Your Horse And Your Horse's Drugs
Posted by Geoff Tucker on Sun, Aug 30, 2009
The opinions and views of this blog is for information and entertainment only and should not be used as a substitute for seeking advice from your veterinarian about your horse and your situation. Specific advice may only be given after a valid veterinary - client - patient relationship is made.Disclaimer: I love drugs - I mean the legal kind. Tylenol, Pepto, and DMSO are all I need if left alone on an island. OK, maybe a bottle or two of whiskey.
Let's see what's in your medicine bag for your horse. Bute - kind of like Tylenol so that's good. Banamine - like Tylenol and Pepto so that's good. A gallon of "pink stuff" - very similar to Pepto. An assortment of DMSO liquid, gel, and roll on. Finally the sedatives and tranquilizers: a bottle of xylazine (once called Rompun) or a bottle of Dormosedan or Ace. These all work better than whisky for your horse.
OK, maybe a bottle or two of whiskey in the horse Rx bag wouldn't hurt.
Wait a minute, you say. What about these other items? Antibiotics, steroid anti itch creams, de-wormers, anti ulcer medicines, eye ointments, herbal remedies, rub on pain relievers, injectable arthritis treatments, magical potions with unknown ingredients mixed by your vet, magical potions with unknown "natural" ingredients mixed by your holistic practitioner.
How do all these things fit in with caring for our horses? Are they all necessary? Well yes, to a degree. But they are often used without thinking of their proper use. In other words, they are often misused.
What was the thought that started this blog early on a Sunday morning? It was a forum I read about yohimbine - a drug "used like water" according to one posting vet. These vets over-drug horses with sedatives in order to work on them, especially for power tool dentistry. When done, they administer yohimbine to reverse the sedation. Like snapping your fingers in front of a hypnotized person.
The problem on the forum was that there were reports of several horses who had died after being given yohimbine compounded by a certain manufacturer. Remember the polo ponies in Florida earlier this year dying from a badly compounded drug? But this yohimbine case is actually worse! Why? In the Florida case there was no FDA approved alternative. These vets using the compounded yohimbine have the alternative to use the FDA approved yohimbine. They do this to save about $16.50 per injection. It is against the law to use a compounded drug when a FDA approved drug is available. Now several horses and their owners know why.
I can understand using potent and abundant sedatives on the horse suffering from a near fatal wound. I can understand having the owner hold the bottle of whisky as the vet works. But using these powerful drugs for elective procedures such as dentistry, sheath cleaning, or tear duct flushing is preposterous. It represents how horsemanship has evolved into auto mechanics. "Don't worry about giving a lot of this drug because I can give him this other drug to counter act it." Two drugs in stead of good horsemanship is laziness and a misuse of medication.
Learning to be your horse's advocate is not easy but it is important. My discussion here is to get you thinking. Every drug, no matter if it is manufactured or grown, affects your horse. There is a time and place for all of them, and you have the control. Unless, of course, your horse says to you, "Too much whisky last night, Ma. Where's the Tylenol?"
Who is your horse's advocate?
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Blog August 30, 2009 by
Geoff Tucker, DVM is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Blog by
Geoff Tucker, DVM is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.