Tag: Horse Care

In the wake of Saratoga's race meet, which made headlines for high-profile fatalities in Grade 1 races, racing fans and stakeholders have asked each other — what else can be done to improve equine safety?

As pre-race veterinary checks have increased and medication use has become more restricted, many people have shifted their focus toward breeding. Some have gravitated toward the general progression of the breed toward speed and away from distance and pedigrees, while others have focused on particular sires or sire lines they believe are responsible for greater soundness problems.

We asked Dr. Tim Parkin, head of school and professor of veterinary epidemiology at Bristol Veterinary School, about this question. Parkin is the primary epidemiologist who analyzes data from the Equine Injury Database and together with a research team has identified patterns and risk factors that increase the chances a given horse will suffer a fatal injury during a race.

Parkin's work has shown – predictably – that fatalities are complex events with multiple factors that influence the likelihood one will occur. One factor may explain just a portion of the difference in risk between a fatally-injured horse and a living competitor from the same race, which makes his job difficult. In 2017, Parkin said his team could explain just 35 percent of the ebb and flow of fatality rates between the start of the EID's record-keeping in 2009 and 2017, at which point the overall fatality rate was trending downward (as it is now).

As it turns out, Parkin believes that the identity of sires and dams in a horse's pedigree probably don't make as much of a difference in its risk level as what we may expect.

“Every time we run the multivariable analyses we put sire and mare in as what are known as random which indicates how much influence breeding might have on risk,” he said. “They always come out as having very little influence when accounting for all other variables.”

Parkin cited two peer-reviewed studies that were conducted by a former student of his on injury data from Hong Kong and Great Britain.

In the study of Hong Kong data, which was published in 2013 in The Veterinary Journal, researchers looked backward at 15 years of health data and built statistical models to tease out how much heritability influenced a horse's likelihood of injury. The data was not limited to horses that had suffered fatal breakdowns, but rather horses who had a musculoskeletal issue identified on an examination from an official veterinarian, or horses for whom a musculoskeletal injury was the reason for their retirement from racing.

Researchers looked at the sire, dam, and sires in the second generation of the pedigree for each horse. Where additional pedigree information was available, they included as many as eight generations' worth of sire information. They also factored in other environmental risk factors and basic identity data like gender.

All horses in Hong Kong are imported from elsewhere, as there are no breeding farms there. Interestingly, the researchers found that horses coming from North America had a reduced chance of a suspensory ligament injury as compared to European imports.

“The heritability estimates for fracture, osteoarthritis, and suspensory ligament injury reported here are small to moderate in size, with large standard errors,” the study's conclusion read.

The heritability of fracture likelihood ranged from .03 to .11 on a scale of 0 to 1, depending on which statistical model the researchers used. The heritability for tendon injury was more significant, ranging between .09 and .2.

There were also genetic correlations between horses' risk of fracture, osteoarthritis, and suspensory ligament injury, suggesting that those who were prone to one type of injury seemed to be more prone to other types of injury, too.

“Significant positive genetic correlations between fracture, osteoarthritis and suspensory ligament injury suggest that efforts could be focused upon whichever of these conditions is most easily phenotyped, and progress in the reduction of genetic risk of the correlated condition might occur concurrently,” the authors wrote.

The British study looked at horses who suffered lower limb fractures and injuries to their superficial digital flexor tendons, and examined pedigree data to find out how heritable those conditions may be in their population. Researchers concluded the heritability for lower limb fractures in the population of British horses was .21 to .37 on a scale of 0 to 1.

“SDFT injury and distal limb fracture were positively genetically correlated,” the researchers wrote in their abstract. “These findings suggest that reductions in the risk of the conditions studied could be attempted using targeted breeding strategies.”

On its face that would appear to be a good thing for those who believe the gene pool is in need of an overhaul. A heritability in that range would seem to suggest that fractures could be reduced by 30 percent if the genetic component could be eliminated.

Unfortunately, the reality isn't that simple, says Parkin.

Parkin says he hasn't run the same heritability analysis on North American data that the researchers did for Hong Kong and Great Britain, but his models take into account a greater array of additional risk factors besides genetics than what the heritability analyses did. His initial results from just including first-generation pedigree information in his model, however, doesn't give him confidence.

Then there's this business of using heritability analysis to reduce risk. Knowing a trait has heritability between .21 and .37 doesn't mean it can be erased from the population, because the breed is still a breed with a limited gene pool.

“If (big IF) we were able to eliminate any breeding influence of fractures then theoretically a 30 percent reduction would be possible – but this is not realistic,” said Parkin. “New horses have to come from somewhere and I would guess that all sire/mare combinations contribute something to the risk – it is just that some will contribute more and others less. How much more and how much less is not possible to say from the evidence we have.”

Even if you set out to reduce the genetic risk in the whole population, Parkin said, it would be difficult to use data from individuals who share so much common ancestry to tease out specific pointers on how to practically accomplish it. Observers may wonder whether Parkin's models could someday flag sires whose offspring carry higher risk for injury as compared to others.

“We may be able to produce an estimate of that higher chance – but it will be an average over multiple progeny and there would also be significant uncertainty around that estimate,” Parkin said. “So each sire may have a point estimate of 'genetic risk' but there would be significant overlap with very many other sires also.”

For now, it seems, breeders will need to make decisions about how best to improve soundness based on the horses and pedigrees in front of them.

The post Are Genetics To Blame For Breakdowns? It’s Not That Simple, Epidemiologist Says appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

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In the spring of 2021, Lonnie Winkelspecht came upon then-4-year-old filly Hoosier Artist in her worst hour.

“She was basically laying in a mud puddle,” Winkelspecht remembered. “She couldn't get up.

“She had a body score of a 0. She was literally dying, laying there.”

Winkelspecht had been called in to help move and stabilize horses that were discovered at a leased portion of a farm in Bourbon County, Ky., in what would become a larger-scale horse neglect investigation. Xavier McGrapth later entered a guilty plea to 13 counts of second-degree animal cruelty after he failed to care for Thoroughbreds who were boarded with him.

Winkelspecht has a farm south of Lexington and also runs a transport company. He had been contacted because many of McGrapth's clients were based out of state and unable to get to the property along with law enforcement to identify and transport their horses back home.

It was a gruesome scene. Horses hadn't been consistently fed in an undetermined amount of time, and what little water was available to the starving animals was filthy.

“That's definitely going to be something I remember for the rest of my life,” Winkelspecht said. “Some of the things I saw that day, I'll never be able to erase from my mind.”

Veterinarians on site wanted to euthanize the 4-year-old chestnut filly who was down in the mud, but Winkelspecht says he stopped them. He wanted to give her a chance, or at least figure out who her owners were before letting someone else put her down. Luckily, they were able to get her to stand, and Winkelspecht volunteered to take her to his farm while they worked to identify and contact the owner. Ultimately, he would take seven or eight adult horses and another five yearlings to his farm, some of whom stayed weeks while others stayed months to regain weight and recover from the neglect before they could safely travel back to their owners.

The filly, who was identified eventually as Hoosier Artist, was small – no more than 15.1 – and had already completed an uninspiring 2020 season on the track, finishing last or second-last in all three of her starts. The owner told Winkelspecht he could keep her.

“She got numerous baths — she was covered in lice,” he said. “Her skin was horrible. We had to give medicated baths and treatments, trying to get rid of the lice, the sores, the rain rot. It was bad. I've never seen a horse that bad in my life.

“My wife fell in love with her that day. She had that look in her eye that she wanted to live. We gave her every opportunity to do it.”

The bills piled up, but the diet – initially hay and later carefully-chosen grain – and the care worked. Three or four months into her recovery, Hoosier Artist was glowing. As more time went by, Winkelspecht thought she may still make a racehorse and sent her to the track in September. After several disappointing outings, he got concerned about her condition and decided it wasn't worthwhile to push her after what she'd been through.

Winkelspecht brought her home and turned her out, believing that one day she'd find her perfect second career.

In 2022, Taylor Tricarico began a search in earnest for her very first Retired Racehorse Thoroughbred Makeover project. Despite coming from a horse-oriented family, she didn't get bitten by the bug until well into adulthood and was still trying to navigate what she wanted to do and how she wanted to approach training her own.

Tricarico saw a Facebook ad Winkelspecht posted for a Makeover-eligible gelding he had for sale on his farm. She went to look at the horse and liked him, but just didn't feel it was the right match. She found herself wandering over to a nearby field where a group of mares were standing by the fence.

“[Hoosier Artist] came right up to me and sniffed my whole face and my neck and rested her head on my shoulder,” Tricarico remembered. “The joke is I bought a horse because she hugged me.”

The next day, Tricarico came back with her vet, and three days later, Hoosier Artist (now known as Frida) was in her backyard. At feeding time that first day home, Tricarico's 7-year-old son climbed onto the top fenceboard while his mother's back was turned. She looked back to see the child patting the mare as she calmly munched her grain.

That, she thought, seemed like a promising start.

“She was just so dead quiet from the beginning,” Tricarico.

The two started with groundwork, and then, “faster than I'd thought I was going to,” Tricarico found herself climbing aboard Frida with no saddle or bridle and walking her around the field.

Tricarico knew she'd need help to get a green horse ready for the Makeover, so she put out a call on Facebook, asking for someone who may want to help her with training. (Makeover entrants may compete as training pairs or teams with a single horse.)

Blakely Releford happened to be on social media that day and came across the ad. She had gone to her first Makeover in 2021 with her first off-track Thoroughbred and had so much fun she'd made it her mission to attend each year, embracing the project of bringing along a new young horse and selling them afterward. She'd had an entry in 2022 but had to scratch at the last minute and was looking for a 2023 prospect. When she saw Tricarico's ad indicating she wanted someone to lease Frida, it seemed like the perfect solution. She didn't know Tricarico, but found out they lived about 20 minutes apart. It seemed like it was worth a shot.

“I have a problem with taking resale horses and then never selling them,” Releford joked. “I didn't really have my hopes up because I thought this horse could be crazy. But then she was just as Taylor described. She was perfect. I'm not even a mare person but she was just amazing.”

From the first minutes of their meeting, Tricarico knew she was witnessing a special bond in the making.

“I could see the sparks fly from the edge of the round pen,” Tricarico echoed.

The first time they loaded the mare into the trailer was an affirmation for both women. It took 30 minutes, and both of them noticed how similarly they reacted to the challenge – with quiet patience and persistence.

“I knew this was a good match before but after that I said now I know it's perfect because our styles are so aligned and our goals are so aligned — putting the horse first and using as little pressure as we need to get the result we want,” Tricarico remembered.

The layers of kismet got even thicker when Releford realized she'd actually known Frida before. She had done nightwatch for Winkelspecht when he had Frida on the farm, although since the mare wasn't in foal, Releford didn't handle her much. She vaguely remembered that she would sometimes bring in the horses in Frida's pasture and that she'd gravitated toward the chestnut mare because she was the easy, steady one in the group.

Frida lives in what the pair describe as a co-parenting situation – she spends some of her time in Tricarico's backyard, where she enjoys ground work, lots of time with children, and casual walks around the farm, and every few weeks she moves to Releford's boarding barn 20 minutes away, where things are a little busier and her schedule is a little fuller.

Releford dabbles in a little bit of everything with Frida, from trail clinics to dressage basics to ground pole classes at hunter/jumper shows. They have their sights set on the competitive trail discipline at the Makeover, in which horses are graded and timed as they make their way around a set of obstacles similar to what they may see on a longer trail ride through open country including water, gates, bridges, and more.

Frida is a sensitive soul – Releford said her first exposure to something new can be shock and awe, but when introduced a second time, she becomes curious, takes a breath, and gives it a try. After that, she moves forward with confidence and perfect quiet, which are great qualities in a trail horse, or in a child's horse, which is Tricarico's ultimate goal for her. Each of her training experiences is done with that future in mind, and the hope that if she sees everything there is to see, she can lead a child through almost anything. So far, Tricarico says she shows a great propensity for children and is almost too quiet when they're on her back.

All of this, they believe, should carry well into competition in October, but that's not their main focus.

“The [Kentucky] Horse Park is everything she's already seen but on steroids,” said Releford. “A lot of people say it's one of the most difficult places to show because there's so much happening all the time. My goal for her is really just for her to go in there and not bat an eye. I think if we do that there's no question about how well she'll do in competition. I'm not really worried about the placings as much as seeing everything we've done pay off.”

Whatever comes from their Makeover experience, Frida has already created a far-reaching legacy. Releford and Tricarico are not just training partners but friends, linked not only by one event, but by their relationships with their equine teammate.

“The first time around doing Makeover, I was all on my own,” said Releford. “It was very, very hard. When I found Taylor and we hit it off from the beginning, she was telling me about all these people Frida had behind her. I knew from that moment we would have support the entire way, and we have.”

Tricarico agreed.

“It's been a breath of fresh air to find someone who has the same ideas as me,” she said.

Winkelspecht was inspired to expand the retraining and rehoming portion of his business in part by Frida's incredible comeback. He now operates as a satellite facility for the Pennsylvania-based Turning For Home, helping them with an overflow of horses who sometimes need surgery or lay-up before they can go on to their next careers. Last year, Winkelspect said he helped the group adopt out 60 horses.

For Tricarico, Frida has deepened her appreciation for the aspect of horses that has made so many people before her fall in love with the species – their endless capacity to see the best in us.

“She is incredibly trusting for everything she went through,” she said. “The fact that humans caused her such harm and yet she came back from that being affectionate and trusting and looking to us for confidence and guidance…that's one of the things that has blown me away about her. Her faith in humans and trust in humans, and her overwhelming desire to please even though she could have a different attitude after everything she went through.”

The post From The Brink Of Death, Former Neglect Case Shines En Route To Thoroughbred Makeover appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

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By the time most students at Utah State University have attended their first week of classes this semester, the 32 students accepted into the USU College of Veterinary Medicine will already have taken their first tests.

Students in the College of Veterinary Medicine Class of 2027 arrived for a week of orientation in mid-August in preparation for the demanding four-year program they are starting to earn a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine degree.

The orientation covers some nuts and bolts of navigating facilities and policies, but the week is titled the Aggie Wellness Experience because the focus is on providing students with connections to their new community of scholars, introducing tools that can help build resilience and improve mental health and wellbeing, and formally welcoming students to the profession.

While USU's fall semester begins Aug. 28, the earlier start for vet med students aligns the program with the schedule with students' peers at Washington State University where the USU students will go for the final two years of training after completing their first two years at USU.

The college has been a partner in the Washington-Idaho-Montana-Utah Regional Program in Veterinary Medicine since 2012 as part of the College of Agriculture and Applied Sciences. The College of Veterinary Medicine is the university's newest college and is preparing to expand its program to provide a four-year Doctor of Veterinary Medicine degree at USU's Logan campus.

The college expects its first class of four-year students to begin their studies in the fall semester of 2025. A new veterinary medicine building will be constructed near the corner of 1400 North and 1200 East in Logan, and students will also continue to learn and gain hands-on experience at the university's Animal Science Research Farm in Wellsville.

A few facts about the incoming class of first-year students:

• There are 24 women and 8 men in the class
• Twenty-two students are Utah residents, and others come from Nevada, California, Texas, Connecticut, North Carolina, Arizona, Wisconsin and Wyoming
• The class includes the first student in the Washington-Idaho-Montana-Utah Regional Program in Veterinary Medicine program who earned a bachelor's degree at USU Eastern (and worked with a veterinarian who is a USU-WIMU alumnus)
• The students' undergraduate majors include biochemistry, biology, anthropology, finance, economics, kinesiology and veterinary science

A highlight of the week for students and their families and friends was the White Coat Ceremony, which is a tradition at medical schools nationwide. Students were presented with their first white coat, donated by college supporters and members of the Utah Veterinary Medical Association. The gathering at USU was linked via video feed with the ceremony at WSU and students were formally welcomed into the profession by Dr. Dirk Vanderwall, interim dean of the College of Veterinary Medicine; Dr. Dori Borjesson, dean of Washington State's College of Veterinary Medicine; and Utah Veterinary Medical Association President Dr. Susan Benson.

At the end of the ceremony, the USU students joined their new colleagues in taking the Veterinary Student Oath which says, in part, “I promise to work conscientiously to develop my scientific and medical knowledge and skills for the benefit of society through protection of animal health, the relief of animal suffering, the conservation of animal resources, the promotion of public health, and the advancement of medical knowledge.”

The post Utah State’s First Class Of Veterinary Students Begins Their Studies appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

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US Equestrian strives to consistently ensure the safety and welfare of both our human and equine athletes. One fundamental aspect of equine safety is microchipping. Microchips in horses allow for immediate onsite verification of horses for the purpose of safeguarding the health of each horse. This is vital, especially during times of disease outbreaks or natural disasters.

To this end, the US Equestrian Board of Directors approved a new microchipping rule during the 2023 Mid-Year Board meeting.

Beginning December 1, 2025, under GR 1101.1, all horses competing in USEF-licensed or -endorsed competitions must be microchipped with a 15-digit ISO compliant 11784/11785 chip.

For more information on microchipping, including content that was made specifically to answer a wide array of questions, please visit www.usef.org/microchip.

If you have specific questions about recording your microchip, please email horseservices@usef.org.

The post United States Equestrian Federation To Begin Requiring Equine Microchips On Dec. 1, 2025 appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

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