By Cathy Barnette, DVM  

For a veterinarian who primarily serves pleasure horses, expanding your practice to include performance horses and their trainers may seem like a daunting challenge. Not only do performance horses have unique medical needs, their owners and trainers can also place new demands on a practice.

However, performance horse services can offer a tremendous opportunity. U.S. Equestrian Magazine, a publication of the United States Equestrian Federation that primarily caters to performance horse owners and trainers, estimates that its average member spends approximately $16,000 per year on equine purchases.¹

Before expanding into this area of equine veterinary medicine, however, it is important to ask yourself: is your practice equipped to meet the needs of performance horses and their trainers?

When expanding practice from pleasure horses to show or sport horses, the unique medical needs of these athletes must be considered. Serving a performance horse clientele may require additional skills, training, and equipment, depending upon the discipline(s) that you wish to serve.

Preventive Care
Performance horses are frequently exposed to other horses and novel environments. This impacts their preventive care needs. In addition to core vaccinations, performance horses often require a variety of risk-based vaccinations.

All performance horses should receive vaccines for equine herpesvirus (rhinopneumonitis) and equine influenza, and the following vaccines should also be considered:

• Strangles

• Leptospirosis

• Potomac Horse Fever

• Anthrax

• Botulism

• Snake Bite

• Equine Viral Arteritis

More frequent deworming may be required, due to increased exposure risk. Additionally, performance horse preventive care often includes a greater emphasis on nutrition and nutritional supplements, in an effort to maximize health and performance.

Joint Health
Regardless of their discipline, performance horses are typically subjected to greater joint strain than pleasure horses. The prevalence of orthopedic injuries varies based on the horse’s specific sport and performance level,² but all performance horses require attention to joint health.

Nutraceuticals and supplements are commonly employed as preventive measures in equine joint health. Routine soundness exams and radiographs may also play a role in the early detection and management of joint disease. When joint disease arises, you will also need a plan for helping clients address those conditions.

Bodywork
A variety of alternative treatments, classified as “bodywork,” are popular among performance horse clients. These treatment modalities can offer considerable benefits for performance horses.

• Chiropractic applies controlled forces to specific joints or body regions, aiming to cause changes in joint structure, muscle function, and/or neurological reflexes. Chiropractic emphasizes the relationship between the spine and the nervous system and is often used to address conditions involving the musculoskeletal system and/or nerves.³

• Acupuncture involves inserting needles into the skin at predetermined locations, causing a local inflammatory effect that impacts the nervous system.⁴ Acupuncture is used to aid in the diagnosis and treatment of a wide variety of conditions.

• Laser therapy is used to promote rapid tissue healing after an injury. For example, laser therapy has been shown to improve the healing of suspensory ligament injuries.⁵

• Pulsed electromagnetic field therapy (PEMF) involves pulsing electromagnetic fields through tissues to promote healing. Studies in this area are relatively limited, but some clients and veterinarians offer anecdotal evidence in support of this practice.⁶

Gastroscopy
Gastric ulcers are estimated to affect up to 60% of show horses and 90% of racehorses.⁷ These ulcers can have significant impacts on both health and athletic performance.⁸ Therefore, gastric ulcer management is a significant component of performance horse medicine.

Gastroscopy is the only way to accurately diagnose ulcers in horses, which means that any veterinarian seeking to care for performance horses should be capable of offering this service.

Meeting Client Demands
Performance horses and their trainers spend a considerable amount of their time traveling. Unlike pleasure horse owners, they are unlikely to visit your practice facility for medication refills and other products. Therefore, catering to a performance horse clientele requires thinking outside of the box and offering a different suite of client services.

Performance horses may travel across the country with their trainers, depending on season and show schedules. Meeting their medical needs requires the ability to effectively and efficiently ship medications and other products on demand. Covetrus® Drop-Ship Pharmacy Services are a simple way to meet the needs of your performance horse clientele, allowing you to authorize up to one year of refills on medications that can be shipped directly to your client’s location.

Prescriptions can be managed using Covetrus’ Equine Prescription Management platform, providing convenient control over your patients’ prescriptions.

Covetrus offers another benefit for performance horse veterinarians, helping you meet client demands in an efficient manner. The Covetrus Trainer Concierge Program helps your clients order, track, and manage their orders 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This reduces the amount of time that you must spend managing approved prescriptions and medication refills.

By utilizing these services to meet client demands, you can free up more time to provide your patients with the best possible medical care.

About the author
Cathy Barnette, DVM is a veterinarian and freelance writer, based in Southwest Florida. After graduating from the University of Florida in 2006, Dr. Barnette spent 14 years working in small animal general practice. Her current professional focus is veterinary writing, creating educational content for veterinary teams and their clients. Dr. Barnette is a paid Consultant for Covetrus. 


REFERENCES
1. U.S Equestrian Media Kit 2022. Retrieved from: https://www.usef.org/forms-pubs/W5Hqz3AnmFU/2022-us-equestrian-media-kit 

2. Kane, E. (2016). Predisposed to injury: Different sports carry different risks for horses. DVM360. Retrieved from: https://www.dvm360.com/view/predisposed-injury 

3. University of Tennessee College of Veterinary Medicine. Acupuncture and Chiropractic. Retrieved from: https://vetmed.tennessee.edu/vmc/equinehospital/equineacupuncture/ 

4. Boldt, E. Veterinary Acupuncture and Chiropractic: What, When, Who? American Association of Equine Practitioners. Retrieved from: https://aaep.org/horsehealth/veterinaryacupuncture-and-chiropractic-what-when-who   

5. Pluim, M., Martens, A., Vanderperren, K., van Weeren, R., Oosterlinck, M., Dewulf, J., Kichouh, M., Van Thielen, B., Koene, M. H. W., Luciani, A., Plancke, L., & Delesalle, C. (2020). High-Power Laser Therapy Improves Healing of the Equine Suspensory Branch in a Standardized Lesion Model. Frontiers in veterinary science, 7, 600.

6. Gaynor, J. S., Hagberg, S., & Gurfein, B. T. (2018). Veterinary applications of pulsed electromagnetic field therapy. Research in veterinary science, 119, 1–8.

7. McClure, S. Equine Gastric Ulcers: Special Care and Nutrition. American Association of Equine Practitioners. Retrieved from: https://aaep.org/horsehealth/equine-gastric-ulcers-specialcare-and-nutrition   8. Lo Feudo, C. M., Stucchi, L., Conturba, B., Stancari, G., Zucca, E., & Ferrucci, F. (2022). Equine Gastric Ulcer Syndrome affects fitness parameters in poorly performing Standardbred racehorses. Frontiers in veterinary science, 9, 1014619.