SARAH: Welcome back, SmartPak fans.
We're here filming July's Ask the Vet video
with SmartPak's Staff Veterinarian and Medical
Director, Dr. Lydia Gray.
DR. LYDIA GRAY: Hi there.
SARAH: I'm SmartPaker Sarah, and I'll
be reading the questions that were voted on by you guys,
submitted by readers like you--
DR. LYDIA GRAY: That means I'll be answering them.
SARAH: You will be answering the questions.
I hope you came prepared.
DR. LYDIA GRAY: Ooh, we'll see.
SARAH: So if you guys have had questions answered
in previous episodes, you are eligible for a gift certificate
from SmartPak.
And if you guys haven't submitted a question yet,
you could win in the future.
If you submitted a question and haven't gotten your gift card,
email CustomerCare@SmartPak.com so that you can
get that and start shopping.
One unofficial question that we did get for--
DR. LYDIA GRAY: Hope I'm ready for this one.
SARAH: Well, you don't have to answer this one.
I'll tackle this one.
Why do we always dress the same?
Because twinning is fun, I think, for one thing.
And we have a lot of awesome apparel at SmartPak,
and so we love to pick out things that look great.
And also, Nels likes to make sure-- Nels
is our videographer.
Hi Nels.
Nels likes to make sure that we look--
DR. LYDIA GRAY: Smashing.
SARAH: Smashing.
I think that's accurate.
DR. LYDIA GRAY: Good word?
SARAH: Yeah.
And so we also don't want our clothes
to distract from what we're talking about
because horse health is the most important thing here
at SmartPak.
DR. LYDIA GRAY: Number one.
SARAH: So we really want you guys
to be able to focus on that and not worry too much
about what we're wearing.
So with that, let's jump into the first question.
This one's a long one.
DR. LYDIA GRAY: Oh boy.
SARAH: And it was submitted by Kristen,
and she e-mailed it to our customer care team.
And Kristen wonders, I'm adopting a draft horse
with whom I've worked for several years.
He's a 10 to 12-year-old Belgian gelding who
has a slight wobble in his head when he's standing at liberty
or while tied, as well as a stringhalt-like symptoms
in his right hind.
She's been told that his condition is called Shivers,
though, to the best of her knowledge,
it's never been officially diagnosed by a veterinarian.
He appears to be otherwise workably
sound and happy to do his job with the farm and his teammate.
It's been something that we've learned to work around.
From her understanding of the condition, it's degenerative,
so she's anticipating a lot of time over the next few years,
making sure his quality of life is the best it can be.
Are there any exercises, feeding programs, or supplements that
will help his Shivers symptoms?
DR. LYDIA GRAY: Oh, Shivers.
SARAH: You came prepared.
DR. LYDIA GRAY: Well, I did, I am because, of course,
Newman has it.
SARAH: Of course.
DR. LYDIA GRAY: Of course.
SARAH: Like many things.
DR. LYDIA GRAY: Everything.
So the short answer to her question is "not really."
The longer answer is, for the benefit of everyone else,
what is Shivers?
And so it's a disease-- it's a neuromuscular condition that's
been around for centuries.
SARAH: Neuro meaning?
DR. LYDIA GRAY: Nervous system.
SARAH: Muscle meaning?
DR. LYDIA GRAY: Muscle system.
SARAH: Good one.
I tried to trick you.
DR. LYDIA GRAY: I know.
I got ya.
Yeah, I'm awake.
And so what happens is classically you see it
in early stages, when horses back.
You ask them to back, and they pick up a hind leg,
they take it out to the side, they
hyperflex it, over flex it, shake it a little bit,
and then slap it down.
As the disease progresses-- and she's right,
it does progress-- not every horse but a lot of them, 70%,
so the majority.
You can see it with the head and the neck,
very common in Belgians.
You can see it maybe in the first one or two
steps of the walk, not usually in the trot.
But it does affect them standing,
sleeping, they lose weight, and a lot of horses,
eventually, if they go this route, do get put down for it.
Vitamin E, always recommended for neuromuscular conditions,
perhaps selenium.
Turnout and light exercise usually good for this.
Always a complete and balanced diet.
There is a question of is this related to PSSM, Polysaccharide
Storage Myopathy, completely different muscle condition.
But because a lot of horses, Belgians especially,
that have Shivers have PSSM, it's
coincidental at this point.
But the advice for that is a high fat, low sugar diet
doesn't hurt these guys.
But I will caution her.
You've got to get your veterinarian out there and get
a diagnosis, because there are quite a few neuromuscular
conditions that have a funny way of looking, a hitch in the
get along, so to speak.
And you've got to understand, you've
got to know for sure what this is.
She mentioned stringhalt - different condition.
So PSSM, EPM, there's a lot of things out there.
You've got to make sure that the horse has Shivers
because what if it's something else that you
could do something about.
I did go to a talk last year and what
I learned from that is that draft horses it's common in,
warmbloods, Thoroughbreds, Thoroughbred crosses.
But 16.3, 16.3 hands seems to be a predisposing factor.
Tall horses.
Ponies rarely, if ever, have this.
So that was a huge piece that we added to our puzzle.
SARAH: OK, all right.
Well, that's, I think, about as much
as you could hope to know--
DR. LYDIA GRAY: Yeah, yeah, it's a tough condition.
SARAH: Our next question is submitted by Mia,
and she e-mailed as well.
And she's wondering, her horse's sheath gets very dirty
very quickly, and she can give him baths and keep it clean in
the spring, summer, early fall.
But when it's really cold, how can she
clean his sheath without getting him all cold and wet?
DR. LYDIA GRAY: I have a short answer for this one, too.
You might be surprised.
I don't think sheaths really need to be cleaned.
SARAH: You don't think sheaths need to be cleaned.
DR. LYDIA GRAY: Not really.
And especially not as often as she's doing it.
And I wasn't sure about my answer.
I thought maybe I'm just being lazy, so I double-checked.
And there is the American Association
of Equine Practitioners-- we talk about AAEP.
We shorten it because that's a mouthful.
They have articles, health articles, on their website.
And one of them is written by a board-certified
theriogenologist.
I know, that's a person who's an expert,
a specialist in reproduction.
And his first little introductory paragraph
was horses' sheaths don't really need cleaning.
So I thought "Yes, I'm on the right track."
And it's because there's a normal production of material,
there's a normal flora and fauna of bacteria,
and when we get in there with harsh soaps
and scrubbing with rough materials
and water that might not be the right--
have the right consistency-- we alter that,
perhaps to the worse.
So we might be, by all this cleaning,
doing more harm than good.
SARAH: OK.
DR. LYDIA GRAY: Again, I throw this out,
think of the Mustangs.
Nobody ever cleans them, and they do just fine.
They actually have a higher conception rate
than our domestic horses, so that might be a little evidence
that maybe we're being a little overzealous on the cleaning.
SARAH: Probably more opportunity for breeding
among the Mustangs.
DR. LYDIA GRAY: Maybe, maybe not.
We'll see.
SARAH: All right, so our next question is submitted by Kellie
on YouTube.
Kellie is our first--
DR. LYDIA GRAY: Not Kellie.
SARAH: Three-peat.
DR. LYDIA GRAY: Oh my gosh, Kellie.
SARAH: Kellie, our future DVM, our first three-peat question,
and Kellie's wondering, going along with the water
after work question from last month--
thank you for watching, Kellie.
we appreciate you-- what about feeding them grain?
When is it safe to feed our horses after or even
before riding?
I was told 30 minutes.
Is that true?
I don't know.
This is a people question too.
It's like you can't eat before you go swimming.
DR. LYDIA GRAY: Oh right, right.
SARAH: The same sort of thing.
DR. LYDIA GRAY: Yeah, so I'm not going
to touch that territory because that's somebody else's, but
I'll just speak to the horses.
One thing we know-- so we look at the different facts,
and then we sort of add the facts up into a picture.
And I don't know if that's called deduction or induction,
inductive reasoning, whatever.
So the horse's stomach empties anywhere from 30 minutes,
if it's mostly liquid, like if they take a big drink of water,
to it can be as much as 12 hours.
But two to four hours is sort of the standard,
the average, the norm.
So you think, if you feed your horse
a big meal, grain meal, two to four hours, it would be gone.
But now-a-days, think about it.
Who's feeding big grain meals?
I think we, SmartPak, has done a pretty good job of saying,
maybe grain isn't the best thing.
And maybe large meals of grain aren't the best thing,
even if your horse needs grain.
So horses that are getting hay in a small hole hay net 24/7,
or they're getting ration balancers or multivitamins,
they're not getting these huge meals.
You can probably work them any time.
Now, if your horse is getting a large meal--
and I would say a large meal would
be like two, three more pounds.
Think of the time that if the horse is eating
and then you take the horse out of the stall,
you've got to groom them, you've got to tack them up,
you've got at least a 10-minute walk warmup.
So you've got 30, 45 minutes after they've
eaten of non-work activities.
SARAH: Giving time to settle.
DR. LYDIA GRAY: Yeah, so I don't worry about it a lot.
Now, it does depend on what you're doing.
I mean, if you're doing a walk or ride,
this really doesn't matter.
If you're doing pretty heavy exercise,
intense, then giving them more time between an actual meal
and giving them more time after the exercise before the meal
is not a bad idea.
But I don't think it's as critical as we were thought.
Again, like the water, I think it all comes from Black Beauty.
Right?
SARAH: It's the source of so many horse care mysteries
and myths.
DR. LYDIA GRAY: Good and bad, both.
SARAH: So it sounds like if you're
kind of mimicking nature, if you're
trickle feeding your horse and allowing him to have
small access to food constantly, he's taking in little bits
at a time, you could exercise your horse whenever.
If you're feeding large grain meals,
having to schedule your work around that
may be just another additional problem you're dealing with--
DR. LYDIA GRAY: Haven't thought of it that way, but sure.
SARAH: And then, one of the things that this question
doesn't address but made me think of was maybe
there is actually more risk from working
on an empty stomach, if you're working
your horse on an empty stomach, could you
talk about why that might be?
Because it's one of our favorite things to talk about.
DR. LYDIA GRAY: And I know some disciplines prefer
to work on the empty stomach, but that might not
be the healthiest thing for horses
because I think where you were going--
SARAH: You know where I'm going.
DR. LYDIA GRAY: There's thought bubbles above your head,
but I know where she's going, is ulcers.
Because horses release acid, gastric acid,
all the time, there's always acid in their stomach.
If there's not always food in the stomach sort of soak
that up, then, it's eating away at the lining of the stomach,
and that's painful.
So if you keep a little bit of food in there all the time,
they're happier, they're healthier.
I think their attitude's better.
Their performance has got to be better.
So hopefully, we can slowly over time dispel that myth, too.
SARAH: All right, I like it.
Our next question is from Emily, and she also
submitted her question on YouTube.
And following the Vitamin D question we had last month,
we now have a Vitamin E question.
My vet has recently been pushing for all of her clients' horses
to get more Vitamin E.
DR. LYDIA GRAY: Yay!
SARAH: What is Vitamin E used for in the horse?
How much should a horse be getting per day?
And should you use a natural or unnatural supplement?
What's the difference?
So based on your reaction, I'm guessing
you're not a fan of Vitamin E.
DR. LYDIA GRAY: I'm a huge fan of Vitamin E. What
we know about it is that there's really
high levels in fresh grass.
So horses that are on pasture are probably doing great.
We also know that not a lot of horses are on pasture.
SARAH: Certainly not in significant amounts.
DR. LYDIA GRAY: Yeah, yeah, I mean
this is like all day, turn-out pasture.
SARAH: Not like what he can reach under the fence.
DR. LYDIA GRAY: That does not count.
So then you've got to make that up.
Now the NRC, which is the Nutrient Requirement of Horses
says, that one to two international units-- sorry,
that's the unit they use-- per kilogram of horse.
Ugh, metric.
So a 500 kilogram horse is about 1,100 pounds,
so we're talking 500 to 1,000 units, international units,
of Vitamin E a day is like the basic you need to sustain life.
We're not talking optimum here, and we're not
talking the exercising horse or the sick or injured horse
or a horse that might need more Vitamin E,
a horse with a neuromuscular condition such as Shivers.
So in that case, it might be more
like 2000, 5000 for a horse with a Vitamin E
responsive myothapy, muscle condition--
SARAH: Thank you.
I've heard of 10,000 international units.
So then, it comes to her question, which
I thought was cute, the natural or, she called it "unnatural."
We use the term--
SARAH: Supernatural.
DR. LYDIA GRAY: We use the term natural or synthetic.
So natural-- and here's your tip for label reading.
Natural will say d-alpha-Tocopherol
because alpha-Tocopherol is the thing
that we measure in the blood.
It's the isomer.
It's the version of Vitamin E that's active in the body.
The synthetic Vitamin E will say dl-alpha-Tocopherol.
So you just look for that little "l,"
and then you know it's synthetic.
Both are fine, there's no problem with them,
it's just that the natural is more bioactive.
Some used the word 'potent' in place of 'bioactive.' But when
you feed natural, all of the Vitamin E is going to serve
as an antioxidant, specifically for nervous and muscle tissue.
When you feed a synthetic Vitamin E,
not all of the alpha-Tocopherol is bioactive,
is available for the body to use, only about one eighth
of it.
So you just have to feed more, but it's less expensive.
So it's a decision that the horse owner
makes, knowing the value of both, natural and synthetic.
SARAH: OK, if you guys want to learn more about natural
Vitamin E particularly, you can go to SmartPak.com/Research
and click on the link for our Vitamin E research study,
which was completed by our very own Dr. Lydia Gray.
DR. LYDIA GRAY: That's why I like it so much.
SARAH: And I picture you, when you
say you're a fan of Vitamin E, making signs and holding them
up--
DR. LYDIA GRAY: Foam fingers.
SARAH: Yeah, just really like "Vitamin E is number one."
DR. LYDIA GRAY: Number one.
SARAH: But I don't know if you would
say it's number one or no, there's
another number you would say.
Number one international units, perhaps.
DR. LYDIA GRAY: You know I'm a little bit nerdy that way.
I probably would say it that way.
SARAH: Make it very accurate.
OK.
Our next question is, it was submitted on YouTube,
and it was Majorica Pearls.
That is a guess at how that is pronounced.
And her question is much more straightforward than her name.
I assumed it to be her.
How do you treat and prevent stubborn cases of scratches?
DR. LYDIA GRAY: Oh scratches.
You can tell they're frustrating.
SARAH: Especially, well, you live in,
Illinois, so you guys are dealing
with some pretty serious mud.
DR. LYDIA GRAY: The Midwest.
Scratches are a national problem, universal problem,
but it turns out that they're different in different parts
of the country.
In Arizona, they have sand scratches or something.
SARAH: Sounds painful.
DR. LYDIA GRAY: I know.
Scratches can be painful.
There's a range.
We're talking about the pastern of the horse--
just to back up a little bit here-- the back of the pastern,
so between the heel and the ankle.
You with me?
OK.
So it can get just a little bit warm, pink/red.
Or it can break out in scabs and fluid and hair loss.
And it can be painful, so when the horse moves, it hurts.
SARAH: Because it's a really high motion area
with the joint flexing there.
DR. LYDIA GRAY: Yeah, and so you're moving that area.
It's not comfortable.
So does it happen because of an infection,
or does it happen because of environment,
like chapping-- wet-dry, wet-dry, wet-dry-- probably
because the organisms involved can
be different in different parts of the country,
and treatments are all different.
Probably it starts with the opportunity
of a break in the skin because of the environment.
And then, bacteria that live there normally say,
what the heck?
We may as well.
So they're pals.
And then, all heck breaks loose.
And so the important thing that I tell people is
don't add to the wet-dry, wet-dry
by soaking or using excessive water or harsh soaps to clean,
picking the scabs off.
Do what your vet tells you, and this
is an area I would involve my vet right away.
But I like to clean as dry as possible.
I use something called Dermacloths
because it's not water.
I don't get them wet, and then, they
don't get dry and then just make it worse, a vicious cycle.
SARAH: And where do you buy your Dermacloths?
DR. LYDIA GRAY: From SmartPak.
SARAH: It's the right answer.
DR. LYDIA GRAY: So I clean it.
And then I put whatever lotion, potion, ointment
that my vet recommends.
And again, that's different in different parts of the country.
If you find something, a cleaner or a topical that works,
buy stock in it, use it.
Don't keep switching around because I've got people
in Indiana, Illinois, Michigan that like this product,
and I got people in Arizona, New Mexico, California
that like this product.
So--
SARAH: And different horses may respond differently as well.
DR. LYDIA GRAY: Different horses and different colors
of horses and breeds.
Look at draft horses with the feathers.
So one tip is you've got to clip or shave,
I'm sorry, all the hair off because to allow healing
without further damaging the skin.
You've got to air--
SARAH: But you want to do the right thing--
DR. LYDIA GRAY: --air and sunlight.
SARAH: --for the horse.
DR. LYDIA GRAY: Yeah.
So it'll grow back.
It's fine.
SARAH: It will.
DR. LYDIA GRAY: Yeah, trust us.
SARAH: It always does.
We've cut our hair.
It grows back.
DR. LYDIA GRAY: It does.
SARAH: It's always a little hard at first.
OK, well that's it.
We've made it through another month of questions.
Thank you guys so much for the wonderful submissions
and thank you all for voting so that we
can make sure we're answering your most pressing questions,
your most popular topics.
We will be accepting questions for the next video
through July 1st.
And you can use hashtag #askthevetvideo
when you post your question on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram,
Twitter, or if you want to e-mail it
to CustomerCare@SmartPak.com we'd love to hear
your question there as well.
If your question is selected and makes it into the top five,
you will win one of those SmartPak gift cards
we talked about in the opener.
DR. LYDIA GRAY: Kellie.
SARAH: So it's definitely-- I know seriously, Kellie,
what are you going to get?
I think she might be up to a saddle at this point.
OK, so that's all we have for this time.
If you guys have any thoughts, we
would love to hear your feedback.
Don't forget to subscribe so that you don't miss
the next Ask the Vet video.
And leave us comments, let us know what you want to hear.
Thanks for watching and have a great ride.