Lasix Encourages Racehorse Doping in America

The Florida Derby racehorses will be injected with two performance enhancing drugs before heading to the paddock for their derby run, prednisolone and Lasix. Both prerace drugs are allowed by the state racing regulators, who have become puppets of the trainers' lobby. Raceday injections are the root of all the current doping troubles in America. The state racing jurisdictions, all of them, have chosen to set the example of allowing horses to be injected intravenously with performance enhancing drugs shortly before racing. This practice of legal doping has created an untoward atmosphere of generalized racehorse doping, as we are seeing. Raceday and day before medication has to be eliminated if progress protecting the health and welfare of racehorses is to advance.
A strict policy of not allowing horses to be injected with drugs in the days before and the day of racing is the international standard. Where raceday injections are not allowed, racing is 4X safer for the horses, and jockeys. In America, horses break down at 4X the rate of horses racing without the pre-race performance enhancers in Asia, Australia, and Europe.
The raceday drug Lasix potentiates breakdowns due to its performance enhancing effect. Lasix also allows for the substandard care of the racehorses. To permit legal doping is to encourage widespread doping. Raceday Lasix (and IV cortisone) are considered doping by the regulators in Asia, Dubai, Europe, and Australia, where racing is safer and horses are better cared for. 
Sid Gustafson DVM
http://therail.blogs.nytimes.com/author/sid-gustafson/

The Principles of Equine Welfare

In Consideration of the Nature of Horses

In consideration of the horse’s nature and behavior horsewomen and horsemen are obligated to provide horses an appropriate environment, proper nutrition, sufficient sociobehavioral circumstances, as well as ethical training and horsemanship modalities. By nature the horse is a grazer of the plains, a social and herd animal, and flighty. Horsemanship and training are best accomplished through behavioral understanding of the horse and facilitation of the horse’s nature, rather than by force or coercion. Horses are best trained in a relaxed, calm state. Training that puts the horse into the flight or sympathetic state generated by fear and contained by ropes or pens is discouraged, and not in accordance with acceptable standards of well being.

Horses graze and walk together 60-70% of the time under natural circumstances, eating and moving from spot to spot independently but within a few meters of the next horse. Stabling should make every effort to accommodate or recreate these long-evolved grazing in motion preferences for proper physiological function and mental health.
Locomotion is essential to physical and behavioral health. Horses require miles of daily walking to maintain proper physiological function. Stabled horses must be brought out of their stalls several times each day to walk and exercise. Hours of daily walking are necessary to fulfill the nature of horses.

Horses require other horses for proper health and prosperity. Horses require the constant companionship of other horses. A horse should seldom be kept alone. Horses being mixed with other horses and expected to share resources should be properly acclimated socially, and be given the required space to adjust to new herds without injury or undue stress. Every effort should be made to provide horses with the social benefit of appropriate companion horses through times of stress and illness.

Horsewomen and men need to appreciate the sensual nature of the horse, and understand the physiological needs of the horse. Horses prefer the open view, and if they cannot be with other horses, they need to see and smell other horses for proper behavioral functioning and responsiveness. 

Water is the most important nutrient, and must be provided in consideration of equine behavioral preferences along with free-choice salt.

Grazing is the preferred and predominant equine activity. Horses did not evolve to metabolize grains and non-structured carbohydrates, or to remain stationary for even short periods of time.

Play and sleep are naturally occurring preferences that require accommodation however horses are housed or stabled, as deprivation results in behavioral deterioration.

Horses are physiologically dependent on shared social grooming and sensual contact companionship. If stabling precludes these preferences from fulfillment, then every effort need be applied to replace or recreate these needs on a daily basis.

These behavioral considerations apply to horses in transport, and for those horses too, however unwanted, man is obligated to provide the proper environment, social functioning, nutrition, medical care, and exercise to sufficiently assure health and comfort.

As to performance, every care and precaution need be taken to avoid exceeding the adaptability of the horse. All of the horse's normal natural sensation should remain fully intact and functional without undue pharmaceutical influence. The horse's metabolic, physical, medical, and behavioral limitations must be monitored by equine veterinary professionals on an intense comprehensive basis.

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.

Horse Behaviour; The Nature of Horses

Dr Gustafson's long awaited book is now available here.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ILG3JX0

Through time horses have embedded themselves into the psyche of humans in a variety of cultures throughout the world. Linguists proclaim that the ancient words for mind and horse are similar in a variety of horse societies. The Mongol word for horse is takh, meaning spirit. The original horse people related to horses in a state of flowing communication. The result was a blending of human society with horse society. After eons of walking across the world, humans brought the wild Tarpan into their fold. As the two species came closer and closer together, the original horsepeople tamed, trained, and selectively bred the Tarpan to become today’s horse.

The process of domestication required eons of time; a blending of species brought about a shared geography and shared communication. Each species observed and followed the other for millennia, developing an understanding that resulted in a sophisticated merger. The domestication process continues to this day. To blend with horses, people must know horses. Here we will come to appreciate the deepest natures of the horse, the natures that allowed this wonderful species to blend with us.

Sustenance of this blending of horse and human requires an appreciation of the nature of the horses. The once daily and hourly coexistence has drifted. A rift has developed. If a contemporary horseperson seeks unity with horses, they must come to know the horse in order to bridge the rift.

            

Today, horsefolk attempt to develop willing partnerships with horses as the original domesticators must have. Appreciation of equine behaviour allows this blending, which can be quite real.

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.

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.