WELL-known equine veterinary surgeon, EquiVET Ireland Ltd founder Marcus Swail discussed the pre-purchase examination (PPE) of horses for sale at Thursday’s Teagasc National Equine Conference. Explaining why the PPE is done at all, Swail said it is an exercise driven by the requirements of the purchaser.

“They are spending X amount of money and want to know what they are buying. It is an exercise in risk-assessment. There is no such thing as no risk. As a vet, you are looking for something approaching a ‘normal’ risk. What you want to avoid is increased risk,” explained Swail, who is also Ireland’s senior High Performance team veterinary surgeon in all disciplines.

“Broadly speaking, the vetting examination is a five-stage procedure. There is a resting part and a moving, or dynamic, part of the exam. Both during the exam and subsequent to it, you have additional procedures like flexion tests or trotting the horse in a circle. Most purchasers would have an expectation that flexion tests would be done. Similarly, you’d declare whether the horse was trotted in a circle or not.

“As a profession, we have to be very clear of what we knew about the horse beforehand. A lot of the horses I vet, I would know them or they may even be a client of my veterinary practice. There is a declaration to be signed. You have to be very clear to the purchaser about what we know about the horse, it’s a perfectly reasonable thing to do,” said Swail.

When it comes to the opinion, there can be misunderstandings. Veterinary surgeons aim to put all the relevant findings in this part of the PPE.

“I start at the nose and end up at the tail. It is an exercise in looking with your eyes and feeling with your hands. Work your way down the neck and the forelimbs.

“Look at the back and the hindlimbs. It can be easy to miss sarcoids or scars if the horse is hairy and not clipped. Finishing up at the tail and looking under the tail is particularly important in a grey horse.

“Sometimes you are already concerned before you are leaving the exam room. The horse might have a thick tendon or a windgall type thing,’’ said Swail. Showing pictures of horses with sheared heels and clubby feet, he advised the delegates to pay attention to young horses’s feet in particular.

Well handled

Moving on to the dynamic or moving part of the examinations, this involves trotting the horse up and before and circling the horse on a hard surface.

“The surface the horse trots on is important, the horse should have confidence. Trotting a horse in a circle is trainable, you should have the horse well handled, able to trot up and down and trot in a circle in a calm, balanced, manner. Otherwise you are not doing yourself any favours,” said Swail.

“Moving on to the wind part of the examination, in Ireland, we ride the horses for this part of the exam. This is what the purchaser wants – particularly in the five to eight year olds. The market for the North American/UK will expect to see the horses ridden. That is what they are used to.

“There is quite good evidence that there is a small number of horses that you look at in-hand that are not lame yet that are lame under saddle.”

Another part of the PPE is the eye and heart examination. Showing images of a horse that had suffered a penetrating injury to his eye and another with an odd pupil, Swail explained it was discovered that this horse’s eye suffered a bang and was very inflamed inside. That sale went through okay.

Screening

“If you are producing horses and have a nice horse, you should be screening that horse from an imaging point of view and see what you have. Look at their eyes, put a stethoscope on their heart. You could have good X-rays but a noisy heart murmur.”

Swail spoke about bone chips at length, advising producers to get rid of them as early as possible.

“X-rays are the commonest imaging we employ for part of the risk-assessment and you’ll hear a lot about bone chips. There can be a genetic component to it, the horse is growing quickly on middling land. This is why you hear people talking about copper supplementation.

“These little chips are mistakes that happen when they are growing. You can take them out and add value to the horse. We get excited about chips because if left there, over time, they damage the joint and led to arthritis,” said Swail.

Questions from the floor included Hoof Wall Separation Syndrome in the Connemara Pony and how Swail views splints. “It’s the development of a bony bump on the cannon, it settles and is part of the furniture. Outside of the show ring, splints are not offensive,” Swail commented.

Top show jumping horse owner, breeder and producer, Richard Bourns asked what Swail’s view was if chips were removed, and there is scars left behind. Swail replied: “Often a little bed is left behind of where the chips were taken out.

“You have an internal conversation with yourself on this – what does it matter – it’s not there now. It does not bother me at all.”

X-rays

Asked about differing opinions on X-rays, Swail did not agree that opinions varied widely, saying there is generally a degree of agreement.

“X-rays should always be interpreted. A client once said to me, ‘remember I’m riding the horse, not the X-rays’.

“If I need to, I’ll send X-rays to two radiologists in the States because they are looking at them all the time and if there’s something I have not seen before, they will have seen it. You’d defer to their experience because that’s their job. However, if you were sending X-rays to radiologists all the time, I don’t think you’d see the purchasers for dust.”