Measuring Equine Welfare

Equine welfare is measured by the amount of medication and veterinary care horses require in their given situation. The more medication and veterinary services required for a stable or discipline, the poorer the welfare situation is for the horses. Inadequate husbandry creates the need for medication. The more medication required, the poorer the equine welfare.
Properly cared for and stabled horses seldom need veterinary attention and require very few if any drugs to maintain their health and performance aspirations. American racehorses would be better served by providing more appropriate horse-friendly care rather than continued injections of raceday drugs. Permissive drug programs create substandard care. The massive amounts of Lasix, cortisone, and NSAIDs administered to American racehorses is reflective of the poor welfare standards the industry allows. Permissive drug programs perpetuate substandard care. As well, the breakdown and unsoundness so prevalent in American horseracing are directly proportional to the amount of veterinary services (drugs administered and injected) horses receive. The more drugs horses receive the more they breakdown. Heavy use of drugs reflects poor welfare. American racehorses are poorly cared for as reflected by the drugs trainers claim the horses require.
Thoroughbred welfare is the issue that needs addressed. American racehorses need better care. A high incidence of EIPH is reflective of substandard care. Racehorses need much more locomotion and out of stall activities than they presently receive. Abundant locomotion enhances soundness of wind and limb. Horses require several hours of afternoon activities each day to promote and sustain health of limb and wind including hand walking and grazing, lungeing, hill and dale conditioning, measured turnout, pasturing, massage, passive flexion, swimming, play, and variety of other activities that keep them moving.


Dr Gustafson is an equine veterinarian, veterinary behaviorist, and novelist. Applied veterinary behavior enhances optimum health, performance, soundness, contentment, and longevity in animal athletes. Natural approaches to development, training, nutrition, and conditioning sustain equine health and enhance performance. Behavioral and nutritional enrichment strategies enhance the lives of stabled horses. Training and husbandry from the horse's perspective result in content, cooperative horses. DrSid provides equine behavior consultations to help recreate the needs and preferences of horses in training and competition.

June 4, 2008, 3:42 PM

Drugs and Racehorses

By SID GUSTAFSON

Phenylbutazone seemed a miracle drug when the stuff began entering the bloodstreams of racehorses in the 1960s. I was collecting the post-race urine that concentrated the metabolites of that drug during the ’60s, and as a teenager I became acutely aware of drugs and racehorses.

What a soothing anti-inflammatory effect bute brought to racehorses in those simpler days when its use first became widespread. The alleviation of certain lamenesses was dramatic. “Really sweet stuff,” I remember Wright Haggerty’s Kentucky groom telling me on the Shelby, Montana, backside in 1965 as he pestelled up tiny white 100-milligram dog pills he had received from my father, the attending and regulatory veterinarian (thus my job as urine catcher). The original medical plan, being that most racing jurisdictions back then prohibited the use of any and all drugs, was to use bute for training. The groom mixed the white powder into a mash, and fed his eager and waiting racehorse, who trained like Seabiscuit the next morning.

Bute cools hot joints and quiets inflamed tendons to desirable medical effect, allowing horses to return to training and racing sooner than otherwise, allowing them to maintain their conditioning. Tight, cool legs and hooves are necessary to continue conditioning the racehorse. If there is excess fluid in a joint, or swelling within a hoof, conditioning is generally counterproductive as further inflammation and damage follow exercise.

Bute was first used to facilitate continued training by quieting certain injuries or inflammations, and was especially effective when used conscientiously and conservatively. In a certain sense and in compassionate, knowing hands the drug provided humane relief to the rigors of racehorse life. The question quickly became: Could bute enhance performance? It was not a question for long. The answer was yes. Bute was and is the cleanest boost ever for a horse with mild inflammation in need of relief. The stuff could move a horse up, as they say, without a mental, or stimulant effect, but with an anti-inflammatory effect.

Two horses being equal, however, bute generally won’t make a horse with quieted inflammation run faster than a horse without joint, bone, or tendon inflammation. In a sense, bute restores normal overall biomechanical function. The nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug takes the heat out of mildly inflamed legs, feet, and joints, and this can be good in considerate hands.

Bute also became useful in the sense that it was diagnostic, or so the mind-set went at the time. If you administered bute and your horse went back to training and eating and being a sound horse after laming up a bit, then it was concluded that the condition was not significant enough to warrant rest, only to warrant bute. Bute, then, could be used to assess the severity of the lameness in racehorses. Some did not consider bute-responsive conditions serious, and this is one line of reasoning that eventually allowed the legalization of bute. There were medical arguments for its use in racing horses, medical arguments made by veterinarians and drug companies.

The conditions that bute administration does not resolve or effectively manage are considered problematic, and those conditions generally warrant rest, rather than more intensive treatment. Today, however, if bute does not manage the condition, more intense treatments are used, and more intense drugs are used.

Rest is the oldest and most effective treatment for lameness. In the history of horse doctoring, no treatment is more effective. The horse has a tremendous potential to heal musculoskeletal injuries if returned to natural pasture conditions, grazing the plains with herdmates. The problem is that it takes a full year of rest to cure many conditions racehorses develop, and at least months for others. No one has time to rest racehorses, to wait a year, and then take eight months to recondition the horse. With racehorses the clock is ticking, fast. If drugs can save time with racehorses, they are used for just that. And that is the case these days. The industry has transcended bute. The monthly veterinary bills at Belmont and Aqueduct often exceed the monthly training fee. Ask any owner.

If conditions are diagnosed accurately and thoroughly, and drugs are dosed properly and administered in a timely manner, doctors can reduce problematic inflammation in a given leg or joint, which in turn protects the rest of the horse by minimizing the risk of extra strain on other joints and limbs to compensate for the painful injured joint. However carefully dosed and administered, however, this brand of racehorse sports medicine puts more pressure on the weakened, and now treated joint, and herein lies the danger. In addition to systemic medication given intravenously to treat joint inflammation, cortisone is injected directly into joints and tendon sheaths to get a significant anti-inflammatory effect. Cortisone is in a different class of drugs called steroids, which can be used more specifically than bute to reduce the inflammation in a specific joint.

When there is swelling in a joint or tendon sheath, excess synovial fluid is secreted, distending the joint structures, and in some cases, deforming them, making for irregular movement. The reason for excess fluid in a joint is most often damage to the sensitive joint structures; damage to the synovial membranes, articular cartilages, ligaments, tendons, and underlying bone, any or all of the above. Damaged joints are weakened joints. They are inflamed joints, and in racehorses, many become cortisone-injected joints: weakened joints that are quieted down with cortisone. Why? Horse joints need to flow smoothly. Imagine an abraded joint surface, or a tendon that loses its lubrication as is passes over a running, moving joint, the resultant pain, swelling, inflammation, increased friction, and impaired function. If there is rough movement in one joint, the roughness is relayed throughout the horse’s musculoskeletal system, increasing the burden on the other legs and joints.

Intra-articular injection of a joint with cortisone is a potent treatment. In certain veterinarians hands it can be used beautifully. The most commonly injected joint is the fetlock, which is also the most commonly fractured joint. The reality is that most of fractured joints were cortisoned joints, although this information is inaccessible because of medical confidentiality. Bute is less intense, less potent, and a more conservative, safer remedy. The original idea was that legalized bute would replace joint injections, or that was part of the intent. That has not been the case.

Phenylbutazone, or bute, abbreviated from the early popular brand Butazolodin, is a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug very similar to aspirin. Those who understand the pharmaceutical principles of aspirin understand phenylbutazone. Bute reduces inflammation, and subsequent to that, pain. That is the sequence, anti-inflammatory first, with subsequent pain relief. As a result of reduced inflammation, there is restoration of function accompanying relief of the joint pain.

If you consider aspirin a painkiller, then I suppose you can consider bute one, as well. Bute lasts longer, a day or two, while aspirin is more quickly metabolized in the horse, a matter of hours. The sustained anti-inflammatory effect of bute is especially therapeutic to horses. Prolonged anti-inflammatory relief allows the interdependent musculoskeletal system of the horse to redistribute weight appropriately. Lameness anywhere imbalances the horse. In a sense, bute can improve the balance by providing anti-inflammatory relief of the inflamed parts.

Initially, drugs for racehorses being illegal, bute was used to facilitate training and not so much enhance racing. That came next. The medication got to working pretty darn good, and in time trainers began administering bute to their horses closer and closer to racing, and soon the testing folk started picking it up. Matt Lytle was one trainer who taught me about bute, the smile it put on his face until Croff Lake, one of his horses, suffered a bad test after winning the Oilfield Handicap in Shelby, Montana, one of those years in the mid-’60s. Lost his purse and sort of soiled his reputation all because of a shade of bute in the urine.

Later, I heard him defend the drug, and his use of it: he gave it for the horses well-being, he claimed, and knowing Matt and his connection to his horses, I did not doubt his intent and compassion. Pain relief is compassionate, especially the sort of racehorse pain relief bute provided. The problem today is that a good thing, bute, or medication in general, has been taken too far. In the passion of competition and in a world of big money, horses have become victims of a misguided pharmaceutical culture.

My dad, having dispensed the bute, sampled Matt’s horse after it won the Oilfield Handicap. I was the one who caught Croff Lake’s urine, which tested positive. Then the next spring a winning horse tested positive in the Kentucky Derby. Rather than further restrict drug use to remedy the situation, the industry legalized drugs. From that time, horse racing shifted from a covert medication culture to an overt medication culture, which has been recently brought to its knees.

After hundreds of other doping incidents, there came a general consensus that if so many felt the need to use bute, maybe it should be O.K. to run on. After all, it was only a type of aspirin. And perhaps its legalization would eliminate the need for other more abrasive medications, such as opiates and amphetamines, and local anesthetics. Some even thought it would reduce the urge to administer intra-articular injections of cortisone. Not the case.

By the time I graduated from vet school and began practicing at Playfair Racecourse in the late ’70s, I could legally treat racehorses with nearly everything except stimulants, opiates or depressants. That left a lot of anti-inflammatory drugs, antihistamines, hormones, steroids and bleeding medications to administer to running racehorses, not to mention a multitude of vitamins, amino acids and minerals thought to help a horse endure the rigors of confinement training and racing.

Now virtually all racehorses run on bute and Lasix, and now with too many fractured fetlocks the medication has to be reduced. Bute wasn’t enough. No drug is. Legal bute engendered a drug culture. The ideology that more conservative use of potent medications would follow legalization of bute did not prove up. More intense drugs and medical treatments followed, rather than less. The pharmaceutical adaptability of the racehorse has been exceeded. Horse racing has to wean itself from its addiction to drugs that no longer help, but instead weaken horses. Racing jurisdictions are in the process of rolling back drug use. The trend should continue as a part of the remedy to reduce breakdowns. Foreign horse racing jurisdictions run without medication, and their safety records are better than the United States’. Horses running clean are less likely to break down than those running on medication.

Sid Gustafson is a novelist, social commentator, and former thoroughbred attending and examining veterinarian licensed in New York, Washington, and Montana, where he has had significant experience in the regulation of racehorses, especially as it pertains to soundness and breakdowns.

http://therail.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/04/drugs-and-racehorses/?smid=pl-share

Dr Gustafson is an equine veterinarian, veterinary behaviorist, and novelist. Applied veterinary behavior enhances optimum health, performance, soundness, contentment, and longevity in animal athletes. Natural approaches to development, training, nutrition, and conditioning sustain equine health and enhance performance. Behavioral and nutritional enrichment strategies enhance the lives of stabled horses. Training and husbandry from the horse's perspective result in content, cooperative horses. DrSid provides equine behavior consultations to help recreate the needs and preferences of horses in training and competition.

Welfare and Safety of the Racehorse Summit

Dr McIlwraith gave a fine presentation on intra-articular steroids. He failed to mention the effect of corticosteroids on the circulatory system and coagulation, and subsequently their contribution to contributing to increased incidences of EIPH. Side effects of fluid retention, catabolic breakdown of membranes and tissues, and alteration of the clotting processes are side effects that need to be explored and studied. Both corticosteroids and NSAID alter normal coagulation and contribute to an increased incidence of EIPH. Their extensive use is one of the many significant reasons American racehorses are prone to experience EIPH. Many medications, especially those utilized regularly in training, create the tendency to bleed. For this reason, many contemporary trainers feel they cannot race without Lasix. Lasix has become a cover for the overzealous use of performance medications, as most performance medications aggravate the clotting and pulmonary circulation process. Aggressive use of corticosteroids, bloodbuilders, and NSAIDs contribute to EIPH. This combined with inappropriate stabling and the failure to enrich the stabled racehorse's wellbeing with abundant forage, friends, and locomotion has created the illusion that drugs are needed to race horses.

Thank Dr Bramalage for the fine conditioning presentation. It seems Dr Bramalage did not mention the critical need to exercise horses throughout the day to sustain and maintain musculoskeletal and pulmonary health. Abundant locomotion beyond the training regimen is what American racehorses lack but need to promote soundness of wind and limb. Horses locked down in stalls all but an hour or two a day are not receiving adequate movement required to enhance the soundness of lungs and legs. Racehorses require movement throughout the day to adequately develop and sustain soundness of wind and limb. 

Dr Gustafson is an equine veterinarian, veterinary behaviorist, and novelist.  Natural approaches to development, training, nutrition, and conditioning sustain equine health and enhance performance. Behavioral and nutritional enrichment strategies enhance the lives of stabled horses. Training and husbandry from the horse's perspective result in content, cooperative horses. DrSid provides equine behavior consultations to help recreate the needs and preferences of horses in training and competition.

Racehorse Advocacy: The Trouble with Raceday Medications

Racehorse Advocacy: The Trouble with Raceday Medications

Dr Gustafson is an equine veterinarian, veterinary behaviorist, and novelist. Natural approaches to development, training, nutrition, and conditioning sustain equine health and enhance performance. Behavioral and nutritional enrichment strategies enhance the lives of stabled horses. Training and husbandry from the horse's perspective result in content, cooperative horses.DrSid provides equine behavior consultations to help recreate the needs and preferences of horses in training and competition.

Lasix-free Horseracing

The simplest and most logical solution that favors the health and welfare of the horse is to ban raceday Lasix and the administration of all other drugs after entry. No medication should be allowed to be administered whatsoever after a horse is entered and the post positions are drawn. This policy would make racing not only safer, but more enticing to the general public, as the playing field would be evened, and the betting would be fairer. 

The drugging-the-racehorse experiment has failed miserably. Drugs break horses down by facilitating substandard horsemanship. Racing was designed to be clean. Racehorses should be free of drugs that influence performance in any shape or form. It is poor form to needle horses before they race, the poorest of form, really. 

Lasix use has engendered the dangerous drug culture horseracing is experiencing. Lasix facilitates substandard horsemanship. Lasix promotes the medication mentality. Most horses that bleed are those horses cared for and conditioned in a substandard fashion. Pulmonary health is reflective of appropriate horsemanship. Drugging horses to race demonstrates a lack of consideration for the health and welfare of horses, as has come clearly evident.

Rather than establish appropriate ventilation and provide horses with abundant locomotion which enhances the soundness of wind and limb, trainers lock their horses down in the stalls, feed them drugs, inject their joints, harpoon their jugulars with Lasix and whatever other drugs they can get away with before heading to the paddock, and race. These people are not horsemen, they are sham pharmacists. This drug-addled behavior, my friends, causes breakdowns. Lasix is the root of the problem, and Lasix and all other drugs, whatever their nature, should be forbidden after entry, as the rules once stipulated back in the 1960s before the pharmaceutical veterinary lobby. Doping has and always will be a problem, but a problem that will be much easier addressed and minimized when permitted drugs are taken out of the picture after post positions are drawn. The standard procedure that resulted in the Aqueduct breakdowns was this: Enter the questionably sound horse. When the race fills and entries are drawn, get the vet over to inject all the troubled joints. Don't stop with the joints. After all that joint work, best make sure everything else that needs doping is doped. Dope the horse thoroughly, with everything and anything that may help and will not test. Race the horse; hope he or she wins to cover the vet bills, and cross your fingers the horse doesn't breakdown and pray the jockey survives if the horse does.

Clean it up trainers and commissioners. Get rid of the drugs-help-racehorses-race idea. Horses that require medication should not be raced until their medication responsive maladies are healed. 

Anyone remember how to race a horse drug free? Charlie and Woody knew.

Ah, I can smell it. I can see a return to horsemanship, I can see all the horses getting the wholesome attention they need and require to stay sound of wind and limb. I envision a return to all the hand grazing and walking the stabled racehorses once received each and every afternoon before the advent of permissive medication. I see again all that leg rubbing, all that muscle massaging, all the abundant afternoon attentions and conditioning. 

Yes, the days of horsemanship may return after all. Let's look forward to clean racing. We have the juveniles in the Breeder's Cup off the Lasix, and the next step is to follow that through, and keep this years two year olds free of Lasix and raceday meds from here on out. 

Dr Gustafson is an equine veterinarian, veterinary behaviorist, and novelist. Natural approaches to development, training, nutrition, and conditioning sustain equine health and enhance performance. Behavioral and nutritional enrichment strategies enhance the lives of stabled horses. Training and husbandry from the horse's perspective result in content, cooperative horses. DrSid provides equine behavior consultations to help recreate the needs and preferences of horses in training and competition.

The Snaffle Connection

More communication can be relayed between a horse and rider with a snaffle bit than with most other headgear. A snaffle allows sophisticated connection in trained, knowing, and familiar hands. In progressive relationships, the horse and rider each knows and feels the other constantly and intimately. The slightest tongue move the horse makes is felt by the rider, and responded to appropriately. The tiniest finger touch to the rein, likewise, can relay the most timely and specific information. Headstalls without bits, or bridles with heavy curbs and shanks cannot detail refined communication like a snaffle can. Snaffles allow refined requests and responses to be taught. In the end, all can be cued from the seat, bridleless, after the teaching process with the snaffle and other headgear has reached ultimate fulfillment. These taught aids can later be overlain with classically conditioned seat and leg cues, and the snaffle can then be replaced with a bride-less contraption, or no head gear at all. Snaffles facilitate refined cue teaching and delicate responsiveness. Horses come to admire sophisticated, timely fingers. Here is an example of snaffle connection. The reins on Rachel are white, and Calvin's fingers, voice, and seat do the talking, and listening. Rachel tells Calvin when rein pressure is necessary, and Calvin listens. This is also an ultimate example of utilizing the horse's proclivity for flight.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=37TaDAMDIkw

Dr Gustafson is an equine veterinarian, veterinary behaviorist, and novelist. Behavioral approaches to development, training, nutrition, and conditioning sustain equine health and enhance performance. Behavioral and nutritional enrichment strategies enhance the lives of stabled horses. Training and husbandry from the horse's perspective result in content, cooperative horses. DrSid provides equine behavior consultations to help recreate the needs and preferences of horses in training and competition.

May 25, 2012, 10:09 PM

Alkalinization, Lasix and Milkshaking: A Veterinarian’s View

By SID GUSTAFSON

The Kentucky Horse Racing Commission’s hearing on race-day medication last November revealed that Lasix alkalinizes horses, elevating their racing TCO2 values.

The more Lasix, and the closer it is administered to the race, the more intense the alkalinization effect of Lasix, according to the science presented at the K.H.R.C. race-day medication hearing. Lasix alkalinizes horses, creating a competitive metabolic advantage similar to milkshaking, rendering the drug Lasix a clear and present doping agent. Human athletic regulators have deemed Lasix a doping agent, and horseracing regulators will eventually have to come to that appropriate conclusion. Lasix has significant potential to alter and enhance racehorse performance.

As well, in my experience as both an attending veterinarian and a regulatory veterinarian, the attending veterinarians administering Lasix are often requested (as long as they are in the stall with the horse before the race to give the Lasix) to administer intravenous sodium bicarbonate, calcium and wide variety of other substances, including adjunct bleeder medications and undetectable performance-enhancers to stimulate or calm horses while sustaining added endurance. By pharmaceutically altering and manipulating a variety of physiological and neurological parameters for competitive advantage, medicating veterinarians influence the outcome of horse races and racehorse performance. In addition, these race-day medicators put horses at increased risk to break down. The statistics presented at the hearing clearly show horses medicated on race day break down more often than clean racing runners. The connection is indisputable.

There are a wide variety of pharmaceutical and nutritional manipulations veterinarians and trainers apply to gain competitive advantages, especially when veterinarians are allowed to medicate horses on race day, and the day before. Intubation (passing a tube up the nose and down the esophagus to administer a gallon or so of a sodium bicarbonate, crystalline sugar, and whatever else doesn’t test but may help move a horse up) is one method to milkshake a horse. Intravenous, intramuscular, sublingual, and oral administration of drugs are other racing-vet approaches to alkalinize racehorses to buffer the metabolic acidosis they experience as they enter the anaerobic acidotic state in the later stages of the horse race.

The historical method to curb veterinary doping has always been to bar veterinarians with needles from being around horses on raceday. When I started collecting racehorse urine in the ’60s, veterinarians were not allowed to be around horses with their needles and drugs on raceday in America. Initially, racing regulators barred trainers from possessing drugs and needles. Next thing they knew, veterinarians were slinking around from stall to stall before the races injecting horses as if they were sick. When I practiced on standardbreds in New York in the late ’70s and early ’80s, racing veterinarians were not allowed to be on the grounds hours before the races at Batavia Downs and Buffalo Raceway.

Horses are notoriously vulnerable to pharmaceutical manipulation, and these days with all the permissive medication policies, trainers and their veterinarians remain notoriously tempted to pursue every pharmaceutical ploy they can devise to move a horse up. Alkalinization comes in a variety of bottles and can be achieved by utilizing a variety of methods. It is the nature of many trainers to take whatever pharmaceutical measures they feel they can get away with to get their horse across the finish line first.

To allow racing veterinarians in a stall with a horse before a race is to permit doping, as it has turned out in America. I have witnessed veterinary doping first hand from California to New York. The solution to prevent doping and render an even field is to keep medicating veterinarians away from horses in the days before they race, as is the policy in Europe and Asia, where racing is approximately four times safer than in America. There, veterinarians can attend horses, but they are forbidden to medicate them, as is the appropriate ethical standard. Horses are never denied appropriate veterinary care, but when horses do require medication, they are declared unfit to race, as should be the policy in America.

Certain bodywork, massages, and physical therapies are appropriate as the race approaches, but doping is not. Drugs and medications are to treat ailing and lame horses, and ailing or lame horses are not permitted to race in ethical racing jurisdictions. Horses deemed to require medication are horses unfit to race by current international ethical standards. The universal standard through horse racing time has been to bar administration of any and all medications before a horse competes. Racehorses and riders are best served to run with no drugs in their systems. The clean racing standard is the standard that has effectively and appropriately protected the health and welfare of horses through time.

There are a variety of conditioning, husbandry and nutritional strategies that can be used that do not include or involve drugs and medications to prepare horses to withstand the rigors of a race. Tapering down the digestive tract, appropriate nutritional supplementation, appropriate exercise routines, appropriate hydration and metabolic preparations, and an endless variety of other holistic and physiologic preparatory approaches are more wholesome medication-free approaches for horse, rider and horseplayer.

It should be noted here, as well, that California allows trainers to take horses on and off Lasix without public knowledge. The attending veterinarians are allowed to use the steroidal estrogen hormone Premarin instead of Lasix. The California attending veterinarians are at liberty to switch out established race-day Lasix administration for race-day Premarin without the public disclosure of the change. All the while the horse is listed on the program as a Lasix horse race after race, despite differing medication regimens from race to race. This can result in significant variations in the type and dosage of administered medications from race to race, with associated alterations in performance. A horse listed as a Lasix horse may legally receive Premarin instead of Lasix. Next race the horse may receive Lasix, or Lasix plus Premarin, or only Premarin. The betting public is not made aware of these medication switches. Potential performance variations because of medication changes are hidden from the public by the C.H.R.B. Their regulatory veterinarians are forbidden to disclose the information to anyone but the testing laboratory, so the lab knows why certain Lasix horses do not have Lasix in their urine. The race-to-race medication choices are orchestrated and controlled by the racing veterinarians administering the race-day medications.

The Breeders’ Cup is in California this fall. Oversight by the Breeders’ Cup or reconsideration of the medication rules is in order there to protect the health and welfare of those champion runners and to assure medication consistency from race to race and horse to horse. The betting public deserves to be accurately informed about which horses are receiving what drugs, and for which race, and what changes to the medication routine occur from race to race.

The journey to establish clean horse racing continues. Soon, the horses shall prevail as horses have prevailed through time. Trainers will soon be required to utilize horsemanship rather than drugs to chalk up a win.

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Sid Gustafson, D.V.M., is a novelist and equine veterinarian specializing in thoroughbred sports medicine and equine behavior. He currently practices regulatory veterinary medicine, representing the safety and welfare of thoroughbred racehorses.

http://therail.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/25/alkalinization-lasix-and-milkshaking-a-veterinarians-view/

DrSid's interview with Dr Doolittle regarding socialization and willing partnerships with pets and horses.

Dr Sid Gustafson is a wealth of knowledge about horses, dogs and cats!  Proper socialization, life enrichment and fulfillment for your animals helps them be happy, willing and eager to learn.

Dr Gustafson is a practicing veterinarian and university educator, as well as an animal welfare advocate. He teaches Equine Behavior at the University of Guelph, for the EquineGuelph Open Learning program, an online education program that reaches out to horse folk worldwide.

He has taught domestication science, equine behavior, and the evolution and domestication of the wolf at Montana State University, and the University of Montana Western, where he was the Equine Studies Program Coordinator.

Dr Sid also writes for the New York Times regarding the health and welfare of racehorses. He represents the health and welfare of racehorses for the California Horse Racing Board as an Official Veterinarian at various meets in California. Dr Gustafson recently testified before the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission supporting the ban of race day medication to improve the health, welfare, and safety of racing thoroughbreds.

If you would like your horse, dog or cat to be delighted to be with you, to want to please you, and to be big hearted, willing and happy companions and partners, then listen in as Dr Sid shares his most important lessons, tips and insights.  Enjoy!

We discussed:

• What is required to get a horse or dog in the space to be a willing learner?

• Is there a secret to encouraging dogs, cats and horses to want to please us?

• How important is socialization to future behavioral health in dogs, horses, and cats?

• What are the 3 essential needs that caretakers must fulfill for their animals for them to be happy, healthy and balanced individuals?

• What are poison cues?

To contact Dr. Sid Gustafson for more information go to WWW.sidgustafson.com or you can like his Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/BigskyVeterinaryClinic .  DrSid@mac.com /406-581-4946 Cell / 406-995-2266  Office.

May 11, 2012, 11:28 AM

Conditioning and Winning, Lasix-Free

By SID GUSTAFSON

Horses evolved as social grazers of the plains, group survivalists moving and grazing together most all of the time. During their 60-million-year evolution, horses came to require near-constant forage, friends and locomotion to maintain health and vigor of wind and limb.

Despite domestication and selective breeding, today’s racehorses are no exception. Although horses are extremely adaptable, the last place a horse evolved to live is in a stall, alone, with limited space to move and forage about with others. The solution to manage bleeding in racehorses is to breed, develop, teach, train and care for horses in a horse-sensitive fashion that provides abundant lifetime locomotion and socialization. Pulmonary health is reflective of overall health and soundness in horses.

In order to maintain pulmonary health, natural conditions need to be re-created in the stable. Horses prefer to graze together and move nearly constantly. Constant foraging, grazing, socializing and moving are essential for joint and bone health, hoof health, metabolic health and pulmonary health, and, of course, mental health. In order for lungs to stay healthy, horses need movement, more movement than American trainers currently provide the population of stabled. Horses communicate with movement and sustain physiologic and metabolic health via near-constant locomotion. Movement is what is most often missing in a racehorse’s stabled life.

Walking throughout the day enhances and maintains lung health. Stabled horses need hours of walking each day, more walking than most are currently afforded. Veterinarians who manage racehorse health need to ensure that their patients are provided with adequate daily locomotion. The movement of training and track conditioning are not adequate to condition healthy lungs throughout the rest of the day, as lung health requires 24/7 movement. For a horse, moving is breathing. Abundant on-track and off-track locomotion is necessary to condition a horse’s lungs and to provide the necessary resilience to withstand the rigors of racing.

Lungs deteriorate when movement is restricted. Horses breath all day long, and near-constant movement is required much of the day to assist their breathing to maintain pulmonary flexibility and vigor. Plentiful walking enhances breathing and lung health. Swimming and doing lunges are also appropriate lung-conditioning activities. Grazing while casually walking clears the airways. Hand grazing may be the best lung-healthy activity of all. Racetracks need to provide abundant hand-grazing opportunities for all of the stabled horses, and the green grass needs to be appropriate grazing grass. Kentucky limestone grass is always best, it seems.

Training over hills and dales, as well as walking up and down inclines helps develop and sustain pulmonary vigor. When horses are locked in a stall a large percentage of the time, their lungs deteriorate. Stabling that does not afford abundant movement and head-down grazing and foraging impairs lung health, making horses vulnerable to bleed when exerted in a race. The cause of exercise-induced pulmonary hemorrhage is insensitive and deficient stabling and husbandry practices and includes diagnostic failures to detect bleeding during training.

The care that establishes and enhances pulmonary health and endurance in horses is the same care that enriches stabled horses’ lives. Pulmonary care is providing the same near-constant movement that keeps racehorses’ musculoskeletal systems sound. It is the care that keeps horses on their feet during races. Horses must remain sound of limb to ensure lung soundness, and they must remain sound of lung to achieve and maintain limb soundness. Afternoon and evening hand walking and hand grazing are essential to develop and sustain lungs and limbs fit to race.

Horses with healthy lungs are content and fulfilled horses whose lives their caretakers adequately, if not extensively, enrich. Lung health is supported by limb health. Breathing and running are biologically intertwined on the track, a breath per stride. To stride correctly is to breathe correctly. To breathe correctly is to breathe soundly, and race sound.

Horses who are bred, socialized, and developed properly from birth, and who train while living enriched stable lives are seldom likely to experience performance-impairing E.I.P.H. while racing. They are more apt to stay sound. Humane care of the horse prevents bleeding. Pulmonary health is reflective of appropriate husbandry, breeding, training, nutrition, and the abundant provisions of forage, friends, and perhaps most importantly, locomotion. Bleeding in a race is reflective of inadequate care and preparation, of miscalculations and untoward medication practices. Lasix perpetuates substandard horsemanship, artificially suppressing the untoward result (bleeding) of inadequate preparation of the thoroughbred.

Genetics play a role in pulmonary health and physical durability. Lasix perpetuates genetic weakness by allowing ailing horses to prevail and sow their seeds of pharmaceutical dependence. Running sore causes lungs to bleed. Lasix manages a wide variety of unsoundness, as do the cortisones and NSAIDs (bute and similar drugs). These anti-inflammatory drugs aggravate coagulation processes. Rather than drugs, pulmonary health is dependent on appropriate breeding and proper development for the vigor, durability and endurance thoroughbred racing demands. Drugs are not the solution. Competent horsemanship is the solution. Genetic dosage, behavioral and physical development, socialization, training, and locomotion husbandry are the keys to racehorse soundness, lung health, stamina, and durability. The causes of E.I.P.H. are no mystery to seasoned race folk. Horses prone to bleed are those horses that are mistakenly bred, inadequately developed and inappropriately stabled and trained.

Horses evolved in the open spaces of the northern hemisphere and require the cleanest, purest air to thrive and develop healthy lungs and hearts. Stable air needs to be constantly refreshed to maintain pulmonary health. Ventilation is essential, and enclosed structures are often inappropriate. Barn design needs to provide both clean air and abundant locomotion. Bedding is critical. Clean straw provides the most movement by simulating grazing. Horses stalled on straw are noted to move about with their heads down nibbling and exploring for hours, recreating nature to some degree, keeping their lungs healthy with movement, their respiratory tracts drained by all the head-down nibbling and grazing. Horses need near-constant head-down movement to maintain optimum lung health. Long-standing horses’ lungs deteriorate quickly. Not only does near-constant movement maintain and enhance pulmonary health, abundant locomotion maintains metabolic health, joint and bone health, hoof health and digestive health.

To enhance lung health is to enhance the overall health and soundness of the racehorse. Racing appears much safer in Lasix-free jurisdictions, where the drug crutch is not allowed, because the drug crutch allows horses to be cared for in a substandard fashion. (A link to the transcript from the Kentucky Raceday Medication Committee hearing is here.) Drugs are not allowed to replace appropriate care and training in Asia and Europe, and raceday drugs should be barred in America as they are in the rest of the civilized world. The stabled racehorse has to be carefully and humanely cared for and nourished in a holistic fashion, both physically and behaviorally, to win and stay healthy to win again.

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Sid Gustafson, D.V.M., is a novelist and equine veterinarian specializing in thoroughbred sports medicine and equine behavior. He currently practices regulatory veterinary medicine, representing the safety and welfare of thoroughbred racehorses.
http://therail.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/11/conditioning-and-winning-lasix-free/

April 29, 2012, 9:58 AM

New Model Needed for Race-Day Treatments

By SID GUSTAFSON

The white horse emerged late last year representing promise to restore a limping game; a new age of clean racing, race-day-medication-free racing; but the white horse hung coming down the lane. Too much Lasix, it seems; resulting in an inability to hold sway.

American trainers and their attending veterinarians remain unwilling to sacrifice their race-day needles just yet. They are reluctant to give up medicating racehorses before the runners head over to the paddock. Rather than educating trainers how to appropriately care for racehorse lungs and limbs as attending veterinarians should, the race-day vets continue to inject drugs, and more drugs. The more drugs attending veterinarians administer, the more they are paid. The only fees attending veterinarians generate are fees for administering medication. Attending veterinarians are paid in direct proportion to the drugs they administer.

One can easily see how that may sway their opinion regarding drugs, and their decisions to administer drugs to racehorses. There are no veterinary fees for consults or advice on the backside. Herein lies a significant part of the medication problem. Attending veterinarians have failed to learn how to charge for medical consults. To give the advice to let a horse run clean is to not be paid for anything, although it is often the best advice a veterinarian could give to a trainer regarding a champion runner. To be able to deliver sound horsemanship advice and be eligible to be willingly paid for his knowledge and professional acumen, an attending vet needs to appreciate the true nature of horses and learn how to manage bleeding and unsoundness in more appropriate, less pharmaceutical, fashions. When attending veterinarians come to understand as much about equine behavior and welfare as they know about manipulating horses with drugs, life will begin to improve for horses.

It is simply not good form to go after horses with needles and drugs before they race. It is not fair. It is not right. It is not medically or morally appropriate. It has been demonstrated to be a practice that is harmful to horses, a practice that when allowed is applied to virtually all horses rather than horses in need, regardless of their limb and lung health. To medicate nearly every horse who races in America with bute and Lasix is not the practice of veterinary medicine, but rather some sort of medication sham. Veterinarians should know better. As has long been suspected in ethical racing jurisdictions around the world, medicating racehorses on race day has proved to be an inappropriate and unethical practice, not to be allowed, much less tolerated. The regulators of racing in the 1960s had it right. No drugs allowed, no doping whatsoever permitted, regardless of the dope or the doper. The results of race-day medication will always be the same: rogue winners, rogue losers, more medical issues incited than resolved, more deterioration of the horses and the sport, shorter careers, more fragility, and more breakdowns. More public concern and scrutiny.

It has long been public knowledge that horse racing requires strident antidoping regulations and enforcement. It is becoming increasingly evident that the attending veterinarians are the people who require intense monitoring. Once entrusted with the health and welfare of racehorses afforded by their professional standing and education, they can no longer be counted upon to practice right by the horse. Racehorses and drugs have had a long, albeit dangerous, marriage, and the attending veterinarians have been the ministers of the nefarious relationship.

To relentlessly medicate racehorses, rather than to nurture and care for them properly in accord with their long-evolved nature, has resulted in tragedy reaching to the very top of the American horseracing game. The more medication horses are given, the less carefully their natural needs and tendencies are tended to, and the more fragile they become.

Rather than drugs, appropriate care and horsemanship are the keys to appropriately manage bleeding and unsoundness in horses. Racing was originally designed to be drug free, and that clean-running notion of ethical regulation holds to this day. It is generally accepted by most welfare-progressive societies around the world that trainers and their attending veterinarians cannot be relied upon to represent the health and welfare of their horses when money and fame are to be gained by pharmaceutical manipulation of their charges. Permissible race-day drug injections have deteriorated the game considerably.

All of this year’s Derby runners are scheduled to race on Lasix, and most all of them will also get injected with the adjunct bleeder medication which the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission allows to be injected into horses before the race, the drug known as Kentucky Red, or carbazochrome. Good stuff, that Kentucky Red. If one drug is good, two must be better, or so goes the veterinary reasoning and fee structure of attending veterinarians.

In addition to pushing drugs into the Derby runners’ veins shortly before they race, the veterinarians will also be very busy injecting the horses the day before they race. Never enough vetting has become the backside mantra. In addition to the race-day cocktail the Derby runners and all the other runners on the card will be receiving before they run, most of the runners will be medicated with phenylbutazone 24 hours before the Derby, along with various other additionally permitted nonsteroidal, anti-inflammatory drugs, as well as a surfeit of other permissible medications. Most Derby horses will have a cornucopia of drugs circulating through their systems by the time they reach the starting gate, enough drugs to float a battleship, as the saying goes, drugs that allow trainers to exceed the adaptability of their racehorses.

The reality, now demonstrated worldwide, is that horses and their riders are best served to race clean. The fewer drugs the better as far as the horses’ health and welfare are concerned. The public prefers an even field, and a fair horse race. Clean racing evens the field and protects horses, riders, and horseplayers. Clean racing selects for the best horse; the most durable, soundest, best developed, best bred, and fastest horse. Clean racing allows horses to persevere and prevail over a long career of running. Clean racing allows the best horses to prevail time and again, to win the Triple Crown.

Across the oceans, clean runners are currently competing more safely than the drug-addled American horses. Foreign runners break down less, and bleed little, if any, more than the heavily medicated American horses. Everywhere but in America, bleeding and soundness are managed with horsemanship and appropriate husbandry as bleeding and unsoundness should be managed. The correlation between race-day drug use and breakdowns has become painfully evident. The more drugs a jurisdiction permits to be administered to horses, the more breakdowns the horses racing in the jurisdiction experience. The time to ban race-day drugs is now. Horses cannot speak, file lawsuits, or tweet, therefore much of the medication abuse of racehorses in veterinary hands goes unnoticed as unreported, excepting, of course those abuses so prevalent and overwhelming that they require reporting by those news outlets genuinely concerned about the health and welfare of racehorses.

Next time, I’ll deliver another rousing sermon from my rabbit hole in the infield: how to race and win without Lasix, and to race and win again, and then win one more time. It is no coincidence that there has not been a Triple Crown winner since Lasix started sapping the vigor and durability out of champion runners in America. The times they are a changin’ for the better for horses, thanks to those who have the creative cause to step forth and take a stand for the health and welfare of Equus caballus.

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Sid Gustafson, D.V.M., is a novelist and equine veterinarian specializing in thoroughbred sports medicine and equine behavior. He currently practices regulatory veterinary medicine, representing the safety and welfare of thoroughbred racehorses.

How to Race Horses without Lasix, Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Horses have long raced without medication the day they run, and appropriately so. Medication is for horses who are sick or unsound. Only healthy horses are qualified to race. Horses that require drugs to race should not be raced until they heal, and can race without medication. Healthy horses race safest.
Trainers who feel they cannot race horses without injecting them with raceday drugs are unqualified horsemen. The concept of fair play precludes the use of drugs to influence the outcome of a race. Horses deserve better than to be medicated on raceday, as over 90% now are. Horses have long successfully raced clean when properly cared for and appropriately conditioned, and have raced more safely than mismanaged horses that require medication to get them around the oval each race. 

Conscientious horsemanship and appropriate husbandry of stabled racehorses manages both EIPH and soundness. Horses need to get out of their stalls each afternoon for a few hours of grazing and walking about, perhaps some lungeing to lung up the lungs and flush the metabolism. Horses are born to move nearly constantly, and it is this near constant movement that appropriately conditions lungs to handle the athletic rigors of a horserace. Humane care of the horses is the answer to managing bleeding and breakdowns, not drugs, my goodness. The bleeding medication issue is entwined with the breakdown issue, as it is the horses medicated for bleeding that breakdown approximately 4X more frequently than clean running horses.

The horses will prevail soon, as the ban on raceday drugs is inevitably necessary to revive the sport and restore integrity to the game. 

Horses everywhere will breath great sighs of relief at not having to be needled with drugs hours before every race they run.

Dr Gustafson is an equine veterinarian, veterinary behaviorist, and novelist. He helps refine horse training methods to accommodate the inherent nature and behavior of horses. Applied veterinary behavior enhances optimum health, performance, soundness, contentment, and longevity in animal athletes. Natural approaches to development, training, nutrition, and conditioning sustain equine health and enhance performance. Behavioral and nutritional enrichment strategies enhance the lives of stabled horses. Training and husbandry from the horse's perspective result in content, cooperative horses. DrSid provides equine behavior consultations to help recreate the needs and preferences of horses in training and competition.

Racehorse Advocacy

Racehorse Advocacy
The Trouble with Raceday Medications

By Sid Gustafson, DVM

April 12, 2012

Thanks in part to the racehorse advocacy efforts by The Humane Society of the United States and the Humane Society Veterinary Medical Association, a variety of racing jurisdictions are reviewing raceday medication practices and are making advancements to support the drug-free welfare and humane care of racehorses. Raceday medications are in the process of being gradually prohibited, as are the indiscriminate and abusive use of drugs in racehorses in general. It has become clear to many that current racehorse medication practices in the United States and Canada exceed the adaptability of the racehorse, resulting in unnecessary breakdowns, injuries and even death to both horses and jockeys. Rather than drugs, it is the humane care of racehorses that supports soundness of wind and limb.

The practice of administering raceday medications    is being called into question.    Gina Hanf

A variety of groups have responded to the call to provide better care for racehorses. The Kentucky Horse Racing Commission invited The HSUS to testify at its raceday medication hearing in November 2011, and I provided a version of the racehorse advocacy that follows. The Interstate Horse Racing Improvement Act (H.R. 1733/S. 886) is making its way through the U.S. Congress, and is supported by several congressional representatives. Make sure your representative supports this important Act. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has called for an investigation of the New York Racing Association breakdowns. The New York Times is running a series of articles exposing the medication charade that has endangered horses and riders for decades in America. The Breeder’s Cup committee has banned raceday Lasix for two-year-olds competing in this year’s race¹.

Drug-free racing will improve stabling, conditioning and husbandry practices for racehorses. Medication has long been a crutch that facilitates the improper care of stabled horses. Rather than alleviate medical conditions, recent data clearly demonstrates that racing medications allow people to exceed racehorse adaptability. Drug use perpetuates fragility in racehorses². Fragility is dangerous for both horses and riders.

To appreciate the principles of equine behavior is to understand what is required to maintain pulmonary health in horses being conditioned to race who are confined to stalls, and it is not drugs. The solution to managing exercise-induced pulmonary hemorrhage (EIPH) and preventing breakdowns is appropriate breeding, development, horsemanship, training and husbandry—not drugs. The care that establishes and enhances pulmonary health and endurance in horses is the same care that enriches stabled horses’ lives. It is the same care that keeps racehorses’ musculoskeletal systems sound. It is humane care that keeps horses on their feet during races. Limb soundness and pulmonary soundness are physiologically entwined.

Horses who are bred, socialized, and developed properly from birth, and who train while living enriched stable lives, are seldom likely to experience performance-impairing EIPH while racing. They are more apt to stay sound of limb. Bleeding in a race is reflective of inadequate care and preparation, of miscalculations and untoward medication practices. Drugs and raceday medications perpetuate substandard horsemanship, artificially suppressing the untoward result (bleeding and breakdowns) of inadequate preparation of the thoroughbred. The solution to manage bleeding and prevent breakdowns in racehorses is to breed, develop, teach, train and care for horses in a horse-sensitive fashion.

Horses evolved as social grazers of the plains; group survivalists moving and grazing together much of the time. Horses require near-constant forage, friends and locomotion to maintain health of wind and limb, even if they are stabled. Racehorses are no exception. The last place a horse evolved to live is in a stall, alone, with a limited view and uncirculated air. The solution to managing racehorse health is proper horsemanship and husbandry, which is sadly lacking at today’s racetracks. Horses prefer to graze together and move nearly constantly in natural settings; to race without drugs, natural conditions have to be re-created in the stable. The equine requirement for near-constant grazing and moving is essential for joint and bone, hoof, metabolic, and pulmonary health. In order for lungs to stay healthy, horses need more movement than they are currently provided. Abundant on- and off-track locomotion is necessary to condition a horse’s lungs. To enhance pulmonary health is to enhance the horse’s entire life and outlook. Not only do properly stabled and trained horses’ lungs hold bleeding in abeyance, they hold sway and win. Pulmonary health and bleeding prevention are dependent on smooth running and biomechanically-sound locomotion.

Horses evolved in the open spaces of the Northern Hemisphere and require the cleanest, purest air to thrive and develop healthy lungs and hearts. Stable air needs to be constantly refreshed to maintain pulmonary health. Ventilation is essential, and enclosed structures are often inadequate in providing the healthy air horses require. Appropriate barn design and stabling practices maintain pulmonary health. Bedding is critical. Clean straw provides stall movement by simulating grazing. Horses stalled on straw are noted to move about with their heads down nibbling and exploring for hours, recreating nature to some degree, keeping their lungs healthy with movement, their respiratory tracts drained by all the head-down nibbling and grazing. This is not enough. For healthy lungs, horses need to get out of their stalls for hours each afternoon. Not only does near-constant movement maintain and enhance pulmonary health, abundant locomotion maintains metabolic health, joint and bone health, hoof health, and digestive health. To enhance, support and maintain lung and limb health without drugs is to enhance the overall health and soundness of the horse.

Sid Gustafson, DVM

Sid Gustafson, D.V.M., is an animal welfare advocate, educator, writer, and equine veterinarian. He teaches Equine Behavior at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. He practices regulatory veterinary medicine, representing the health, safety and welfare of thoroughbred racehorses.

Dr Gustafson is an equine veterinarian, veterinary behaviorist, and novelist. He helps refine horse and dog training methods to accommodate the inherent nature and behavior of horses and dogs. Applied veterinary behavior enhances optimum health, performance, soundness, contentment, and longevity in animal athletes. Natural approaches to development, training, nutrition, and conditioning sustain equine health and enhance performance. Behavioral and nutritional enrichment strategies enhance the lives of stabled horses. Training and husbandry from the horse's perspective result in content, cooperative horses. DrSid provides equine behavior consultations to help recreate the needs and preferences of horses in training and competition.