I wish there was a Vet equivalent of House MD!

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I'm frustrated at reading all these stories on here about young, talented horses who are dangerous to ride. On the odd occasion that an owner is particularly persistent, the vet is particularly thorough and with a bit of luck or intuition it is confirmed that the horse has something unusual very wrong with it physically/medically.

I know there is rarely anything vets can do to fix the horse when they occasionally, eventually locate these problems, but surely if more cases were investigated in depth, things would at least improve? There are so many strange, mis-understood horses because no-one looks hard enough for what's wrong.

Is it all about money? Would it not be worth the expense of the investigations? Is technology not up to finding problems deep inside horse's bodies and brains or do vets just not have easy access to the necessary technology to really see what's going on?

I really wish some budding super-vet would do a large-scale study of many dangerous horses, find out all the causes and then maybe someone could work on doing something about them.

Just random thoughts, I suppose, but these stories of injured, despairing owners and wasted, screwed-up horses are so common it shocks me there's still so little insight or solutions.
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It might be a case of money; vet's bills can very quickly run into thousands of pounds, even with technology advancing the way it is (How much does an MRI cost?) and FAR exceed the value of the horse. Even if you're insured how much are you covered upto in vet's fees? £5000 per case? I know people who have spent twice that and still had a lame/unrideable horse at the end of it. Not a lot of people can afford that. And then there's horse welfare to consider. Some horses become a danger to themselves and others and IMO it's sometimes kinder to PTS than to prolong the investigation.
Perhaps MOST importantly, you can't just a horse where it hurts. Vets are essentially flying blind; they rely on the owner's understanding of his/her horse to even BEGIN to figure out what might be wrong and if you're starting out with a young horse, you might not even have that.
It's a hideously difficult and expensive task. I think vets do extremely well under the circumstances.
 
they did - it was called SuperVets - filmed at uni when I was there - they didn't film the students much and tried to cut us out of shots so we spent our time guessing who's feet made it into shots! It was on BBC1 2.5yrs ago. Wish they'd do more. I might be a vet, but I still love watching those programmes.
 
It is not always a case of the vet bills, sometimes it is the case of the vet misdiagnosing, or not really giving you any real diagnosis. If your vet says there is nothing wrong with your horse how willing would you be to go against the experts word and get a second opinion?

There are also the people who get a back person out who say that it's pelvis is out, and people believe them. I know of one case where the horse actually had laminitus, the back person told them to ride the horse thru it.

But you get this with doctors as well, it is not just an animal problem.
 
You also get the people who can't help the vet at all -as an owner you should know the 'norms' for your horse, what they eat/drink/weigh/poo/temp etc as averages. Just phoning the vet saying its not right won't help much, but saying its not right, with its temp up, eating less, extra thirsty can help direct towards the right test.
 
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I'm frustrated at reading all these stories on here about young, talented horses who are dangerous to ride. On the odd occasion that an owner is particularly persistent, the vet is particularly thorough and with a bit of luck or intuition it is confirmed that the horse has something unusual very wrong with it physically/medically.
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As one who has had any number of supposedly 'dangerous to ride' horses through her hands, the vast majority have nothing that a vet could fix. Som are born with the potential to be 'hot' or 'highly strung' - inadequate/bad handling and training does the rest.

The vast majority can be cured - we haven't had a failure yet - but some will never be suitable to go back to their owner because the owner is not capable of handling this sort of horse.

Obviously there is the odd horse with something like kissing spines, or a brain tumour or other serious medical/mechanical problem - but they are in the very small minority of 'difficult' horses.
 
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Som are born with the potential to be 'hot' or 'highly strung' - inadequate/bad handling and training does the rest.

Obviously there is the odd horse with somethink like kissing spines, or a brain tumour or other serious medical/mechanical problem - but they are in the very small minority of 'difficult' horses.

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I'm not talking about "hot" or "highly strung" horses, I'm talking about the exploding ones. OK some people may just be over-estimating their ability or have unrealistic expectations of horses to have perfect behavior, but there are a lot of people on this forum and elsewhere who come across as generally sensible and competent who have described horses with very unpredictable, violent, reactive behavior. It depends what you include in your definition of dangerous. I mean the ones that flip, and it sounds to me like they are not all that rare.
 
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I'm not talking about "hot" or "highly strung" horses, I'm talking about the exploding ones.

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'Exploding' horses are ones who are born 'hot' or highly strung and are handled inappropriately as foals, badly backed, badly trained. Fear and resentment turn to anger and explosive behaviour. It happens more often than obscure veterinary reasons to 'young, talented horses'. It may not be the fault of the current owner/rider - sadly, horses do not keep diaries. And people passing on a 'problem' horse are usually pretty economical with the truth.

Obviously there are things that can cause explosive and unpredictable behaviour but in most cases these show other symptoms other than JUST the explosive behaviour. (And most of them are quite easy for ANY competent vet/owner combination to diagnose - for example: severe ulcers, or a GTC tumour in a mare.)
 
I would both agree and disagree with you JG, also having extensive experience with "difficult" horses. If an otherwise reasonable horse suddenly develops an inexplicable behaviour I think it often does have, at least in part, a physical cause/component. BUT this doesn't necessarily mean it's a veterinary issue, or at least not completely. It also doesn't mean good riding and management can't improve the situation. I KNOW I've had horses with quite serious problem - old neck injuries, latent unsoundness, even kidney disease - that were, at least in the short term, perfectly fine if ridden and managed a certain way.

Think of it for yourself - if you have a bad knee, say, but are otherwise healthy, wear good shoes, exercise properly, walk on good footing, etc etc, you will likely be quite serviceable for a long time and might even be able to stress your knee in careful ways and be fine. If you're running on hard ground, in crap shoes, carrying a too heavy, unbalanced backpack, then you're going to be hurting a whole lot more and, predictably, a lot crankier and less able to function properly. Not to mention that GOOD riding, carefully done, is physio for horses - I have certainly seen people "ride horses sound", especially old masters who were trained when the medical options were far smaller and less successful.

As a boss of mine used to say, "Who cares if you can ride it?" Even a significantly compromised horse can be "okay" in one situation but not in another, at least not for long.

Anyway, on the original point, I truly believe part of the problem is that vets are only privy small section of information about the horse. Very few of the ones I've met, no matter how fantastically talented and educated in their own sphere, are also great trainers/riders/behaviourists and almost none spend more than minutes in the company of their patients. It's just not possible to be educated in all things.

I've (and no doubt JG and anyone else in the same business) spent hours and hours and hours watching horses, sitting on horses, asking horses questions and analysing answers - I have a pretty good idea what's "normal" and how things might be off the rails, even if I can't say exactly why. The absolute BEST diagnostic experiences I've had are working in concert with a good vet, with him/her taking on board my "diagnosis", not as an absolute, but as a jumping off point. And, by the same token, I've had vets find explanations to things I would not have suspected. (I would also hope every vet AND trainer stores away those learning experience for the information they may provide in future, similar situations.)

I do find some vets are initially reserved about a more holistic approach - I've certainly been told it's impossible to intuit where a horse is lame or how it's teeth are or which muscles might be hurting by "feel" but what is what they do any different? Most come around and even get enthusiastic when they see it as simply another source of information not a challenge to what they know or do.

The other issue is horses are, of course, individuals. What makes one horse dead lame may make another slightly stiff. And every situation is different - things like footing, shoeing etc make a huge difference. So it's not as simple as taking an x-ray or doing a test and saying "yes, there's why the horse is lame!" I had a horse diagnosed at four with what we were told was a debilitating lameness and he trucked around, mostly as an eventer, until he was 27! Another two had "behavioural" problems that in one case turned out to be kidney disease and in the other liver damage, almost certainly from medications. There is rarely one right answer. Lots of horses don't "vet" but are fine so just saying "the tests say" isn't always the whole story.

I think many people also hold vets to an impossibly high standard and discourage experimentation or "guessing". It's ALL guessing until the tests come in. I'd much rather have the vet who says "Gee, that's not it. Moving on," but I do find many clients are not comfortable with that and see it as "weakness" or the sign of a bad vet. It takes real security to accept you'll not always be right.

A subject near and dear to my heart . . .:)
 
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I would both agree and disagree with you JG, also having extensive experience with "difficult" horses. If an otherwise reasonable horse suddenly develops an inexplicable behaviour I think it often does have, at least in part, a physical cause/component. BUT this doesn't necessarily mean it's a veterinary issue, or at least not completely. It also doesn't mean good riding and management can't improve the situation.

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Ah - I think we are on the same wave length. Obviously if any normally well-behaved horse suddenly starts behaving badly in the absence of any change in management/rider then you should first look for a physical cause. (And the 'change in management' might be something as simple as a change of haylage which you might not be aware of - if a batch is delivered and half comes from one field cut one week - and the rest from another field cut two weeks later there could be a VERY big difference in energy supplied.) Or in a grass kept horse, a change in the weather can be enough to effect the grass and a horse's behaviour.
 
Absolutely - often it's the simple, basic things that get overlooked most easily. Also, even with problems based in handling/riding experiences I do find people overlook specific incidents because the horse *seems* okay at the time but of course the important part is how the horse perceives the situation and/or feels about it afterwards. Same with injuries - I've worked with horses for weeks with the owners very involved and then suddenly they've said, "Gee, I wonder if this could be related to such and such . . ." Hindsight is 20/20.

Vets, of course, face the same problem. It's almost impossible to get a complete history on a horse because we are simply not with them 24/7 and even a witness may not interpret things fully. I saw a horse hit it's neck on a fence post, get up and run off apparently unharmed. Over the course of days he developed increasing ataxia and only because I'd seen the incident did we get his neck x-rayed first. He's fractured 2 vertebrae but they weren't displaced so his symptoms only showed up fully as the area swelled and then the spinal cord died. I've also seen horses clearly injured/scared whilst being ridden who seemed to "shake it off" in the moment but then developed obviously related problems later, particularly if they were adrenelised in the moment.

I really do think part of it though is anyone with hard one professional skills TENDS to think most solutions are based in what they know. But it's almost always more complex than that. Medical treatment may help, a management change might help, a change in riding might help - likely the best is a combination of changes/improvements/treatment. But sometimes pride gets in the way. More often funds are limited and the human tendency towards linear thinking clouds the situation.
 
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