Breeders' Cup Keeneland 2022 Failing the Horse

Breeders’ Cup Keeneland 2022, coda

Medication remains intense--Breakdowns continue

 

 

I attended this year’s Breeders’ Cup to celebrate the revival of the American game, to finally—after half a century of advocacy—enjoy racing where horses were not intravenously injected with furosemide prior to going to the saddling paddock. When I arrived Sunday and read the permissive medication rules still in place in the Breeders’ Cup Horsemen’s Guidebook, I could feel the trouble coming. We were all hoping for an injury free event. The Europeans came through, but the Americans did not. Two of their horses did not make it across the finish line.

Monday morning, seeking more information, hoping to ally my fears, I accompanied a prominent Kentucky attending veterinarian as he made his rounds through the Breeders’ Cup barns. He picked me up as I was making the daybreak walk from the frontside where the media shuttle dropped us off each morning, to the stable area, a good mile hike. The Kentucky gentleman noticed my gimp, stopped his car, and took me in as he passed by on his way to work. It was Monday, so time was soft. We visited about trainers and racehorses, Europeans and Americans, the differences therein. We visited openly and extensively. Call it professional courtesy, call it ‘birds of a feather,’ we talked vet talk. We listened to each other. He, having read all of my New York Times racehorse advocacy articles, and I, knowing his honorable reputation, got on fine. We had met briefly at the Run Happy Breeders’ Cup at Keeneland in 2015. As our conversation narrowed to the horses at hand, he explicated all of the impending American medication scenarios, hiding nothing from me, knowing nothing could be hidden from my seasoned eyes:

The majority of American Breeders’ Cup runners would be injected with Lasix 24 hours before loading into the gate. This potent diuretic alters the metabolism and pharmacodynamics of previously injected medications (masking). This is one reason the permitted 24-hour drug is given, as its ability to manage pulmonary fragility and prevent EIPH is by and large absent by race time. Lasix to flush. The good doctor noted that Mr Baffert’s recent problematic post-race positives in Kentucky from horses medicated in California took place in stakes races where raceday furosemide was not allowed. Sophisticated doping strategies falter when Lasix is no longer part of the formula.

Most of the treated American Cup horses received 10cc IV, the maximum allowable. Furosemide is showing up in the post-race blood and urine samples as you read this. Thresholds have been set somewhere, although they were notably absent from the Breeders’ Cup Horseman Guide that stated that 24-hour Lasix was permitted, while the thresholds for all the other drugs were published, an interesting omission, I thought, one still missing, I might add. If the Breeders’ Cup post-race Lasix positives are below established furosemide thresholds, nothing will be said. I personally received this information from the Breeders’ Cup and Kentucky regulatory veterinarians. After we finished our ride around the Smith barns, my attending veterinary friend introduced me to the examining veterinarians who were hard at work. In all, I visited with 11 regulatory veterinarians and 2 attending veterinarians during the week preceding Domestic Spending and Epicenter’s feature race fractures. Drugs and regulators were plentiful.

 

Ultimately, regulation failed as regulation does in permitted pre-race drug jurisdications. In the Classic, the all-time leading American trainer’s horse suffered a fetlock fracture. Out went the ambulance in the most anticipated race of the century. I watched with glasses four floors up. Epicenter faltered badly when asked to move through horses on the backstretch, nearly going down. Joel Rosario, no stranger to leg-fracture spills, kept him afoot, and pulled him up deftly and professionally, saving two lives. 

The outriders and ambulance crew restrained and manhandled Epicenter to keep him upright and off the fractured canon bone. Veterinarians alongside, the uncentered horse hopped three-legged into the ambulance. He rhythmically threw his head as he moved toward the ambulance to lessen the weight bearing of his right front, that catastrophic gait that still makes me shudder. 

Meanwhile, unbeknownst to me, Flightline galloped. 

The ambulance sat stopped for a few minutes after Asmussen’s horse was loaded, a worrisome sign to me. I am an extensively-experienced track veterinarian who has been in ambulances with three-legged horses more than once. The impact of those experiences runs deep, especially when a jockey is being loaded into the other ambulance. The stopped ambulance likely allowed the outriders and veterinarians to suspend Epicenter in a hydraulic squeeze device—taking weight off the broken leg—where it was safe for them to draw blood, medicate pain, soothe excitement, and secure the splint. Pain managed, stability provided, the ambulance departed. Epicenter was transported to Rood and Riddle, a primary sponsor of the Breeders’ Cup, to undergo orthopedic surgery.

Epicenter’s fracture has been screwed back in place and it is said he is being syndicated to stud to perpetuate the cycle of breeding horses whose legs do not hold up to racing. Neither laws of the state nor laws of genetics nor morals nor equine welfare concerns impede American owners, breeders, and trainers. Drug free solutions as to how to prevent these tragedies were put on full display by the foreigners at this year’s Cup. Despite readily available training strategies that enhance soundness of wind and limb, Americans continue to rely on drugs to train horses. 

The results of the American trainer affair with drugs are tragically apparent. Americans cannot get away from unnecessarily locking their horses down requiring a heavy dependence on medication. Overly-confined horses become fragile of limb and wind, and a perceived need for medication follows. This medication cycle exacerbates racehorse vulnerability to injury and subsequently imperils jockey safety. 

Confinement and medication are the downfall of American racing. Rather than a drug-free Flightline celebration, this year’s Breeders’ Cup became a tragedy rivalling Eight Belles bilateral breakdown in the Kentucky Derby. This year’s breakdowns were made all the more tragic for me considering all the time that has passed since that first Saturday in May. Why can lessons in animal welfare not be learned by Americans? Unlike the Eight Belles breakdown—and to their credit—the Kentucky regulatory veterinarians kept all of the horses on their feet despite the fractures, thus sparing the jockeys’ injury. 

The Euros and Asians demonstrated how to race safely. 

Knowing better but refusing to adapt, drug-dependent US trainers continue to break down horses and unnecessarily endanger the lives of jockeys. Mr Brown’s Domestic Spending fractured his pelvis, racing from gate 14 in the BC Mile after a 440 day layoff from an injury. Chad medicated the horse and raced, two weeks earlier claiming to be omniscient regarding all of his horses’ soundness’. Domestic Spending fractures his under-conditioned pelvis, and the horse is vanned off with a major injury. At the starting gate, the horse made it clear he was not ready to race, yet they made him run. 

American trainers continue on with their medication charades that make horses vulnerable to injury, despite simple labor-intensive, medication-free solutions that fulfill and favor the racehorse. Easily-employed enrichment strategies sustain and enhance soundness of wind and limb. Medication does not. Breakdowns and bleeding are largely preventable with appropriate breeding, development, sensitivity to behavioral need, and conditioning that fulfills and enhances the horses’ long-evolved speed and strength. 

The American confinement and training methods remain horse-insensitive, unprofitable, unethical, and ineffectual. The trainer is responsible for the condition of his horse. Not the attending vet, owner, or regulatory vet—the trainer. American trainers continue to send their horses to races medicated and in a condition unfit to race as Brown and Asmussen demonstrated in the Breeders’ Cup. Their horses were not ready, and as a result they were seriously injured in the running and vanned off.  The Euro and Japanese horses were ready, drug-free and ready, sound of wind and limb. All of them returned sound and safe, many of them won easy.

Horses in America continue to break down at an unacceptable rate. Any break down in the Breeders’ Cup is disturbing, and here we had two, further reflection the American horseracing culture continues at its worst—humans failing the horse. Drugs continue to flow into inadequately stabled horses, and injuries and fatalities unnecessarily continue. When the drugs stop, the injuries will dissipate, as has been demonstrated time and again everywhere other than America.

The solution for safe flat racing has been effectively employed across continents and throughout the world by restricting drugs. The foreign horsemanship specialists not only brought their charm and beauty, they displayed sophisticated training strategies that favor the horse’s health and well-being. Holistic therapies, and keen attention to the horse’s long-evolved behavioral needs resulted in winners, winners all around wherever they finished. All made it home sounder of wind and limb than when they arrived to showcase their talent. Their trainers make stabling, training, and racing a good deal for their horses. In return, their horses make racing a good deal for them. If only Americans would embrace these winning strategies that make racing safer and horses and owners happier. All of the Euro and Asian horses returned safely. In fact, their horses returned sounder of wind and limb, a sophisticated display of preparation that Americans must soon emulate if they expect the sport to survive here, much less thrive. 

Two American-trained horses sustained racing-fractures on the biggest day of racing. As well, some of the American horses bled, while the Europeans and Japanese remained sound of both wind and limb. No bleeding, no fractured bones in those horses trained and conditioned with the horses’ best interests in mind. And winners, yes, win after win.

 

Permitted medication perpetuates substandard horsemanship. Drug-free racing favors the horse. America has a choice. Drug-free runners win and come home sound as demonstrated by the Europeans. Look, see: Drugged racehorses are more apt to break their legs. Permitted pre-race drugs do not favor the horse. Too many medicated horses do not finish, exemplified by the American breakdown endemic still in play at the Breeders’ Cup.   

As it turns out, horses do not need drugs to race. NSAIDs and cortisone joint injections potentiate breakdowns by masking inflammation, allowing horses to race and train with pathology present. At times, trainers have had their veterinarians add local anesthetics to the cortisone injections to facilitate a good hard preparatory work. Many of these blocking agents do not test, but both Baffert and Asmussen have had local anesthetic positives in the not-so-distant past. Hall of Fame trainers. Baffert’s horse Messier bled, and Asmussen’s classic runner broke down. 

All drugs and any drug deteriorate safety when utilized to mask pain and inflammation to facilitate training when pathology is present, especially local anesthetics such as lidocaine or mepivacaine. Rest and rehab are indicated when pathology is present, rather than drugs to ease the pain so as to train. Furthermore, drugs and failure to properly develop and condition their horses likely incited the pathology that had them call for more drugs to get their horse to the next race. Claiming trainer tactics taken to the top of the game, to the Breeders’ Cup. 

The American permitted pre-race drug experiment has failed. Permitted drug use led to unpermitted drug use, doping a billion dollar industry, horses the victims. Americans continue to fail their horses on the biggest stage of all. America’s horrid breakdown endemic will not stop until the drugging stops. In Europe and China, drugs are forbidden two to four weeks before horses race. Breakdowns and epistaxis are rare. Their horses fly over here and win easy, and safely.

At Keeneland, where local horses continue to breakdown and bleed, BC runners can receive IV phenylbutazone 48 hours before loading into the gate, and, unfortunately, they can be doped with Lasix 24 hours before they race. None of the Europeans I interviewed planned to partake in the Lasix, considering it more likely to stiff the horse than help. But according to the Kentucky attending veterinarians I rode and visited with, many, if not most, of the Americans are fulfilling their racing drug addiction at the Breeders’ Cup, and having their horses injected with Lasix the day before, and IV Bute two days before. Disgraceful. Unethical. Ineffective. Heartbreaking. Leg-breaking.

 

I observed nearly all of the Breeders’ Cup horses in the barn area and on the training and main tracks. The differences in stabling, training, and care are significant and remarkable. The foreign horses walked, jogged, and conditioned together in herds. Miles and miles of locomotion to enhance the soundness of wind, limb, and mind. Hour upon hours of socialization. If not with other horses, with hands on grooming and grazing care. I estimate Chain of Love spent 10 hours out of her stall day in and day out, accompanied by her pony horse. I visited her most every day. Her pre and post exercise routines were well over an hour long. Rubbing and brushing before, bathing, massaging, and walking after. More massages, more walks, physical connection horses need. A typical conditioning day included two to three trips around the smaller training track with her pony horse, followed by one or two trips around the main. This was in addition to abundant walking to and from the stable, and within the isolation compound.

Likewise, the Euros provided their horses with abundant daily locomotion and socialization. They successfully re-created natural for their horses, rewarded by  how safely and successfully they raced, and how happily they returned. Limb health, lung health, metabolic health, hoof health, digestive health, and mental health are all dependent on miles and miles of daily walking. It was a joy to see trainers putting the horse first, a joy to witness the happy horses loving their track lives. If only the Americans could learn to appreciate the happiness and soundness appropriate husbandry brings. If they do not learn, and learn soon, the American game will continue its decline.

As the Euro horses walked, jogged, galloped through the morning, the American horses were back in their stalls by 9am. Many remained there the rest of the day, Tyler’s Tribe among them as far as I could tell, their lungs withering, legs weakening, veterinary drugs flowing into them, and Lasix flowing them out. Meanwhile, Chain of Love walks clean. Mishriff jogs clean. The Appleby herd whinny together as one.

Beyond the USDA quarantine, I observe the covey of attending veterinarians go from American barn to American barn medicating horses all afternoon, every afternoon during the days preceding the Breeders’ Cup. As counterbalance, the examining veterinarians examine. I witness all of this. I have an eye for medicating-veterinarians and medicated horses. I, too, was once an attending veterinarian. I know their game.  From a distance, I watch the horsedoctors carefully select and load the medications, syringe after syringe. They color the fluids with vitamins and whatever else they can sneak in that will slip by the testing lab. Off they march with their tray of medications into the shuttered stalls. Two days before, the day before. 

As the Friday races went off, the veterinarians with horses in Saturday went to work. The Saturday runners received their intravenous Lasix, urinating the weight away, flushing other drugs along. Lasix imbalances equid electrolytes, drawing the horse up, pulling calcium out of bone. At one stable, I observed the water buckets set out Friday evening, seemingly withholding water, I am not sure. In the quarantine barn, the lads were changing water, cleaning pails, rubbing their horses, walking in communal circles, providing abundant locomotion in the most restricted spaces.

The untoward injuries on Saturday were reflective of the inappropriate American veterinary approach of medicating horses to race rather than walking them. Meanwhile, the drug-free hydrated, enriched and fulfilled Euros ran to win. You’d think winning would be enough incentive for Americans to do right by the horse, but our culture has not yet embraced the welfare of the horse like it needs to. I am sorry to report that as long as the drugs are permitted, American racehorse drugging will continue along with the substandard horsemanship the drugs facilitate. Bleeding and breakdowns will follow at unacceptable rates, and the game will fade away, or be forced to stop. 

 

If and when all of the medications to race are restricted as they are in Europe and Asia where happy racehorses graze, walk, socialize, and race together, Horseracing in America will have a chance, a last chance to help the horses prevail in fashions that favor the horse, rather than fail her. 

 

 

 

Dr Gustafson graduated from Washington State University as a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine in 1979. He is a practicing veterinarian, animal welfare journalist, equine behavior educator, and novelist. The application of behavioral science to the husbandry of horses enhances optimal health, performance, soundness, contentment, and longevity. Behavioral, social, locomotory, and nutritional strategies enhance the prosperity, vigor, and health of stabled horses. Sid offers veterinary care, training, husbandry, and conditioning from the horse's perspective to achieve willing and winning equine partnerships with humans.

Horsemanship Bloodstock, Sid Gustafson DVM

Horsemanship Bloodstock

Sid Gustafson DVM

Equine Behaviorist

Racehorse Welfare

 

I secure yearlings sound of wind and limb, captivated with the behavioral essence to prevail.

 

I help develop the willing partnerships between horses and humans, keeping your horses sound, happy, and healthy. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I offer purchasing and management services. Once your ideal horse is purchased, I guide your horse to the most appropriate farm, barn, or stable, one with knowing and sensitive human hands. Based on the horse's development and physical maturity, the most behaviorally positive training situations are found. Once placed, I monitor the stabling and training on your horse's behalf. 

I represent the health and welfare and drug-free training of your horse. In addition to monitoring the training, racing, and conditioning protocols, I monitor your horse's contentment, nutrition, socialization, daily locomotion, and happiness. My behavioral fulfillment strategies are designed and implemented to enhance your horse's potential to train and win. Nurturing a willing partnership between horse and trainer/rider is essential to racehorse success, soundness, safety, and longevity. I promote drug-free racing, and educate and guide trainers with strategies to prevent injuries and bleeding issues.

 

 

 

 

To blend with caretakers and riders as herd is key to horse happiness. Each horse must be stabled, trained, and managed in a fashion that fulfills both their individual and herd behavioral needs. Abundant daily locomotion is essential for soundness. Grazing and communing with other horses is essential for welfare. Miles and miles of daily walking and jogging together are essential for digestive, hoof, joint, bone, muscle, pulmonary, metabolic and mental health. 

I ensure that all horses under my management are stabled in a fashion that re-creates natural. Progressive racehorse management ensures behavioral health. Healthy horses become willing partners. Those who please racehorses, develop racehorses who please their owners, riders, and guardians.   

Natural behaviors must be re-created in the training and stable setting. Near-constant movement and foraging, along with abundant daily socialization with other horses creates winners. A naturally fulfilled and behaviorally enriched racehorse is a willing partner, happy to train and win. 

 

 

 

 

 

Utilizing sophisticated training-monitoring technology is now a premier strategy to ewin races. Additionally, monitoring assures owners that their racehorse is being trained properly. Welfare and health are easily tracked, reported, and monitored. Conditioning and stabling protocols are accurately adjusted. Problems are detected before they appear.

EKG, GPS, and stride length are monitored. Conditioning and distance preferences are determined for each horse. Soundness is maintained, both mental and physical, for each individual. This scientific monitoring enhances each trainer's ability to train, place, and condition horses to sustain a long and safe career. Breakdowns are prevented. Welfare is monitored, along with medication use. Dr Gustafson reviews all suggested medication protocols. Horses under Dr Gustafson's management are trained without medication, or with minimal medication. Never is medication allowed to facilitate training or racing by suppressing a problem or reducing pathological inflammation. Physical therapy, rubbing, swimming, walking, lounging, grazing, and socialization with other horses are the soundness-maintaining strategies that enhance endurance and longevity.

 

 

 

 

 

My experience as an attending veterinarian, regulatory veterinarian, and equine behaviorist supports my seasoned ability as a bloodstock agent and racehorse manager. I secure sound horses with animated movement. I find horses with the mental aptitude to readily blend with humans to condition, stable, and race successfully. 

Pedigree is but half the equation. Horses evolved as social grazers of the plains moving and grazing together nearly 2/3 of the time in natural settings. Abundant daily locomotion is essential to maintain soundness, pulmonary, digestive, metabolic, and behavioral health. Dental health in growing horses requires daily attention and care. 

 

 

 

  

The Language of Horsemanship.Racehorse Advocacy. 
Native Bloodstock. 
Racehorse selection, acquisition, and welfare management.
Securing yearlings sound of wind and limb with the behavioral essence to train up and prevail. 
Progressive racehorse monitoring utilizing sophisticated EKG and GPS motion monitoring technology. 
Enhancing welfare to maintain the soundness of wind and limb, while developing the will and stamina to prevail. Medication-free training and racing enhances welfare.

 

 

 

Dr Gustafson is a thoroughbred bloodstock agent and a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine. The application of behavioral science to the development of racehorses enhances optimal health, performance, soundness, contentment, and longevity. Behavioral, social, locomotory, training, and nutritional strategies enhance the prosperity, vigor, and health of competition horses. Sid develops racehorses in deference to the horse's perspective, achieving willing and winning equine partnerships with humans. 

 

The Merging of Horses and Humans

 The Merging of Horses and Humans

Convergent social and communicative characteristics drew humans and horses together. In a sophisticated blending of group survival, a curious and social clade of horses merged into humankind's social structure ten to twenty thousand years ago or so. 

Our contemporary relationship with horses as companions and performers can be aptly appreciated through an understanding of the evolutionary processes that impelled horses and humans to merge together in the first place. The shared social traits and communication abilities continue to facilitate a mutually beneficial existence. These days horses sustain our dreams, and maintain man's connection with nature. To better understand the social sphere of horses is to better understand one's relationship with horses. Horsemanship remains slipping into a horse's social circle, to pair bond with the horse. 

The domestication process began tens of thousands of years ago when groups of horses and Neolithic people began sharing the grasslands of northern Eurasia. Before merging their groups together, horses and humans and dogs independently developed the communication and social skills to enhance group survival. Similar social goals facilitated a merging of the three species. Group survival became shared group survival. Dogs provided protection. Dogs and people cleared the grasslands of predators. Interested horses came closer, and became more tolerant, reaping the grazing safety. The hunting of horses shifted to the herding of horses, and in time this led to milking and stabling, breeding and riding, the most delightful animal pairing imaginable.

To grasp how man and horse societies may have merged long ago is to appreciatethe contemporary horse/rider relationship. To develop positive relationships with the horse, one must come into an awareness of the long evolved social nature of horses. Horsemanship merges human nature with the nature of the horse. The language of horsemanship allows horses and humans to achieve pairings that achieve far greater accomplishments than the sum of horse and rider would allow. 

The social nature of horses is one of constant awareness. Constant awareness is essential for group survival. The landscape must be surveyed as the group grazes collectively connected. The horseperson is best served to blend into the survival construct of the horse to achieve willing partnerships. Willing partnerships form the basis of the cooperative survival construct of the horse. Cooperative partnerships facilitate survival of horse and rider. Horses know to work together with other horses—provided they were taught to be a horse by other horses (appropriate socialization)—and can be taught to work together with a rider or handler.

Horses living in harems in natural settings remain constantly aware of all the other horses in the herd, behavior learned and taught within the herd. Socialization teaches survival behaviors to growing horses. Mankind capitalizes on the horse's survival behaviors to train and pair with horses. Successful horsetrainers train horses as the mare trains the foal. Horses are all about learning and awareness. Horses are born to learn. Horses are born to be aware of others to facilitate their learning. Horses learn to be horses from the mare and herd, the same learning and teaching emulated in horsetraining.

Awareness is essential for learning, and also for surveillance. Except for brief spells of sleep and play, horses constantly observe their surroundings for any unwelcome developments, such as the approach of predators. Predators include anything with which the horse is unfamiliar. All unfamiliar creatures, places, and things are considered suspect and possible dangers. Neophobia is the term used to describe this survival trait.

Most horses are innately fearful of all new things. This is normal and expected behavior. Horses constantly survey their surroundings with their stellar vision. They see by day or night, and nearly 360°. Eyes set high in their head, horses graze and gaze, they watch. The grazing nipping and chewing motion rotates their head enough to see behind them on a periodic basis. When not grazing or dozing, horses focus on watching. When dozing or sleeping, others horses watch for them. All horses need other horses for behavioral health. Foals raised by the mare and herd in a grazing setting develop into easily trainable animals. It is the herd of mares and foals that teaches thoroughbreds and other breeds to run at speed in close company, horseslong evolved flight strategy, flight in numbers. The mares and cohorts give growing horses the confidence to run by and through other horses at speed. Horses learn how to move from other horses. They learn how to see and graze, and perhaps most importantly, how to communicate with others as taught by other horses. This is socialization. Please appreciate the necessity of socialization in the development of normal equine behaviour, please.

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.

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.

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 Horses Heal

Restorative healing in Equus caballus.

Restoration strategies that recreate the horse's social grazing preferences facilitate and potentiate horse healing. Appropriate healing of many equine maladies is encouraged when the veterinarian provides appropriate initial treatment and subsequently carefully facilitates a scenario to provide the horse with abundant forage, friendship, and locomotion. 
Grazing pasture in an open setting with other horses, when appropriately orchestrated, has the potential to provide the most profound and often the most cost-effective healing of musculoskeletal infirmities and injuries. For conditions allowed to progress to lameness, time is required, often months. When musculoskeletal conditions are detected early, before lameness ensues, short term rest and restorative strategies encourage solid healing (days to weeks). Both long and short term healing are enhanced when the horse is content with the forage, friendship, and locomotion resources. Avoid unnecessary restrictions to locomotion whenever feasible.
The earlier inflammation is detected, the shorter the time period is required to heal. Healing in a social-grazing setting is a long-evolved trait of the horse. Horses acclimated to herd and pasture settings during their development respond best to restorative healing. 
Horsefolk need to take special care not to exceed the horse's adaptability regarding stabling and healing. 

Horses require a sense of comfort and security for physical and mental restoration (and maintenance). An adequate social grazing environment, or appropriate facsimile thereof, often provides the most comfort to the most horses. Horses provided with adequate socialization throughout their upbringing are most responsive to these strategies. For horses, comfort and security come from friendship, forage, and, most-critically, a near-constant casual locomotion. Young horses and newborns learn to be horses from the dam and herd, and foals are best served to develop with horses in an appropriate grazing environment, as well. Horses learn to socialize, communicate, graze, locomote, run at speed in close company, play, smell, balance, move, and compete from their mother along with the herd members.

Corral or stall rest is counterproductive to healing, as it deprives horses of all three healing essentials. Horses heal efficiently in a social grazing setting, not one of isolation and deprivation. To a horse, restoration, from the word rest, ideally implies grazing open country in a herd setting with abundant environmental resources; appropriate grasslands to graze and walk, salt, and appropriately placed clean water. The properly managed social grazing setting with the open view is the environment in which horses evolved to thrive and heal.


Healthy physical and mental development are best actualized in a social grazing environment. Neonates rely on their dam for critical early learning processes, including sensual development, locomotion, and early mobility.  The development of agility, coordination and athleticism in early life is critical to subsequent mental health and soundness. Abundant social contact, grooming, sleep, play, athletic development, and social bonding occurs during early herd life. Horses rely on constant contact and frequent interactions with other horses for healthy mental and physical development. 
Opportunities for the abundant expression of normal equine behavior and motion promotes healing. 
Unfortunately, healing opportunities of this sort are not available everywhere, especially in the more urban equestrian settings. Space and grazing limitations restrict healing opportunities. In these scenarios, the horse's preferences have to recreated with carefully designed and implemented ENRICHMENT strategies that provide some fashion of near constant forage ingestion that allow oral and physical and movement and motion. Stabling scenarios often restrict social expression and sensual contact. Horses are sensitive to these deprivations which results in stress, which complicates and delays healing. 
LOCOMOTION is essential for both horse health and healing. 
Husbandry, healing, and rehabilitation nearly always benefit from appropriately managed and free choice locomotion strategies that are constantly tailored to the horse's healing process. Locomotion is required not only for normal healing, but for normal digestion, respiration, hoof health, circulation, and all other physiologic functions of the horse. Stall rest is at the expense of many systems, especially the hoof and metabolic systems. Digestion and respiration are compromised by confinement and restriction of movement. Metabolic, digestive, circulatory, hoof health, musculoskeletal, and nervous, systems, as well as the all other systems and functions of the horse, are dependent upon adequate and appropriate locomotion for normal functioning and/or healing. 

For horses that are hospitalized, paddocked, stabled, and corralled; active implementation and re-creation of the social pasture setting is necessary to maintain health and promote healing. The absence of abundant forage, friends, and locomotion is detrimental to a stabled or hospitalized horse's health, if not welfare. Medical conditions are apt to deteriorate in the face of the deprivations created by stabling and hospitalization. 
Stalled horses heal poorly. In addition to appropriate medical treatment, veterinarians and stable managers must creatively provide horses with abundant socialization, forage, and locomotion to maintain health and facilitate healing. 
Horses also heal horsefolk, and those horsefolk that implement these healing strategies often experience a sense of healing themselves, it seems. The human/horse bond runs deep. Domestication of the horse is a co-evolving evolutionary process. The human perspective is being shaped by the horse's perspective these days. Appreciation of the science of equine behavior and equitation is a welcome change for the horse after centuries of considerable subjugation.