Healing in Horses

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.

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.

Racehorse Advocacy

Racehorse Advocacy

The Trouble with Lasix

Testimony before the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission hearing on raceday medication. November 14, 2011, Frankfort, KY, on behalf of the Humane Society Veterinary Medical Association and the Humane Society of the United States.

Sid Gustafson DVM

Equine veterinary behaviorist representing the health and welfare of horses

11-11-11

To appreciate the nature of the thoroughbred, I would like to briefly review the evolution of the horse and the domestication process. Of all human/equine pursuits, horse racing is perhaps the most natural equine pursuit of all, more natural than polo or stadium jumping or cutting, for example. Horses have evolved for 60 million years to run at speed in close company. Running at speed is the horse’s long-evolved group survival mechanism. This is the nature which is nurtured in thoroughbred lines and thoroughbred development and training. Racing comes natural to a horse.

To appreciate how horses develop the athletic endurance to run at speed together in connected and close company, veterinary behaviorists observe horses in natural settings to assess how horses naturally prepare themselves to race. They study how horses prepare younger horses to develop strong limbs and lungs and musculoskeletal systems to achieve success in evading prey. Knowledge of the horse’s nature is abundantly applied here in Kentucky. Farm after farm has large pastures where bands of mares and foals, and later bands of cohorts, run and play and learn to travel closely together at running at speed. They learn to communicate together, to change leads together, to move in a safe and synchronous organized fashion while running in large circles. It is this essential experience with other horses in a herd that a growing thoroughbred gains the confidence to run by and through horses later in life in a race.

The goal of a harem is to teach the foal to run with the herd. The mare and band are the long-evolved teachers of this process. The herd conditions growing horses. Running with the herd facilitates the physical development of the lungs and musculoskeltal system. The reproduction and re-creation of these natural behaviors are essential for the healthy mental and physical development of the thoroughbred, as is evident everywhere in the Bluegrass. In order to later prevail in a horserace, growing thoroughbreds need to be conditioned by the herd to develop the ability, coordination, stamina, pulmonary capacity and strength, confidence, and experience needed to endure training and racing. 

It is this knowledge that elucidates how raceday medication impoverishes the welfare of racehorses. To appreciate the principles of equine behavior is to understand what is required to maintain pulmonary health in horses confined to stalls being conditioned to race. The solution to managing Exercise-Induced-Pulmonary-Hemorrhage is appropriate breeding, development, horsemanship, training, and husbandry. 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 the care that keeps horses on their feet during races.

One point is clear; the data from non-Lasix, non-raceday medication jurisdictions indicates clean-running horses suffer significantly fewer breakdowns than horses running on Lasix in America. Over the last two years, we watched two horses break down for every 1000 starts. Meanwhile, the clean running Hong Kong Jockey Club has less than one breakdown for every 2000 starts. They have no apparent or significant problems with bleeding. They have clearly demonstrated that clean racing is four times safer than medicated racing.

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. Appropriate husbandry and training maintains and establishes soundness of both wind and limb. 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 EIPH while racing. They are more apt to stay sound. Humane care of the horse prevents bleeding, my friends. 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. Peformance medication leads to fragility. Rather than alleviate medical conditions, this data indicates racing medications exceed racehorse adaptability and perpetuate fragility in racehorses. Fragility is dangerous for both horses and riders. To grasp how Lasix impoverishes the welfare of the racehorse, one needs to understand the long-evolved nature and behavior of the racehorse.

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. Lasix manages a wide variety of unsoundness’s, as do the cortisones and NSAIDs. Running sore causes lungs to bleed. Anti-inflammatory drugs aggravate coagulation processes. Please appreciate that horses running on pharmaceutical scrims are 4X more likely to break down. 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 husbandry are the keys to racehorse soundness, stamina, and durability.

The causes of EIPH are clear. Horses prone to bleed are those horses that are mistakenly bred, inadequately developed, and inappropriately stabled and trained. To allow drugs to cover conditions reflective of horsemen failing to attend to the basic needs of the horse in training impoverishes thoroughbred and standardbred welfare. To administer Lasix, the adjunct drugs, and phenylbutazone to virtually every horse before he or she races is an inappropriate application of veterinary medicine. The en masse drugging of racehorses has been demonstrated to be unethical, unnecessary, and untoward. In the case of contemporary American racing, Lasix is the drug that allows horsemen to abuse horses, to use a plethora of performance enhancing drugs, to cut corners on the proper care, conditioning, development, and husbandry of their racehorses, to develop an ideology that relies on drugs rather than talent. Drugs should not be allowed to alleviate conditions reflective of improper care. The first rule of veterinary medicine is; First, Do No Harm.

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. Racehorses are no exception. The last place a horse evolved to live is in a stall, alone. The solution to manage bleeding in racehorses is to develop, teach, train, and care for horses in a horse-sensitive fashion. Training and husbandry need to be a good deal for horses in order for horses to maintain healthy partnerships with people. Pulmonary health is reflective of overall health and soundness in horses.

In order to maintain pulmonary health, natural conditions need to be recreated in the stable. Horses prefer to graze together and move nearly constantly. This constant grazing and moving are essential for joint and bone health, hoof health, metabolic health, and pulmonary health. In order for lungs to stay healthy, horses need movement, often more movement than trainers provide. Walking enhances and maintains horse health. Stabled horses need a lot more walking than most are currently afforded. Abundant on track and off-track locomotion is necessary to condition a horse’s lungs. Lungs deteriorate when movement is restricted. Horses breath all day long, and movement is required much of the day to maintain pulmonary strength and health. Walking and movement enhance breathing and lung health. Drugs are not the answer. 

Development and conditioning of pulmonary health throughout growth and while training are the answers to preventing bleeding, as they have always been. 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 inappropriate. Barn design needs addressed to maintain pulmonary health. 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 natural 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 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 horse. Racing is safer in Lasix-free jurisdictions where the drug crutch is not allowed. Drugs are not allowed to replace appropriate care and training in Hong Kong and Europe, and raceday drugs should not be allowed in America. The stabled racehorse has to be carefully and humanely cared for and nourished, both physically and behaviorally, to win and stay healthy. Lasix has weakened the breed, and weakened the American horseracing game considerably as the numbers across the board clearly reveal.

The horse has brought us all here today. If racing is to flourish as a sport in Kentucky, horseracing must come clean of drugs and replace its raceday medication attitudes with appropriate horse-sensitive breeding, development, horsemanship, behavior, training, and husbandry programs. To honorably share this great Commonwealth with our friend the horse, we must learn to use the resources of the land and people to nurture Kentucky horses, and rid the heart of the sport of its dependence on raceday drugs.

Respectfully submitted,

Sid Gustafson DVM

Goodbye Lasix, and Good Riddance

October 28, 2011, 9:14 AM                                                      
NY Times, The Rail

By SID GUSTAFSON

Beginning with the 2012 Breeders’ Cup, 2-year-olds will not be administered medication hours before they race for the first time in decades. The regulators of racing have seen the light from the horse and rider perspective. Extensive studies clearly indicate that drugs cause more trouble for racehorses and their riders than they alleviate. Lasix jurisdictions have significantly more breakdowns than jurisdictions where Lasix is not allowed. No prerace Lasix means no attending veterinarians with loaded syringes in the stall injecting the horses with drugs hours before they run. The dangerous and dubious charade of medicating racehorses before they compete is coming to a welcome end.

Science and research continue to reveal and demonstrate that raceday drugs have not been helpful to the safety of the sport. Drugs generally have not been helpful to any sport. Why veterinarians and others continue to advocate raceday drug use for competition horses is beyond sound reason. The only ones who benefit from racehorses being medicated on raceday are the attending veterinarians and, subsequently, the veterinary surgeons. Equine veterinarians have long lobbied for drugs to enhance racing, but the science continues to demonstrate that chronic use of raceday drugs degrades the quality and safety of racing while impoverishing the welfare of racehorses. Raceday medications increase the breakdown rate. After decades of racehorses suffering the devastating effects of untoward veterinary influence, raceday medication is on schedule to be eliminated in the next few years. Consider this a most beneficial measure for racehorses and horse racing.

In Europe, bleeding is managed with proper husbandry, feeding, and preparation of the horses rather than with the drug Lasix, or any other legal drugs. There, appropriate conditioning and husbandry measures maintain pulmonary health and endurance, eliminating reliance on medications to manage bleeding and unsoundness. Less medication translates to safer horse racing. Bleeding is best prevented by appropriate breeding, athletic development, abundant locomotion, husbandry, training, nutrition and conditioning rather than by drug use, which sets a grave precedent.

There is scientific validity that the drug Lasix prevents pulmonary hemorrhage, yes, but that is not an adequate reason to advocate its raceday use. Lasix begets a plethora of additional drug use. Wherever pre-race Lasix is permitted, additional drugs are administered to most all of the diuretically-infused racing horses by their trainers and attending veterinarians. Lasix allows and encourages a lot of drug use. It legitimized the stage for the medication mentality that has haunted racing in recent years with all the notable breakdowns, sudden deaths and wrecks.

Lasix or Salix is furosemide, a potent diuretic that dilutes the urine and lowers the pulmonary blood pressure. The drug alters the electrolyte balance of racing horses and makes them vulnerable to heat stroke and metabolic dysfunction. As well, chronic diuretic use interferes with locomotory abilities required to run biomechanically sound by altering cardiac function, muscle function, nerve function, and most every other physiologic function. Diuretics weaken horses. These days there is little doubt that pharmaceutically weakened horses are more vulnerable to breaking down. It is not surprising that Lasix jurisdictions have more breakdowns than drug-free jurisdictions. We should have known. Now we know.

No more Lasix is great news for horses. Endurance, durability, soundness, sway, turn of hoof and mettle will enter the betting and breeding parlance once again. No raceday medication means sounder, more durable racing. Sounder, safer racing can help sustain public interest and financial support for the sport. Horseplayers and the general public do not necessarily relish betting on medicated horses.

The racing competition in Europe flourishes without raceday medications. The increased quality of racing without drugs is readily apparent at racetracks across the Atlantic. The enhanced quality of drug-free running can be easily observed in many of their classic races. There, trainers must take care to properly nourish, condition, and enrich their charges without using drugs as a training crutch. It shows in nearly every race.

In two years, American racing jurisdictions are scheduled to join the rest of the racing horse world and eliminate Lasix in the United States and Canada. Running clean is running safer and fairer, as the Europeans and others have honorably demonstrated. Of course, honor when visiting America is a different thing, and the Europeans will drop their ethics to run on Lasix and all the other drugs still allowed at Churchill Downs in this years Breeders’ Cup. Although perhaps honorably intentioned while racing in England and France, the European trainers know how Lasix moves up a horse in America. As has long been the history of horse racing, honor with horses is one thing, and the quest for purse money still remains quite another.

Nonetheless, progress is at hand. The tide of drugs administered to American racehorses has crested and will soon be falling away altogether. The removal of anabolic steroids has already improved safety while allowing female racehorses to run with the ranks of males. The further flow of drugs into the veins and joints of horses will gradually ebb. Trainers will have to rely on knowledge, finesse, athletic development, horsemanship, nutrition, behavior, husbandry and their jockey to win a horse race, sort of like horse racing was always intended to be. Imagine that.

2012 will be the year in America where the culture of raceday medication begins to disappear. Horses at tracks everywhere will breathe great sighs of relief, as should their riders, drivers, supporters, advocates, players, writers and parlayers.

Good riddance to Lasix and all the drug use it has encouraged and facilitated. Good riddance to Lasix and all the electrolyte imbalances, metabolic dysfunctions, shortened careers, breakdowns and weaknesses the drug has caused willing runners.

There is nothing so fine as running clean and winning; nothing so fine as being truly the best horse; nothing so fine to win naturally and return to race again and hold sway.

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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.

Horse Training Principles, DrSid's Q and A

Q: What do you think are the biggest barriers today to horses being trained humanely?

Lack of appropriate socialization during the development phase of the horse's life, birth to two years old. Horses need to first become horses, as taught by the mare and herd, to subsequently become willing learners and partners for folk. Husbandry is also critical. Horses require friends, forage, and locomotion, and often these necessities are restricted by stabling and change, resulting in inability to learn, resulting in heavy handed training tactics. Horses are willing to please those who know how to please horses. Horse lives must be fulfilled and enriched when they are stabled if one expects them to train up and learn willingly.

Q: How can understanding learning theory help the average horse owner?

It is essential to appreciate learning theory, but perhaps more important is to appreciate the social nature of the horse so one can fulfill the needs of the horse before the training begins. Learning theory is only helpful if horses are cared for in a fashion that facilitates and encourages them to be in a learning state of mind when the training takes place. Horses need to be socialized, fulfilled, and enriched, and that requires a knowledge of equine behaviour.

Some horse trainers cannot articulate or explain learning theory, but they do know the fundamentals of shared sociality, and many, although ignorant of the science, apply learning principles properly. Nonetheless, it is preferred to know the science and to understand socialization. Social species require abundant socialization. Some folk, such as Native Americans and those raised by horses through childhood, intuitively know how to train horses, as they were taught by horses. They know the science, they just do not know it as science as they effectively enter the horse's social milieu. No one told them they had to become the horse's boss, only to become the horse's friend, and those folk succeed quite well. Those who have trouble training horses are those who try to establish dominance to an excessive degree. 

Q: What or where do you feel the best source is for owners and trainers to learn more about training and learning theory?

They need to take equine behavior at Equine Guelph, and/or read and study McGreevy's two books, Equine Behaviour and Equitation Science. If the people are young (or agree to take a stance of innocence and open-mindedness), they should observe horses in natural settings, and hang out with horses whenever possible. Horses teach horsemanship to those with the right eyes. Kids often have the right eyes, while adults often lose their capacity to see what horses are saying and feeling. Rather than listening to and learning from horses, they attempt to domineer them.

Q: What do you think is the best recent advance in horse training?

Understanding domestication, which reveals the importance of pair bonding with each horse one desires to teach. It was the horse's idea to take up with mankind, it seems. They showed up willing to please. Other than that, not much else. One must go back in time to find advances that have long since been lost. Peggy Brown felt advances in equipment were the best advances, but I say the less equipment the better, so I do not believe in equipment and tack, especially rigs. The best advances in equine training would be, again, at Equine Guelph where Equine Behaviour is taught as a science based discipline based on the evolution, domestication, and behaviour of the horse.

Q: What do you think is the biggest disservice to horses in the trends of horse training today?

Lack of appropriate socialization is a great disservice to growing horses, as is interference with the mare/foal bond shortly after birth (imprint training is a significant welfare and behavioral insult to foals). The mare is the most qualified teacher of a foal, and teaches the foal to become a horse, as well as to pair bond. For a person to believe they know more than a mare is a mistake. Any child can observe imprint training and know it is wrong to interfere with a neonate and her mother's relationship. After a week, the people can begin training. For the first week, the best way to develop a foal to become a willing partner is to let the mare teach the foal all about willing partnerships.
Once the horse is grown and ready to train at two or so, isolation becomes a big problem for the well-being of the horse. Stabling without 24/7 forage, friends, and locomotion creates all sorts of learning disabilities and unwelcome behaviours. Only happy horses learn well and efficiently. The happiest horses are those allowed to graze together. The unhappiest horses are locked in a stall much of the time, and are the least likely to learn willingly.

 What do you perceive to be a common accepted mistake when training horses?

Trying to exert dominance over horses. One must always remember that it is the horse who will always have the last word. 
This mistake of attempting to establish dominance is unfortunately not commonly accepted. Horses are the most adaptable, willing learners on the planet. They are more than happy to be taught and to appease their teachers if only they are allowed appropriate socialization, and subsequent application of learning theory, which includes bonding practices. Coercive training is unproductive. Horses cannot be forced to prevail in athletic competitions. Horsefolk must seek and attain willing partnerships with horses to prevail in athletic competitions. One cannot force a horse to win the Kentucky Derby, one must work with the horse's nature every step of the way. 
It is the herd of horses that teaches foals to run at speed in close company with other horses. It is the herd that gives the horse the confidence to run through and by other horses in a horserace.
One is best served to recreate the learning scenario the mare and herd creates for their foal. Mares teach utilizing pressure, release, reward. As well, the foal learns by mimicry. To learn how to walk the horse talk, watch mares teach their foals. Horsemanship is becoming part of the herd, it seems.

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.