Pioneer Equine Hospital

06/10/2025

It’s another toxic plant Tuesday. This invasive species isn’t toxic to all animal species but deadly at high doses in horses. Leave a comment if you know the answer!

05/28/2025

Sports Medicine Spotlight 
How do we know where a lameness is coming from? 
 
Once we have determined which leg(s) your horse is sore on, how do we decide what is causing the pain? Flexions can be very helpful in determining a general area of pain, but because of horses’ anatomy, it’s very hard to only flex one joint by itself. That’s where “blocking” comes in.  
 
Blocking means that we are putting local anesthesia either near nerves, perineural anesthesia, or within joints or other synovial structures, intrasynovial anesthesia. It’s similar to when your dentist numbs your mouth for a filling with a local injection. When we put block near nerves, we are numbing out everything below that block. When we block joints, we numb that particular structure. If your horse goes sound, we have a more precise area to focus on. This block wears off in 1-3 hours or less depending on the medication we use.  
 
Using local anesthesia can help pinpoint where a lameness is coming from. That way, we can more precisely use diagnostic imaging (don’t worry, we’ll cover that soon) to investigate the lameness as well a guide therapies to better help your horse.  
 
Pictures show 
1. An abaxial block of a front leg that would block out the whole foot 
2. Dr. Cameron blocking a middle carpal joint (middle joint of the knee) 
3. Anatomic diagram of the nerves of the front limb (Singh, B. (2017). Dyce, Sack, and Wensing’s Textbook of Veterinary Anatomy.) 

05/26/2025

For all those that served and never made it home⁣
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As always we are open 24/7 for emergencies (209) 847-5951

05/23/2025

05/19/2025

Free webinar!! The American Association of Equine Practitioners is putting on a free webinar for owners on keeping your horses safe from infectious disease on 5/20/25. This is a great resource for any owner that travels with their horse(s)

05/16/2025

Foal Friday Update
If you guessed neonatal isoerythrolysis (NI) you are correct! This occurs when the dam produces antibodies to the foal’s red blood cells. This can happen because the mare naturally has these antibodies or at some point she was exposed to a different blood type and developed antibodies (breeding trauma, previous difficult foaling, blood transfusion). Along with life saving antibodies in colostrum, these red blood cell antibodies are also in colostrum which the foal then ingests when it nurses. These antibodies attack the foals red blood cells causing them to burst. As a side effect of these cells being destroyed, a lot of bilirubin is released from cells, which is what causes the yellow mucous membranes (bilirubin is also what causes jaundice in liver diseases but it’s because the liver isn’t functioning and processing the bilirubin normally).

There is a blood test, drawn within 2 weeks of foaling, that can identify major red blood cell antibodies. We recommend this test for all mule foals as they are at a higher risk of NI. If these antibodies are identified, a foal must be kept from nursing until the colostrum is gone. This also means they will need banked colostrum or plasma to get the vital antibodies for life.

Foals with NI typically require a reduction in stress, IV fluids, and possibly a blood transfusion in severe anemia cases. With Dr. Mielnicki and Dr. Elder’s help, this little guy got a blood transfusion and supportive care. Within hours he was vigorously nursing and bouncing around. After a short stay in hospital, he was back home doing normal foal things and hasn’t looked back! Congrats Dugo family on this little nugget!

05/15/2025

Sports Medicine Spotlight
When your horse isn’t quite working right, has a known lameness, or you are looking for a baseline, we look at lameness in a few different ways. What does a thorough lameness exam include?

1. Walking and trotting in hand in a straight line. Typically more severe lamenesses can be seen on a straight line.

3. Trotting in a circle to the left and right on hard and soft ground. Sometimes lamenesses get worse on the inside or outside of a circle or on soft ground. Although not always true, we generally start thinking soft tissue injury if the lameness is more apparent on soft ground and more likely to be bone pain/arthritis if more obvious on hard ground.

3. Flexing- since we can’t ask our equine athletes where it hurts, we can flex different joints in their legs to see which exacerbates a lameness

You can see Dr. Cierra McClure doing a lameness exam. What is Dr. Cierra’s favorite part of being a lameness doctor?
“Lameness is like puzzle, and when I put the puzzle together I get the reward of making a happier horse and a happier owner”

05/13/2025

What’s your diagnosis?
A healthy Quarter Horse c**t was born to an experienced broodmare on day 345 of gestation. He drank sufficient colostrum as his IgG was > 800mg/dL 24 hours after birth but he did have a mild low red blood cell count (anemia). 4 days later he was lethargic, reluctant to nurse, had a worsening anemia and had developed icterus or jaundice - the yellowing of the eyes and gums seen here. He came to Pioneer to see the internal medicine team.

Leave a comment if you think you know what this c**t has and come back on Foal Friday 🐴 for the answer!

05/11/2025

♥️♥️Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms out there- human moms, horse moms, horse show moms, rodeo moms, mama bear types, second moms, and mother figures. What we do takes all kinds of support and we’re so grateful to work on and work with all types of moms ♥️♥️