The Ultimate Athlete

So how do we build a more durable athlete when longevity is the goal? And I'm going to turn to Dr.

Restillo first.

So Dr. Rustillo, if you would give us kind of the way of the land.

So not only has sports medicine and what we know about lameness evolved dramatically over the last few decades alone, but I think we all recognize that the quality and the caliber of the horses in the show pen has evolved too.

So their schedules are busier, they're traveling more, stakes are higher, and the competition is pretty fierce.

So talk to us about that and how you're guiding these horses with proactive exams and deploying these preventive strategies that keep them active and successful for longer.

Well, I think you're exactly right.

The schedule has sort of forced our hand to change our approach.

You know, the time off that the horses might have seen in the winter months, for example, is just no longer there.

And you could pretty much take your horse to a competition year round.

And so my approach has definitely focused on the preventative exam approach.

looking at these horses routinely, trying to get a sense of their baseline, normal, understand where their weaknesses lie and stay ahead of the curve.

And then not just thinking about musculoskeletal health, but also incorporating aspects of diet, podiatry, incorporating the other team members like the farriers and the physiotherapists, because it takes a whole team to keep these horses at the top.

I love that.

And I promise that I didn't share my questions ahead of time, but she just pretty much ran down the list.

So good job.

But, you know, with these horses that you treat, are you seeing them more often, but treating them less often because of this approach?

I agree with that.

I certainly am looking at them more often.

One of the bigger aspects of my personal care plan is the recheck exam.

So I'm not just looking at them when there's a problem, but after I've treated for that issue, I really try to get my hands on them, eyes on them one more time and say, okay, was that good enough? And now how, for example, does treating their hocks make their back feel better? You know, is the horse moving better overall? Are there any other fine tuning aspects of comfort that I want to now incorporate? And I'd rather look at them more often and say, hey, they look great than space those exams out too far and miss something.

And along that monitoring plan, I may have horses that aren't necessarily in my zip code, but we've incorporated the Slape app for gait motion and have found that to be a really productive tool to keep a beat on how these horses are doing even when I'm not next to them.

So I can share the app access to the groom or the rider and we can record some straight line trials and And keep tabs on something, for example, a horse that's recovering from an injury and really phasing back into work or a horse that we know has a malady that we don't want to get away from us and feel comfortable going back to the ring.

Yeah, I love that.

I mean, there's so much more technology that's out there now that can really help.