Injecting Perspective

From the title, you might think this is a tabloid article about who’s sitting at whose table at the latest charity event. I’m actually talking microchips… in horses.

Straight from the horses mouth!

Unless they’re crazy famous, most horses in the sports world get handed around like foster kids, with occasional name changes along the way. Hiding its history works out really well if a horse needs to get sold but is always on the injured reserve list, or has a Charlie Sheen reputation. And while I’m on board with the whole Christian- every- horse-gets-a- second- chance ethic, it certainly isn’t good for the long term health of our industry when new owners find out they got the short end of the horse- deal stick. The industry relies on a regular influx of people with deep pockets, who are willing to trust others to do the right thing with their money. Like most fiction, buying horses is best enjoyed when starting with a “suspension of disbelief”.  But it’s a small world, horse people like to talk, and raw deals usually end up getting found out. And when they are, we often end up losing another customer to boys, or college, or some other lame excuse given by parents who are tired of getting screwed by the unscrupulous. We are doing ourselves and our industry a favor then, when we act with transparency. Being able to reliably identify every horse that is for sale, and know its entire show history may sound like a bad idea, but can end up being good for all of us.  So there’s my “what microchips can do for you” spiel.

Now that I’ve talked about you, I want to talk about me.

Microchip

Unlike racehorses, most sport horses have pretty long careers. We would have the luxury of seeing the long term results of what the vets are doing, if we were better at tracking down the complete show record of horses that we had treated in the past. Having objective data (how many times the horse showed at a rated horse show), versus subjective data (questionnaires of owner’s opinion of how the horse is doing) is significantly stronger science from which we can draw conclusions about what we are doing. We could study results for a specific treatment (shockwave vs. stem cells vs. rest for injured suspensories) that would help us make much smarter decisions about what to do today with the horse that is in front of us. In the thoroughbred world, it wasn’t very hard for researchers to go to an auction, find a bunch of yearlings with OCD chips, then call up the Jockey Club a couple years later, and check race results for that group of horses. Then researchers were able to compare the racing success of that group, against horses who did not have these bone chips. Guess what? The chips didn’t really matter (a quick foray back into “news that’s good for you” territory). If we were able to call up the USEF and just as quickly see the performance record of horses who were given a particular x-ray or ultrasound diagnosis (the USEF wouldn’t have a clue what we were studying, so confidentiality would be strictly maintained for each horse), we could find out how long most of them were actually able to compete, and at what level of competition. This research would be especially useful when applied to the prepurchase situation for example. It’s not uncommon to find a sound horse with a questionable x-ray that doesn’t really bother us personally. But we caution our clients that when they eventually go to sell the horse, the next vet might not be so forgiving of the x-ray. This lack of data has created a vicious circle that has killed plenty of solid horse deals. Lots of great information could be uncovered that would help us all. We could examine effects of footing, therapies, and intensity of show schedules on long term results for horses. But first, we need the ability to easily track these horses through their entire careers so the info could flow.

Measurement

I have confidence we’d find that some of those things that scare us now, wouldn’t make us so nervous after we looked at accurate data. No one wants to buy a horse older than 12, but there are a lot of horses in their late teens and twenties who are trucking right along. And I love it when I come across a horse that had a soft tissue injury years ago, that undoubtedly was given a grave prognosis by the first vet that saw it. But now years later, the horse has had a long and great career. The body really can be resilient, if tended to properly.

A handful of years ago the American Horse Council was doing some groundwork to see about getting more horses microchipped in this country. The USEF was talking about it too. Not being on the inside for either conversation, I’m not really sure why the issue died, but I’m disappointed no one is talking about it anymore.  Can anyone out there tell me why it died? And can anyone give me one solid reason why we aren’t willing to spend less than a hundred bucks on permanently identifying horses that are worth more than my house?