Regenerative medicine covers a suite of different technologies that enhance the horse’s natural healing process and help them heal faster. Equine veterinarians have been using regenerative medicine for the past decade to treat joint disease and soft tissue injuries; however, it’s new to many horse owners and only equine veterinarians specializing in sports medicine tend to offer the technologies.

The crisp, cool temperatures of fall are delightful for human and horse alike. But as nature slips toward a dormant state, hay becomes the forage of choice for most horses. Hay is dead grass. Once fresh grass is cut, dried, and stored as hay, its vitamin content, along with valuable omega 3 fatty acids, dramatically decline, making supplementation necessary to fill in nutritional gaps.

Moving Well by Breathing Well - At some point, most riders aboard a horse that is breathing heavily will draw a conclusion about its fitness. Respiration, though, can be a fickle fitness marker. And it might sometimes tell you more about a horse’s mental state, physical tension, or plain old natural aptitude than his current fitness. Respiratory rates are always telling us something important. The key is figuring out what the message is.

During the summer there are often waves of horses presenting with respiratory disease. Ontario Veterinary College researcher, Janet Beeler-Marfisi, never really ascribed that to being part of air pollution until her recent research revealed that horses, with their far greater lung capacity and athleticism, can also suffer when air pollution levels rise.