Owners Recognition of Laminitis

A cross-sectional study in England examined the accuracy of owners reporting laminitis in their horses and ponies. The objective was to determine the percentage of owner-reported cases of laminitis that were later confirmed by a veterinarian and to compare the owner’s observations of potential risk factors to the veterinarian’s observations.

All of the suspected laminitis cases reported by owners were later confirmed by their veterinarian to be laminitis (no false positive reporting by the owners). However, the owners only recognized about half of the total number of cases identified by their veterinarians (55% false negative reporting by owners). The conditions owners most commonly confused with laminitis were undefined lameness, foot abscesses, colic, stiffness, a bruised sole and navicular disease. Not surprisingly, most owners who reported that their horses had laminitis had previous experience with laminitis.

The authors concluded that owner reporting could be useful to identify cases of laminitis for future studies. However, due to under reporting by owners, estimates of the incidence of the disease would likely be low.

— Pollard D et al. EVJ 2017;49:759-766

Measuring Horses: Free and Easy

Researchers in Brazil took more than 10,000 measurements of 24 adult horses to investigate the reliability of traditional physical measurements compared with those obtained using a free open-source image analysis program, ImageJ. Three trained evaluators took repeated body measurements of the horses. Physical measurements were obtained using a measuring stick and tape measure for lengths and a goniometer for angles. Photographic images were obtained…