The Jurga Report: Horse Health, Welfare, and Care

Mint juleps? Twin spires? Big hats? Those are hardly the images that this billboard designed by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) evokes but that’s what you will see if you are in Louisville, Kentucky this week.

The outspoken media experts at PETA have created an image of a horse with a hypodermic needle for a blaze running down its face.

In a touch of classic irony, Congress may soon be deliberating new legislation to preclude drugs from racing. The Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act would provide the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) with authority to clean up the sport and enforce anti-doping standards in races with simulcast wagering.

Frozen in time: Why do we taxidermy our equine legends?

"In Spain's boom years, they were a rich family's status symbol: pet horses to ride at the weekend. Now abandoned as a result of the economic crisis, they are plodding in their tens of thousands to the slaughterhouse...."

Click on the headline or image to read the full article about the crisis in Spain and its effect on the nation's horses (in English).

Secretariat could run like the wind, Trigger was a movie star and Mr. Ed could talk.

As horses go, Soren is special, too, although you won’t see why when first meeting him face to face. But as soon as this big red horse turns around, you will discover something is missing — his tail.

Click on the headline or image to read the full article.

"The Kentucky Court of Appeals has overturned a decision by Kentucky regulators to issue a five-year suspension to Dr. Rod Stewart in 2009. Regulators issued the suspension after a search at Keeneland of the veterinarian’s equipment turned up cobra venom and several anti-Parkinson’s drugs.

"The March 15 appeals ruling said that the statutes used to justify the penalty were 'vague,' in part because the state’s rules in 2009 did not specifically outlaw the possession of cobra venom, a painkiller, and in part because the state’s rules for Standardbreds allowed the possession and use of the drug at the time."

Click to read the full article on the DRF web site.

Farrier Owen Moon was hospitalized after being bitten on the leg by a donkey as he was trimming its hooves. On Thursday morning, May 9, Moon was making his rounds trimming hooves.

@HoofcareJournal writes: This is an usual story; the donkey was a "guard donkey" and apparently considered the farrier to be a predator. So it did its job. Worth a read.

Endurance racing needed a smooth day out on Friday at Windsor Horse Show, after the negative publicity that has surrounded it in recent days.

For those not familiar with this niche equestrian pursuit, an endurance ride involves a course of up to 100 miles long which must be completed by one rider on one horse. It is little wonder that the International Equestrian Federation (FEI) has identified it as a hotspot for chemical enhancement, with 41 cases of doctored horses reported between 2010 and 2012.

Figures prepared by the Swiss Equestrian Federation suggest that the Middle Eastern states — which have come to dominate the sport since the 1990s — are at the heart of the problem.

Click on the headline or image to read the complete article.

Watch NATURE’s Legendary White Stallions airing Wednesday, May 1 at 8 p.m. (ET) on PBS (check local listings).

Sure, you already know all about the Lipizzaners and the Riding School and the movements, the quadrille, the uniforms, the music. But this hour-long PBS documentary is more than a travelogue of Vienna or a bucket list stopover for horse lovers.

Click on the image to watch previews of the show on The Jurga Report for EQUUS Magazine on Equisearch.com.

Learning to ride is full of moments when you fervently hope that no one is watching. Falling off is a right of passage that either makes you a rider, or inspires you to take up a different sport.

But sometimes you end up in the emergency room, where you may well become a number in a research project that tracks equestrian injuries.

With the help of Oregon trauma surgeon John Mayberry, MD, The Jurga Report shares some statistics from 2013's first medical study of equestrian injuries.

Click on the headline or image to read the full article.

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Specialists at Liverpool and Glasgow universities are pioneering research they hope will lead to a greater understanding of melanoma

Click on the photo or headline to read the full article.

"Hope" springs eternal: Here's that cute filly you saw as a newborn on the Budweiser Clydesdales Super Bowl commercial. Maybe you even helped choose her name in the online voting. Beginning today, fuzzy, gangly "Hope" is receiving visitors at Warm Springs Ranch in Missouri.

Read about Hope on The Jurga Report today; just click on the headline or photo to go the story.

At Saturday night’s Genesis Awards in glitzy Hollywood, American horse reform politics walked out a winner. Not just once, but twice.

It was an unlikely jump from the cute Modern Family sit-com dog Beatrice to the ugliness of pad stacks, chains and mutilated pasterns on Walking horses but the Genesis Awards made the leap.

Click the headline or image to read the full article.

"Area horse owners are being notified that an Equine Herpes Virus Outbreak (EHV-1) has been confirmed in the area and has already claimed two horses in Gurnee, Illinois..." 

@FranJurga writes: This article from a local newspaper in Illinois details what some of the "real world" horse owners in the area of the outbreak are doing to protect their horses, and in a more general sense, what forms their reaction to the risk might take.

Many outbreaks of EHV occur at racetracks or shows. When small stables and farms are affected, information about how they handle the situation is often not shared.

In this article, local veterinarian Anne McCombs gives some interesting advice and horse owners are interviewed, as well.