Around 6 months ago Simon and I had just finished working up a lame horse, and were discussing the diagnosis, treatment and prognosis with the horse’s owner. We felt the horse had a good prognosis for returning to soundness, but it became evident that all three of us had different opinions as to what a “good prognosis” actually meant. It was as a result of this conversation that we started thinking about how opinions of prognosis might differ between different owners and different vets, and the potential need to clarify what we mean. Communication is a cornerstone of veterinary practice, and if we all mean different things by the same words then the aim of clarity cannot be achieved.

After 6 months of hard labour (5 months of Alex procrastinating followed by a couple of weeks of work!), we have devised a study that hopes to clarify some of these issues. In the form of an online survey, we hope to summate the attitudes of both vets and owners toward prognosis, and hope that we can develop a rational approach to communicating it. This is the point at which we need your help – the more animal owners who fill in the survey, the better and the more useful the results will be. If you could fill in the survey then we would be delighted – if you could spread the word to other animal owners (owners of small animals, horses and farmers are welcome) then we would be ecstatic!

Please click on the following link to take the survey, and pass it to as many of your animal owning friends as possible:

www.equine-vets.com/survey

Many thanks in anticipation of your help with this study!

After seeing such a large number of horses and ponies affected with laminitis over the last few months, it was not difficult to decide upon the topic of our Spring talk.  We will be talking about the structure and function of the equine foot, the causes of laminitis, how we approach treating it and perhaps most importantly, how it can be prevented.  Hopefully we will see a good turnout for this interesting and important subject.

The talk will be held in Tyldesley on Thursday 3rd March at 8PM.  Food and drink will be provided, which has been kindly sponsored by Boehringer-Ingelheim.  If you would like to attend, then please call the office on 01942 886174 to book your place, so we have an idea of how much food to provide.  We’re all looking forward to seeing you there!

Although flies, midges and other flying nasties are probably the last thing on our minds with the current weather, it is worth planning ahead if you have a horse with sweet itch.  Sweet itch is an allergy to the saliva of the common midge, and causes severe itching in affected horses and ponies.  It is extremely common, and can be very frustrating to treat effectively.  Fortunately, there is some help at hand, in the form of a relatively new product called Cavalesse.

Cavalesse

Cavalesse comes in two parts – an oral supplement  that is given every day, and a topical cream for application to irritated areas.  The oral supplement must be given in advance of the start of fly and midge season, so if your horse is prone to sweet itch, now is the time to get started.  Cavalesse can be an extremely effective problem, and as a practice we were actually involved in the initial trials so we have first hand experience of its usefulness.

If you would like to try Cavalesse for your horse, or would like to discuss prevention measures for sweet itch, then contact the office on 01942 886 174.

Preventing accident, injury and illness to your horses is an important part of our jobs, so we are always pleased to see organisations taking positive steps to help with this.  Accidents involving horses are surprisingly common, and the British Horse Society are currently running a project to try and reduce their incidence.  They aim to gather information on accident hot-spots in the UK, so they have some ammunition to take to the government and get some help.

You can help this project by reporting any accidents that you have experienced with your horses to the BHS website, at www.horseaccident.org.uk.  Currently they are recording road accidents, dog attacks, and incidents involving low flying helicopters, fireworks, slippery road surfaces, wind turbines and bridleway gates.  If you have had problems with any of these, then please go to the website and enter the details.  The BHS assure us that all information will be strictly confidential.

Finally, it is worth having a look at their site even if you haven’t had an accident, as all incidents are shown on a map.  This means you can check out dangerous areas and accident hot-spots near you, making life safer for you and your horses.

Although I try not to admit it in social circles, I am a lover of the parasitic and find an almost unhealthy interest in worms, mites, lice and the like!  I know that there are not many who share this passion, but hopefully after reading this post you can see why some parasites truly are fascinatingly fantastic, even though they (thankfully) don’t affect horses!

First on our list is Dictyocaulus viviparus, the bovine lungworm, which has a quite fantastic means of getting about. To set the scene, the momma worm is living in the cow’s lungs, lays some eggs, which the cow kindly coughs up, swallows, and then defecates. So the poor little parasite is now embedded in a big pile of cow dung on the ground, where it has the pleasure of hatching from its egg. Now this baby parasite would quite like to get to another cow, so it can have babies of its own, but what self-respecting cow is going to eat its own dung? Perhaps it would be best off getting off this steaming pile that it calls home, and finding some grass, but how? This is the fantastic part, as it turns out that a species of fungus (Pilobolus spp) grows on the cow dung, and when it’s ready to send out its spores, it does so in an explosive fashion. So our little baby worm climbs onto the fungus, waits until it sporulates, then rides the explosion out onto the grass! Truly fantastic I’m sure you’ll agree.

Our second fantastic parasite is called Onchocerca, and our more knowledgeable readers may question this designation, as it causes River Blindness in Africa, a far from fantastic disease. However, what is fantastic is how this worm avoids being killed by the immune system. To grasp the beauty of its evasiveness, we must first learn a small amount about how the human body kills invaders. Parasites such as Onchocerca are attacked using a type of cell known as an eosinophil, whereas bacteria are generally destroyed by another type, called neutrophils. These two types of cell are pretty specific in their killing, so neutrophils are useless at killing parasites. Now brace yourself for the fantasticness! Onchocerca worms allow bacteria to live beneath their cuticle (skin), so the body finds these bacteria, and despatches neutrophils to kill them. It also notices the worm, and sends out eosinophils to kill them. However, the response to the bacteria surrounds the worm with neutrophils, which block the eosinophils from reaching their target, protecting the worm from the immune attack. Further, the worm’s cuticle protects the bacteria from being killed, so the worm can sit happily in a protective cocoon of neutrophils, kindly provided by the human’s own immune system.  This was all discovered accidentally, after treating patients with antibiotics (and so killing the protective bacteria) led to the worms disappearing.

Next up we have the first of our mind-controlling parasites, Toxoplasma gondii, a protozoon parasite, that can cause disease in immuno-compromised humans, such as those with AIDS, but is in fact generally transmitted between cats and mice. Now for this parasite to complete its life cycle, it requires the infected mouse to be caught by a cat, which represents a small problem, as mice are usually repelled by the smell of cat urine, keeping them away from cat hunting grounds. This is but a small problem for Toxoplasma though, as it “simply“ alters the mouse’s behaviour, making it attracted to cat urine. Thus, mouse is more likely to be caught by a cat, completing the parasite’s life cycle.  Somewhat scarily, it also appears that Toxoplasma infection can also have a “mind control” effect on humans.  One study showed that exposed humans are more likely to be involved in road traffic accidents, while another showed that exposed females were more promiscuous on average than those that had not been exposed!

Our second mind-controlling parasite is a liver fluke of cattle, which goes by the name of Dicrocoelium dendriticum.  Its life cycle is complex, but involves first a snail (Galba truncatula), and then an ant (Formica spp.), with the ant being eaten by a cow to complete the cycle. Another small parasitic problem…ants tend to live either underground, or on the surface of the ground, but cows tend to eat tall grass. How then can we get the cow to eat the ant. Well we could do this by getting the ant to stop being repelled by light (negatively phototrophic), and instead be attracted to it. So the stage of the fluke found in the ant (the cercariae), send some emissaries to the ant brain, where they encyst to become metacercariae. This causes a lesion in the ant brain, changing its behaviour, so it’s attracted to light, and climbs tall grass blades to get as close to the sun as possible. A perfect target for a cow to eat.

The clocks have gone back, the leaves are starting to fall, and fireworks are exploding all around us – there’s no doubt that summer is long behind us and that autumn is really here.  The last couple of weeks have been noticeably colder, with the appearance of the first hard frost of the season.  This has some significance for those of us who own or work with horses (beyond having to dig out our winter coats!)

Firstly, this time of year is an extremely important time of year to worm your horses, and it is essential that you use a wormer that will kill encysted small strongyle larvae.  The two products that are licensed for this purpose are Equest (and Equest Pramox), and Panacur Guard.  There are some resistance problems with Panacur, so at this time of year we would recommend treating with Equest.  This isn’t to say that Panacur doesn’t have its place in a well designed worming strategy.  If you want more information about worming, what product to use and when, then we have a whole section of the site devoted to the subject – Worming Your Horse.

Importantly for those of you that own colts, now is also the ideal time to have your horse castrated, as the vast majority of the flies have been killed off by the cold.  Castration is a relatively quick and simple procedure, and unless you are planning to breed from your horse should be done as soon as possible.   It can be performed under standing sedation at your own yard, and is priced to be very affordable.  Older stallions can still be castrated, but may have to be done under general anaesthetic, which is more expensive and carried more risks to your horse.  If you have a colt that you would like castrated then please contact the office.

Well I am currently two days into my week off and already I’ve found myself with nothing to do. Nothing fun anyway, although I’m sure the floor could do with sweeping! I’ve resorted to writing some more fact sheets for the website, so why not go and have a look? The latest one is on colic, a very common condition, and one that is worth knowing about.  If there is anything important missing, or you have any questions then just use the comments section of this post.

Also this week my new toy was delivered – a flexible intra-oral camera.  This means I will hopefully be able to get some really good pictures of some common dental problems, so watch this space.

Welcome everyone to our new website, and in particular to the blog section! As a self-confessed geek I have given the website a once over, and after conversations with the other vets, we all thought a blog might be a nice idea to let our clients get to know us a little better. Many of you will (hopefully!) only see us occasionally, and a little post by each of us now and again will hopefully keep you in touch. We’ll also bring you any news on new diseases and treatments as we come across them, and give some refreshers on older diseases that may be seen in a new light.
So, having said we’d like you to know us better, I should probably introduce myself to those of you I haven’t met. I’m Alex, I’m 25 and I grew up just the right side of the Pennines in Halifax. I qualified from Liverpool University in 2009, and started work for Simon a few weeks later. At work, my main interests are medical cases, especially ophthalmology, and anaesthesia. Since starting work I have also developed something of a penchant for dentistry, and will hopefully be going on a course later this year to learn some more advanced techniques.
Outside of work sport plays a fairly dominant role in my life, with cricket and rugby the foremost. Sadly injury curtailed a promising playing career in rugby, which leaves me with only cricket – this may explain my somewhat rotund waistline at present!
I hope you like the new website, and please do keep up with posts on this blog – I will be pestering the other vets to write on it as much as possible! Feel free to use the comments to ask me anything you like, although I reserve in advance the right to avoid answering!