a Saturday night to call but I digress.
One of this weekend’s emergencies was a common Fall problem: laminitis. Why Fall you ask? Well let me answer. This time of year your crazy horses are getting ready for Winter. That’s right: Winter. The brain of the horse is tuned to seasons in a very particular way. It has to change the metabolism, hair growth, foot growth, and a million other little tweaks so that the system is ready for whatever the coming season will require. Horses, having evolved in cold climates, start getting ready for Winter around August 15th. To do this the pituitary gland increases its production of about 5,000 different hormones. All is fine and dandy unless your horse also has Cushing’s or is pre-Cushingoid. If that’s the case too many hormones are released and voila!! Laminitis happens.
The good news is these laminitis episodes are relatively minor, even if sometimes they don’t look that way, and are quickly controlled with some anti-inflammatories like bute or previcox, a little help from some thyroid hormones, and changes in trimming or shoeing. Knowing your horse’s ACTH levels if they are a suspected Cushing’s horse helps the Docs manage these guys if they experience a flare up.
In other goings on this week, Dr. Vurgason treated another one of those things called a pig at the office. They really are rather adorable until they open their mouths. I was grateful she anesthetized him so that she could perform a castration. Dr. Lacher saw several horses for lameness, along with a few dentals and other routine health stuff. I think she might get some kind of perverse pleasure from making her technicians run around in circles since she makes them do that a lot! She claims this is so she can watch the horses move after stressing different parts of their bodies but I have my doubts.
Aug 18, 2015 | Ailments, Breeding, Disaster Preparedness, Feed, Infections, Injuries, Leg issues
Tuesdays with Tony
Whew what a week! Yesterday was Black Cat Appreciation Day and my hordes of adoring fans came by to give me offerings. I am sure you all appreciated the Black Cats in your lives yesterday but if not we may still be adored today.
Many of you saw the pictures yesterday of the hind legs of a horse who went through the floor of a trailer. Luckily the trailer wasn’t moving at the time. Dr. Lacher and Dr. Vurgason have a long road ahead of them taking care of that guy. The first step will be seeing how much of the skin survives the first week. About half of what you see will survive; the other half will need to be trimmed off. Next week sometime they will remove the sutures and re-suture the wounds to try to get better coverage. After that it’s bandaging, bandaging, bandaging. I think regular cat scans will also be in order to be sure all is going appropriately.
The rest of the week was jam packed. Last week something called a pig came in to the office. Some may think those are little and cute but I have my serious doubts about that. It made a very loud noise when I sniffed it. Dr. Vurgason loves these things called pigs so I will likely be supervising more and more care. I have put in a request for earplugs. Dr. Vurgason does routine pig care including vaccinations, castration, nutrition, and Wellness Care.
It was a very busy and diverse week here around Springhill. I supervised Dr. Lacher doing something called IRAP on a horse with a lameness in a hind leg. IRAP is this amazing stuff that actually comes from the horse. Dr. Lacher draws blood then does some special processing which increases the concentration of IRAP and then injects that back in a joint that has pain or inflammation. It about requires a PhD to understand but luckily I am a cat so naturally I know everything. The horse she used it on this week had an infection in a joint in his leg. The infection was aggressively treated and fixed but the body was over-reacting and causing the joint to be painful. IRAP will help calm down all that inflammation like a cat purring on your lap.
Meanwhile in the office, Dr. Vurgason did a few dental floats and some breeding work. Being neutered since I was a little tyke I know nothing of this breeding thing. They assure me my life is better but I have my doubts. I ended the week making sure Charly correctly drew blood for an Oral Sugar Test. This test determines if a horse is responding to sugar correctly or if they have Metabolic Syndrome. I told the horse I hope she doesn’t have it since it sounds like exercise and a diet are involved and those are two words I do NOT like to hear. In preparation for another busy week I am now..
