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things a lot of people consider performance enhancing. We found that these horses had lost anywhere from 35 to 55 pounds the morning after they had run. If they had
in fact urinated off 25 pounds and then drank 2.5 buckets of water over the next
18 hours (which they will do, after a race), that equates to about 100 pounds of water that they ingested. Yet, they are still too far behind in their weight curve,” he says.
“We had one filly that ran in Chicago with 3cc of Lasix, which is considered a small dose, and weighed her the following morn- ing. She’d lost 100 pounds! We had to weigh her twice because I couldn’t believe she could lose so much weight. It took her about six weeks to fully recover. She was a big strong filly and the dehydration, inability to dis- sipate body heat, etc., was probably harder on her,” Casner says.
“If medication was causing horses to lose that much weight, we needed to stand back and question whether this was in the best interest of our horses. So, we weighed them all. We discovered that these horses had lost a lot of weight by the morning after a race. We started running some of them without Lasix, but continued to give them bute. Eoin Harty, my trainer at that time, used a lot
of bute in his barn. He’d use it before they worked, after they worked, before they raced, and after they raced for a couple of days.
So, I asked him to back off the bute for a while on these horses and see what happens,” recalls Casner.
“Eoin was willing to find out. We had been running some horses without Lasix, but continued giving them bute, and we had some
that bled. So in subsequent races, we withheld the bute as well as the Lasix. Every one of those horses ran their races without these medica- tions and did not bleed.”
Butazolidin is no longer used in human medicine because it is considered a precur- sor to leukemia. “There was a high incidence of people developing leukemia who were on butazolidin back in the 1950’s and 60’s. I remember a trainer at Sunland Park who died of leukemia, and he took bute every day for his arthritis. When you look at the list of side effects that bute can have, it’s huge. Every horseman knows that if you give a horse an injection of bute in the vein and you get a little bit outside the vein, it is very irritat-
ing to the tissues. The neck will ‘blow up’ and the horse will have thrombosis (blocked vein). Sometimes, it takes a long time to get over that. This in itself tells you that it is very caustic,” says Casner.
A study at the University of Kentucky at the Gluck Center showed that administer- ing butazoladin results in suppression of inflammatory factors for about the first 24 hours. “After that period of time, there’s a big rebound and a spike in the pro-inflammatory cytokines. No state allows bute to be admin- istered to racehorses less than 24 hours before a race, and most of the time it’s 36 hours. So when those horses are going into a race after they’ve been given bute the day before, the bute is no longer producing any anti-inflam- matory effects but still has a negative effect on clotting and the platelets (just like any NSAID) for 72 hours. If you take aspirin and cut yourself, you will bleed excessively. No surgeon will perform surgery on a person who
has had aspirin within the preceding week,” he explains. One of the side effects is bleeding and bruising.
“After looking into this, Eoin and I had
a horse we were partners on and we ran that horse without Lasix, but still had it on bute. It ran a good race, but came back and bled. I fully expected Eoin to call me and want to run the horse on Lasix for the next race, but he didn’t. Instead, he ran that horse without Lasix and without bute. He ran a big race and scoped clean as a pin!”
“I started a re-examination of these things. You have to look at the whole process and the race preparations, and figure out if something is effective and doing what it’s supposed to do. There has to be logic and science behind it. Lasix has become a big part of a track veteri- narian’s revenue stream, about 34% to 40% of their revenue,” says Casner.
“I had a vet back in the late 1990’s who
was probably the first to alert me to the negative effects of bute. At that time, I had a good stakes filly named Victory At Sea, but
she would bleed through Lasix. I asked the veterinarian if there was anything we could
do for her because she bled through Lasix. He said, ‘Ah, just don’t give her any bute next time and see what happens.’ The next time we ran her, she won and not a drop of blood. The vet understood that bute was one of the things that was causing bleeding.”
Then, Casner did an experiment with
a stable pony. “We weighed the pony, then gave him 1cc of Lasix, tied him in the barn, and caught all of his manure and weighed it. He had urinated off about 25 pounds of body weight when we weighed him four hours
According to Casner, horses can urinate around 25 pounds after Lasix is administered, which can leave them way behind in their weight curve and make it harder for them to recover from a race
Casner has experimented without bute or Lasix for years and believes his horses feel better, kicking and squealing before a race and recovering quickly. Whereas before, they would be dull and not clean up their feed the night before, taking several days to get the medication out of their system
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EQUINE HEALTH