Please know your vet!

I just wanted to start this post because so often I see people post in when their horses are sick or any trouble and they say, "my vet won't come".

PLEASE everyone, take the time to talk with all of the vets close to you AND in the surrounding areas. Find out who has emergency procedures and will come when you need them. And my suggestion is to make that vet your main vet for your horse(s).

I have a great relationship with the vets here in our area and they will come anytime night, day or holiday that I call. Anytime. When I moved here, I took the time BEFORE I had any problems to find out who to call and who would help. And I maintain that relationship by always paying my vet bill. Sometimes I don't pay it right away, but they know I will pay, and I will pay very soon.

So find out the scoop before your horse gets sick or hurt and maintain a good relationship with the vet, and hopefully you will never have to say "my vet won't come".

Good post ;)


I love my vet, he will come out, any time day or night, rain, hail or shine. And if he's on another emergency call, he'll send one of his other practice vets out for me. If I'm REALLY stuck, I also deal with another clinic, a bit more expensive but they are pretty good and have a larger number of vets - so if a dire emergency, I am pretty much guaranteed to have at least one vet available to come out.

Something I'd like to add to this post as well - Always have your vets number handy in the stables, and on your phone! You never know when you will need it, or if someone else will need to call them for you.

Good point about having the vet numbers handy at all times. We have so many horses here mine is actually one of my speed dial numbers, seriously!

Completely agree :)

The other advantage of knowing your vet, and them knowing you, is when a problem arises that you can take care of, but need meds, you can go pick them up at their office and save on an unnecessary vet call.

When Whiskey got a nasty wire cut - deep but small, I was able to call my vet, explain her injury, and request permission to come pick up antibiotics and some banamine. I took a picture on my cell, showed it to him at his office, and he gave me cleaning tips and let me pick up Whiskey's meds. She healed up with only a very small scar.

Great thread, and YES YES YES.

Meet your vet as soon as you have animals, it's a good idea for your vet to meet your furry friends before they are ill or injured so he knows what their normal looks like.

Find out what the out of hours coverage is because at 5pm on Friday night, especially if it's a long weekend my guys start looking for things to impale themselves on, or eat to give them belly ache, love them.

We are in the enviable position of having a lot of equine vets in the area. They ALL know my horses because I make SURE that they all get a share of routine care. We keep a record of each horse's vaccinations, medical problems and treatments up to date and printed out in the glove box of our truck. They all take turns covering for each other nights and weekends also.

ALSO: In the glove box, we have a notarized Power of attorney giving our BO or any available veternarian permission to treat or euthanize our horses should we be unable to give permission. What if you were in some kind of horrific wreck and unable to give permission yourself? Our BO has a copy.

We also added a codicil to our will leaving our horses to friends along with $5000 for their care and maintenance if something should happen to us. We're in our 60's and our kids are NOT horsey and live 10 hours away. They would have no idea what to do with the horses.

So... if something terrible happened to you, what would happen to your horses?

Now that is some pre-planning!

I have a binder full of everything to do with Sky. Purchases, Sky's medical records, boarding agreement, his brands, any history I know, leasing contracts, etc.

I haven't made a will yet (plan to) or have a bank account for "what to do if I suddenly die" funds for him. It's on my to do list!

It's a great idea though; thanks for reminding me!

We have a binder for all of our animals' medical records - including Coggins tests and vaccination records for the horses (and pictures of them, as well.) We used to have a vet that we adored - he was great with our dogs and cats, but not so great way back when we originally had horses. Fortunately, we never had any emergencies back then.

The horses we have today are pretty much all "rescued" horses, and came to us with various health issues. ("Rescue" in this instance = they all came from bad situations and were either purchased as a mercy to their previous owners, or were given to us by their previous owners that could no longer care for them. We are not now, nor have we ever claimed to be a rescue operation, it just happpened that we got some horses out of bad/potentially bad situations.)

When we got the horses, we started using an equine vet. However, after finding out how badly he had deliberately misled us regarding the condition of two of our horses, we went to a new vet. He is fantastic, and is also an equine vet. He's been out to our place on one "emergency" or another several times in the last couple of years. The one episode we had with colic was the same night his wife was giving birth to their most recent child. His partner was stuck on deliving a red bag foal, and could only talk us through what we needed to do until she could get there.

Fortunately, that colic turned out to be very mild and resolved itself. It was due to a kick in the belly, not anything to do with the digestion system. Our regular vet was out the next morning (sleepless night for him, no doubt!) to check on our patient, but he was up and playing, eating, drinking, pooping. He was fine.

We didn't get charged for that visit - vet had coffee and breakfast with us and called it even!