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??