Equine Wellness/Preventive Care - Ensuring Optimal Equine Well-Being With Quality Preventive Care

Name: Veterinary Services
Brand: Aspen Veterinary Clinic

What exactly is equine preventative care?

Equine preventative care aims to be proactive with the health of your horse. This includes annual exams, vaccines, floating, fecal examinations, oral examinations, and considerations related to nutrition and optimum exercise.

Dr. Jesse Saul
Aspen Veterinary Clinic

How does preventative care impact the health and wellbeing of my horse?

Preventative care is a philosophy we push for at Aspen Vet. We believe that it is better to be preventative and proactive than trying to be reactive due to a situation that could have been avoided with proper care.

What should I expect during a preventative care appointment for my horse?

During one of our preventative or wellness care appointments, there will be a physical exam performed by the doctor. In this examination, the doctor will examine your horse from nose to tail, assessing eyes, ears, mouth, body condition, and listening to the heart, lungs and gut sounds. Joints, tendons and feet will be examined. This is also the perfect time to discuss nutrition, vaccinations, parasite prevention, deworming, and optimum hay and feed.

What vaccinations does my horse need?

Typically, we would split up vaccines into spring and fall vaccines. However, with some of the combination vaccines available today, we usually just vaccinate once a year. Ideally, we would vaccinate in the spring because most of the diseases we vaccinate against are carried by insects. We want to administer vaccines before the peak insect season. Important vaccines at Aspen Vet include Eastern and Western equine encephalitis, West Nile virus, tetanus, and rabies. For horses that travel, we recommend additional vaccines such as equine herpes virus or equine rhinotracheitis, and equine flu.

How often should I schedule a wellness exam for my horse?

We recommend that your horse be examined at least once a year during its adult life. For foals and senior horses, we often recommend multiple visits throughout the year. The frequency of visits for your specific animal is a topic that would be discussed during the annual wellness visit.

If you still have other questions and you'd like to reach out to us, you can call us directly at (928) 526-2423, or you can email us at [email protected]. But please do reach out, and we'll get back to you as fast as we can. Don't forget to follow us on social media Facebook, Instagram

Equine Wellness/Preventive Care - FAQs

Dr. Jesse Saul
Aspen Veterinary Clinic

What does a wellness exam look like for my horse?

A wellness exam is an exam performed by one of our veterinarians to evaluate every body system of the horse starting at the tip of its nose to the end of its tail and everything in between. The veterinarian is going to be looking at everything from eyes, ears, mouth, to joints and tendons, to listening to heart and lungs and gut sounds, to talking about nutrition, what is the best vaccines, what's the best deworming strategy, and everything in between.

What does horse deworming look like?

For horses that are born and raised in Arizona compared to a horse that's born and raised in Kentucky, the deworming strategy may be completely different. So at Aspen Veterinary Clinic, our recommendation is to perform a fecal examination on every horse at least once a year to evaluate first and foremost, does your horse actually have any GI parasites? And if it does, we can actually quantify and determine what is the load of parasites. Based on those two factors, if your horse does have parasites and how many parasites it has, that will determine how we go about deworming and a deworming strategy for you and your horse.

How often does a horse need to be dewormed if they don't have any worms?

If we determine on regular routine fecal evaluations that your horse doesn't have any parasites, then it is not necessary to deworm your horse. A lot of resistance nowadays to a lot of the parasites that we're seeing. So it is very important to have these fecal evaluations performed so we can determine if it is essential to deworm your animal and what is the best medication to use if we determine that it is necessary to deworm your animal.

What are horse vaccinations and why are they important?

Just like our other veterinary patients like our dogs and cats, these diseases that we're vaccinating against are trying to prevent disease, and the diseases that we consider important to vaccinate against are all diseases that we have here in Arizona. If an animal were to contract any of these diseases, they can be very detrimental if not fatal to your horse. And so we are huge proponents of annual vaccines for every horse, even here in Flagstaff. The primary diseases that we're vaccinating for are Eastern and Western equine encephalitis, West Nile virus, tetanus, and rabies. For some horses that are performance animals that are traveling, there are additional vaccines that we will often recommend, such as equine flu and equine rhinotracheitis.

Are there any risks or any side effects to any of these vaccines?

Fortunately, these vaccines have been highly studied and are very safe for most animals. I say for most animals, because just like dogs and people, there are some who are more prone to a vaccine reaction or an allergic reaction to that vaccine. If something like that were to happen, fortunately, we do have after hours emergency services, and we can talk about that if that is a concern before vaccinating to make sure that you have proper medication at home, so you can be very proactive if something is off with your horse.

If one of my horses is sick, can they get the other sick?

Absolutely. Just like any of us, if you have a sniffly nose and you have a common cold, you can spread that to your co-workers or your family. A horse can do that just as readily, and given how social horses are, it is very common for a sick horse to spread whatever disease it might have to either its housemates or to a friend across the fence.