Sommaire pour November 2015 de Equus

Another reason to yawn I’d like to add an important point about horse yawning (“What’s Behind a Yawn,” Hands On, EQUUS 455). One primary reason they do it is to relieve stress or tension. If you were to just hang with your horse after a workout, just standing around not touching him for, say, 25 minutes, you may witness him yawning multiple times. You will see your horse’s eyes start to close, and a sense of complete calmness will take over. When riding, you may also witness horses yawning when stressed. Knowing this, your readers can gauge their horses in training and know when to give them a break. Peg Smith Brooklyn, Wisconsin Give second colic surgeries a chance “Repeat Colic Surgeries Spell Trouble” (Medical Front, EQUUS 456) captures the…

A study from Brazil suggests a possible correlation between a mare’s age and the gender of her offspring. Researchers at the Pontifical Catholic University of Minas Gerais reviewed the breeding records of nearly 60,000 Mangalarga Marchador horses born in Brazil from 1990 to 2011. In a multi-step statistical analysis, they compared the sex ratio of offspring to the age of both sire and dam as well as to the age gap between the two. They then performed the same analysis on the records of 253 horses of various breeds foaled from 1989 to 2010. Analysis of the combined data showed that mares older than 15 were more likely to deliver fillies than were younger mares. On the other hand, the age of the sire seemed to have only a minor…

Although he showed a bit of skittishness in his first racetrack outings, American Pharoah has earned a reputation for being very laid-back around the barn, remarkably so for an accomplished racehorse. Writing for Sports Illustrated just after the colt’s Belmont win, Tim Layden captured this aspect of the colt’s personality: “Pharoah’s adaptability is not a shock. He lived on three different Kentucky farms in the first year of his life and then was broken (taught to run) at a training center in Florida. Once he was shipped to [trainer Bob] Baffert, he ran his first two races at Del Mar, his third at Santa Anita and his two Kentucky Derby preps in Arkansas. He is known around Baffert’s barn for possessing the sweet demeanor of a golden retriever—valuable in shipping…

American Pharoah’s constant companion on his Triple Crown journey has been a 6-year-old Quarter Horse named Smokey. The buckskin accompanies the champion on trailer rides, keeps him company in the barn and escorts him to and from the track for workouts. Before arriving at trainer Bob Baffert’s barn, Smokey had his own successful career as a reining horse, competing under the name This Whiz Shines. During American Pharoah’s Triple Crown races, Smokey was ridden by former jockey turned NBC sports reporter Donna Barton Brothers. The duo galloped up to American Pharoah after each victory for a post-race interview, reuniting the two barn buddies.…

You might not think that your horse has much in common with American Pharoah or the other 11 horses who’ve won the Triple Crown. And in the most obvious ways you’d be right. But where it matters most, the daily care that keeps your horse healthy closely parallels the management practices that help elite equine athletes perform their best. That’s because, for the most part, “racehorses are a unique population, but they are still horses,” says Reynolds Cowles, DVM, a Virginia veterinarian who has spent much of his nearly 50-year career serving racehorses both in the barn and on a myriad of safety and research advisory committees. Through every era, from Sir Barton’s Triple Crown in 1919 to American Pharoah’s this year, racehorses have had the same basic needs: a…

EQUUS welcomes freelance submissions for practically any section of the magazine. Send manuscripts to EQletters@aimmedia.com. We will also consider typed hard-copy manuscripts, but please note: If you would like your materials returned, you must include a selfaddressed, stamped envelope. We do not review or accept simultaneous submissions. Here are a few guidelines for writers: • Back Page— essays that illustrates an aspect of equestrian life. • Case Report—accounts by equine practitioners and horse owners of unusual or baffling cases of equine illness or injury. • Feature articles generally run from 1,600 to 3,000 words. • Medical Front—brief articles about the latest research, technological advances, treatments and other veterinary topics pertinent to horse owners. • True Tale—true stories that focus on experiences that typify the multifaceted relationships we have with our…

New research suggests that windy weather increases the risk that horses living in Florida and other subtropical regions will develop a potentially devastating ocular condition known as deep stromal abscess (DSA). A fungal infection affecting a layer of tissue within the cornea, DSA often occurs in the wake of a superficial abrasion to the surface of the eye. A fungal infection affecting a layer of tissue within the cornea0, DSA often occurs in the wake of a superficial abrasion to the surface of the eye. “They seem to simmer for days to weeks, become painful and can take months to heal with medical and/or surgical therapy,” says Dennis Brooks, DVM, PhD. “They are the most common reason for corneal transplants in the horse.” The infection is found in many warm…

Be thankful for defeat. Be thankful for failure. Be thankful for frustration, for heartbreak, for foolish mistakes, for frailty, for hard luck, for doubt, for unanswered longing. These are the things that gauge the robustness of the challenges we choose, that sound the depths of our bravery and fortitude, that measure our worth. Only those intimate with the pain of loss feel in full the sweet euphoria of triumph. I am grateful that I waited 37 years, since I was a little girl, to see this Triple Crown victory. I am grateful for all the brave horses who tried and failed and scattered our hopes. When American Pharoah bent his exquisitely beautiful body into the homestretch at Belmont, scorching fractions faster and faster as his jockey sat taut-armed on his…

How the champion’s name ended up containing a misspelling may never be known. Originally, his owners cited a clerical mistake at the Jockey Club as the cause, but the organization says no data entry is involved in processing registrations and misspellings are often submitted intentionally so they are not generally flagged. Another possible explanation put forth was a misspelling by the winner of the social media contest held to name the horse. The winning entrant, Marsha Baumgartner of Missouri, told The New York Times that she doesn’t remember exactly how she spelled the name, but she did look up the word “pharaoh” in the dictionary before making her entry. Baumgartner took the hubbub about the name in stride: “Horses can’t spell, anyway,” she told the reporter. To avoid confusion for…

KENTUCKY DERBY PREAKNESS STAKES BELMONT STAKES 1919 SIR BARTON (Star Shoot x Lady Sterling) Owner: J.K.L. Ross Trainer: H. Guy Bedwell Jockey: Johnny Loftus Fast fact: Although Sir Barton is credited as the first American Triple Crown winner, the term hadn’t actually been coined yet in 1919. 1930 GALLANT FOX (Sir Gallahad III x Marguerite) Owner: Belair Stud Trainer: James “Sunny Jim” Fitzsimmons Jockey: Earl Sande Fast fact: Gallant Fox is the only Triple Crown winner to sire another Triple Crown winner—Omaha. 1948 CITATION (Bull Lea x Hydroplane II) Owner: Calumet Farm Trainer: Ben Jones, Horace “Jimmy” Jones Jockey: Eddie Arcaro Fast fact: Eddie Arcaro is the only jockey to ever pilot two horses to Triple Crown victories: Whirlaway and Citation. 1935 OMAHA (Gallant Fox x Flambino) Owner: Belair Stud…

When I was about 15, and my sister, Laura, was about 11, we began taking a Greyhound bus to Baltimore nearly every weekend to spend the day at the races. You might think a racetrack is not a safe or appropriate place for unaccompanied girls to spend the day, and we did have a few bad experiences. But for the most part, we always felt welcome. Some men, fathers themselves, were protective and paternal. Some saw us as lucky charms and asked us to stand near them while a race was in progress. Of all the experiences of my childhood, I’m most grateful now for the luxury of those long, idle, unstructured days that we were free to spend pursuing things we loved. Days like that have been so rare…

Although sedation can help make a lameness exam go more smoothly, a new study from Germany suggests that it might affect how the horse moves, making diagnosis more difficult. Xylazine or other mild sedatives are sometimes administered to horses who might otherwise make lameness examinations challenging, explains Matthias Rettig, DVM, of the Free University of Berlin. “Some horses are uncooperative during a lameness exam and kick, which can be difficult and dangerous,” he says. But sedation can make a horse sluggish, so Rettig and his fellow researchers set out to determine whether it affects the biomechanical parameters that veterinarians use to diagnose and pinpoint lameness. For the study, researchers attached inertial sensors to 44 horses who were randomly split into two groups. Baseline lameness examinations were performed on all of…

A new study from Poland suggests that music may help horses relax and perform better. To determine whether listening to music has physiological effects on horses, researchers at the University of Life Sciences in Lublin selected 70 3-year-old Arabian racehorses. Forty of the horses were exposed to music for five hours each afternoon for six months, while the remaining horses, serving as a control group, heard no music. Every 30 to 35 days during the study period, the researchers collected cardiac measurements from all the horses while they were at rest, saddled and ridden at a walk. Over the first three months of the study, the cardiac measurements of horses exposed to music indicated lower levels of stress. The researchers concluded that the music had a positive effect on the…

If you don’t believe that a horseshoe brings good luck, consider the case of American Pharoah and what I like to call his “Pharoah plate.” A shoe with an unusual, customized heel plate not only carried him to his Triple Crown victory this spring—without it, he might not be running at all. Last fall, after racking up two consecutive wins in September 2014, the promising bay colt stayed in the barn while other top 2-year-olds raced in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile in November. A left front foot lameness described vaguely as a “deep bruise” had kept American Pharoah out of the race. With an eye toward prepping his colt for the 2015 racing season, on October 29, 2014, trainer Bob Baffert called in farrier Wes Champagne, who has a reputation…

No sooner had American Pharoah strolled out of the Belmont Park winner’s circle last June 6, the 12th and newest winner of the American Triple Crown—the first to wear the laurel wreath in 37 years!—than I began receiving urgent messages from around the country asking me how the colt’s performance measured up against that of Secretariat’s in 1973. Or Seattle Slew’s four years later. Or Affirmed’s a year after that. “American Pharoah proved his greatness today, wouldn’t you say?” breathed one correspondent. “How does he stack up against the other greats you have seen?” asked another. Two months later, the band was still playing, with NBC’s Tom Hammond suggesting, in the broadcast of the Haskell Invitational, that any horse who wins the Triple Crown had to be considered a “great…