The Horse Doctor

We just got back from a week long trip to Costa Rica. I heard from a friend that American airlines was going to change their reward miles program so I should use them now. We wanted to go back to Costa and take all the kids and allow me to surf during the BIG season. We flew into San Jose and rented a 7 passenger SUV and headed into the mountains. We went up to the Arenal volcano and went to hot springs at "Baldi ". The kids said it was one of the highlights of the trip with many pools throughout the lush gardens that averaged 104 degrees from the volcanic heat. We then headed up to the Hacienda Guachipelin , a hotel/ranch up on the side of another volcano. Here is one of my emails back during the trip that i was asked to post....remember that I did these at night after dinner and several Imperial's (local beer). It's day 3 on the Adventura Costa Rica. We are at the Haciedna Guachipelin for another nite. Today we were up at 7am and really stiff from the climb up and...

There has been a report of piroplasmosis at an Ocala area Hospital. Here is an excerpt from the FAEP report. " Equine Piroplasmosis (EP) is a blood-borne parasitic disease which is caused by two organisms, Theileria equi ( formerly Babesia equi) and Babesia caballi . It is primarily transmitted to horses by ticks; however, the disease can be spread mechanically from animal to animal by contaminated needles. The disease was eradicated from Florida in the 1980's and the tick species generally believed to transmit this disease in other countries have not been identified in Florida in many years. This disease is not directly contagious from one horse to another but requires direct blood transfer. Human infection with equine piroplasmosis is extremely rare. Acutely affected horses can have depression, fever, anemia, jaundiced mucous membranes and low platelet counts. Equine Piroplasmosis can also cause horses to have roughened hair coats, constipation, and colic. In its milder ...

I had an interesting call this week about Chronic Fatigue Syndrome in horses. I know there is much debate about the issue in people and actually a lot of research that is still remarkably inconclusive. When you do a google search for chronic fatigue syndrome, horses , you come up with 432,000 hits. Almost every page references reports from Dr. Walter Tarello in Italy. If you have read anything I have written then you know I'm a skeptic and with this one my bullshit-ometer is redlining. I have read his publicatio ns and have some serious questions as to scientific method and the conclusions made ( much less how it even got published). I do not doubt that these cases are sick, they have fever, weight loss and lethargy. What I do doubt is the diagnosis and the way it was arrived at. "After staining with the Wright technique, slides were microscopically examined (x100) showing the presence of micrococci-like organisms on 5-6% of Red Blood Cells, and the absence of alternative ca...

I came across this video that is absolutely shocking from C-SPAN. I'm sure the high gas prices are hurting everyone, but I can tell you first hand that it is brutal for Equine Veterinarians. With four Vets driving into 5 counties the fuel costs are staggering and forcing us to increase our trip charges. I find it odd that we are virtually the only country that so restricts the amount of domestic energy production. We complain about electrical shortages in California, yet they have not built a new power plant in over 20 years. We complain about high gas prices but haven't built a new refinery in over 30 years and currently are at maximum production. Each year we import more of our energy and transfer more and more of our wealth to other countries. I don't know if the final answer is increased coal production (we have 27% of the worlds coal deposits), nuclear, wind,solar, hydrogen our geothermal....but I think we need an "ALL OF THE ABOVE " approach for now. Over ...