Page 55 - Barrel Stallion Register 2016

of an issue if the horse continues to have trouble. “Maybe the trainer starts off using a nebulizer and it’s beneficial. But if it’s not, then it’s important
to work with the veterinarian to ascertain exactly what the problem is and to find what will lead to clearing up that problem,” he says.
“If you are a horse trainer and stabling X number of horses and trying to get the most performance out of those horses, you might implement the nebulizing treatment for all the horses in your barn to try to increase perfor- mance of the whole barn. That may work to some degree. Success is difficult to measure, but these trainers know their horses and they know whether they are performing to what they think is their optimal level. You could potentially see some benefit regarding overall performance in
a barn,” says Rickey. Many barrel racers are also using some of these breathing treatments and feel it aids their horses’ performance.
“There are many different products that can be used in a nebulizer, including steroids and nebulizer formulations and bromides, but we need to know what we are attacking and how to approach the individual problem. I applaud horsemen who are trying to take care of the problems their horse has, but the question is whether these breathing aids are actually taking care of their specific problem. The best thing
to do would be to examine tracheal washes on some of the horses to see if they consistently have the same types of issues. Then, work with your veterinarian to come up with a treatment that would be most successful to use,” he says.
“The colloidal silvers work best for their antimicrobial activity. If you don’t truly have a bacterial issue in your horse and it’s more of an inflammatory response, maybe the horse would benefit more from a corticosteroid. We need to
Becky Canaday giving a breathing treatment to her horse Dashing Chester, who is an AQHA Open World Champion Jr. Barrel Racing Horse.
Many horses have been taken out of their natural environment and spend most of their time in a stall, which creates conditions that can trigger breathing problems and inflammation.
know what we are attacking. We also know that putting a corticosteroid into a horse that has an infection is counterproductive. In terms of the colloidal silver, however, there’s probably not a downside; this won’t cause more inflammation. So even if it doesn’t help, it won’t hurt, whereas that’s not true with corticosteroids,” Rickey says.
Nebulizer TreaTmeNTs
“I’m a horse person, and my 14-year-old horse Chester is a bleeder,” stated Becky Canaday, who markets a nebulizer mask kit and colloidal silver for lung treatments. “I was told he had allergies and I finally took him to Texas A&M in March. He was given a cellular lavage (BAL), which means that at the same time they scope the horse, they squirt in some saline and suck it back out to have a sample of the airway fluid. Then, they can analyze the cells that come with it. This way I knew exactly what was going on with my horse. That was the best $300 I’d ever spent on him in his entire career,” she says.
“His problem is called exercised-induced pulmonary hemorrhaging. His respiratory
tract itself was fine. Prior to that, I thought my horse had allergies. I first bought an all-in-one nebulizing system for Chester because I run him in AQHA events (he is an AQHA World Champion) and I don’t like to give a lot of drugs. He would get really antsy, almost like he was not getting enough air. I had been advised to close up the hole in the bottom of the mask so he would breathe deeper, but this made him uncomfortable. So I just opened it up and let him breathe it,” says Becky.
“So, I came up with my own respiratory system. I wanted something that is simple and easy to use. A human mask, for someone with
allergies, is not enclosed. We are not trying to force the air down the horse’s lungs. You are just letting them breathe comfortably and eas- ily and letting the medicine get down there,” explains Canaday, who uses colloidal silver as the treatment.
“It is not FDA approved and probably never will be. Silver has been around a long time in medical treatments. I know our silver is true colloidal silver. Ionic silver is not recommended to be used internally. It’s okay externally, but not internally because the ionic charge enables it to bond with sodium chloride (salt) in the body. The particle size is very small. If you compare the size of the silver with the size of a cell, it’s like putting a strand of hair in a one mile space,” she explains.
“When it comes to silver, I share the opinion of most veterinarians who say that it doesn’t take very much to do the job. More is not better.
“The thing to keep in mind on silver is how long it takes to kill pathogens. The kill time in a petri dish is anywhere from 30 seconds to 2 to 3 minutes. It usually stays effective, killing microbes, for about 4 to 6 hours. If you have
a horse that is really sick, you can nebulize it every 4 to 6 hours. You could also put it on their feed or give it as a drench,” Becky says.
You can have a really healthy horse and haul it into some of these major facilities where there are many competitions with one horse event after another, and put that horse at risk for exposure to something. Some of these places are also very dusty. “And down South there seems to be a lot of fungi and horses may get fungus in their lungs. The silver is a very effec- tive treatment. An antibiotic is not effective against a fungus.” The nebulized silver can combat these lung invaders.
SPEEDHORSE 53
equine health