As a shortage of equine veterinarians grows, everyone from universities to veterinary hospitals to farm managers have been brainstorming how they can help inspire young people to take up the profession, or keep young vets from switching to small animal practice. You might not think of the upcoming Thoroughbred Makeover as a pivotal event in this area, but thanks to the efforts of Dr. Shannon Kelly Reed, clinical associate professor of large animal surgery at Texas A&M University, it has become that for some students.
The Thoroughbred Makeover is a training competition hosted by the Retired Racehorse Project and is designed to showcase the significant progress an ex-racehorse can make with just 10 months of training in a new career. The event evolved from a demonstration to a small competition between professional trainers to a giant event with cash prizes which draws hundreds of Thoroughbreds and people to the Kentucky Horse Park each year.
Reed is a longtime advocate of off-track Thoroughbreds, having competed in the Makeover event herself in 2017 and 2018 and aimed some of her academic research at better understanding the demographics of horses leaving the track for new careers.
While trainers must apply and be approved to enter the Makeover, many of them are amateurs who don't ride or train as their full-time job. For some of them, their Makeover horse may be one of their first Thoroughbreds. As she watched the event grow from a competitor's perspective, Reed saw an opportunity for continuing education.
“I heard a lot of people saying, 'You can't put weight on Thoroughbreds' or 'They're always footsore' and I wanted to say no – you just have to change the standard, or help people reach it,” she said.
Reed suggested to event organizers that this could be accomplished by a mandatory veterinary exam on arrival, and they suggested she launch a program to make it happen. The arrival exam, which horses must pass in order to compete, includes evaluation of the horse's body condition score, soundness, heart rhythms and lung sounds, and basic vitals before they're cleared to compete.
Reed said it's rare for a horse to fail the arrival exam, but the goal isn't to weed out potential competitors – it's to help Makeover hopefuls anticipate what Thoroughbreds need that other breeds may not. The exam process is explained thoroughly to competitors during the year as they're training their horses, giving them the chance to anticipate and troubleshoot some common challenges with horses transitioning from racetrack to show ring. Reed and the RRP staff make themselves available for continuing education webinars and troubleshooting, all with the knowledge that the let down period between track and new career can be a learning process not just for the horse, but also for the owner.
The prospect of examining every horse in a field that this year includes 404 horses is a daunting one, however. Reed knew from the first year of the procedure in 2019 she was going to need some help.
“The first year we started it was me and multiple veterinarians from Hagyard and Boehringer-Ingelheim because they were co-sponsors of RRP,” she said. “It was seven veterinarians getting through well over 300 horses. That was the first year I put out a call for vet students. I had a whole bunch show up and at the end of the day they said this was the best experience they'd ever had.”
The next year, Reed created a formal program and asked interested students to apply for a spot on the examinations team. She got 350 applications for 30 spots, well beyond anything she could have expected, and several years in, there are still ten or more applications for every one spot on the examination team. The response has been so encouraging that practicing veterinarians have pulled together stipend money to help students who don't live locally to afford the trip to Kentucky.
Small teams of veterinary students are matched with veterinarians and each other based on their equine experience level, pairing more experienced students with those with less handling experience. They work 30 hours in the course of three days, which is a real crash course in the type of working conditions that can be part of a working equine vet's day.
Reed said most of the applicants already have an equine interest, but she gets many who are on the fence about whether they want to go into a horse-oriented practice – and who may not have been sure whether their non-riding backgrounds would dampen the industry's welcome.
“The AAEP helps us out a lot, but I don't limit it to student AAEP chapter members. We want to open it up to students who think they might be interested,” said Reed. “There's no pre-requisite that you have worked with horses before you get there. We try to keep it inclusive, and I randomize how I choose the students. Then, a lot of them leave there saying, 'You know, I think I could do horses.'
“It's unique in the hands-on part of it because nowhere else can you say we're going to examine 400 horses. They're all going to have lumps and bumps on them because they raced, but we can talk about those, we can look at radiographs, we can do soundness checks. They get a huge experience seeing horses, some of which are normal, some of which are rehabbed. I don't think there's many experiences that allow them that much repetitive, rapid, learning to assess a horse which is the baseline for all of their physical exams when they go out for their career.”
The students get a great experience interacting with horse owners, because Reed points out the culture of the Makeover is the “happiest horse show on earth” wherein most competitors are just thrilled to have made it to their season-end goal. Owners in this setting are much more cheerful than the typical show barn, where a lot of money is on the line and everyone's attentions are divided and strained.
Student feedback after the event has supported Reed's impression that those three days are proving to be hugely influential in some students' career paths.
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If you appreciate our work, you can support us by subscribing to our Patreon stream. Learn more.“I do have at least two alumni from the first year that have at least discussed and negotiated with people on the racetrack to work with them there, and that's a big deal,” said Reed. “There are people out there who want to do equine medicine; we just have to catch them. It's not that they don't want to work, they just want to work with purpose.”
Anna Botiller, who is a second-year veterinary student at Mississippi State University, participated in the arrival exam program at last year's Thoroughbred Makeover. After starting a career as a veterinary technician focusing on horses in Central Kentucky, Botiller already had experience with Thoroughbreds prior to veterinary school, but found the process incredibly helpful for developing a sense for which exam findings are normal and which are less so. It also gave her the chance to see equine veterinarians at work, and to change some of the preconceptions she had about the job.
“As a first-year vet student, at the time of last year's RRP, I was sitting in classes where professional development professors told me I could expect to make half as much in salary and work over twice as many hours as my small animal counterparts,” said Botiller. “I admit, prior to RRP last year, I was a little heart-broken thinking it might be impossible to be a full-time equine vet and have any financial stability or life outside the job. Particularly concerning (then and now) were my mounting stack of student loans in contrast with the prediction of a low salary. I was seriously considering that small animal emergency work might have to become my focus, relegating equine work to on-the-side. And then I spent three days surrounded by full-time equine vets who are vivacious, laughed hard and often, supported one another, worked together like a well-oiled machine, are financially stable, and still have time to find fulfillment in family and hobbies outside of work.
“Due in large part to my experiences with the RRP vet arrival team, I'm actively looking for equine clinics where I can fulfill externship requirements that will help me continue down the path of becoming an equine veterinarian. I look back on those three days last October and realize that it's the people who put on programs like this who are reshaping equine vet med, one vet student at a time.”
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