NEWS
Lifting a down horse
Posted: Monday, May 22, 2006
All communities with a horse population should have a trained and fully equipped rescue team
by John E. Madigan, D.V.M., M. S.
Finding a horse that is down and unable to rise on its own is a situation that requires immediate response. A horse's instinctive nature is to want to get up. (In the evolutionary scheme of things, down is dead if you are a horse because predators are never far away.) So the horse will flail and fight to get to its feet, often producing further injury, muscle fatigue, head trauma, and many other problems.
So a question to be asked, based on my years of dealing with down or recumbent horses, is this: Is a down horse a dead horse, i.e., does it have any chance of surviving what caused it to be down? The answer is no, a down horse is not a dead horse. In my experience, the key is to gain immediate access to the horse and to lift it to attempt to determine what is wrong, and at the same time removing all the adverse effects of being down that might have led to its death if it had remained recumbent.
When a horse is down, it will have further problems in a matter of a few hours from the struggle to rise or the crush of muscle on hard ground:
•Pressure sores develop;
•Muscles become hard;
•Nerves get pinched;
•Eyes are hit or rubbed on the ground;
•The bladder cannot work;
•Defecation is difficult;
•Eating and drinking cannot be done; and
•A cascade of other problems occurs.
So let's examine two different scenarios. Both are real cases and illustrate the point.
Scene one
A large draft horse travels to a show, and on the way home, the owner feels a movement in the trailer and stops to look inside. The five-year-old stallion is down in the trailer. The owner removes the partitions, but the horse still cannot roll up onto his sternum. The horse was fine when it walked onto the trailer. It has been healthy and has no fever. Because it is a 2,000-pound horse, its muscles will undergo a gravity-induced crush in a matter of hours. What now?
The owner drives the horse to a veterinary facility. At this facility, basic equipment and protocols are in place for handling a down horse. The horse arrives and attendants pull it onto a skid, a special, flat, plastic sheet that slides easily. Veterinarians examine the horse and find nothing abnormal, so it is pulled on the skid without sedation to a stall where an overhead winch is in place.
Attendants place the horse in the specially designed Large Animal Lift developed by the University of California at Davis, and the animal is hoisted into the upright position. The UC-Davis Large Animal Lift is not a true sling in that it will not hold up a horse long term that cannot support itself to some extent.
Upon examination, veterinarians find no fractures, and the horse can stand with a bit of assistance. Attendants transfer the horse to the Anderson sling, a long-term suspension apparatus. A chemistry work-up reveals the horse is suffering from an inflammatory myopathy (muscle inflammation). It is treated in the hospital and released seven days later.
Scene two
A horse in training flips over during saddling and goes down hard on the ground, hitting its head. The horse flails trying to get up, but its experienced rider, who also places a pad under the horse's head as it lies on the hard ground, comforts it. It is midday on a weekend.
A veterinarian is called and arrives to treat the horse for head trauma. Caregivers try to assist the horse to rise, but it falls and hits its head extremely hard. The veterinarian sedates the horse. It is now weak from sedation and will need even more strength and neurological ability to rise.
The horse remains down all night. Caregivers try to roll it up onto its sternum, but they become exhausted. The veterinarian returns and sedates the horse again. The next day a group of people brings ropes, fire hoses, and straps to put under the horse's flank and brisket, and a backhoe operator is called to lift the horse. The horse is still struggling to rise, so the veterinarian administers more sedation. The horse struggles and falls back onto the ground from the makeshift device. The veterinarian is asked to euthanize the horse after 36 hours of struggling and efforts to save the animal, and a lot misery for all involved.
Different outcomes
Would the horse in scene two have recovered? No one knows, but we do know that the horse incurred many more problems than the initial head trauma from being in recumbency too long.
If the horse community in scene two had minimum equipment and training, a different approach could have been taken. The horse could have been sedated, placed on a skid, pulled into a trailer, and taken to a referral clinic set up to lift a down horse and make an assessment.
Alternatively the horse could have been put on a skid and dragged to an indoor area or pasture area where it could have been placed in the UC-Davis Large Animal Lift and raised off the ground to see if it could stand. It could have been stabilized in the Large Animal Lift for a few hours.
Our work has shown that the process of getting up is the most difficult and limiting aspect for a down horse. If the horse can stand at all upon being lifted, medical treatment often can be administered and further damage from being down ceases.
Also, if an examination after lifting the horse reveals a condition from which the horse is not likely to recover, it may be time to stop rescue efforts. If a prompt assessment in the standing or upright position is made, horses found to have unrecoverable injuries will suffer for a shorter duration if prompt euthanasia is determined to be the most humane choice.
In some instances, if the horse can stand for only a brief period, we can lower the horse back down, provide treatment, and then retry lifting it in six to 12 hours.
In many instances, horses originally perceived as not having a chance can be lifted and go on to recover.
I believe every racetrack, every large stable, and every community should have the minimal equipment to care for or move a down horse.
John E. Madigan, D.V.M., M.S., is disaster and emergency response coordinator and head of the helicopter rescue team for the University of California at Davis School of Veterinary Medicine.
