When preparing for vaccinations, it's helpful to know what a horse has been vaccinated for in the past. If a horse's vaccination history is unknown, it's best to assume that he has not received any vaccinations at all and use the protocols designed for unvaccinated horses, which might include boosters of some vaccinations. Additional doses of most vaccinations will not harm a horse, reports EQUUS magazine.
The strangles vaccine is the one exception: it should not be given if a horse's vaccination history is unknown. In rare cases, horses that have had strangles before and those that have been repeatedly vaccinated for the disease may have a serious complication called purpura hemorrhagica if they are vaccinated again, according to Dr. David Horohov of the Maxwell H. Gluck Equine Research Center in Lexington, Ky.
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Purpura hemorrhagica is an immune reaction that causes the blood vessels in the head, legs, and abdomen to swell. This condition is painful for the horse as circulation is impaired. Horses with purpura hemorrhagica can be very depressed and it can take a long time for the swelling to abate. Purpura hemorrhagica can be fatal if it isn't treated effectively or in a timely manner.
Though the risk of purpura hemorrhagica is small, it's best to pull a strangles titer on a horse with an unknown history. The titer will show if a horse carries antibodies to Streptococcus equi. If he does show titers, he doesn't need to be vaccinated again.
The Thoroughbred Makeover has been over for a week now. Horses and humans who came to the Kentucky Horse Park from all over the country have returned home, jumps and competition arenas have been packed away, and the last ribbons have been awarded. But for anyone who showed up to watch the finale competitions on Oct. 15, one performance probably burns clear in the memory.
Meg Hems and her off-track Thoroughbred Nucks arrived at the covered arena well ahead of their scheduled finale ride, streaked in silver and glitter. Hems and Nucks had qualified for the finals in barrel racing, and had also participated in the Thoroughbred Incentive Program Barrel Racing Championship earlier in the week, but their first performance was something completely different.
Their first ride on that Saturday was for Devyn.
Hems and Nucks were also finalists in Freestyle, which is a delightfully open-ended discipline at the Makeover. It has basic requirements of horse and rider – that they showcase the horse's ability to walk, trot, and canter in both directions, halt and back up, do a lead change and trot in a figure eight. They have five minutes to show the horse off however they like. The discipline has seen a wide variety of creative performances through the years, with riders foregoing saddles and bridles, leaping their horses over fire, wearing costumes, and hauling props to music.
(See the 2018 Freestyle finals below.)
Generally, the horses who demonstrate the most versatility and most bombproof nature prevails, and with the top five competitors advancing to the finals, the discipline is a highlight of the Makeover's last day for spectators.
Hems had practiced the core elements of her routine for a few weeks before shipping to Lexington from her base near Hamilton, N.Y. Hems works long hours at a car dealership and has a daughter who is ten months old – not exactly a combination that leaves a lot of time for riding. She said she rode Nucks in the dark by the light of her truck's headlamps more often than she did in daylight.
So for her, putting on a blindfold at the start of her routine made the crowd twitter, but was just another ride in the black, with Nucks to guide her like he always had before. With blindfold in place, Hems trotted and cantered Nucks around the indoor arena as Tim McGraw's 'Live Like You Were Dying' played over the loudspeakers. The pair looped figure eights over an enormous tarp laid in the middle of the arena, Hems counting strides and using the sound of Nucks' feet on the plastic to help her get a sense for where they were in the ring.
Having practiced the pattern at home, Hems said Nucks turned himself through the space, knowing the center of the figure eights should fall over the tarp.
Nucks' quick mind was one of many reasons he had converted Hems from her skepticism of Thoroughbreds. From time to time, Hems hauls horses for Second Chance Thoroughbreds, bringing them from the track to the facility's base. Something about the Mission Impazible gelding, who retired a maiden after 12 tries, stuck out to her. Nucks called the program's coordinator and asked what his story was.
“I was not looking for a horse. I did not want another horse,” she said. “I really liked him. I had picked up a rehab project, a mare from my track, and I said, 'I'll switch with you.' She said, 'I don't have room for another mare but I'll tell you what, I'll pay you the first month's board to take him. People brag about getting a free horse but I got paid to take him.
“I've worked with quite a few [OTTBs] but I've always trained them for someone else or rehomed them … I've never connected with one like I do with Nucks. I trust him with my life. He's not going anywhere. I love that horse.”
Hems has done a little bit of everything as a rider. She runs barrels and does a lot of trail riding, but has evented, driven, done Western pleasure, roping, and hunters.
“I grew up riding English and decided I didn't like placing off someone's opinion,” she said. “Now, we just place off the clock and it's a good time. And I can wear sparkles.
“I'm weird in the sense that I like finding the job the horse likes, and then I enjoy doing the job with them.”
Her equestrian horizons were widened by the influence of her close friend, Devyn Merritt Anderson. While Hems grew up riding 4-H, Anderson grew up doing Pony Club, ultimately earning the organization's highest certification level in horse management. Anderson evented in the Genessee Valley, becoming the beginner novice champion for Area 1 and also drove carriages.
Hems and Anderson met while working at a farm and garden store a decade ago and realized they had horses in common. Their bond became a strong one. Hems stood up in Anderson's wedding and she was there for her friend throughout her ten-year battle with ocular cancer. Anderson was there for Hems' brother when he too was diagnosed with cancer.
Anderson (left) and Hems (right) at Hems' first event
“She lit up every single room she went into. If you needed someone to talk to or someone to cheer you up, Devyn was the person,” said Hems. “Devyn was the one who helped him through it more than anyone. Any time he was scared or unsure, he'd call or text Devyn. She'd walk him through it and tell him it would be ok. He ended up beating cancer, and that was their deal was he beat cancer so she had to, too.
“He fought, he won, and he gives a lot of credit to Devyn.”
Anderson also saw something special in Nucks. It was Anderson who convinced Hems not to make him a resale project, but to keep him. Anderson gave them both dressage basics that made Nucks' strides even and easy to count.
So as Hems prepared for the delayed 2020 Thoroughbred Makeover, she had an idea. She planned to take Nucks to the freestyle, which Anderson knew. What she didn't know was that Hems was planning to dedicate the routine to her.
“I was going to come in that arena and, surprise, this whole routine's for you,” she said. “She was going to cry. There was no question there. But it would be all the best tears. Her and I lived off surprising each other. I'd send her flowers randomly to brighten her day. She'd call me to tell me I was doing a great job. That was our friendship – we went out of our way to cheer each other up.”
Having wowed the crowd with her blindfolded trot and canter work, Hems signaled to four people standing in the arena with her – including her younger brother. Each lifted a corner of the enormous tarp, with Hems and Nucks walking underneath. Hems shed her blindfold and grabbed a flag from her brother, then galloped out from underneath the tunnel. The black flag showed a rainbow of cancer awareness ribbon colors, each representing a different type of disease, surrounding white letters spelling out “No One Fights Alone.”
Hems sent Nucks at a gallop around the arena's perimeter, the glittered tassels on her show shirt flying, the flag flapping, her hair streaming behind her. And then, she dropped the reins, throwing her arms open and letting her Thoroughbred sprint at full speed, completely free. To anyone sitting in the crowd, she had an otherworldly power to her, racing the wind on her nearly-black horse like something out of an ancient myth.
“I am going to be completely honest – I didn't plan to throw my hands up,” she said. “I didn't practice it, I didn't plan on it. The emotion hit me, and Nucks has my back through everything and I knew it. It just felt right.”
Anderson wasn't in the stands, as Hems had planned. Just a month before the Makeover, she lost her battle with cancer at the age of 31. At the conclusion of the song, Hems looked skyward. She said she knew that even though she wasn't sitting in one of the seats in the front row, her friend could see her.
“It's very true that nobody fights alone, as cliché as it sounds,” said Hems. “I wanted every single person in that crowd to know they're not alone. The disease is nasty, but there are people out there. We all have to have each other's backs.”
Hems and Nucks finished second in the freestyle competition, third in barrel racing overall and 3D Average Champion in the TIP Championships and High Point Adopted Horse Award.
Not long after finishing second in the @RRP_TBMakeover 2020 freestyle division (riding around the arena blindfolded!) Megan Hems and Nucks, by Mission Impazible brought the same spectacle to the barrel racing final, where they were third. That was pretty cool. pic.twitter.com/lnJFOQaaLe
“He's got an old soul to him,” said Hems. “He's only six years old but that horse, I can put my daughter on him. I knew he wouldn't do anything dangerous. He knows he's got to take care of his people and he genuinely loves to be loved. He lives for me to tell him he's a good boy.”
Now, she said Nucks will get a vacation. They'll spend the winter trail riding through the snow before gearing up for shows again. He may learn to work cattle in springtime. Whatever comes, Devyn was right about Nucks – he belongs with Hems for life.
The College of Veterinary Medicine launched its new Department of Public and Ecosystem Health Oct. 25 after extensive campus consultation. This is the college's sixth academic department and its first new department in more than 20 years.
“This department unites the programs and activities at the College of Veterinary Medicine that already leverage a One Health approach, and will link interdisciplinary work that benefits the well-being of people, animals and the environment,” said Lorin D. Warnick, D.V.M., Ph.D. '94, the Austin O. Hooey Dean of Veterinary Medicine. “The department brings together veterinarians, research scientists and public health practitioners with the goal of addressing critical health problems through education, research and community engagement.”
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“The launch of this department at the College of Veterinary Medicine is an important step for Cornell in preparing the next generation of scientists to meet the complex health challenges that attend changes in climate, animal habitat and human behavior. The new department will provide a home for Cornell's outstanding public health program,” said Provost Michael I. Kotlikoff, who served as dean of the College of Veterinary Medicine from 2007 to 2015.
The founding chair will be Dr. Alexander Travis, professor of reproductive biology and director of Cornell's Master of Public Health Program.
“It is an honor to help start this unique department,” Travis said. “Most academic departments are organized around either a specific subject or a common disciplinary approach. Instead, we unite faculty from different professions and disciplines to work together to tackle some of the world's most pressing challenges.”
The challenges are organized within three main themes: Healthy food systems, encompassing everything from food production to consumption and associated nutritional and health impacts; emerging health threats, which grapples with topics such as novel infectious diseases, antimicrobial resistance and climate change; and biodiversity conservation, which is needed to preserve the systems on which all life depends.
These challenges effectively boil down to two things, said Travis – sustainability and equity. “Many of the worst problems plaguing us today stem from the unsustainable ways that humans interact with other species and the environment, and the inequitable ways that we interact with each other,” Travis said.
The ongoing coronavirus pandemic demonstrates the need for a department to focus on these interconnected issues, he said.
“Unfortunately, COVID-19 provides an excellent example of how unsustainable use of wildlife and unsafe food systems combined to enable the emergence of a new infectious disease,” Travis said. “And we've seen that the worst impacts of the pandemic have been borne by the most vulnerable among us, here in the U.S. and around the world.”
In addition to emerging infectious diseases, the department's three themes encompass a host of interconnected problems facing humanity. Climate change affects human health and food production, and increases the frequency of historic disasters, such as fires and floods that harm people and can drive wildlife to extinction. Poverty and discrimination affect people's nutrition, environmental exposures, stress and more. And loss of biodiversity reduces humanity's sources of food and medicine, making people more vulnerable to disease and reducing services, ranging from pollinating food crops to protecting people from storm damage or keeping air and water clean.
Addressing these complicated problems requires diverse disciplinary expertise – not just in veterinary medicine and public health, but also in the realms of ecology, social sciences, and policy.
“Cornell has experts who are the best in the world in their fields. We plan to build on that excellence in research, teaching and practice through university-wide collaborations, so we can maximize our impact in New York and beyond,” Travis said.
The new department contains 26 founding faculty members, all of whom come from other departments within the College of Veterinary Medicine. Each teaches in the veterinary curriculum and/or Master of Public Health Program, supervises graduate and professional students in scientific research, and engages in clinical or public health practice.
The department plans to grow its programmatic offerings for students, including combinations of degrees – such as D.V.M./M.P.H., M.S./M.P.H., and Ph.D./M.P.H. – because students will increasingly need to use a multi-disciplinary, systems-based approach as they attempt to tackle the world's issues in their careers.
Travis is well-suited to running a department that unites many different areas of focus for comprehensive solutions to problems. His research explores a diverse set of subjects, including fertility in humans and animals, and efforts to help alleviate poverty and hunger in developing countries, work that indirectly benefits local wildlife. He has served as associate dean of international programs and public health at the college and is founding director of the Master of Public Health Program.
Said Warnick, “The Department of Public and Ecosystem Health builds on our college's roots and long history of contributing to advances in public health — and is another way Cornell is embracing challenges facing humanity, animal life and our planet.”
The Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation (TRF) has received a $60,000 matching gift from the Santulli Family Foundation to launch the 2021 Hay Drive. Richard and Peggy Santulli will match every dollar donated to the TRF up to $60,000 for this campaign. The TRF's goal for the 2021 Hay Drive is $120,000 to cover the cost of hay for the nearly 500 former racehorses currently in their care throughout the country.
The TRF Hay Drive is one of the most important campaigns for the organization and will be conducted by direct mail, email and social media as well as one-on-one donation requests. The Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation, now in its 38th year, is the oldest Thoroughbred rescue in the country and provides sanctuary to a herd of nearly 500 retired racehorses.
“Hay is the cornerstone of a horse's diet and especially so in the winter months,” said Jessica Paquette, TRF Director of Communication and Annual Fund. “With the rising cost of hay throughout the country, we are grateful for the support.”
Last year, with the help of the Santulli Family Foundation, the TRF surpassed the goal of $120,000 and the organization is hopeful that this year's response will be equally as successful.
“We are immensely grateful for the continued support from the Santulli family,” said Patricia Stickney, TRF Executive Director. “They have been longtime champions of aftercare and we hope that their generosity will inspire others to give as well.”
About TRF: Founded in 1983, the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation is a national organization devoted to saving Thoroughbred horses no longer able to compete at the racetrack from possible neglect, abuse, and slaughter. As the oldest Thoroughbred rescue in the country, the TRF provides lifelong sanctuary to retired Thoroughbreds throughout their lifetime.
Best known for its pioneering TRF Second Chances program, the organization provides incarcerated individuals with life-changing vocational training through its accredited equine care and stable management program. At eight correctional facilities across the US, including one juvenile justice facility, this program offers second careers to its horses and a second chance at life for program graduates upon release from prison. The TRF Second Chances Program at the Wallkill Correctional Facility provides a home for 40 retired Thoroughbred racehorses and has been changing the lives of returning citizens for nearly forty years.
