I recently had to stop on the side of the road to help out a family whose trailer had rolled over, trapping their horse inside. By the time I’d got past the queue of stationary holiday traffic, they’d already done the first aid basics, and it was great to see how well they’d coped. However, it made me think about what owners can do in emergency situations for shock, trauma and blood loss in horses.

In serious accidents, the most common injuries are probably bruises and lacerations – jagged cuts, caused by broken metal and debris cutting through the skin. However, puncture wounds and broken bones are also not uncommon, and it can be really difficult to determine what’s a mild graze, and what’s a deep, dangerous puncture wound in the field, let alone by the side of a busy road! If you’re faced with a real emergency like this, remember three things – first, make sure you and anyone else around are not at risk. Second, get someone to call a vet and any other emergency services ( e.g. the police to close the road, the fire brigade to cut horses and people out of the wreckage, and of course ambulances for any human casualties). Finally, assess the horse(s) and do what first aid you can at the scene….

When I was training as a vet, a 20 year old horse was considered really quite old. Now, however, I regularly find myself working with healthy horses in their late twenties and thirties – even a few that go on into their forties!

That said, horses don’t age uniformly – one may be sprightly and fit at 30, while her paddock mate is really feeling his age at 20, so there’s a lot of variation. The challenge is maintaining them at the best quality of life for as long as possible.

To do so, we need to consider three things:

• Work and exercise
• Preventative health (worming, dental care etc)
• Disease management and medication

I’ll deal with these in sequence, although really they are of course all interconnected……..

I’ve been thinking about teeth this week – horses’ teeth in particular. That’s partly because my own horses are due for a dental check up, but also because there’s been a report in one of my journals that really made me think how much dental work has moved on in the last ten or fifteen years!

When I was training as a vet, an equine “tooth check” mainly involved grabbing the tongue, having a quick feel round, then rasping away at anything that felt sharp. If you were properly equipped, you’d use a gag (aka a dental speculum); if not, many vets were happy to work around the horse’s tongue and teeth.

Nowadays, that sort of cursory examination really isn’t good enough in many cases. There are a lot of very well trained and experienced vets, as well as good equine dental technicians (EDTs) who would probably need a sit down if they saw some of the things that were commonplace not that long ago!…