Churchill to test scratch horses
 

Seems like a good idea to me...but who knows.

http://www.drf.com/news/article/90084.html

Waste of time and money. Basically if you scratch a horse sick they are going to test it to make sure that you actually treated it. So if your horse had a temperature and you treat it with bute/banamine and antibiotics, you are safe. Pretty much as long as you treat the horse with something, you will be safe. Of course if your horse has a phantom sickness and you treat it then you will be clear too. Maybe the tracks should look at the fact that we enter sometimes 5 days before a race is actually run and a lot can happen in those 5 days. But they would rather waste everyones time and money by ensuring the horse gets a shot of banamine.

Thanks....good point. Thats why I made not much of a comment on it. I don't know the insides of the industry, like so many other people on here do:rolleyes:

Cannon...do trainers/vets just shotgun administer anti biotics without lab work on a ill horse?

I thought that trainers do blood lab work, check the white cell count and maybe culture before administering meds. So how does the scratch blood test program help if a trainer is waiting the results before administering?

Seems like they are not helping the health care of the horse in question if they are going to fine the trainer if NO antibiotics/anti inflammatory meds are found in the blood test by the track vet? :confused:

Instead of checking for med in the horses system...let the track vet draw blood and see what really is the sickness the horse has to see if it's a legit scratch. Elevated white count...good.....no elevated white count...fine of $250.00. That will stop the indiscriminate administering of medication. Crap...we keep giving the equine set antibiotics..we'll see superbug MRSA that doesn't respond to usual antibiotics in our stables soon!!!!!

It is just a stupid idea. Simply treat your horse, sick or not and you pass. Of course horses not stabled at Churchill are probably not going to be tested anyway. It is just a waste of money. Just like testing to make sure that you give Lasix and testing for the adjunct meds. They say they dont have enough money to adequately test but they add silly things to the list of things to test for?

Article mentions trainers freely admitting to scratching horses for easier spots. If they hadn't said anything, would CD still be instilling this?

Depends on what kind of sickness. If it looks like it is in the lungs, Baytril is usually the chioce before the bloodwork comes back.

They simply want to increase the number of starters per race. There is very little regard for much else. Bettors may think that is a good thing but if you are betting on borderline sick horses you wont. It is not like CD has many short fields.

Doesn't really matter. I'm sure that Evans is pounding on these guys to squeeze every penny. That usually leads to waste of time ideas like this and the over/under bet.

So trainers/vets might give meds before the test come back? Anti biotics for viral symptoms which are similar to bacterial lung infections....:confused:

stupidest damn bet I have ever heard of for a horse race.

Problem is that tests take awhile to come back in many cases.

if you culture a sample that means you take a swab from the suspected infection, wipe it in a growth medium, put the medium in a controlled environment...

and wait...


and wait...


you get the point.

if your spouse had an illness would you want the doctor to wait until he knew the specific problem before he administered a broad spectrum antibiotic?

To me, as an owner, this is a foolish idea. When I look at the book, talk about races to enter, etc. -- the situation is very, very fluid. A horse gets knocked off his feed, does something, it could be a blip on the radar screen or something else.

To me, it's worth it to "buy" time and get to a race I want to get to. If the forecast is rain, I certainly don't want to miss a spot where the race might come off and I can get into a 4 horse field. If I have a back-up spot, it's worth it for me.

Once again, I don't think this is the solution to get to the desired result.

Eric

not the classiest move of all time by Churchill...

maybe they are really really smart and this is a babystep in a masterplan of improvement and change among the health and testing regulations of the sport!:D :o :rolleyes: :mad:

I'm in the medical field with a patient load of over 350 patients each day and YES...we don't prescribe anti biotics until we get a positive test. Nowadays we do in house strep and mono tests that take 5 minutes. We get cultures back in 24 hours. We will call in the script ONLY with a positive culture.

In case you have not been reading the papers lately, MRSA staph super bugs are spreading here exactly because broad spectrum meds are dispensed before a correct diagnosis is made. And IF broad spectrum meds are given and taken, then a blood test culture test 24-48 hours later is now void and not valid.

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/antibiotics/FL00075

http://www.drgreene.org/body.cfm?id=...detail&ref=519

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/85910.php

http://www.annals.org/cgi/content/abstract/134/6/479

so my 25 year old knowlege from working in a microbiology lab during college is out of date?

i guess i can live with that.

so long as i never have to smell that smell again.

As soon as you give banamine, the WBC count is depressed in about 4-6 hours (along with the fever).

Animals, fortunately, haven't developed much resistance to antibiotics so far. They do have a fear of catching staph (and could be a MDRS) from their human handlers' hands during wound care handling, etc. Culturing animals for URI isn't common, and radiographing lungs is very difficult. Even an animal on antibiotic can have a culture taken, and the results interpreted in light of the MIC and drug dose the animal has been on, so antibiotics doesn't preclude subsequent culture if required. And that doesn't even address viral stuff.

This is stupid. If a trainer wants to scratch a horse, who cares? Sometimes
an animal is just "off", and the trainer justifiably trusts their sixth sense about not running the animal, even if there is no fever, no cough, no WBC depression or elevation, etc.

Nobody has business ordering a trainer (via intimidation) to run their horse.

My impression is the racing secretary can make the life of a trainer miserable in the future if it's a bad trainer habit to scratch constantly anyway(Cannon?)

I give antibiotics all the time without any bloodwork on dogs and cats as outpatients or inpatients in the ER. It's not "shotgunning" if done with sound reasoning based upon physical exam findings and knowledge of pathogens and pharmacology.

So there is no MRSA or equivalent in the equine world??

Not really, although it's certainly something the veterinary world has kept a close eye on, obviously, due to what's happened in human medicine over the years.

There have been problems within some equine hospitals regarding nasty salmonella species, and some small animal hospitals have had environmentally-specific nosicomial infections that take attention and care to eradicate. But no super-super bugs have developed out of that yet, thank goodness.

I think it's probably because animals generally have different epidemiologic considerations than humans, fortunately, it is much more difficult for them to 1) spread antibiotic-resistent bugs around, as unlike humans they are not out and about exposing 20 or 100 others after having taken only half of their prescribed antibotic dose; 2) rarely do animals get prescribed antibotic in their lives compared to humans, 3) sick herd animals are more often euthanized than treated

The worse and most common veterinary antibiotic misuse in my experience has been (in referral patients) vets who have prescribed a variety of different antibiotics for an escalating non-responsive infection that is fungal; and repeated antibiotics prescribed for "urinary tract infections" that are not.

The very common canine skin staphs are still quite sensitive to the cephalosporins, and the derm world hasn't reported any resistence problems appearing yet.

Believe it or not, the way herdsmen (cattle) tend to throw antibiotic at anything with a runny discharge, and considering the use of antibiotic in swine and poultry operations, resistence hasn't developed (although what's in our food chain is another story).

That's all I can think of at the moment :)

I agree with what you are saying but what do you do about the handful of trainers (Moquett) who consistently enter and scratch (many times entering multiple to get the race to go then scratch). I know this is not the "spirit" of the scratch but he really shops for races.

I respect Chuck's opinion as he obviously understands the physical aspect of this much better than I ever will, but I don't think that's the only issue here, and I for one am happy any time any racetrack seems to pay attention to the horseplayers' interests. The simple fact is that horseplayers waste an enormous amount of time handicapping races that end up completely different than the ones they originally analyzed. In NY, race after race gets significantly altered by late scratches, and the handicapping of claiming races in particular becomes superfluous until the late scratches are given. And, furthermore, the same trainers seem to scratch the most, and often this seems to be because the race does not set up well for their entrants. These scratched horses also show up in the very near future quite often. While I blame the racing office for carding similar opportunities for these scratched horses, I blame the trainers too, who show little to no regard, far too often, for the overall best interests of the game. Why should they be allowed to enter and then have the option of deciding if the race is too tough for their horse at the expense of the overall good of the game? When an eight horse race scratches down to five this is dramatically the case. Horseplayers are given a poor wagering opportunity, thus the handle suffers significantly, and everybody loses.

Nobody is suggesting that a trainer run an ailing horse, but we all know that this is quite often not the case with scratched horses, and perhaps a plan like this will minimize the problem horseplayers face with abundant scratches. I understand there are opposing views to this, and I could probably argue some of them as well, but to me the bottom line is that the game is much better overall when original fields remain intact......and when there's a sense that this will be the case on a consistent basis.

Would trainers be less inclined to scratch if there was a rule that said any scratched horse cannot run for, say, 21 days? Maybe instead of testing horses, which like Chuck said will catch no one, they could force a horse to stay in the barn for a period of time. Perhaps that would separate the healthy from the sick, so to speak.

I also don't think this move has anything to do with protecting horseplayers' interests. That is incidental.

Yes an no. Obviously it is being done to try to increase field size. However, this is because the larger the field size the larger the handle, and thus the more the track makes. However, the handle is bigger because horseplayers, obviously, have a greater desire to wager. Thus the differing interests are directly intertwined.

I'm just big on not giving credit where credit isn't due. And were it not for the fact that larger fields mean more money for the track, this move would not have been made, even IF bettors asked for it.

Now, I'll be singing a different tune when tracks start refunding money or paying consolations when a multi-race bet is affected by a scratch instead of giving the post-time favorite. I hate that rule.

Fair enough, but I am also for applauding a rule which has at least an auxilary benefit to horseplayers.

Let's see what happens after CD weighs the cost of the testing against the added revenue from the increased handle, if there is any added handle.

Both positions horseman vs. handicapper are completely plausible arguments.

The owners buy the horse, have it fed, trainered, and vetted. The owner wants the best opportunity to make their invest fruitful. Handicapper loses when owner takes position to scratch horse when conditions are more favorable another day. Who is wrong here? Nobody.. handicappers are looking sustain their livelihood...Owner/trainers looking after theirs... The good of the game theme is a bit weak and self serving.. If the owner/trainer picks better spots and wins more money they have ability to reinvest in the game and are more likely to do so. So isn't that just as good for game?

I think an owner should do what is in his/her best interest and handicappers should do the same.

While I agree with much of what you said I fail to see who this is going to help outside of vets who will be giving more shots, often to horses without a real need. I would gather that virtually no one will not scratch because of this but those that do will pay a minor $30-50? penalty by giving a horse an unnecessary shot. I guess what I am saying that while it is nice to see a track pay some kind of attention to the bettors needs, an idea which is so flawed serves more as a PR move than something with actual effectiveness.

As I said before a state that is lacking in funding for proper testing is jsut wasting more time testing for things like this. CD could put its money into something more constructive that actually has a chance of doing something.

Agree...plus increased owners cost of the vet injection and medication bills for a BS scratch!:mad:

Then owners should insist that their trainers only enter if they intend to run.

There's your solution. Make the horse stand in the barn so it can't make the next race it scratched to run in. To make this effective, though, they'd have to ensure cross-track communication so that I couldn't scratch out of Delpark to run at Charles Town, and get away with it.

A lot of condition books seem to be written on a 21 to 28 day cycle so make it 30 days.

i took my kids to a pediatrician once, long ago....she said viral, here's a prescrip for antibiotics. the paper went in the trash along with her phone #. docs like her a part of the problem, another part are those who take part of their meds, feel better, rest goes on the shelf...dummies.

Don't forget the one's that break down, they need to be tested too!
:)

Antibiotics are prescribed for viral infections so the body can fight off other bacterial infections while the body is weakened from fighting the viral infection.

that's the first time i've ever heard that. and i don't think it's true.

http://www.webmd.com/cold-and-flu/fl...tibiotics-work


http://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/p...ns-antibiotics

It's KAKA