National Geographic is actually doing it; they are bringing back a modern day James Herriot! Here comes the premiere of The Incredible Dr. Pol, Saturday, October 29, at 9 and 10 pm ET/PT on Nat Geo WILD. (I wanted to be the Dr. Pol for Nat Geo but by the time I replied to an email about the search for a vet I was way too late)
From Nat Geo:
“An expert in large farm animals and pets, with a “you name it, and we’ll treat it” attitude, this house-call-making veterinarian has seen it all. Dr. Pol works 14-hour days to help the diminishing population of family farmers survive by playing an integral role in keeping local farmers’ livestock healthy and in turn, their businesses profitable. He’ll travel across rural Michigan to care for every family pet and head of livestock in need of his expertise and kindness, treating numerous patients, including horses, pigs, cows, sheep, alpacas, goats, cats, dogs and even an occasional reindeer.
With such a busy practice, we are on call right alongside Dr. Pol as he treats a variety of cases, including two dogs with faces stuck full of porcupine quills, sick horses that may need to be put down and a pig with an abscess that needs to be drained. We’ll also get a front-row seat as Dr. Pol examines a cow to check for pregnancy by reaching his arm into the rectum and feeling the ovaries. For local farmers, while many of these animals are their livelihood, others are a part of their extended family. “
I remember this lifestyle – I started out my practice in a rural farm practice treating everything from the performance horse to the dairy cow to the show goat to the feeder pigs to the farm dog. It was a fun part of my veterinary career. I look forward to watching this show and having fond memories of what the veterinary life has to offer and then realizing how happy I am to be doing what I am now.
Check out this video – I remember palpating cows! When I was a student I had gone to California to the large dairy’s there and I had palpated 300 cows in one day!
The Incredible Dr. Pol: Vet and Wild
Premieres Saturday, October 29, at 9 p.m. ET/PT—Special Premiere Time
Dr. Pol receives an emergency call from a client who finds her horse down and fears he may not make it. Suffering from a spinal cord injury, he decides to give the horse a cortisone shot. Will he survive? Dr. Pol’s son, Charles decides to extend his visit to help his father with the work overload. His only request—to palpate a cow. But trouble creeps up when Dr. Pol and Charles perform an emergency futotomy, an intense procedure to extract two dead fetuses from a cow in hopes of saving the mother’s life. And, the clinic celebrates its 30th anniversary with a special pig roast with old friends, former employees and longtime clients.
If you have been paying attention the last year or so you have been hearing and reading that here in the US we have developed some resistant parasites in our horse population. How did we develop these resistant parasites? Well to be honest our deworming protocols. In our zeal to have a clean worm free horse population we have instead developed worms that are resistant to treatment.
SO what to do? There are reports everywhere saying we should deworm regularly only with ivermectin, and others saying we should only deworm after testing to be sure our horse has parasites, and others still saying use a rotational deworming program but base it on the time of year rather than just every 30 or 60 days. However very little information is out there on how to actually prevent your horse from being infected in the first place. Well it is a matter of equine parasite management.
In equine parasite management one needs to first consider the actual risk of your horse being infected by parasites. The risk for a horse stabled and fed inside a barn and turned out by itself in its own personal dry lot is going to be much less than another horse that is kept in a small pasture with 5 other horses. With a horse in the environment as the latter, it is going to be near impossible to prevent infection from parasites, so one has to be dedicated to management of the pasture to prevent an overabundance.
The rules of equine parasite management -
Clean up the manure in the pasture/turnout – a minimum of once a week this reduces the amount of eggs being delivered to the pasture and also the larva.
If you feed hay and/or grain, feed inside the barn or at a minimum in a bunk off the ground and in an area separate from the pasture. If you do feed in a bunk outside place the bunk on a concrete pad or limestone. Clean feed buckets and bunks regularly.
If possible divide your pastures and rotate the usage allowing a rest period to help kill off parasites.
Test each horse’s manure regularly (once every 2-3 months) for parasites. One horse can be a high shedder and be the main infector and another have a very low parasite count. Knowing the high shedders will help you manage those individual horses and keep them separate from the rest of the herd if possible. Also you can treat the horses that shed and treat each horse as an individual which actually helps the entire herd.
Deworm any new horse prior to introducing them to your herd.
If you use these five steps you can lower the risk of your horse being infected with parasites, then you do not have to worry about what you have to do with the deworming schedule or if you have to rotate or what product you have to use, because you will have a lower risk of parasite infection.
Other Sources for deworming and horse parasite control
From the very day that newly-initiated horse owners pick up their crisp new how-to horsecare book or go to that first horse health lecture, the first commandment of horse health management echoes in their ears: Thou shalt worm thy horse religiously.
It is that time of year again it’s Chocolate season! It starts with Halloween and ends at Christmas. This is where us humans gain several pounds due to good food and even better candy. Chocolate is a favorite of mine and truly a favorite of many. However our dogs should not be indulging in chocolate, it is toxic to them. Depending on how much your dog weighs and how much your dog eats will decide whether your dog will be OK, have gastrointestinal symptoms, have seizures or even die.
It is the theobromine that is in chocolate that is really toxic to dogs and certain chocolate is much more toxic than other types. Depending on how much theobromine is in the chocolate will decide on how toxic. For example White Chocolate has very little theobromine and it takes quite a large amount to be toxic in dogs, in comparison baking chocolate or real cocoa is highly toxic to dogs, because it has a lot of theobromine.
Usually I tell people to go to the cool interactive chart offered several years ago by National Geographic – it still available here – National Geographic Chocolate Chart
However this year a fellow veterinarian, Dr Marie from AskAVetAQuestion.com offered me a free Chocolate Toxicity Calculator to put right here on my site. So thanks Dr. Marie!
Canine Case of the Week is Bear a special dog with Intervertebral Disk Disease in the cervical spine. What makes Bear special is that he is also a cancer patient, OK he is a good dog too! Bear is one of my lucky patients that has been able to take advantage of the new information about acupuncture I have learned from the Chi Institute in my process to acupuncture certification.
Bear is a 10 year old neutered male black Lab. He was diagnosed with Osteosarcoma of the jaw in December 2010. The tumor was wrapped around his lower canine and it bled every time he ate. When it was discovered that it was cancer Bear underwent surgery to have the front third of his lower jaw removed. He recovered fine from the surgery and no longer had bleeding every time he ate.
Shortly after his jaw surgery he started limping on his left front leg. Of course thinking the worse his owner brought him right away to a specialist and discovered that no the cancer had not spread but actually Bear had a strained tendon in his elbow. The specialist injected the elbow with corticosteroid and the limping improved. Unfortunately he developed a neck problem 2 weeks afterwards.
Bear has had issues with his neck for a long time. He would be stiff and a little painful to the touch. His owner would give him aspirin and in a day he would bounce back, however this time was different. He did not bounce back and in fact became worse. He could not turn his head to the left without being in pain. Back to the vet Bear went. His cervical spine was radiographed and luckily no signs of cancer, but also no significant findings for a problem relating to his pain in the neck. He was diagnosed with Cervical Intervertebral Disk Disease or Cervical IVDD. An MRI could be done to confirm the diagnosis but with the expense, the fact that an MRI may not be as reliable as once thought for diagnosis of IVDD, the fact that Bear has gone through a lot already and most important the owner was not wishing to put Bear through another surgery and only wants him comfortable for how ever many months she has left with Bear, an MRI was not performed and Bear was given typical conservative pain management pharmaceuticals – muscle relaxers and pain relievers. He did this for a couple of months. It did not help enough and in May it became much worse. He could not raise his head comfortably and he was placed on more pain relievers. In June when nothing else seemed to be helping Bear’s owner called me.
My first visit Bear was mildy depressed but still happy to visit. He could not raise his head very well, looked uncomfortable and certainly could not turn his head left. He was not sleeping well at night. He was very painful when touching his neck or trying to move his head. I spent time massaging and doing chiropractic adjustments to help relieve some of his tension and pain. I also prescribed Gabapentin for the neuropathic pain since none of the pain relievers he was on were seeming to help.
A week later I revisited and readjusted. He was improved. His pain was mostly gone but he still could not turn his head to the left.
The next week I revisited again and now he could turn his head about 50% to the left and still no pain. I adjusted him again and was happy with the progress. However Bear had other plans with his new found reduction in pain.
The problem with giving a dog pain relievers, or doing modalities such as chiropractic or acupuncture is that they do relieve pain. The problem with relieving pain is that the area is still healing and can take 12 weeks to heal completely, but since there is no pain the dog will use the area like there is nothing wrong. If the dog feels better and does something it should not it can re-injure the area and start the whole cascade of events all over. That’s what Bear did!
He was happy feeling better and became excited one day. The owner knew that she needed to keep him calm and not do any activity with him, but Bear had other ideas and decide to play hard for a couple minutes and re-injured himself. When I saw him we were back to square one! He was in pain again and could not turn his head at all. We started over. I massaged and adjusted him and and was coming back the next week, after my trip to the Chi Institute.
Monday, after my course work at the Chi Institute I visited Bear He was out of pain but still could not move his head to the left. I had some small needles that I usually use for horse legs. I did some acupuncture for Bear’s neck and I have a laser machine and lasered a few acupuncture points as well. The treatment lasted about 20 min. After the treatment was over, Bear got up shook all over and whined at the door. He went out, went to the bathroom, came back in and went right for his toy box. The owner and I were quick to tell him – OH NO. She told him to go lay down. The owner and I could tell he was feeling very spunky and wanted to play. He felt very good. So I went onto my soapbox and told her how he needed to rest and definitely needed to be confined and not allowed to play. The problem with acupuncture is that they feel too good and can re-injure themselves. All the while I was talking (preaching) Bear was laying with his right side against a wall, obviously upset that he was told he could not play, and at one point the owner and I looked at him and he looked back at us. It only took a couple seconds for it to register that he was turning his head to the left to look straight back at us!
Here was a dog that had for months not been able to turn his head to the left and I thought I had made some big progress with the chiropractic treatments to get him to turn his head 50% of the way and now he was turning his head like nothing was ever wrong. He had no pain and had full range of motion from one 20 min treatment of acupuncture.
Today I visited Bear and he is almost completely normal. He is off all the medications except for the Gabapentin which he has started weaning off. He has a little limp in his left front leg but his neck shows no sign of pain and has about 90% range of motion. I treated him with electroacupuncture today and will visit him again in two weeks.
I have a new found respect for acupuncture and will be incorporating it more and more in my treatment protocols. I will be suggesting it to clients more frequently and eventually I can see that my practice will be a Traditional Chinese Veterinary Medicine practice using herbs and acupuncture with some chiropractic and physical therapy added. Thank you Bear for the excellent results that were way beyond my expectations. With more treatments I am hoping to help him with his elbow pain and extend his life comfortably despite living with an aggressive cancer.
Calm down horse people, all this EHV-1 hysteria is getting to me. As of today there are less than 40 horses that have contracted Equine Herpes Virus 1 from being exposed at a national cutting show in Odgen, Utah. Despite what certain news outlets are reporting it has not spread yet. Think about it there are over 7 million horses in the US, less than 40 have contracted the disease and less than 5 have died – 0.00057% of the population is definitely NOT an epidemic.
Yesterday I was a little disappointed in one of The Horse’s articles relating to the outbreak – EHV-1 Outbreak: Number of Confirmed Cases Rising. The title of this article and definitely the first line in the article really irritated me. Here is a respected health journal and they are playing to the hysteria that is building. Worse yet with the line, “It’s been nearly a week since the first indications of a neurologic equine herpesvirus-1 (EHV-1) outbreak began to surface, and the outbreak shows no signs of slowing down.” they certainly are continuing and even promoting that hysteria. I tweeted my disapproval with two tweets -
Stephanie Church the Editor-in-Chief responded back to the tweets with a tweet of her own -
I agree with their mission and the responsibility they have placed on themselves which is why The Horse is an excellent source for articles on health for your horse (I have blog envy for sure). I said so and reiterated my displeasure with that specific title and first line of the article. Stephanie understood and followed up with this tweet -
I am glad that Stephanie commented and listened to me explaining my displeasure and in the end seemed to be more conscious of what I was trying to say. I’d like to expand and clarify my position, first by saying that The Horse is by no means the problem here. They are still one of my most trusted sources for information about the outbreak. I also want to say that I am concerned about this outbreak but not to the point that I have seen some people and owners out here on the internet. On top of the hysteria, the misinformation is horrific. I can not believe with as much good information being repeated in many different reputable areas that there still is misinformation being given, even by veterinarians! And not only misinformation but information that may be detrimental to your horse’s health rather than helpful.
The Facts about this EHV-1 Outbreak
EHV-1 has been around a very long time and it is unknown at this time whether this outbreak is caused by a new strain.
EHV-1 causes respiratory disease, abortions, foal deaths and/or neurologic disease. If a horse obtains the neurologic form it is not a death sentence.
This outbreak has been limited to the horses that were exposed at the cutting show in Odgen, Utah and their stablemates. It has not spread to other horses.
Containment/Quarantine is the best defense against spread and it appears that at this time it has been contained by quarantining the horses that have been exposed.
Vaccination is ineffective against the neurologic form and controversial.
First and foremost – the vaccine will NOT protect your horse against the neurological form of EHV-1. There were neurologic cases of EHV-1 in horses that were vaccinated every 3 to 4 months with an approved vaccine in the last outbreak. At this time there is not a labeled or approved product to protect your horse against the neurologic form. There is good reason for this – because there is not one that will protect against it!
There is promise though and break-throughs in research. The modified live vaccine shows some promise and did protect in one study of 5 horses, but still seemed ineffective in the outbreak a couple years ago. New advances in vaccine technology with recombinant DNA vaccines and Chimera type vaccines are also showing some promise but still are not available or ready to prove they are effective.
One of the biggest problems with the current vaccines, besides not being effective against the neurologic form, is the duration of so called protection. The vaccines currently available only protect for 3 months or so. (In some horses as little as a few weeks) So this means that if you really wanted to properly vaccinate you would need to vaccinate every 2-3 month, but it still will not prevent the disease and may only limit symptoms. It does prevent virus shedding which could possibly be of some benefit to limiting the exposure to other horses.
This is where my opinion comes in based on experience with the immune system and evidence from other species (cats and dogs). It is not advisable to be stimulating the immune system with a vaccine multiple times a year especially once every 60 days, unintended consequences may occur. In dogs and cats it has been proven that annual vaccination can and does cause immune system disorders such as allergies, auto-immune disorders and even cancer. Why would the horse be so different? And we are not talking about annual vaccination; here we are talking about giving a horse a vaccine every 2-3 months that’s 4 to 6 times a year. Talk about over vaccinating! It has not been proven in horses to have detrimental effects but it really has not been researched either. So in my opinion why would you risk your horses immune system to try and protect against a disease that it can not protect against? It is possible that the reason we see an increase in the neurologic form of the disease in vaccinated animals is because of over-vaccination. No research just an opinion based on other species experience with over vaccination.
In the end just remain calm horse owners. Be educated and informed. Pay attention to where the disease has occurred and realize that taking your horse to a show is a risk, but why do you have the horse in the first place?
Bear is a 10 year old neutered male black Lab. He was diagnosed with Osteosarcoma of the jaw in December 2010. The tumor was wrapped around his lower canine and it bled every time he ate. When it was discovered that it was cancer Bear underwent surgery to have the front third of his lower jaw removed. He recovered fine from the surgery and no longer had bleeding every time he ate.
