Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Hoofcare & Lameness Presents World Horse Welfare's Laminitis Video Conference (Part 4: Measuring Invisble Body Fat Using Ultrasound to Accurately Determine Body Condition)

Welcome to the fourth in a series of feature presentations designed to help horse owners recognize the signs of laminitis in horses and to work toward preventing endocrine-related laminitis. In this video, laminitis researcher Alex Dugdale, currently at the University of Liverpool's Leverhulme Equine Hospital in Great Britain, talks about the subtleties and shortcomings of traditional body condition scoring.

For years, a simple visual evaluation of a horse has been used to determine a horse's relative body score, and this in turn was sufficient for a veterinarian to tell an owner if the horse might be at risk for laminitis and should be put on a weight management program and avoid excess grazing at high risk times.

But Dugdale is muddying that field considerably by suggesting that horses can appear to be slim--thus earning a mid-range or acceptable body score--but have large amounts of interior belly fat that may be making them susceptible to insulin resistance and, by extension, the potential complication of laminitis. Fat tissue can act almost like a gland in the way that it programs the body's reaction to nutritional stimuli, and reacts in particular to fluctuations of sugar-type nutrients in grasses and feed.

Simply put, some horses and ponies are just plain fat, while others show areas of fat in specific areas of their bodies that researchers have come to associate with a suspicion of equine metabolic syndrome. Now Dugdale is taking that regional adiposity a step further to include invisible fat.

Dugdale suggests using an ultrasound probe to scan a horse's belly lining to see what sort of fat stores are laid down there. Unfortunately, the scan is not recorded on the video because of lighting problems, so this video is a bit incomplete.

To learn more about laminitis prevention: Watch Part 1 of the series, "The Horse's Foot and How It Goes Wrong" and then go on to Part 2, "Recognizing the Early Signs of Laminitis” and Part 3, Hoof Management and Pain Relief. This series was created by World Horse Welfare, a British charity that organized a series of horse owner conferences on laminitis with the support of Dodson and Horrell, a British feed company that is active in laminitis research.

More information about how to access body condition around the horse's girth is available in this article about laminitis prevention for horse owners on The Jurga Report.

© Fran Jurga and Hoofcare Publishing; Fran Jurga's Hoof Blog is a between-issues news service for subscribers to Hoofcare and Lameness Journal. Please, no use without permission. You only need to ask. This blog may be read online at the blog page, checked via RSS feed, or received via a digest-type email (requires signup in box at top right of blog page). To subscribe to Hoofcare and Lameness (the journal), please visit the main site, www.hoofcare.com, where many educational products and media related to equine lameness and hoof science can be found. Questions or problems with this blog? Send email to blog@hoofcare.com.

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Saturday, October 16, 2010

Hoofcare & Lameness Presents World Horse Welfare's Laminitis Video Conference (Part 3: Management and Pain Relief with Catherine McGowan)

"Managing your laminitic and minimising his pain">Managing Your Laminitic (Horse) and Minimising His Pain" is the third in a series of feature presentations designed to help horse owners recognize the signs of laminitis in horses and to work toward preventing laminitis. In this video, laminitis researcher Catherine McGowan, currently at the University of Liverpool in Great Britain, talks about the tools that a farrier uses to help a horse and relief the physical foot pain caused by laminitis, as well as the pros and cons of medications like Bute for pain control.

The farrier who briefed McGowan is Ian Hughes, farrier at the University of Liverpool equine hospital. He's pretty shy about publicity, in spite of my best efforts.

Learn more about University of Liverpool farrier lecturer Ian Hughes and his role as chief farrier for the 2008 Olympics in Hong Kong. This nice photo of Ian (left) at work with his Vettec gun is from the portfolio of Hot Shots Photography.

These videos were filmed at a laminitis awareness seminar organized by World Horse Welfare and British feed company Dodson and Horrell earlier this year. More videos from the series will be posted on the Hoof Blog in the next few days.

The conferences, which were held at leading UK veterinary universities, were organized by Dr Teresa Hollands, Senior Nutritionist at Dodson and Horrell. Featured specialists included Professor Derek Knottenbelt, Dr Cathy McGowan and Alex Dugdale from the University of Liverpool, David Catlow from Oakhill Veterinary Centre and Samantha Lewis from World Horse Welfare, among many others.

The videos in this series include “The Horse’s Foot and How it Goes Wrong” (Professor Knottenbelt,) “Managing your Laminitic and Minimizing his Pain” (Dr McGowan,) “Recognizing the Early Signs of Laminitis” (David Catlow,) “Using Ultrasound to show the Difference Between Fat and Muscle” (Alex Dugdale,) and “How to Fat Score a Horse” (Samantha Lewis.)

To learn more: Watch Part 1 of the series, "The Horse's Foot and How It Goes Wrong" and then go on to Part 2, "Recognizing the Early Signs of Laminitis”.

A partial list of Catherine McGowan's research is available on the National Library of Australia's scientific database website.

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Friday, October 15, 2010

Friends (Not) At Work: Where's Mike Wildenstein?

Michael Wildenstein CJF, FWCF (Hons), Adjunct Associate Professor of Farrier Medicine and Surgery in The Department of Clinical Sciences of the College of Veterinary Medicine at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, has announced his plans to retire from his position and from the profession of farriery. For the past few weeks, Mike has been on an extended vacation that led straight into his retirement and he is enjoying some private time during the transition, he said today.

"Tell them that I am living the good life and enjoying my retirement!" was Mike's message.

Mike was offered an early retirement by Cornell and New York State, an offer that came one year earlier than Mike had planned to retire. He decided to take the offer and begin the next chapter of his life.

This announcement is a bit of a shock to the farrier and veterinary communities. Michael Wildenstein is one of the highest qualified farriers in the world and one of the most respected. He was the first farrier to gain a faculty position at a US veterinary college. He has been in great demand as a consulting educator and farrier. As an instructor, he shaped the professional lives of hundreds of farrier students in the Cornell farrier school program over the past 19 years.

Mike has left no stone unturned in his pursuit of absolute excellence in his own professional development but more importantly, made friends wherever he went without any regard to his position or skill.

Of course everyone in the horse world wishes Mike the very best and congratulates him on a job superbly and exquisitely well done. He's beaten a path that hopefully will be followed by others, if they have the strength of character to attempt to excel the way that Mike did.

Mike has simply retired from this phase of his professional life, and we can only wonder what he'll do next. He needs some privacy now to make that transition and thanks everyone for understanding that need, and for their good wishes.

Thanks, Mike.

Hoofcare & Lameness Presents World Horse Welfare's Laminitis Video Conference (Part 2)

"Recognizing the Early Signs of Laminitis" is the second in a series of feature presentations designed to help horse owners recognize the signs of laminitis in horses and to work toward preventing laminitis. In this video, British veterinarian David Catlow shares his insight from working with horse owners, and explains what conditions can fool a horse owner into thinking that a horse is just routinely lame rather than suffering the onset of a serious, life-threatening disease.

These videos were filmed at a lamintiis awareness seminar organized by World Horse Welfare and British feed company Dodson and Horrell earlier this year. More videos from the series will be posted on the Hoof Blog in the next few days.

The conferences, which were held at leading UK veterinary universities, were organized by Dr Teresa Hollands, Senior Nutritionist at Dodson and Horrell. Featured specialists included Professor Derek Knottenbelt, Dr Cathy McGowan and Alex Dugdale from the University of Liverpool, David Catlow from Oakhill Veterinary Centre and Samantha Lewis from World Horse Welfare, among many others.

The videos in this series include “The Horse’s Foot and How it Goes Wrong” (Professor Knottenbelt,) “Managing your Laminitic and Minimizing his Pain” (Dr McGowan,) “Recognizing the Early Signs of Laminitis” (David Catlow,) “Using Ultrasound to show the Difference Between Fat and Muscle” (Alex Dugdale,) and “How to Fat Score a Horse” (Samantha Lewis.)

To learn more: Watch Part 1 of the series, "The Horse's Foot and How It Goes Wrong".

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Liverpool's Professor Derek Knottenbelt Speaker at Michigan State University Vet School

Each year, the Michigan State University College of Veterinary Medicine's Equine Division invites a visiting Freeman Scholar to visit MSU-CVM to provide seminars and informal instruction to the large animal faculty and residents. This year Professor Derek Knottenbelt from the Leahurst Equine Hospital at the University of Liverpool in England will be at the East Lansing campus from Wednesday October 20 through Friday October 22.

Professor Knottenbelt will be giving two seminars for faculty and students at the College of Veterinary Medicine and he will also be the speaker for the October 20 evening program of the Michigan Equine Practitioners Association.

The topics of Knottenbelt's lectures will be "Equine Sarcoids" and "Role of Working Equids Around the Globe – Why Should We Care?"

Biography: Professor Knottenbelt graducated from the University of Edinburgh's Royal (Dick) Veterinary College in 1970. After a four-year spell in his native Zimbabwe working in the State Veterinary Service as a research officer, he moved into private practice in the UK where he stayed for 12 years. During this time he developed an interest in equine medicine and so, in 1985 he turned to the academic world, first in Zimbabwe and, after 1989, at Liverpool.

Professor Knottenbelt‘s expertise in equine internal medicine is recognized both nationally and internationally, particularly in equine oncology and dermatology. He is a Diplomate of the European College of Equine Internal Medicine and holds a personal Chair in Equine Medicine at the University of Liverpool. He has published widely in journals, authored 13 equine veterinary medicine textbooks and is frequently invited to speak at national and international meetings.

Knottenbelt received the Animal Health Trust Scientific Award in 2003, the BEVA (Blue Cross) Welfare Award in 2004 and the OBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honors of 2005 for his services to Equine Medicine. He is actively involved in many domestic and international charities relating to equine welfare and works tirelessly to support these causes.

His most recent effort was organzing a mad motorcycle relay of ten senior academic and private-practice veterinarians around England and Scotland to present research education at vet schools. The "Horsepower CPD" vets delivered their lectures in their motorcycle leathers and then sped off to the next university. The purpose was to benefit the British Equine Veterinary Association's fund-raising efforts and to help establish a therapeutic riding program for handicapped children in Mali, where Knottenbelt volunteers for part of each year as an equine education outreach provider. The lectures were free but donations for the funds were requested and the tour was partially sponsored by Petplan. The volunteer lecturers visited seven vet colleges in six days and planned to raise 60,000 pounds for charity.

A special service provided by Professor Knottenbelt is a web site he created to help horse owners around the world who have horses affected by sarcoids. Sarcoids affect as many as seven percent of the horses in Great Britain; that is a higher per capita infection than other countries. Sarcoids seem to be a growing concern in the United States, as well.

Knottenbelt is particularly astute on subjects related to dermatology of the horse's foot; he also has a keen interest in laminitis and worked with World Horse Welfare and Dodson and Horrell on their Laminitis Road Show series to educate horse owners on how to recognize and prevent laminitis.

A video of Knottenbelt's lecture on the equine foot (and what can go wrong) from that series can be viewed on The Hoof Blog.

Photo courtesy of the University of Liverpool.

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Thursday, October 14, 2010

Hoofcare & Lameness Presents World Horse Welfare's Laminitis Video Conference (Part 1)

Welcome to an amazing educational opportunity. World Horse Welfare and feed company Dodson and Horrell have created a series of videos from their recent "laminitis roadshow" conference in Great Britain and the Hoof Blog will be posting the videos here for you to watch at your leisure. This first brief video is the introduction and summary, featuring equine nutrition researcher Teresa Hollands of Dodson and Horrell.

In this first "feature-length" 24-minute video, you will meet Professor Derek Knottenbelt, who is no stranger to readers of Hoofcare and Lameness Journal. His article on pemphigus (sometimes called coronary band dystrophy and the subject of more articles to come) is one of the most popular articles ever published by Hoofcare and his work on hoof diseases is extraordinary in the way he integrates research and treatment with other areas of medicine.

Professor Knottenbelt was recently a guest speaker at Tufts University's Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine and I highly recommend him as a speaker. You'll see why when you watch this video, which includes one of his clever improvisational dramatizations--he becomes the hoof's laminar bond! His simple explanation takes the mystery out of insulin resistance and how it is involved in the mechanical collapse of the foot in laminitis; this video also helps with explaining many other key concepts of laminitis and its prevention for horse owners.

More videos from the road show conference will be added to the blog in the next few days. Please watch them all, share them all, and refer back to them.

Many thanks to World Horse Welfare and Dodson and Horrell for their leadership in laminitis education for horse owners. This is critical information that needs to circle the world, wherever horses can be cared for in a way that helps prevent laminitis. It is, after all, a preventable condition in most cases and so much pain and suffering could be spared if horse owners can be educated about management practices.

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