There would be a pretty limited job market for someone trained solely how to draw blood.
Veterinary technicians are trained to draw blood.
The sticking point is the regulations wrt veterinary practice acts vary considerably from state to state regarding who can do what for money.
I don’t know of anyplace that techs are permitted to perform procedures without a DVM on the premises (typical wording is direct/indirect supervision), though I’ll admit I haven’t looked closely in awhile.
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You don’t know me or anything about me, so save your judgmental BS for someone else. You got called out for twisting a comment that you didn’t bother to quote because it would not prove your point.
I’ve been in this industry long enough to not only plant the forest, but to blaze the trail through it.
I have been proactive enough to have testified more than once in an abuse case that resulted in multiple convictions for a repeat offender, that has kept him from ever legally owning animals. That was after he threatened to burn my barn down with a Molotov Cocktail.
You can take your righteous indignation and stuff it. I have been on this forum for many, many years, and know quite a few here in real life. They will stand by my character and actions as well.
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Yes every bit of this.
Please folks – do not mention violators by using only their initials – this is the biggest complicity the ordinary public tends to display in enabling abuse to continue. This hides who they are, because no, everyone doesn’t ‘know’.
Without the names, information doesn’t come up on an internet search on the name. By someone who wants to know their true reputation before they commit to something with that individual.
Every time a violator name is spelled out, we the public join the forces against abuse. We make it searchable. We help get the word out. So that the public can make informed decisions. Thank you for that.
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Is anyone else getting a 403 error when replying to this thread?
For whatever it is worth …
Eventing is said to test the cleanest.
Eventing has the fewest permissable meds. While being physically demanding. With only one ribbon per horse/rider, and low or no prize money.
The culture is different. The expectations are different. Very probably, in many cases, the reasons riders ride is different.
It’s something to think about when figuring out how to dial down the abuses in hunter/jumper. A far more populous discipline, formatted very differently.
But the culture is the biggest difference, IMO. How can culture change begin to take root, at the grassroots level?
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Outside of FEI, aren’t the med rules for eventing and hunters exactly the same?
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Because in eventing you have to learn how to ride. Speaking for cross country specifically, you’re out on terrain without your coach on the rail telling you what to do. If you mess up, you fall, or your horse does. The risk is much greater. You have to learn how to ride 3 different disciplines, and be effective at all 3. Lastly, and correct me if this isn’t a rule anymore, no one but the entered rider can ride the horse for the entire competition. No trainers schooling horses during the week.
Now there are other parts of the culture that idk how we work into the H/J world, like eventers keeping their horses at home a lot and hauling to their coaches/events alone. Certainly this isn’t everyone, but the eventers I know are much more educated as a whole than the average h/j rider.
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I agree with this for hunters. In jumpers, we probably have issues on soundness abuses, but not the additional problem of drugging/lunging and whatever else to make them quiet. The less trainers teach people how to ride instead of how to show, the more difficult it is going to be to have horses that their owners feel safe on. The costs of shows means they want to go win. It’s all built into the hunter culture.
That is why I really like the new UJDA concept (I think I have the acronym correct). Their concept of having jumper type classes, but with horsemanship type judging is a big plus.
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Maybe more of an added training/advanced practice certification to allow the to do something as simple as draw blood with an order to do so but without direct supervision? Similar to medical directives in human medicine? I realize that techs are trained to draw blood, but I’m thinking of something that gives them credentials to say they’re essentially experts, and that no one should be able to make a stink about these people “hurting” their horses during a blood draw. (Again, the irony of letting the trainer medicate, often with IV injections, but feeling that a trained, educated professional with a career in veterinary medicine should not pull blood from the same horse…)
You know far better than I what will and won’t fly in the veterinary world. 
I’m just trying to think outside the box based on the piece of the medical world that I know well.
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@Nikki “Juniors can give injections. It’s part of horsemanship. Some of these riders will go to college to be vets.”
This smacks of willful ignorance. Have you ever thrombosed a vein? Missed? Blown a wall? How would a kid know what to do when causing a potentially lethal and at a minimum serious medical issue in a horse? Kids should not be giving injections outside of their own family animals (acknowledge farm life here). Part of horsemanship is learning from experts, e.g. VETS, in this case and NOT from anybody else.
This attitude is part of how and why folks feel that drug abuse to control a horse is fine.
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This is the same reason I think the suggestion of training people to be equine phlebotomists is nuts. Human phlebotomists and small animal vet techs are generally drawing from more “benign” locations. With a horse you are going into the jugular right next to the carotid, and it is a very big deal if you blow one those or inject into the wrong one.
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Spare me your fake outrage. How do people learn how to give injections? They are taught at a young age. Being a junior is much more than tacking up a horse and jumping over fences.
Doesn’t Pony club teach you how to give injections?
You harp and complain that juniors don’t do enough, but when Junior start doing enough, you harp and complain that they’re not experienced and can hurt the horse.
Veterinarians can show them how to give injections. They can also teach them the dangers of injections and how to correctly give one.
Emergency situations do happen and people need to know how to get proper medical care when the vet can’t come to the farm.
I do not condone drug use in the Horse show world. I’m against using regu mate on geldings and Mares calm during horse shows. So again, spare me your fake outrage.
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There’s a massive leap between teaching juniors to safely give injections and thinking that juniors injecting horses should be a routine sight at horse shows.
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It was dex, and the only penalty was a $1k fine and return of prize monies from that show, so USEF must have found it to be a minor infraction. He was not suspended. See link below, you can search on his name and it will come up.
FWIW, Nick is generally one of the good ones. He loves the horses, can ride the pants off anything and has been able to do so since his junior days.
No fake outrage here. It’s genuine. I was taught to give injections by working for vets. I learned what to look for when blowing a vein, what can happen to a horse when you miss. I spent a lot of time under a watchful eye giving banamine, penicillin, and other drugs that can maim or kill a horse quickly. At the same time even giving a benign drug, a needle puncturing the esophagus or other tissue is a risky thing, e.g. one does not just “pull back on the plunger.” One needs to know what the tissues at the needle tip feel like given that the tip will have carried skin pathogens in to those tissues. Why do vets do surgical scrubs (not just for joint injections)?
@Nikki spare me your fake “this is for the kids and future of the sport.” You still don’t know what to do when you miss do you?
And Pony Club does NOT teach how to give injections. It is NOT a required skill.
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I understand your intentions. I’m simply pointing out the untenable logistics of such proposals.
There’s been a recent bill passed in Colorado allowing the equivalent of veterinary “nurse practitioners”, which would require some sort of master’s degree program that the sponsors dreamed up, and they would be able to practice without close supervision, but still under the auspices of a licensed DVM.
Most of the profession is opposed to this, and I say good luck finding a DVM willing to risk their license and liability insurance to cover somebody else.
I also can’t see someone going to the effort of getting an advanced degree/certification whatever, just so they could work occasional weekends pulling blood and collecting piss while dealing with annoyed trainers/owners.
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Going back to getting all the ducks in arow on a regulatory basis, I spent a number of years on the vet tech committee of my state’s VMA.
You would not believe the time and effort that our committee, the VMA as a whole, and the state’s vet tech association put into trying to get legislation passed or amended.
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Multiply that by every state where the USEF would like to have horses drug tested.
Not only is that a huge effort, why do you think the majority of DVMs or CVT/RVTs would want to bother doing it?
So some bunch of people generally regarded as “rich” by non-horsey folks could control the number of unethical people involved wth their luxury pets?
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Again, the desire to clean up the sport is admirable, but for much of what is being proposed in this thread, it is logistically a nightmare on a number of levels.
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I currently teach large animal medicine and skills to veterinary technicians.
Something I repeatedly warn them about is to never give an injection, be it IV or IM to anyone else’s horse.
Because as soon as their horsey friend find out they’re CVTs, they get asked.
And that’s all fine and good, until, as RAyers said, something goes wrong.
And then their “friend” wants to sue.
And the insurance company finds out who gave the injection and they reject the claim for the medical or mortality insurance due to that.
Not worth it.
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Teaching juniors to give injections (IM or IV) is a fine thing to do - under direct supervision by a very knowledgeable person, ideally a vet, and I don’t know any vets currently that would teach this to a junior. Even IF you had a vet that would teach a junior, there’s no place and no reason for that at a horse show. That’s something that requires an at-home, quiet, low stress environment.
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I’m not sure how the idea that “X group does it better” ended up in this conversation. 
As for cleaning up the sport in terms of welfare and medication issues, the biggest oversight is not holding owners accountable, regardless of whether they were “aware” of an infraction or not. Speaking as an owner of a high-performance horse ridden by a professional and as a competitor with my personal horse, it’s clear that “follow the money” applies. The key lies in addressing who’s buying the horses and funding the classes. If accountability extended beyond just trainers to include the owners, the sport would likely clean up much faster.
ignorantia juris non excusa. An owner who is unaware of a “law” or rule should not escape liability for violating that law merely by being unaware - of the rule or that the infraction is happening in this case (yeah, not apples to apples but the point stands). If the horse or trainer is caught, horse, trainer and owner should receive the same ban. That way there is no shifting the horse to a reciprocity relationship etc.
This approach would also impact horse show management, potentially making them less inclined to turn a blind eye to welfare issues. If a trainer from “X barn” is banned, and the horses can’t simply be handed off to “Trainer B” to continue showing, it introduces real stakes for show management. With the possibility of losing entries and revenue, show organizers would have a vested interest in enforcing welfare standards more rigorously. This added accountability would create a system where everyone involved—owners, trainers, and show management—has “skin in the game” when it comes to ensuring the integrity and welfare of the sport.
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Not while I have been in Pony Club they have not.
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