Attending vet visit

[beau159]

@Cw123

for those who board or have boarded at a AA full care barn, what is the general policy or norm when it comes to the owner being present when the vet looks at their horse? I’m not talking about routine things like that vaccines or the emergency situation that requires the vet to come out last minute. But say your horse has been sore or lame and the vet is scheduled to come out to do an exam. Would your trainer or barn manager be okay with you coming out and asking questions or hear if what the vet has to say? Or is it better to just stay out of the picture and wait until the trainer calls you and tells you what they found.
note- this is a barn where full care means the trainer has all say over the care of the horse including grooming, turnout, feed, etc. most clients are okay with just “showing up and riding.” But some prefer to be a little more “in the know” based on previous negative experiences with other full care programs

If the trainer or barn manager would NOT allow the owner to be present for the horse’s vet exam, then I would think that the trainer and/or BM are trying to hide something and aren’t to be trusted… It’s one thing if the owner chooses not to be there and lets the trainer or BM do it for them. It’s another if the trainer/BM will not allow the owner to be present.

I have never been in that situation and probably never will be, but if I ever had a trainer or BM tell me I could not be present for my own horse’s vet exam, I’d tell them where to stick it, and then leave with my horse.

[findeight]

As would I. Never heard of any who actually banned it, many just didn’t encourage it. Sure there are some out there though in which case they are easy to avoid when picking a barn that works for your individual needs.

[NancyM]

This is so foreign to me, I can not imagine this every happening. “OMG, we can’t have horse owners actually getting first hand knowledge about their horses, or gain any actual horsemanship skills, it might put them on the course of actually becoming horsemen themselves in time!!” If they did, they might be able to form an intelligent opinion about the horsemanship and care supplied by said barn owner/trainer. Keeping “clients” in the dark keeps them dependent, and keeps them “clients”, and paying the bills. No wonder our equine industry is failing and dying. It used to be that coaches and trainers actually encouraged their students to become horsemen themselves through mentorship. Important ideas and knowledge were passed down through the generations, as “horsemanship”, added to regularly with new knowledge gained as it became available.

If someone wants to ride something without learning horsemanship, buy a bicycle.

[findeight]

Don’t think it’s been established there is actually a barn with a contractual clause banning owners. There might be assumptions and rumors but we might be thrashing a very rare or non exsistent situation very few experience around.

But there are owners and parents paying for kid horses for a few years until they age out that don’t care and the kids aren’t interested, it’s just a thing for a few years. And there’s partnerships and absentee owners in the mix, but none of that is the same as an official, in writing policy banning clients from contact with vets.

It would be very easy to avoid such places if there is an official rule. Getting asked to stay away and/or shut up because you can’t stay out of the way does not count as an official policy.

[mvp]

@Equibrit

If I pay the bills, I will be overseeing ALL my horse’s care. If I own a horse I am responsible for his welfare - period. The more I know the better MY decisions will be.

I do not see that handing over decision making to somebody who has a vested interest in making an income from my horse, is a good idea.

And you know this is a good policy, even in a full-service barn because if/when your horse goes lame (permanently or not) he now becomes solidly your problem. No way will I turn over veterinary decisions to a trainer who will lose no money if we get it wrong and, rather, fill my stall with a new training client while I find a retirement place for the lame horse I now own. Owners ought to be involved, scrupulous consumers of veterinary care if this is the way the industry is going to work.

[mvp]

@Princess Sparkles

I really don’t understand how this would even happen–just tell “Chatty Cathy” to leave. Period. Maybe you just have disrespectful people in your barn, but at mine, all I would have to say to someone is that this is a delicate procedure that requires the vet to focus and the horse to stand still and to please leave the area–and they would. Now, I am the BO, so maybe it carries more weight when I say it, but my horse had hock injections a few months ago and one of the boarders politely asked if she could watch–she asked myself and my vet. We both said yes because she just stood quietly out of the way and asked some questions when the vet was done. Of course, I don’t feel the need to keep my horse’s medical information uber secret–that’s the thing with horses. There is no exam room at the barn to take them into. Unless you book your appointment when no one is likely to be around, someone might see/hear what is going on.

In terms of anything potentially communicable, other people in the barn have a right to know about that–their horses live there too.

And for people saying high end barns NEED to keep lameness/vet exams private from everyone so there is no gossip and have potential buyers walking away from purchases because of incorrect medical gossip–well, that’s horses. If people are stupid enough to make purchase decisions based on medical issues (real or imagined) heard about from third hand gossip, then they are not very smart buyers. People buy (or don’t buy) horse for lots of idiotic reasons. I think there is just as much precedent for horse sellers being dishonest about a horse’s medical issues and trying to actively hide information as there is for buyers getting the wrong information and choosing not to buy.

None of that is an excuse for not permitting an owner to be at a vet appointment for their horse that they are paying for.

Yabbut, if the horses are expensive ones… and people, as you say, buy/don’t buy for stupid reasons, I’d really want my trainer to protect the value of my investment. As a seller, I don’t care how or if the buyer does a PPE or how extensive that is. And perhaps they won’t even get to a PPE if they have heard rumors about my horse. The “Meh… gossip comes with horses” is not a good business practice if you have clients who wish to sell horses. And I think trainers can control this; the good ones do.

I think that “no owners on multiple lameness exam day” is an attempt to be even-handed and subtle about controlling the gossip machine. After all, it’s harder and more nefarious to tell Findeight’s Chatty Cathy to leave right then and there than to create a blanket policy which she’ll follow along with everyone else… with no eyebrows raised. I don’t think I have ever been able to ask anyone to butt out of a vet treating my horse without having to have a conversation about what happened and what the vet is doing… and so there’s no clean, gossip-free way to protect confidentiality.

[findeight]

That’s right…and I cannot tell Chatty Cathy to leave because she’s a paying client boarding a horse there and it’s not my barn. The vet did a good job of getting rid of her though. No mincing of words.