I directed to the Baran thread, where everything you need can be found. Others have been more forthcoming. If people are willing to play Dr death with horses for ribbons, I fear what they’d do to save their own skin, so I wasn’t really enthusiastic about naming names.
7 Likes
It wouldn’t be the first time someone’s barn mysteriously burnt down
5 Likes
There are a lot of posts in that thread. 280-ish is where the information is.
9 Likes
Since phenobarbitol can only be traced through hair samples, no one has been found to be using it. Wouldn’t surprise me that more the Eboy are using, but until now there was no ability to test for it. People can be making deals … yet.
Pentobarbital not phenobarb
1 Like
This isn’t true. Pentobarb will show up on “normal” blood or urine drug screens as a barbiturate. So will phenobarbital; we routinely check blood levels on dogs who take the drug therapeutically.
3 Likes
Just curious. What therapeutic uses are there for pentobarbitol in dogs? I mean besides for euth.
Pheno* is used for seizures but pento is only used for euth
2 Likes
Thanks. Was confused by prior post saying pentobarbital will show up on routine tox screens…
Pentobarbital will show up on any routine drug screen that is screening for anything in the barbiturate class. However the standard equine drug screens don’t look for barbiturates…they look for NSAIDS, steroids, long acting sedatives, and your typical short acting ones (ace, xylazine, dorm, etc). I work in the human addiction space and our standard drug screens look for barbiturates…so it’s not that you can’t test for them in horse blood/urine…it’s that the standard screening panels aren’t set up to look for them at present. So it’s not that a blood/urine test couldn’t find it in horses…the current tests just weren’t looking for it.
We don’t see it used much anymore as there are better, safer options…but pentobarbital is/was used in humans for a variety of non-lethal applications…insomnia, anesthesia induction, induced coma in people with liver damage, etc. The pharmacokinetics are well understood and all that info is out there, readily available to amateur veterinary chemists looking to do nefarious things with it…
12 Likes
I was not testing for it therapeutically. I was testing for it because my comatose canine patient had eaten part of a horse carcass that had been buried 5 years earlier, and unearthed by a backhoe on the owner’s property. It became a case report. 
The dog slept for 3 days and then woke up. He was initially blind, though his vision returned.
At present, there is no therapeutic use for pentobarbital.
20 Likes
Felicidades, C-Jo, you win for most disgusting story ever told at brunchtime. Fascinating, but disgusting!
18 Likes
Right!? No amount of boxed wine would make this easier to take in
3 Likes
So, wait …. There’s a lot to unpack here. Had the horse been euthanized five years earlier, then that pento had stayed in its system and remained active enough to render the dog comatose?
1 Like
Equine drug testing does not include barbituates. Thus, the implementation of hair samples.
1 Like
The horse is dead so no longer metabolizing the drug out of it’s system, so yes it’s still there.
2 Likes
Oh god, that’s scary. Glad the dog was ok. HOW DID THAT EVEN HAPPEN?
1 Like
Yes.
1 Like
The USEF’s drug panel may not, but it’s wrong to say that pentobarb is not detectable in a blood test. USEF may not run it, but it can absolutely be done. You could do it yourself with an over the counter multidrug urine test from Walgreen’s. (Note that I have used these for dogs as noted in the case above, but have not used them for horses.)
I suspect they’re using hair because drug residues persist longer in the hair than in the blood or urine.
9 Likes
I thought I read somewhere that pentobarbital has a short half life (relatively) so even if it was included in the standard panel, it wouldn’t be caught most of the time
2 Likes
