Millington Equine

11/14/2024

These radiographs show the same front foot of a laminitic patient before and after a single shoeing cycle in a clog. Healthier sole is growing in beneath the tip of the coffin bone, and the coffin bone's angle of rotation from the dorsal hoof wall is already normalizing. We were so pleased for this patient, and most appreciative for the farrier team that is helping Dr. Berman with the case!

11/01/2024

Friday’s best helper (and every day!)

10/21/2024

Dr. Trawick has been working this year to learn more ways of assessing and treating discomfort in our horses, because they're so much more than a stack of joints and they can't talk to us about their myofascial pain. This weekend she joined an incredible group of practitioners (and some great tiny dogs) at a Girthiness and Equipment Lameness seminar hosted by Declue Equine. We talked a lot about the "thoracic sling," necks, and the impact of tack.

Leave a comment if you're a client who would be interested in shockwave therapy!!

10/17/2024

We only just finished the 2024 breeding season, but, if you are considering breeding your mare in 2025, take advantage of this AAEP offering and register for the free webinar! Also let us know your intentions sooner rather than later, because we need to know your goals when planning next spring!

On Oct. 30, join AAEP member veterinarian and board-certified theriogenologist Dr. Dale Kelley for a one-hour webinar discussion that will cover the basics of reproductive biology of the horse, the logistics of breeding season, and what to expect when breeding your mare.

Registration is FREE but required. Attendees are also encouraged to submit their questions in advance through the registration form. A recording of the webinar will be available if you miss the live event.

Register here: https://aaep-org.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_CHkvKjmpTlGOiPMbwhEtBA #/registration

This informative session is brought to you by the AAEP Horse Owner Education Committee.

09/27/2024

This Friday’s fun was getting a horrible sub-solar abscess to drain on our friend Fish Trappe Road and then trying out our new lymphatic compression system on him. He has a recurrent cellulitis in a hind limb that he brought home from his racing days in Puerto Rico, as well as extremely damaged front fetlocks. We hope to reduce his lower limb edema over time.

09/21/2024

We are very excited to add functional electrical stimulation to our toolbox starting next week! The unit is carefully programmed to stimulate deep, symmetrical muscle contraction in horses and reduce inflammation. It will be an excellent addition for horses on rest, horses with atrophy, or just hard workers.

Like usual, W***y the steady Eddie is one of our first cases, with Dr. Trawick’s beloved Kona watching over.

08/28/2024

The loveliest Eliza is officially married! She’s not honeymooning yet so you can see her back in her normal garb immediately. We’re so happy for her 💚

05/14/2024

We can’t say we aren’t charmed by this little guy— He might be an accident, but he’ll have a fan club for life 😃🤣🥰

04/30/2024

What breed do you think this little filly is? 🥰

02/22/2024

Dr. Trawick is in Florida for her first module of medical manipulation training and made sure to find a bay mare with a double whorl to befriend. She’s excited to finally bring this skillset home to combine with acupuncture!

02/13/2024

Snow Day Podiatry Before & After:

One thing snow makes us think about is feet, because we all worry about our horses packing snow and whether they have the right pads. Then when the snow melts, we’ll be back with our constant companion Mud and worrying about moisture levels, dropped soles, and dermatitis.

The patient in the radiographs below is a 22-year-old half thoroughbred gelding, and he’s fairly representative of a common scenario we see. These horses are barefoot, have thin soles, have changes to the coffin bone, are frequently uncomfortable, and get abscesses. We’re talking about feet that look like this for years, not horses that have just been made barefoot with some hope that in time they will “toughen up.” These horses commonly have a potentially small space that has been used long enough that there are some drainage problems--and you all know if Mud is only in two corners that’s where the horse will spend 80% of its time. These are horses for whom the real concern is an ability to be pasture sound, with riding soundness being either irrelevant or in a distant future.

We’ve been exploring what we can do for these horses within realistic parameters to get them to a better place for their hoof care team.

Do you put on a shoe for protection?

Sure, but many of these horses are barefoot because 1. They can’t hold nails consistently or 2. They don’t live in a location a farrier is willing to come to for one horse. We know the demand for qualified farriers scarcely meets the need these days, and it doesn’t make economic sense for them to drive to every single or two-horse home.

Do you cast it? That might help over time. It will likely take an awfully long time for that to allow enough sole development to get ahead of the negative cycle. These are feet that seem to grow almost entirely outward instead of up-and-down and change is sloowww.

You can put on a shoe with a heart bar or a frog support pad, you can keep trying to move the breakover back, but when feet are THIS far gone it usually takes a big effort and some mechanics to get ahead. That can mean a shoe with rocker motion. That can mean a clog nailed on. In this case we tried out a cuff called a Nanric Ultimate that was developed by Dr. Ric Redden and is a favorite in the horsey land of Kentucky. It can be bandaged on or glued on. It can be used to help increase blood supply to the foot and speed up sole growth.

*pause—we know these radiographs aren’t the straightest but we don’t care because they still show change*

This patient was three-legged lame much of the time. He had 0 to 5 mm of sole because abscesses had resulted in some parts of the sole entirely peeling away. These before and afters are 15 weeks apart. For 15 weeks a very diligent owner monitored and replaced the cuffs with multiple farm calls for status checks. In fifteen weeks this horse doubled his sole depth and has been consistently comfortable in his daily activities. Now he has enough foot for his trimmer to work with, and we think that’s pretty cool!

02/08/2024

I’ll let myself out…

Or! You could follow along this month for some cool info, stories, and lame jokes! 🤭

02/02/2024

A gastric before and after case, because those are fun! This stomach belongs to a very sweet gelding who started to have some vague behavior changes while ridden. The pictures are of the glandular stomach, and more specifically the pylorus, which is the outflow tract to the intestines. These lesions are often more frustrating to get healed than traditional non-glandular lesions. The current recommendation is to use full dose omeprazole (Gastrogard) with sucralfate. We're happy this patient is doing better, but this is actually a 60 day improvement photo because he needed a second month of omeprazole, sucralfate, AND misoprostol therapy. Let us know if you have any questions :).

01/17/2024

A good lesson!

01/06/2024

It's likely many of you have already seen this, but it's big news that there was a horse not very far from here in New York that tested positive for rabies. This is an uncommon occurrence (partially because we are so fortunate to have consistent vaccine access in the US) but a reminder of why we do still vaccinate our animal family members.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 5, 2024
Schoharie County Department of Health
RE: Horse Tests Positive for Rabies

12/30/2023

So many folks we adore in one post! We appreciate them all. All The Kings Horses Equine Rescue Connecticut Horse Cremation Rhinebeck Equine

In the spirit of the season, Connecticut Horse Cremation has donated $1,500 to All The Kings Horses Equine Rescue on our behalf. Thank you to the wonderful team at CT Horse Cremation for their generosity!

11/30/2023

This morning we share some overdue pictures from Dr. Berman's trip to Nicaragua in October with Equitarian Initiative. This trip came together a bit haphazardly but was too good an opportunity to pass up! Dr. Berman volunteered to man the dentistry station because apparently not that many people love holding up horse heads. She helped to educate the Nicaraguan veterinary students at the project and together they performed basic dentals on 100+ equids that had traveled from far and wide to visit the site. Dr. Berman was genuinely surprised at how few fractures and significant abnormalities were found in this unmaintained population--many fewer than would have been found in the same number of our own day-to-day friends! This was the first trip back to Nicaragua for the organization after a combination of COVID and political struggles prevented travel. The hope is that it will remain an annual project that begins to see the same patients and can transfer duties to resident veterinarians.

11/10/2023

Stop by if you have time to help our friends or drop something for next season! Many of these patients are taken in from community members when the owners cannot care for them any longer.