Karen Briggs

Karen Briggs is the author of six books, including the recently updated Understanding Equine Nutrition as well as Understanding The Pony, both published by Eclipse Press. She's written a few thousand articles on subjects ranging from guttural pouch infections to how to compost your manure. She is also a Canadian certified riding coach, an equine nutritionist, and works in media relations for the harness racing industry. She lives with her band of off-the-track Thoroughbreds on a farm near Guelph, Ontario, and dabbles in eventing.

Articles by: Karen Briggs

New Equine Performance Centre

The University of Guelph’s Ontario Veterinary College (OVC) in Guelph, Ontario, Canada, has unveiled plans to build a new multi-million-dollar Equine Performance Centre for diagnosing and treating problems in performance horses. The facility is

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EPO Testing Making a Difference at the Track

One of the most potentially damaging drugs to hit the racetrack in recent years is erythropoietin, or EPO. A synthetic version of a naturally-occurring hormone which stimulates the bone marrow to make more red blood cells, EPO was designed to

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New Equine Performance Centre for Guelph

The University of Guelph’s Ontario Veterinary College (OVC) in Guelph, Ontario, Canada, has unveiled plans to build a new multi-million-dollar Equine Performance Centre, dedicated to diagnosing and treating problems in performance horses. The

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Vaccinating Strategically

Every spring, you ask your veterinarian to vaccinate your horse to protect her from disease while she’s showing, racing, carrying a foal, or hanging around your pasture. But is this yearly routine the best way to confer immunity with the vaccine

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Resistant Worms: Do Your Horses Have Them?

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is part nine of a 12-part series on internal parasites of horses.

Most people assume that when they administer a tube of dewormer to a horse, the drug is effectively killing worms. The drug must

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Ulcer Diagnosis Simplified With Sucrose

Diagnosing equine gastric ulcers might soon be a procedure that’s short and sweet. Until recently, ulcer detection depended on using an endoscope to peer at the stomach lining. Now, a team of researchers at Texas A&M University, led by Noah

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Beasts of Burden

Any horse owner who tours the medieval gallery at a museum must stop at the displays of suits of armor and marvel. Imagine the sheer weight of such an outfit–then imagine trying to maneuver oneself into the saddle wearing it! Visions of metal-sheathed knights being lowered by crude cranes and slings onto their groaning draft horses might in fact be hyperbole since historians say knights

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Mud Management

Flanders and Swann, a singing comedy team from the United Kingdom, once penned a song that went like this:

“Mud, mud, glorious mud,
Nothing quite like it for cooling the blood.
So follow me, follow,
Down to the hollow,
And there let us wallow
In glorious mud!”

Of course the song was written from the perspective of a hippo.

For that animal’s distant

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FDA Seeking Vets' Input on Antiparasitic Resistance Survey

Parasite Primer: Examining the Evidence

How do you really know if your worm control program is working? If your horses are looking good, are they doing as well as they could be? If they are not doing as well as you would like despite frequent deworming, is the problem due to worms?

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Lameness Diagnostics

Quite often, the diagnostic tools and techniques at the disposal of your mobile veterinary service are all that are needed to solve the mystery. Some horse owners have been through this routine a time or two: Your vet will ask to see your horse move on a straight line and on a circle, then on a hard surface and a soft one. He or she will ask when you’re most likely to notice the gait

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Ascarids: A Growing Problem

Editor’s Note: This is part 3 in a 12-part series on internal parasites of horses.

In the world of internal parasites, ascarids get no respect. Unlike strongyles, they aren’t a high-drama threat to your horse’s health, and they

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Bad Bug Basics (Parasite Primer Part 1)

Let’s start by taking a look at how parasites differ from other infectious organisms that damage horses, and go on to explore the historical perspective on equine parasite control–where we’ve come from, and how far we’ve yet to go.

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