Latest News – The Horse

When the TV series “Jockeys” ran on Animal Planet two years ago, senior University of Florida veterinary student Ramon Perez was quite the hot commodity with his classmates. That’s because for a three-year window in the 1990s, Perez himself was one of the biggest names in Thoroughbred horse racing. “My classmates usually ask me things like, ‘What’s it like?&r

An equine rescue is a business and should be run like one, or it risks putting its horses in more jeopardy.

Central Kentucky Riding for Hope (CKRH), a NARHA therapeutic riding program, is looking for horses to add to its equine team. The program has recently expanded into a new facility and a new year-round schedule. CKRH has many requests to provide services, but is currently limited in its ability to expand due to a shortage of appropriate horses. The type of horse CKRH is looking for

If someone says he or she can think or talk about equine neurology without becoming dizzy, that shows only the person has not understood anything about it… To take the dizzy factor out of understanding neurologic disease in horses, I.G. Joe Mayhew BVSc, FRCVS, PhD, Dipl. ACVIM, ECVN, head of Equine Massey and professor of equine studies at New Zealand’s Massey University, has dedicated much of

Who should get the credit–or blame–for the closings of Texas horse slaughter plants? Start with the horse industry itself, and its heroic, romantic image of the horse. We do revel in that image, like a mare rolling in a thick patch of clover. (There. I just did it myself.) We sell horses with it. And supplements, tack, blankets, lessons, fly masks, feed, you name it.

Moving your horse into a boarding barn is a lot like sending your child to school for the first time. Just as you would in choosing a school for your kids, you want to do your research, asking all pertinent questions.

When dealing with a starved horse, how should you feed him? How much, how often, and what type of feed will bring the horse back to good health without causing more problems? The starved horse is in a most delicate health predicament, and returning him to health requires using proper “refeeding” protocols.

What do you look for behavior-wise in terms of predicting whether a horse would work out well as a companion horse? Any tips on a good source of such animals and how to select appropriate candidates?

To take the dizzy factor out of understanding neurologic disease in horses, I.G. Joe Mayhew, BVSc, FRCVS, PhD, Dipl. ACVIM, ECVN, has dedicated much of his career to helping practitioners and owners understand equine neurology. He made several presentations at the 11th Congress of the World Equine Veterinary Association on topics ranging from simple reviews of common neurologic diseases

“Steal a little and they throw you in jail,” Bob Dylan wrote a few years ago, “steal a lot and they make you king.” In today’s economy that means you receive a huge government bailout if you accumulate billions in debt and are “too big to fail,” but for everyone else, you’re on your own. Bankruptcy might be the only viable alternative for many individuals and businesses, horse owners among them.

In an equine study using “proteomic” technology that systematically analyzed the proteins in skeletal muscle biopsies, a research team from The Netherlands identified a form of the protein creatine kinase that could be a marker for acute tying-up in horses. “Tying-up or rhabdomyolysis in horses is a serious condition that is characterized by obvious discomfort, abno