Equine Athlete Week 5!

Hey everyone, sorry for the delay in my post! The last few weeks have been filled with long days and lots of travelling, which for me means passing out as soon as we get back to the hotel.  Since last time, we have traveled all over Michigan, Indiana and Ohio preparing horses for the last few regional championships of the summer and youth nationals. The diversity of the Arabian breed still continues to surprise me. All of the shows include purebred Arabian classes and half-Arab classes. The half-Arabs can be crossed with any other breed. Owners choose to breed the other half with breeds that will compliment which ever distinct discipline the horse will be performing in. A few of the different divisions that I've seen are English, country, hunter, park, side saddle, costume and western pleasure. To name a few, I've seen crosses with saddlebreds, hackneys, Dutch harness horses, and quarter horses. If you have never seen an Arabian "park" class I definitely recommend youtubing a video! In the last few weeks I've been able to practice my IV injection skills, learned and performed shock wave therapy and high intensity laser therapy on muscle, ligament, tendon and some bone injuries, flexed lots of horses for lameness exams, practiced aseptic technique, and palpated the landmarks for most joint and nerve block injections(P.S. the 2011 "Equine joint injection and regional anesthesia" book by Moyer and Schumaker has been EXTREMELY useful and I definitely recommend it to anyone interested in sport medicine). Some of the most interesting joints and areas I've seen injected so far are the poll and the shoulder, between the cervical vertebral facets and the SI region(both ultrasound guided), and injection of the navicular bursa which is performed with the help of radiographic images. I also had a few exciting firsts! At the previous show, the Buckeye Sweepstakes, I placed my first IV catheter for a horse that was shipping home and needed a little extra hydration, and during one of the routine barn visits I got to work through an entire diagnostic lameness case. This began with watching the horse lunge, flexion tests,  hoof testers and palpation. The next step was then to block the suspected area. I performed my first palmar digital nerve block! Once the block set in we watched the horse lunge again. We noticed a major improvement with the block, so I then performed my first joint injection in the coffin joint!  I'm currently at the Region 13 Championships in Springfield, Ohio. I will be at this show until Sunday and then I have next week off to stand up in my best friend's wedding. After next week we have two weeks of travelling to client's farms to prepare their horses for the next show, Youth Nationals in Oklahoma City. This summer has been crazy busy, but I am learning so much from Dr. Hill and Dr. O'Cull and I wouldn't have it any other way!  I hope everyone is having as good of a summer as I am! 

Cheers, Alex