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“Sometimes we’ll go into a barn and they say, ‘Oh no, I only use one needle and syringe per horse,’ but they’ll have that one rubber
IV tubing set and they’ll use it on everything. Even though we’ve gotten the needle/syringe message out over the years, they’re still not understanding that when you finish with whatever you’re infusing, you’re getting blood blowback into the line and now that line is contaminated. In our veterinary hospitals,
we throw them away after a single use or we clean, disinfect, and sterilize them. These guys don’t do anything like that.”
Another potential infection source is multiple-dose bottles of injectable drugs. If a handler dips a used needle into a multi-dose vial and then later uses a new needle to draw up a dose for a different horse, there’s the risk that the first needle may have introduced contaminated blood into the bottle.
Finally, Pelzel-McCluskey has found cases where bush trainers will practice direct blood doping. This may involve illegally shipping synthetic or harvested blood or plasma products from illegal manufacturers outside the United States, which could be contaminated, or directly pulling a sample of blood from one horse and injecting it into another.
“They may bring in blood from their favorite racehorse in Central America or Mexico, or they may just get it from another horse in the barn,” she said.
What’s complicating the problem for Pelzel-McCluskey and others is the size of the bush racing circuit, which has exploded in the past five or six years through the power of social media.
“This is not a couple of guys that get together and match race in their back pasture,” she said. “This has now morphed into a very sophisticated, highly-marketed league of things happening across the country.”
Pelzel-McCluskey said in the course of her disease tracing work she has documented 111 bush track facilities in 28 states – some of which have sanctioned racetracks, and some of which do not. All those are Quarter Horse facilities, though Pelzel-McCluskey said last year she discovered two Standardbred bush tracks.
“What you’re seeing with our EIA and piro cases is Quarter Horses, but we are seeing other kind of bush tracks emerge,” she said. “It’s not just up to the Quarter Horses to deal with this.”
Horses, owners, and trainers are organized into racing “teams” that compete as organized leagues. While they all ship in to the track facility to run, they may be stabled together the rest of the time, or may be scattered across multiple locations. They also move frequently from one racing venue to another. A horse may transition from sanctioned racing to bush racing (which is considerably more lucrative for the connections) and stay in that world, or they may flip back and forth. After retirement
from the bush circuit, many horses become barrel racers or otherwise find second careers, because in Pelzel-McCluskey’s experience, very few can have viable breeding careers – possibly due to the years of drug use that came before retirement.
All this poses logistical challenges for USDA officials, and for horsemen who may (knowingly or unknowingly) have horses stabled near
bush track runners. Although the cases the USDA has seen of both diseases are primarily coming from shared needles, equipment, or injectable products, the whole reason EIA and piroplasmosis are tracked by state and federal governments is that they can be dispersed by biting insects across a locality. Considering
the limited or non-existent treatment options for both, that should be a major concern for
all horsefolk, even if they don’t participate in unsanctioned racing themselves.
“For piroplasmosis, that’s not an endemic disease in the United States, we’re not supposed to have it here,” she said. “But we do have competent tick vectors here that could spread it so we don’t want to dump a bunch of piro- positive horses out with competent tick vectors and let it stew for a while. We don’t want to become an endemic country.
“We do have concerns about that, for sure.”
As a veterinarian, Pelzel-McCluskey said she has numerous welfare concerns about the practices she sees in place at unsanctioned tracks. Many bush tracks readily promote their entries and stream their races on social media in order to attract the huge crowds
that fund their operations. Pelzel-McCluskey frequently sees horses being injected with unknown substances (though she has seen evidence it’s frequently cocaine, meth, or Ritalin), buzzer use and unrestricted whip
use in these contests. As documented by reporting from the Washington Post last summer, serious injuries to horses and/or riders are not uncommon and because the events are operating outside the law, there’s no requirement they have medical staff on hand for horses or humans.
Unfortunately, in her role as a USDA employee, she’s only able to deal with the disease transmission portion of the picture.
“We are there for horse health,” she said. “But we are really trying to work with them cooperatively to deal with the disease in the horses. With EIA that usually means getting the horse euthanized.
“We are putting on blinders to things we don’t have any authority over ... and they know we’re not law enforcement. They know there’s very little we can do about anything else they’re doing that may be criminal activity.”
Copyright © 2023 Blenheim Publishing LLC/PaulickReport.com. Reprinted with permission.
SPEEDHORSE March 2023 165
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