Dr. Lacher joins Horses In The Morning co-hosts Glenn & Jamie to talk about recognizing pain in your horse; and why it is so much more than, "which leg is he lame on"?

• Host: Coach Jenn
• Todays contributor: Dr. Erica Lacher from Springhill Equine
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Greetings everyone.

This time, Dr. Latcher joins horses in the Morning co hosts Glenn and Jamie to talk about recognizing pain in your horse.

And it's way more than just noticing whether or not he's limping.

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Visit mynewhorse.com and we've got Dr. Latcher.

On with us again from Spring Hill equine.

Good morning, Dr. Latcher.

Good morning.

How are you guys today?

Thank you for coming back again.

You're just a glutton for punishment, aren't you?

Definitely.

I'm an equine veterinarian.

That's the only way to be.

That's true.

You live it.

You live it for sure.

Well, you wrote an article@springhill equine.com recognizing pain in horses and this is something that I think everybody is interested in.

You know, we all love our horses and we want to know if they are in pain.

So tell us a little bit about how we do this.

Well, horses being a prey species and most of our pets, to be honest, the horses in particular, they don't really like to show us pain.

So it's up to us as owners and veterinarians to really cue into those subtle signs that they give us.

And that was our goal, was to try to help people notice that.

But the big thing is, you know your horse and if your horse is doing something that is abnormal for them, that is often the first sign that they have some pain somewhere.

And it can be incredibly subtle.

But I always tell my clients, like, don't discount that even little tiny sign that your horse is giving you that they're in pain.

So I just want to back up a little bit.

I, I was trying to figure out who wrote this article and Tony, the office cat, of course.

Yeah, he's a really educated cat.

He's gleaned a lot off forking in a veterinary practice.

It's impressive.

But I was wondering because I have two Mustangs.

And the two mustangs that I have will not show pain.

I have one horse that got an abscess and oh my God, you think he's dying.

He's like, you know, non weight bearing, like in the air.

Oh my God, my foot hurts.

And then the other one of the mustangs blows the abscess out.

The coronary band.

You never knew it was in there.

Never showed a lameness.

So is that typical of different breeds to be different the levels of showing pain?

Yes, it's a bit like, you know, the man flu.

When men get a little bit of an illness.

Hey, they're dying.

Yeah.

So that's, hey, I'm still here.

Yeah, it's true.

So I own a thoroughbred and he.

Thoroughbreds are the poster children for the man flu.

You know, they get a teeny tiny little abscess or a scratch and they're often a bit melodramatic about it and hold their foot up in the air and can't move.

Those horses are not the difficult ones.

You know, they're going to tell you very clearly like, ow, my foot hurts.

Do something.

The mustangs in general, these are stereotypes, but in general, the mustangs, the Tennessee Walkers, are very, very, very stoic.

Standard brads are unbelievably stoic.

Those breeds we have to really cue into the more, the more little tiny things that they show us.

You know, for instance, on your mustang, if you really, really, really watch them and sometimes you have to do it from across the barn, you can't be right up on them, they won't show you.

But if you watch them, they'll give you a little tiny toe point on a foot or they'll, you know, they'll be in the back of the stall when they're normally in the front, or they'll be in a weird spot in their pasture.

You know, I mean, they can be very, very, very tiny cues.

If they're out with other horses, they'll walk away from the herd a little bit.

The big one for us though is really looking at facial expressions.

That's a huge one for us.

Yeah.

So I was reading this and what are some of the facial expressions that a horse would give you if they're in pain?

The easiest one to see is the nostril.

If you go out and look at.

The key is go look at a bunch of normal horses, or at least ones you think are as normal as horses get.

Go look at a bunch of normal horses and you'll see that their nostril is relatively round.

Normally when they're relaxed and calm and just, you know, kind of hanging out, doing horse things.

When you see painful horses, that nostril gets a point to it, especially at the back, kind of towards their eye.

And it can even become very triangular shaped.

The pointier the nostril is, the more painful they are.

And they'll get a bunch of wrinkles kind of behind the top of their nostril.

And like I said, if you look at a normal horse standing in a stall being happy, they don't have those, oh, I have a little dog back there.

I don't know if you guys can hear him.

He's helping.

We appreciate that on the show.

You'll see those wrinkles kind of along the edge of the nostril.

And then you also look up to the eye and you'll see that the upper eyelid gets a point to it and it also gets wrinkles behind it.

And those are really big clues for us that that horse is in pain and may not be showing it with other ways.

You know, they may not be pointing to a leg and saying, it's this one.

Right.

Okay, so when I'm looking at the picture that you guys have, and again, it's springhill equine.com it's almost like the nostril is a bit of an egg shape.

For those that can't look at this right now, it's like almost an egg shape with the point of the egg being up towards the eye and then.

And it's funny, you know, how many horses, people think, oh, my horse is such a jerk when I groom him.

And they have the same facial expression.

Especially thoroughbreds.

Red thoroughbreds.

Yeah, exactly.

All the red thoroughbreds are like super sensitive.

All the ones I've known.

So they all get this facial expression and it looks like it's irritation, but actually it could be that it's in pain.

Correct.

And that's where, you know, having a conversation with your veterinarian about my horses doing this, we never discount that from owners.

They spend hours and hours with their horses and they know them really well.

I'm not going to say that that's where it can be very difficult.

You know, it's not an easy process sometimes for us to determine where that pain is coming from.

But that's a worth telling us that something in their life right there is not comfortable for them.

And we may need to adjust what we're doing to figure out how we make grooming, for instance, a little bit more comfortable process for them.

Okay, now tell us.

I Feel like this is a very important thing to learn the basis the, like the basics of.

But the heart rate, a very good indicator of pain as well.

Huge indicator.

If you are suspicious that your horse is painful, walk into their stall with a $5 stethoscope and you put it just behind their left elbow.

There's a little bit of a depression there in the heart girth area, why it's called the heart girth.

Really press your stethoscope in and you'll hear a very slow lub dub sound.

A lub dub is one heartbeat, not two.

It's really tough because worst heartbeats can be very, very slow.

And oftentimes it's easy to double count that.

But you'll hear lub dub.

That's a one.

Normal heart rates for horses are somewhere between 28 and 48.

Every horse sort of has their spot.

You know, for instance, the thoroughbreds tend to be a little bit lower resting heart rate.

So a 28 heart rate may be normal.

Now if you walk into that horse's stall and they're standing there looking relatively quiet, but they have a heart rate of 54, they are definitely painful somewhere.

So this is important to get that $5 stethoscope and go check out your horses now and just understand what their typical resting heart rate would be.

So because I think it's such an important thing, when you call your vet, you've got to have a couple things already.

You've got to have a couple things known.

Your horse is acting sick, you need to have that heart rate, you need to have a temperature, you need to have the crt, the capillary refill time, the skin pinch test, things like that.

You need to be able to tell your vet this is abnormal.

And if you know your horse's resting heart rate, then you're able to tell them, hey, the heart rate is way high.

Is that something that you expect from your clients?

We love it when they call us.

You know, sometimes they're in a full on panic and getting a heart rate can be difficult in those situations.

But it's fantastic to me when someone calls and says, look, Flicka's heart rate is normally 32 and she's just not acting right.

And I took her heart rate in at 60.

Like that's not normal.

And that is, oh, Lordy, I'm headed your way right now.

Like that's what that means for me.

That's how vital that one piece of information is.

Well, if you guys want your vet to come out quickly, you just go ahead and get their heart rate and see, you'll be one of those good clients there.

So is it better to say that the heart rate's a thousand or two just to get you out quickly?

Yeah, you don't want to say a thousand.

That's really, really, really bad.

Yeah.

Heart rate of 28 and a horse is very, very, very normal.

Like that's our athletic horses will often get them down that low.

Geez.

Incredible.

You would think that it would be different.

You would think the opposite.

Yeah.

Thoroughbred, E type horse would have a higher resting heart rate because they're a little bit hotter.

It's actually because of efficiency of the lungs and the heart in terms of pumping blood and oxygenating it.

And so that's how they do what they do.

They have a bunch of different adaptations, which is a whole nother conversation.

But that's why their resting heart rates can be incredibly low.

I will say also, one of the best ways to determine subtle pain signs in horses is put a stall camera in and watch it on fast forward and you'll be amazed what you can see.

The last thing that you have is lameness is obviously a sign of pain.

Talk a little bit about the different types of lameness.

Well, we all are pretty good at getting on our horses.

And especially at the trot.

It's the easiest trotter jog is the easiest gait for us to feel unevenness in.

Those aren't the tough ones.

It is the lesser ones that particularly show up in the canter.

You know, like, oh, my horse is only upset when I'm cantering on the left lead, turning left, you know, after a jump or, you know, coming from walk to canter, those sorts of things.

And again, you can use those same nostril and IQs when you're looking at a horse under saddle.

So if you have doubts that your horse is lame or having a training issue, we have a couple of recommendations.

And one is get a friend to video your horse's head in particular up close while you're riding, and use those same clues to tell you, is this a training issue or a pain issue?

And that has been a huge kind of thing for us to be able to eliminate some of those where the owners were sure it was a behavioral issue.

We look at that nostril on video and we say, no, no, there's a pain issue.

And it can also help us know that we have found the right spot when that goes away.

And it's interesting because I've, I've said this so many times and Now, Tony, the office cat, has written it into the article.

Horses don't fake lamenesses.

I. I've.

I've read somebody on my horses I've seen on Facebook.

Oh, he just fakes it to get out of work.

They don't think like that.

No, they don't.

They.

Absolutely.

Well, let me clarify.

Horses don't think like that, but do ponies think like that?

Because I kind of think they do.

Well, ponies are smarter than horses, I'm convinced.

So I. I might put ponies in that category, but I would have to see it proven before I.

Okay, well, I got a hackney pony.

You can come over anytime and see what you think.

All right.

Something that's really valuable, I think, when you are trying to see if your horse is lame is do the butte test and explain what the butte test is.

The butte test is also another kind of down and dirty, quick and easy for us.

We put them on an appropriate dose of bute for their body weight.

So for an average horse, that is 2 grams of butte once a day.

We do that for three days.

On that third day, when you're riding your horse, that's when you really ask yourself, okay, did the behavior go away or is it still here?

If the behavior has completely gone away, it is almost undoubtedly a pain response.

Oftentimes, though, the behavior will go down instead of completely away, and that just means that the mute has certainly modified a pain response, and so the horse is improving.

If in doubt.

What I often recommend for people is that they bring someone in who is not used to seeing their horse.

So, you know, because we play into a lot of it, you know, we have hopes and dreams and fears about our horses.

So I try to get an objective observer to come in and help me say, like, okay, yes, he has definitely improved today.

Or, yeah, no, you're kidding yourself.

It's you.

And how often, as a veterinarian, are you allowed to say it's you?

Hopefully a lot.

Not as often as I like.

I mean, I think I've expected that from my vet.

Like, no.

And she has said that.

Like, I called her for one horse.

She's like, why are you calling me for this?

Is it because it's this horse?

You know, like, it's.

It's clearly you.

She has definitely alluded to that before.

But it is interesting how many times probably you guys want to say that as vets, it's you.

You're killing your horse.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'm not gonna lie.

That's a true statement right there.

Well, again, thank you so much for joining us.

I know you've come on several times and it's always a pleasure having you on.

Give away your website and how people can find you and contact you if they need to.

Or Tony the Cat.

We are@springhillequine.com Tony has his blog up there.

It's Tuesdays with Tony.

You can always find us there.

We're also on Facebook.

I try to be on Instagram but I'm not very good at it.

So we're not there as much.

And Tony can generally be found on the front counter at the clinic.

He recognizes everybody as they come in.

Well, Dr. Lager, thank you so much for joining us and we will talk to you again soon.

Well, there you have it.

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Sam.