Equine Vet Dallas Goble has seen a lot of laminitis in his time — and he’s pretty blunt about the prospects of treating the malady.

“We are missing the boat,” he told an audience at Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine in North Grafton, Mass., recently. “We need to prevent laminitis, not treat the damn stuff.”

Goble, associate professor of surgery at the University of Tennessee College of Veterinary Medicine, is an unsoundness specialist and also serves as consulting veterinarian for the Anheuser-Busch Clydesdale teams. He notes that despite more and more research, the exact cause of laminitis is still unknown. What’s more, for the vet or farrier in the field, for the horse owner and for the horse, the question is often academic.

“The bottom line is that once the pathological progression is in process, it doesn’t matter what caused it,” he says.

Goble concedes that its impossible to prevent all cases of laminitis, but believes that attention to certain factors can greatly reduce the number of cases.

Those areas include:

♦ Hoof care.

♦ Exercise.

♦ Nutrition and weight.

Hoof Care

Goble says that attention to hoof care will pay dividends. He notes that good hoof care does not mean all horses must be shod, but adds that his own preference is to use the same farrier on a regular basis.

“It requires time for your farrier to become familiar with your horses’ feet, growth rates and how best to trim or shoe each individual horse,” he says.

Goble says that continual changing of farriers usually means the horse is going to suffer. He suggests that owners find a farrier their horse is comfortable with, then learn to like the farrier as well.

He also stresses that hoof care needs to be a priority year round, not just when the horse is most active or competing.

“The time when the horse is not actively competing may be the time that the most intense hoof care is indicated,” he says. “This can be a time of repair and replenishment for the horse that has hoof problems.”

Goble also believes paying attention to nutrition by adding vitamin, mineral and trace element supplementation may be beneficial.

Nutrition And Weight

Nutrition and weight are also important in other ways in the prevention of laminitis. There has been a lot written recently about the “obesity epidemic” in the U.S. population, but Goble says statistics indicate the problem may be even worse in pets.

“We take a draft horse that should weight 2,000 pounds, put another 400 pounds of useless fat on him, then let him gallop down a road,” he says.

Goble points out that most feeds exceed nutritional requirements and says this is often compounded by feeding more than the recommended amount.

“The single most important factor in nutrition is client compliance,” he says. “Regardless of the research and formulation of the ration we are feeding, if we feed twice the volume required, the horses is still going to become obese. You have control of the feedbag, so don’t try to blame your horse because he is obese.”

Grass-induced laminitis is a problem in some areas, particularly in spring, says Goble. He has several suggestions for helping to prevent this problem.

♦ Avoid free-choice access to early spring pasture during the rapid growth phase. Be sure your horse is full before turning it out to pasture, as this will reduce the rapid ingestion of grass.

♦ Follow the same precautions after early spring if rapid pasture growth is induced by a sudden rainfall following a prolonged dry period.

♦ Don’t overfertilize pastures or irrigate them too heavily.

♦ Avoid seeding pastures with hybrid sudans or rapid growth grasses that have high carbohydrate or sugar levels.

♦ Grazing muzzles can be useful when it is difficult to limit pasture access.

♦ Reduce access to pasture by use of an electrical fence. Such fences can be easily moved as additional pasture is needed.

Exercise

Horses, Goble points out, were not designed to stand in a stall 23 hours of every day, exercise for 45 minutes, then get 15 minutes of cooling out and a bath, yet that describes the lives of many horses.

Goble says proper exercise is essential to growing healthy hooves and that without enough exercise, hooves can remodel, resulting over time in thin hoof walls and soles, with poor horn quality and density.

Proper exercise leads to stronger feet, as well as improvements in general body health and fitness, a more active immune system, better weight control and an overall improved quality of life.

Even with limited space, Goble says there are ways to assist horses in exercising. His suggestions include:

♦ Placing feed and water as far apart as possible and feed hay at two or three locations in the paddock, separated by as much space as possible.

♦ Place more than one horse in a paddock or corral if possible, as two horses will usually exercise more than one.

♦ Hot walkers can be used when space is severely limited, but precautions should be taken.

♦ Avoid stall confinement as much as possible. Run-in sheds are an alternative.

♦ If horses must be stall confined, ride them for longer periods.

♦ Consider letting additional riders use horses. They could be leased out for lessons or loaned to handicapped rider facilities.

Hoof Care Related To Laminitis

Once laminitis is present, Goble stresses that hoof care must be tailored to the individual needs of the horse. Cold therapy is generally accepted, as is maintaining frog and sole support.

Cold therapy can be applied using buckets filled with ice and water, ice-filled bags taped or bandaged to the feet and with commercially available appliances. Goble says there are a variety of thoughts on how long cold therapy should be applied and whether it should be continual or at intervals. As a matter of personal preference, he treats continually, but says he can’t justify that through personal research.

“I do know that horses can stand in knee-deep snow and suffer no ill effects,” he says. He also recalls his father having him take horses to spring-fed streams to stand in cold water all day.

Frog and sole support usually includes deep bedding with shavings or sawdust, combined with some method of applying direct sole pressure. Goble cautions, though, about interfering with sole depth.

“We may put the kiss of death on a horse if we pare the sole down to see how much he’s got left,” he says. He believes a minimum of 7 to 10 millimeters of sole depth is needed.

Most important, he says, is a team approach involving owner, farrier and veterinarian, particularly in cases of acute laminitis. The team may even be expanded further by including specialists in areas such as acupuncture, chiropractic, pain assistance and physical therapy.

“Mutual respect is vital,” he says. “And the good of the horse must always be the goal.

Goble also stresses the need to attack laminitis early.

“Don’t wait until a backhoe is the only way to get rid of the problem,” he says.