The Horse’s Advocate Podcasts
Podcast #041 – Dentistry Lectures At The 2021 AAEP Meeting
The American Association of Equine Practitioners (AAEP) held their annual meeting last month and offered a section on the current state of equine dentistry. There were 8 lectures and a panel discussion. I report here what they said in each lecture and then add my...
Podcast #040 – Keeping Equine Practitioners In Horse Practices
Horse owners are facing a shortage of equine veterinarians if they live any distance from horses living in a dense population. The cost of a veterinary education and the poor return on the student’s investment compared to their small animal colleagues is the biggest...
Podcast #039 – Sand Colic In Horses
Sand colic in horses is defined as a blockage in the digestive tract due to the accumulation of sand. It is common where horses graze on land with a sand base. But even if your horses live nowhere near sand, this podcast has value. The root cause of sand accumulation...
Podcast #038 – Horses In Addition And Subtraction Of Science
Horses have been around for about 55 million years. They have been with humans for about 4000 years. They have been replaced with machines in many parts of the world in the past 70 years. Diseases including obesity, Insulin Resistance, Laminitis, Cushing’s,...
Podcast #037 – Horse Feeding And Nutrition – A Book Report
I just finished half of an old book on feeding the horse written by a professor of nutrition. It is called “Horse Feeding And Nutrition” by Tony Cunha. It was first published in 1980 and this was the second edition in 1991 – 30 years ago. What was so striking...
Podcast #036 – Endocrine Disease And The Equine Athlete
I attended a Zoom meeting hosted by the FVMA with the presenter Dr Jane Manfredi of Michigan State.The title of her talk was “Quick On Their Feet: Endocrine Disease And The Equine Athlete.” I arrived a few minutes late but from what I could tell, this was a...
Podcast #035 – Three Dimension Communication With Horses (Part 2)
This is the second part of a discussion I started in episode #030. I continue that discussion of relating the brain of the horse with the human brain as the recent discovery of 4 distinct centers of the mammalian brain described by Dr Jill Bolte-Taylor in her book,...
Podcast #034 – The TMJ Of Horses
The temporomandibular joints connect the jaw (mandible) to the skull. It is the most active joint in the body of the horse moving on average 25,000 times per day – or 9 million chews per year. It has evolved over the evolution of the horse to be a very sturdy...
Podcast #033 – Understanding The Basics Of Colic In Horses
.As a veterinarian, I have seen many horses with colic and as a horse owner, I have experienced colic personally. There is one thing for certain and that is we need to prevent it from happening in the first place. This is why The Horse’s Advocate explains the harm of...
Podcast #032 – The AAEP Discusses Laminitis In Horses
On October 13th, 2021 The American Association Of Equine Practitioners (AAEP) had a virtual meeting of 4 professionals involved in the care of horses suffering from laminitis. This is a crippling and often life-ending painful affliction of the hooves of horses. I...
Podcast #031 – Molds, Mycotoxins And Soaking Horse Hay
Reducing the extra body fat on our horses is the best, if not the only, way to improve and eliminate metabolic syndrome. But is there a cost to their health in the increased production of molds with mycotoxins when doing this? I attended a symposium put on by the...
Podcast #030 – Three Dimension Communication With Horses (part 1)
Humans now live in a world where communication is one or two dimensional. The telephone or video meeting is two dimensional conversation and texting, writing or email is one dimensional. These types of communications don’t employ the depth of vision to notice the...
Podcast #029 – 75,000 Horses Floated By Hand
Horse owners want to do the best for their horses either because of the large investment in their purchase and training / showing or because they are guilty or worried that they are missing something important in their care. The responsibility of providing care has...
Podcast #028 – How Is What You’re Doing Working For Your Horses?
Horse owners want to do the best for their horses either because of the large investment in their purchase and training / showing or because they are guilty or worried that they are missing something important in their care. The responsibility of providing care has...
Podcast #027 – Protein In Horses
Protein is a word in nutrition that horse owners have difficulty understanding. There is good reason for this – because it is more complicated than carbohydrates (sugar) and fat. But why? Horse owners aren’t stupid and on top of this, they want to do the...
Podcast #026 – Horsemanship With Daniel Dauphin
Daniel Dauphin is a horseman from Lafayette, Louisiana with a passion for training horses using horsemanship skills he learned from mentors. His website and social media are listed below. We discuss a variety of topics including what drives us to become better...
Podcast #025 – Hormesis, Rapamycin and Horses
All things in life experience an ebb and flow much like the seasons, the loss of leaves of the oak tree, the tides or the birth and death of all living things. What seems to be the challenge for all of us and our horses is not just having a long life but to be healthy...
Podcast #024 – The Mighty Mitochondria
Within the cells of our horses are power stations where fuel is converted into energy. Without this power station called the mitochondria, the cell and thus the horse dies. In reality, the mitochondria are organisms living within our cells as a symbiotic relationship...
Podcast #023 – Houston We Have A Problem
The equine veterinary profession is at a breaking point. There is little incentive for developing new horse vets. The American Association of Equine Practitioners (AAEP) knows it and is putting together a task force to address this. They are asking all but the people...
Podcast #022 – Parasites Revisited and Liver Disease
I attended two meetings recently. One was about parasites in horses and was worth revisiting for a fresh perspective. The other was about liver disease in horses. While these sound beyond the routine needs of horse owners, I know that many of you want to bridge your...
Podcast #021 – The EquiSummit Conference On The Healthy Horse Gut
I attended a conference called the EquiSummit produced by a major manufacturer of horse feed components and sponsored by the horse feed companies dedicated to supplying horses with feed and forage. Their representatives along with equine nutritionists (consultants and...
Podcast #020 – How To Feed The Competing Horse
Most horses are used for strenuous competition and we would think that they need to be feed differently from retired horses that are in the field. This podcast looks at the requirements of these athletes from a point of view where the basic foundations of nutrition...
Podcast #019 – The Role Of Oils In Horses
Oils and fats seem to confuse a lot of horse owners and because of this, terminology such as “Omega 3 oils” are used a lot but without understanding what they are. As a result, horses are fed a lot of oils with good intentions for their health. But does it? This...
Podcast #018 – The Right To Prevent
As horse owners, we have a right to protect and to prevent injury and disease from happening to the horses under our care. However, owners are being blocked at every turn by caring people trying to make the lives of our horses better. But are they able to do this...
Podcast #017 – Is Soybean Meal OK to feed horses?
This is a question asked on the FB group – If all seeds cause gut inflammation in horses and the core belief of this group is to go back to feeding horses the way they were created, how then is feeding soybean meal (SBM) a good choice for horses? This podcast...
Podcast #016 – Vaccinations For Horses
This is not your average discussion about what to vaccinate your horses with. That would be a discussion to have with your veterinarian who knows you and what diseases are in your area. However, to prepare you for that discussion, I will attempt to give you a bit...
Podcast #015 – The Threshold Of Pain In Horses
There is a point where the pain we are experiencing is beyond our ability to control our reaction to it. This point is our pain threshold and it is different for every person and horse alive. Discovering if your horse is a wimp or a tough guy will help in how you work...
Podcast #014 – The Personalities Of Horses
Horses are like humans in the way they express themselves as blends of four basic personalities. When working with horses, it is important to understand that we cannot change them just like we cannot change another human. The only one we can change is ourselves. Once...
Podcast #013 – Sleep In Horses
Sleep is something every animal on the planet does including insects, birds, fish, aquatic mammals, you, me and our horses. We humans spend a third of our lives sleeping and in that time we repair and strengthen our health systems. So do our horses but little is...
Podcast #012 – Fight Or Flight In Horses
Doc T discusses the portions of the brain responsible for the horses identifying danger, analyzing the threat and then responding to the go / no go for launch into either a fight or running from the area. Understanding the separate locations within the brain and then...
Podcast #011 – Drug Classes In Horses
There are 3 very basic classes of medications in horses that I want to describe today to help horse owners understand what they are and why there is a price difference. Legend drugs are the original product protected by patents and are sold under a famous marketed...
Podcast #010 – Fun With Physics And Horses
Physics is a collection of laws that control how things work in this world. They have no allegiance to a country, religion or even if you are a plant, animal or mineral. Physics is the rule book by which we all play. How the laws of physics apply to our horses is...
Podcast #009 – The Parachute Study
This was a parody published in a top medical journal to bring attention to the fact that there are few research papers published that we can believe. Couple this with the fact that retractions in medical journals are at an all time high, both humans and horse owners...
Podcast #008 – Equine Endocrinology
Equine endocrinology is a deep and complicated subject but in this podcast, Geoff Tucker, DVM (Doc T) reports on a webinar he attended for continuing education credit presented by a pharmaceutical company. Dr Tucker addresses their perspectives as compared to what he...
Podcast #007 – Equine Asthma
Equine asthma is similar to human asthma based on several factors that have now been associated with this lung disorder in horses. It has had several names in the past including heaves, COPD, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and others. In the past allergens have...
Podcast #006 – The Calcium To Phosphorus Ratio
Calcium (Ca) and Phosphorus (P) are two of the most plentiful minerals in your horse and are required for bone structure, muscle function and hundreds of other metabolic functions. However they compete for uptake in the digestive tract. When there is more phosphorus...
Podcast #005 – Should Your Horse Be Turned Out On The Spring Green Grass?
Every horse owner fears the green grass of spring if they have ever had a case of laminitis. In this episode I review an article written in a magazine for horse owners and analyze the information they are giving about this subject. I don’t agree with most of it. I...
Podcast #004 – Frequency Of Floating Horse Teeth
The frequency of floating a horse is variable and is related to the individual horse. Often, we think of prevention on a mechanical device, like how often do you change oil in a car’s engine. A horse is a living being and not a machine. It is the threshold of pain...
Podcast #003 – Cushing’s Disease In Horses
The pituitary is a small gland at the bottom of the brain that regulates so many hormones in the horse. Without it, the body of every mammal (horse and human) would become unbalanced and eventually destroy itself. And it is only the size of a pea! Disease of the...
Podcast #002 – Carbohydrate Dependency in Horses
What is carbohydrate (sugar) dependency in horses and how does it lead to chronic protein deficiency and insulin resistance? This is a fundamental question every horse owner should try to understand in order to 1) feed horses correctly and 2) prevent most diseases in...
Podcast #001 – Medications in Equine Dentistry
Medications in Equine Dentistry are essential to understand as to why they are used and more importantly, why they are often not used properly. One of the buttons you can push on me is this – I really dislike using the terms “tranq” and...