"Any of us dealing with laminitis have our successes, but we’ve also had our share of failures," said Bill Baker, DVM, of Equine Associates in Hawkinsville, Ga., at the recent Bluegrass Laminitis Symposium. "These failures are usually the most memorable, but least-discussed cases. This is unfortunate, because we can all learn from failures–those lessons are where successes are born. Hopefully you will learn from my mistakes and ignorance so you will not have to repeat them."

During the Laminitis Symposium, held Jan. 25-28 in Louisville, Ky., Baker, who is both a veterinarian and a farrier, presented a discussion of six case studies and what they taught him not to do in treating laminitis. He began by describing the following common causes of treatment failure.

No plan "Plan the work and work the plan," he recommended. "Do the diagnostics and assessments in order to be able to plan the work. Have the skill, technique, and materials available to be able to work the plan. And if you don’t have these, don’t start!"

Available skill The case exceeds the skill level currently available (of the veterinarian, farrier, and/or owner).
Finances "I don’t care how many people tell you money is no object, it is an object," Baker said. "With an awful lot of these cases, you get in the middle of it and they go high-scale (the damage is revealed to be very severe), and it’s more than the owner’s willing to deal with