Pegasus Podcast
@thepegasusapp https://www.thepegasus.app/🐴 Conversations with the movers and shakers of the global equestrian industry. Hosted by Pegasus founders Sam Baynes and Jen Tankel.
Pegasus Podcast
Caring for Elite Equine Athletes Competing on the World Stage with Dr. Liberty Getman
Pegasus App Co-Founder and Pegasus Podcast Co-Host Jen Tankel talks to Dr. Liberty Getman, DVM, DACVS, Equine Technical Services, a distinguished board-certified equine surgeon and sports medicine specialist, about how elite equine athletes are meticulously trained and cared for.
Learn the secrets behind maintaining a horse's health, addressing lameness, and optimizing performance, all while drawing parallels between human athletes and the athletic demands of the horses she treats.
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Every equestrian competitor knows, a great performance horse score requires the right balance of preparation, feel, and focus. It also requires a happy, healthy horse. Zoetis has been supporting horses, riders, and veterinarians for more than 70 years. With regenerative medicine devices like Pro-Stride APS, Zoetis is always by your side in the barn, down the centerline, and everywhere in between.
Be sure to Visit ZoetisEquine.com or follow @Zoetis Equine on Facebook and Instagram to learn more.
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Zoetis Equine Resources:
Blog by Dr. Getman on Caring for Elite Equine Athletes Competing on the World Stage
The Future of Equine Joint Management with Orthobiologics
Zoetis Equine Lameness Solutions
New Research Provides Clarity Around the Treatment of Equine Osteoarthritis
References in the Episode:
1. Linardi R, Dodson M, Moss K, et al. The effect of autologous protein solution on the inflammatory cascade in stimulated equine chondrocytes. Frontiers Vet Sci.
2019;6(64):1-9.
2. Bertone AL, Ishihara A, Zekas LJ, et al. Evaluation of a single intra-articular injection of autologous protein solution for treatment of osteoarthritis in horses. Am J Vet Res. 2014;75(2):141-151. doi: 10.2460/ajvr.75.2.141.
3. Muir R, Reisbig N, Baria M, et al. The concentration of plasma provides additional bioactive proteins in platelet and autologous protein solutions. The American J of Sports Medicine. 2019;47(8):1955-1963.
All trademarks are the property of Zoetis Services LLC or a related company or a licensor unless otherwise noted.
© 2024 Zoetis Services LLC. All rights reserved. PRS-00082
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Every equestrian competitor knows a great performance horse score requires the right balance of preparation, feel and focus. It also requires a happy, healthy horse. Sowetis has been supporting horses, riders and veterinarians for more than 70 years With regenerative medicine devices like ProStride APS. Sowetis is always by your side in the barn, down the center line and everywhere in between. Visit zoetisequinecom or follow at Zoetisequine on Facebook and Instagram to learn more.
Speaker 1:Today we're hosting Liberty Guttman, a doctor of equine veterinary medicine, a board-certified surgeon, as well as an equine technical services veterinarian. With Zoetis, dr Gettman and I are discussing what it's like to care for elite equine athletes competing on the world stage. As our eyes have been glued to the Olympics and Paralympics, I'd imagine many people are wondering what does it truly take to care for the health and well-being of horses competing at the highest levels? We're excited to have Dr Getman with us today, from Nashville, tennessee, to help walk us through the care tips she's acquired over the years after working as an equine surgeon who specializes in sports medicine. Welcome, dr Getman. Thanks for joining us on the Pegasus podcast. So first, I'd love it if you can give us an introduction as to who you are and how you found your passion for equine medicine, specifically caring for elite equine athletes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sure, so my name is Liberty Getman, I live in Nashville, tennessee, and I'm an equine surgeon by training. So you know, just like in human medicine and veterinary medicine, we have a lot of different specialties that you can go into. I really became interested in surgery during vet school when I realized that that was a thing that you could actually be and do. So that is what I do by training. But growing up my parents trained racehorses, so I grew up on the racetrack and so I think I was just always very interested in lameness sports medicine.
Speaker 2:You know, performance horses, horses that are these incredible athletes, you know. But what is their limiting factor? How can we help them through their injuries and illnesses and sort of make them the best athlete that they could be? I've always been super interested in that, and so once I got into vet school and realized that not only could I be a veterinarian but I could actually do surgery on some of these equine athletes and sort of, you know, either help them recover from injury or reach their fullest potential, that really just sort of grabbed my imagination and I was hooked. You know, from the time I realized that was a thing that you could do, I was pretty laser focused on becoming that. So yeah, that's me.
Speaker 1:That's awesome, and and I and I hear you're also quite the competitor yourself, and so I believe you're a long distance endurance runner.
Speaker 2:So what types of races do you typically train for? Yeah, and I think quite the competitor is very nice of you to say I would not compare myself to any of my patients as far as being that athletic, but I do enjoy running. So I'm an ultra marathon runner. Strictly speaking, that just means I run anything longer than a marathon. There are tons of different distances and surfaces that people run when they do these races. You know anything from a 50K, which is about 30 miles, to a 50 miler to a hundred miler. There are some 200 mile ultra marathons out there.
Speaker 2:You know I would say my favorite distance is probably somewhere between a 50 and a hundred mile race. And again, you know people think that sounds difficult. It really is just in the training and the mindset. You know you're running pretty darn slow when you do these events. You're eating lots of snacks, so it's just kind of a fun day to spend out in the mountains or woods. But yeah, that's my hobby. It's interesting because I do find a lot of parallels between training and competing in my races and what a lot of my patients are doing as far as training, competing, conditioning, nutrition, things like that. So I do think there's so much parallel in sport. Right, an athlete is an athlete, whether you're a human athlete, a canine athlete or an equine athlete. The bodies of all those species are doing athletic things. Getting athletic injuries need to be trained in similar ways. So I find those parallels pretty fascinating.
Speaker 1:Yeah, can you actually talk a little bit more about the parallels? So like specifically for caring for that elite human athlete and then the horses that are competing at the upper levels caring for?
Speaker 2:that elite human athlete and then the horses that are competing at the upper levels. Yeah, I think it's very similar. You know, and I find it interesting, no matter the discipline that you're talking about with your horses, whether it's a horse that's going to be competing, you know, like at the Olympics, if it's a horse that's going to go cross country or jumping or dressage, or a horse that is more kind of a backyard trail horse but spending all day out the mountains, right, packing you around on the trails. And then your human athletes, you know all of those things A need to be in shape to do the discipline that you're asking them to do, right. So you know you can't take a human who's never run a mile and ask them to go run 100 miles, and you can't take a horse who sits in a barn all day and doesn't have any conditioning and ask them to go compete on a cross-country course. So conditioning is at the forefront, obviously, you know, and that can take years depending on the discipline that you're talking about.
Speaker 2:You know, if you think about human Olympians, we hear about the gymnast all the time.
Speaker 2:We see the videos of the gymnast starting at three years old, right, and by the time they reach the Olympics, you know they're 16, 18, 20 years old and I think it is very similar for our horses. If you think about the horses competing at the top, you know if you have a top dressage horse they've started that from a youngish age, but it takes those horses 10 or 12 years to become a top dressage horse, and so there's lots of parallels between how long it takes to be conditioned, how long it takes to reach the elite level at your sport, the nutrition that you have to think about for any athlete, you know that's always going to be important, whether you're trying to be a basketball player at the peak of their game that's running through tons of calories, or a racehorse that is also running through tons of calories. So there's a lot of parallel. I mean to me there is really no distinction between a human athlete and an equine athlete, other than what specific event they're training for. But there's far more parallels than there are differences.
Speaker 1:That reminds me, and I'm sure you've seen this it's like the couch to 5k training program. How long did it take you to go from, because you mentioned starting at the marathon. So how long did it take you to be able to work up to the ultra marathons?
Speaker 2:It took a couple of years, and I think that's also very similar to our horses, right? I mean, if you're starting a three or four year old horse, you're probably in most disciplines, not expecting them to reach their peak until several years later. There are lots of interesting things that happen to our body and to our horse's bodies when you train day in and day out. You know, and it's almost like building a house out of bricks. You know, the first day that you go out for one run you're stacking one brick to start building your house. That second day that you go out for a run you add another brick to that house. Six months later, maybe you've got the first floor of that house built. So it does take time.
Speaker 2:The changes that occur in your body and your horse's body over every training session really do add up and they build upon each other, and so things like the capillaries in your muscles, for example.
Speaker 2:You get more capillaries in your muscle the more you train, the longer you train every year that you train, and so, especially for something like an endurance event, that does tend to favor kind of older humans and older horses as well, because it can take years to see some of these changes in the structure of your muscle and the structure of your blood vessel and the differences in the proteins that exist in your muscles and blood vessels, and none of that happens overnight. So to me it's kind of a comforting fact that in a lot of these sports you can actually kind of get better as you age, and the same can be true with our equine athletes. And there's a lot of caveats right. Obviously, again, you have to fuel well, you have to recover well, you can't overdo it, you have to have a sensible training program. But to me I always think it's really cool to know that the work that you're putting in today is probably going to pay off six months to a year from now and not necessarily tomorrow.
Speaker 1:Yeah, totally, and many of our listeners are competitive athletes in the horse world as well, so can you help us understand the breadth of a team at, say, the Olympic level?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, and I think again going back to if you think about an NFL team or an NBA team and what you think probably an NFL player or professional basketball player has available to them, our horses competing at the upper level have the same sort of team around them, right? So you know, obviously there's the owner, there's the trainer, there's the groom, there may also be an exercise rider, who might not be any of those people. There's likely at least one veterinarian, often two or three veterinarians because, again, these days many veterinarians specialize in different things. So you know, maybe you need a veterinarian who's kind of like your general practitioner, your family practice doctor that takes care of making sure your horse is well vaccinated and dewormed and healthy, and maybe you have a sports medicine veterinarian that comes in and does more of the lameness stuff. So veterinarians often horses do also have physical therapists or massage therapists or someone who can do chiro and acupuncture.
Speaker 2:I use that a lot of my practice. I think a lot of these therapies like chiropractic care and acupuncture can really enhance recovery and longevity in our equine athletes. You know, there's people who are maintaining the stables, who are maybe the night watchman for that horse, perhaps somebody is working with a nutritionist to make sure the horse is getting the proper nutrition. So there really is a team. It's a huge team and every you know discipline varies, but I think none of these horses that you're seeing at the top level whether it's an Olympic dressage horse or a race horse running the Kentucky Derby all of these horses have multiple, multiple people laying hands and eyes on them every day to get them to where they are.
Speaker 1:Yeah, totally. They're very well loved and taken care of. I wish I had that kind of team on a day to day.
Speaker 2:I always say that. I always say I wish I had the team that I suggested for my patients, or a lot of my patients have for sure.
Speaker 1:Well, ok, so, and beyond the discipline and dedication to the training, so what else do you think is critical to the success of the horse and the rider team that competes at the upper, at the upper level?
Speaker 2:You know there's so much that has to go into it, right? And I think you know, first of all, you have to start with a horse who is genetically talented enough to get there. And that's like winning the lottery, right? If we all knew that formula, if that formula was as simple as breed secretariat every time, then we would all get secretariat every time and it wouldn't be this elusive thing to win the Kentucky Derby. So genetics.
Speaker 1:We tried that, though I think everyone's had like a secretariat grandson at one point in their life.
Speaker 2:Always. I mean, yeah, if you look, most horses do have secretariat in their background, if they have any thoroughbred lineage at all. So yeah, it's not that simple, right? So, yes, the horse has to be genetically talented. I think it's as important for the horse to be mentally talented as well. And you see that in a lot of human athletes, you know, I think we've all met and known horses who have crazy athletic potential but between the ears they just can't keep it together and can't quite get it right. So you know, the mental side for the horse is very important as well as the genetic side.
Speaker 2:And then they really need to mesh with their rider or whoever it is that's going to be competing on that horse. Because you truly are a team, you know, and when you sit on a horse, if're nervous, a horse feels that any slight little cue or thing that you have, that horse is probably going to feel so. You know, obviously it takes years for many of these horses and riders to build that bond and trust with each other. If that horse doesn't trust you, it's probably not going to perform great. Conversely, if you don't trust that horse to not, you know, stop every third jump, then you're not going to feel great when you're on that horse. So it's truly a team and just like any good team, any good marriage, any good relationship that takes work day in and day out to sort of reinforce the trust the two of you have with each other. So it's a lot of domino pieces that have to fall together just right to really make a highly successful, competitive horse rider duo.
Speaker 1:I competed up to prelim level eventing and my mare my sister's thoroughbred mare before I got her she actually did advanced level and before I got her I was actually on an Arabian pony. So it took like a good year. Yeah, yeah, it took a good year to figure out how to like, click, and then, once we did, it was an amazing partnership. But I do remember the days of being nervous Then. I don't know if Arabians are more sensitive than the average horse, but he really, yes, so sensitive, so, yeah, so I can totally relate to that, okay, and so that's actually a good segue. So, practically speaking, if you are in taking a new horse and one that competes at the highest levels and they are sound, what are the little things that add up when it comes to their care?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So taking some cues from our human counterparts and what you would do for that top level human athlete, I always try to get my clients to be more proactive than reactive. Right, Don't wait for a problem to occur, because at that point you're kind of already behind the eight ball. So be more proactive in doing things that are preventative and jumping on top of a small thing before it becomes a big thing. And again, that's multifactorial. So you think about things again like nutrition, exceedingly important. So make sure that your nutrition plan and your regimen is a good one and it's good for the discipline that that horse is doing. You know, somebody that does mounted shooting or barrel racing is probably going to need different nutrition than somebody that is an event horse. Right, there's a different demands on those horses, and so making sure your nutrition is dialed in recovery, making sure recovery is dialed in, you know, I think it's very easy for us to think as humans, and then also for our horses, that more is more. If I train more, I will do better. If I run more miles I will be more prepared. If I work a pattern, more than my barrel horse is going to get it better. And I think, while that's a common sort of normal way for all of us to feel. That's actually not true. You know the body needs time to rest and adapt and respond to all these stressors that you're putting on it during training. So you know, if your horse is in a high stress environment but it never really has a chance to sort of rest and lay down and recover, then it's not going to be able to adapt to all the training that you're doing for it and that's when you will see things like muscle breakdown, soft tissue injuries, because stress is stress is stress and the body doesn't make a distinction between you being, or your horse being, mentally stressed and physically stressed. So if your horse is in a high stress environment and it's in a heavy training load, then all of those stressors are going to add up and they manifest somewhere and typically they manifest either with things like gastric ulcers or muscle issues or soft tissue problems. So rest and recovery is huge, Nutrition is huge and then having a good training plan, you know for what that horse needs to do.
Speaker 2:For me as a veterinarian, often if I have horses that are competing at a high level or competing frequently, then I want to see that horse, probably every three months or so just to do a quick once over. Even if there's nothing wrong with that horse, Often those visits are 10 minutes or less hey, good to see you. I run my hands over the horse, I watch it go on a lameness exam pretty quickly and 90% of the time that's it. We don't need to do anything. But the other 10% of the time often I'll say, huh, that horse took a couple of funny steps on its right front and I've never seen it do that before. Have you been noticing anything in training? And maybe you have, or maybe you haven't, Maybe you've kind of brushed it off as, oh, that was weird, but I don't think anything of it.
Speaker 2:But when you can see those subtle things, you know again being more proactive about that versus reactive and waiting for that to turn into a full-blown injury.
Speaker 2:You're going to be more successful in either A hey, maybe we need to back off on training right now, Maybe the horse needs a couple of days off, or maybe we actually need to do some sort of treatment or therapy on something that's starting to become an issue to keep it from actually becoming a performance limiting issue.
Speaker 2:So I think, looking at these horses very frequently, you know, having a good relationship with your veterinarian and having a veterinarian that understands how important it is to look at your horses, even when they're quote unquote normal For me, I think that's huge, and any horse that's competing regularly and it doesn't have to be at the Olympic level, it can be. You know someone who really enjoys again trail riding with their friends three or four times a month, but it's important for them to for that horse to get them up and over a mountain. The horse isn't going to be able to do that if it has any issues, and so I think any horse that you're using regularly, it's important to get a good veterinary exam pretty frequently, even if you think everything is fine.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, absolutely. How about injury prevention tips? So what do you recommend for horses?
Speaker 2:Yeah, again, I think the biggest thing is not overdoing it in training and not ramping up your training too quickly. You know, sometimes we see this a lot after winter, whenever things are starting to thaw out and everybody's excited and you know, you're getting a first little bit of green on the trees and the grass, the weather is warmer, the ice is gone, everybody wants to start going gung-ho with their horses again. Well, just like you didn't ride over the winter, your horse also didn't do anything over the winter. So you can't just pick back up, you know, in March or April where you left off in September. Your horse has probably lost some fitness during that time. So again, put yourself in their place. Pretend that you were running marathons and then you took three months off. You couldn't just go back out and run another marathon. You would need to. You know, give your horse a couple of weeks to slowly ramp up whatever activity it is that you're doing, so gradually increasing activities.
Speaker 2:If you notice something about your horse that you think seems a little off, get your veterinarian to look at it. I can't tell you how many times people would bring me a horse and say, oh, I know, I'm just imagining it, oh, it's probably just behavioral. Oh, I know this probably isn't anything. It usually is and what I tell people is you know your horse and trust that intuitive little voice in your head. Trust your intuition, trust your gut.
Speaker 2:If something doesn't feel quite right or a horse is doing something that you've never had it do before, maybe it's getting a little cinchy when you go to tack it up and that horse has never done that before. Don't make excuses for it. Get a veterinarian to look at it because there could be some issues there. So again, just being more proactive and less reactive I think is huge, because I think you know horses are flight animals. They're very good at hiding their pain from us. So if they're showing you any of these little signals, for the most part there probably is something there. Where there's smoke, there's fire and it never hurts to have your vet take a quick look.
Speaker 1:In best case scenario, it wasn't anything, and now you have the peace of mind.
Speaker 2:Exactly Then maybe it was a training issue and the horse is a little annoyed about having to go back to work after having three months off. But at least again, like you said, you have the peace of mind of knowing okay, I can push a little bit here, I'm.
Speaker 1:What do you recommend when it comes to lameness?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I think a lot of people get scared when they're told their horse is lame, because it's kind of like this dirty word. But again, I always go back to you know, one of my sayings with my clients is horses are athletic. They're athletic creatures doing athletic things. They're going to get athletic injuries right and again turn on the TV on any given Sunday and every guy on the football field has had an ACL, has had an MCL, has pulled a calf, has had a high ankle sprain. And that is not the end of the world for those guys. They all get treated and they get back on the field.
Speaker 2:So having a lameness is not the end of the world, and our therapies to treat lameness have improved so much in the last 20 years. We have so many options, so many better options, that we really can get your horses back and competing pretty darn quickly. So I think, first of all, don't panic when someone tells you your horse is lame. It's not the end of the world. However, you do need to get an accurate diagnosis. So if your horse has a lameness, you know all that means is that the horse has some musculoskeletal pain, right, but it doesn't tell you what that is. And so if you really want to treat your lameness appropriately, you need a good diagnosis. Unfortunately, I think that's the step that a lot of people skip. They immediately say I don't know what it is, I'm just going to inject his hocks. I don't know what it is, he seems off up front, I'll inject his coffin joints, and that kitchen sink approach works until it doesn't right. And so if you don't have an accurate diagnosis and you don't know what you're treating to begin with, you're not going to be very successful in getting that horse back to work or keeping them back in work.
Speaker 2:So I tell people you know, don't freak out, bring your horse to me, let's look at it, let's get a diagnosis so we actually know what we're trying to treat.
Speaker 2:And then, once you have a diagnosis, the rest is actually pretty darn easy, because again we have so many new therapies that we can use now to treat these lameness issues that can get horses back to work and keep them happy and healthy and sound long term that we didn't have in the past.
Speaker 2:And so these are things that fall under big categories called regenerative medicine therapies, and a lot of people have heard of things like stem cells, so these therapies tend to be like stem cells. They don't all use stem cells, but most of them do use your horse's own blood or bone marrow. We can actually collect your horse's blood centrifuge it extract things from it like platelets and other proteins and then put them back into either the joint or the soft tissue structure that is injured, and these therapies have dramatically improved recovery times. They've dramatically improved our success rates and getting horses back to work and keeping them sound. And so I think you know, get an accurate diagnosis and then consider using some of these newer regenerative therapies that aren't just going to kind of slap a bandaid on the problem and make the horse feel better temporarily. These therapies are actually helping your horses heal, whatever that problem is these therapies are actually helping your horses heal, whatever that problem is.
Speaker 2:Are those therapies also available for humans too? Yes, to some degree not as available, depending on where you are. And I think that's the really interesting thing about equine medicine. It is the one area we're pretty far ahead of our human counterparts in the regenerative medicine space. They're catching up to us. Obviously, sometimes with humans there are stricter standards as far as regulating these types of things, but in horses we've been using these regenerative therapies for the past 20 years. They're becoming much, much more widely used in the last 10 years or so, and so now I think if you're tiger woods or if you're an nfl quarterback, absolutely you're getting these therapies hands down. If you're me NFL quarterback, absolutely you're getting these therapies hands down. If you're me, an occupational runner, you may have to sort of advocate for yourself and demand them, but they are available.
Speaker 2:So some of the things you can get in humans are called PRP or platelet-rich plasma. We have that for our equine patients as well. That's becoming much more widely used in the human space, because it does have dramatically improved success rates for treating a lot of these injuries. And then there are some other products that are still in the testing phase in humans that are available to us in horses that work really well. There is another product called Prostride, and Prostride works very well in horses for treating arthritis and joints, and it just now you can get Prostride in Canada and it's still in the clinical phase of trials in the United States, but it works well in humans as well. So, yeah, just like we said, athletes are athletes. Human, dog, horse all of these species can have all of those types of therapies made, because they're made from your own blood or from your horse's own blood, so it's something that already exists inside of you. We're just taking it out, concentrating it and then putting it back into a site of injury.
Speaker 1:That's so fascinating. So, in addition to ProStride APS, are there any other regenerative medicine device products that you would recommend listeners ask their veterinarian about at their next visit?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely so. I love ProStride. That's a product that I've been using since it came onto the market about 14 years ago and again, I think it's dramatically changed how we treat joint disease in our patients. Prior to some of these regenerative therapies, typically we would do a steroid injection into a joint, and steroids definitely make horses feel better, they make humans feel better, they give you a lot of good anti-inflammatory properties. But over time, repeated doses of steroids can actually cause more cartilage breakdown, and so I switched to using products like ProStribe because, again, that's a regenerative therapy made from your horse's own blood. You're going to get the anti-inflammatory properties from it as well, so you're definitely your horse is going to feel better after you use it. But the great thing about it is it doesn't cause any further cartilage destruction. It actually has healing proteins in it, called growth factors, that are going to stimulate healing to try to slow down that arthritic process and heal any soft tissue injury that is present there. So I love ProStride for use in joints For soft tissue injuries.
Speaker 2:I typically do prefer a platelet-rich plasma or a PRP type product, and the product that I use is called Restogen, so that's just a brand name of PRP and again, what we're trying to accomplish with a PRP and a soft tissue injury is to try to get that tendon or ligament that has a tear to heal quicker and to heal with less scar tissue so that it's less prone to re-injury. And so the PRP again, which you make from your horse's own blood, concentrates the platelets in the horse's blood. Inside the platelets there are these proteins called growth factors that are going to stimulate healing. And so that's kind of what does the magic of a PRP solution? Those growth factors tell that tendon or ligament to heal quicker, to heal with less scar tissue and to hopefully prevent re-injury once you put the horse back into work.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. Okay, so can a variety of horses of different lifestyles potentially benefit from regenerative medicine devices as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that to me, is the coolest thing about being an equine surgeon and an equine sports medicine practitioner is, unlike the hoops that you may have to jump through as a human, I've used as much prostride and restogen in backyard trail horses as I have in upper level race horses, event horses, dressage horses, reiners, you name it and so these therapies aren't exorbitantly expensive. You know, I think when people hear about things like this they think, oh God, ok, well, that sounds great but it must cost thousands of dollars. They don't. They are a little more expensive than a routine steroid shot, but it depends on the number of sites you're treating. So if you're treating two to four joints or so, the cost is actually about equivocal between using something like prostride and a steroid. So they're not cost prohibitive.
Speaker 2:And certainly I think it's really cool that we can make these therapies available to every horse.
Speaker 2:Right, your 20-year-old out in the pasture that really only works twice a year to pack your grandkid around but has a little bit of arthritis? Yes, absolutely, you can use these products in that horse because it's going to be safer for them long-term. It's going to be happier and healthier for the joint long-term. And something we haven't talked about yet is that steroid injections in older horses and horses with metabolic disease and some of those horses can actually cause some laminitis or some founder, and so if you're using a natural product like prostride or restogen, you don't have that concern, and so for any of these horses that are older and have some arthritis but you're worried about using steroids in them because you don't want them to develop laminitis after using steroids, something like a prostride product is much safer. So, yeah, I think these products are for any horse because, like I said, all horses are athletes, they're all doing something athletic to some degree and they all get athletic injuries, and so it's not just your upper level competitive horses and we're using it in all types of horses.
Speaker 1:This is a different example. But even my dog she's a chubby golden retriever. We're working on her weight but she's on. She has hip dysplasia and she's on a bunch of different supplements and it's not like she's a competitive canine. But I want her to live a long, happy life. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I think you know I for as many highly competitive horses that I treat with these products. I treat just as many horses that are that version right, like they've had a competitive life, they've given their owner a lot of good years, and that person just wants them to be happy and healthy and not limping around out in the field and so absolutely these products are useful in those cases as well.
Speaker 1:Amazing. Okay, well, we've covered quite a lot, but are there any closing thoughts for the listeners?
Speaker 2:I just think that you know again, I always find the parallels between human athletes and equine athletes incredible, and I do mean every equine that's out there. Right Again, it doesn't matter what your horse is doing. If you think about what they do on a daily basis. They're incredible athletes. Not to be fearful if your horse is having some lameness issues because the newer therapies that we have to treat them are so much better than what we've had in the past, but really important to get an accurate diagnosis so that you know what you're treating.
Speaker 2:I think a lot of the frustration that happens when you take your horse to your veterinarian and you maybe aren't getting the answer that you want or you're not getting the treatment result that you want, is that you probably don't have an accurate diagnosis and you don't know exactly what you're treating. So it really does all start from there. But it's a pretty cool time to be an equine vet. It's a pretty cool time to be an equine horse owner because they can get these therapies. You know, a lot of times before we can and it's very common for me to treat a horse with some of these products and the client would come back and say do you want to put some of that in my knee, you know so um it. I think it's just really. It's really cool that we can do this for our equine athletes and help them live happier, healthier lives.
Speaker 1:Yeah, totally agree. Very well said. It is a very exciting time to be an equine vet, especially thinking about when I was competing at the levels that I was. It was similar to what you had mentioned, which is when the horse got lame, you were kind of panicked. There weren't all these new technologies and even just the ability to be able to connect with the vet so much easier now and get the answers much easier. It's not like you have to worry about a landline so accessible. So, yeah, okay, amazing. Well, thank you very much for joining us. I hope we get a chance to chat again soon and I want to hear more about the ultra marathons.
Speaker 2:Another interview in and of itself but yeah, thanks for taking the time to talk about this, this stuff, because we find it fascinating and I think the more horse owners that know that it's out there and know that it's something they can ask for, we're going to be able to help more horses that way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, totally Okay. So once again, that was Dr Liberty Gatman, equine Technical Services, veterinarian with Sowetis, and we'll include links to resources shared in the episode show notes. So cool, well, thank you very much. And when's the next run? When's the next ultra marathon?
Speaker 2:I'm doing a rim to rim to rim on the Grand Canyon in September, so double crossing of the Grand Canyon before too long.
Speaker 1:Wow, well, good luck and we'll chat soon, thank you.
Speaker 3:Thanks. Thank you so much for listening to the latest episode of the Pegasus Podcast. As you heard from our mid-roll, our equestrian event management platform is now available to use. Role our equestrian event management platform is now available to use. Now it's easier than ever to host, sign up and sponsor for any equestrian event in the world, thanks to all the features of the Pegasus app. To sign up, go to our homepage at wwwthepegasusapp. That is wwwthepegasusapp. See you next time.