Many horse owners have had the following experience: you put your perfectly healthy horse up for the night and the next morning, He walks out of the stall three-legged lame. A nightmare scenario, right? Whoa, there. It may not...
We all love to see our horse enjoying a graze on delicious spring grass. But that pasture your horse eats with such gusto is not as benign as you might think—particularly for horses with metabolic disorders or genetic predispositions,...
Seeing the full picture of a horse’s body from the inside began not with a hoof, but with a woman’s hand. The accidental discovery of the radiograph in 1895 by the German physicist Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen transformed the human...
Early on in her training, the mare was labeled as a hot off-track Thoroughbred, but was that really her M.O.? Underneath the young mare’s frightening antics was a kind, gentle soul. Through exams, lameness evaluations and radiographs, vets at...
My Spanish Mustang gelding, Rio, is pretty stoic; it takes a lot for him to complain. When I realized the saddle he’d been wearing for years no longer fit him properly, it was because he finally let me know....
The elderly gray Appaloosa craned her neck to watch me as I gently ran my hand over the hard swelling on her hind leg. I didn’t like the fact that the large mass was right on the outside of...
You’ve probably felt that moment of panic. Your horse comes in from the field with a squinty, red, tearing, swollen eye. Immediately, your mind races to the worst-case scenario as you dial your vet. Will your horse end up...
Besides not being able to talk, horses are flight animals and have an instinctual ability to hide pain. So, how do horses communicate pain?Obvious signs such as biting, bucking suddenly, not wanting to be saddled, reluctance to go forward...
In addition to finding the right personality and ability when searching for your next equine partner, oftentimes it feels like you need a Ph.D. to decipher horse-health records, old injuries, and how they might impact a horse’s future athletic...
Dr. Diehl describes in her Vet Adventures column what happens next in life to a gray horse with a serious lameness diagnosis. Does he have hope for a good home?After several hours of diagnostics on Olaf, a 13-year-old gray...
