Highly unlikely, I’d venture to say impossible. This owner is incredibly involved as she bred the horse and makes decisions daily on care and meds.
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Maybe it’s not a matter of wanting a villain … but more a matter of wanting to shift liability?
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But then what’s the point of USEF going the whole exercise-associated fatal pulmonary hemorrhage route? If the scandal is that the owner totally knew and approved this cocktail (as is being suggested by KMHSF and elsewhere), then why not agree that said cocktail was the most likely cause of death? And then demonstrate how the owner did indeed know what was going on?
USEF’s desire to pin the death on something other than the shot suggests (to me) that the owner did not know the full extent of what was in the injection(s), or never agreed to the injection(s).
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This, also - what’s the whole point of them making the owner sign an agreement effectively giving them carte blanche to treat the horse as they see fit? Wouldn’t it make sense that the agreement exists just so they can give the horse whatever they want without consulting owner/regular DVM?
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Legally speaking they should limit any statements regarding the cause of death to what the necropsy report states. I don’t know why it didn’t also list anaphylactic reaction, I do believe the other condition, which was labeled as “severe” did exist and whoever was doing that necropsy for the FEI believed that to be the the most likely attributable cause of death based on the evidence at hand. Otherwise you’re talking a major conspiracy here and you know people just don’t do conspiracies because humans don’t do secrets particularly well.
As for the care custody and control agreement, that is not unique to this situation. That’s pretty much standard across the board for world championship events. Instead of assuming the worst case scenario, let’s assume they don’t have a care custody and control agreement and your horse is colicking. The vet will not treat it because you cannot be reached (you are not even in the same country) and there is no legal authority for them to treat the horse, especially given it would eliminate them from competition. Other less noble reasons to have such an agreement would be to control substances administered to the horse by people who might be less concerned with a positive result or at the very least to have a concerted defense if a substance did trigger a positive.
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Yeah, I’m sure it was more than one person (I’m assuming the regular team vet was there as well but this vet may have been administering meds due to country licensing restrictions), but again, I don’t think they up and changed an entire program without the regular vet, especially if he was in regular contact with them.
I’ll be really honest, I’m not going to rule out that the horse may have had a program as they ramped up for WC (and those nerve destroying jogs) that the owner did not know about…
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Without my permission is the part that makes me outraged.
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It’s incredibly disturbing to me the way many equine athletes are treated like science experiments, given all kinds of supplements, herbal concoctions, and injections–much of which has NO evidence based support for it’s use. Not only do most of those supplements, herbs and injections not any proven benefit, we also do not have enough evidence to know what their potential is for causing harm. It’s completely unethical.
I generally am very reluctant to place blame on vets, they have a very difficult job. It’s really hard when they are treating sick or lame horses and veterinary medicine does not have the same amount of research as human medicine does for vets to draw on when making clinical decisions. But this was a perfectly healthy animal that did not need “treatment” to begin with. And the substances administered neither offered a clear benefit nor had adequate safety data. Witchcraft would have been a safer alternative for this animal. I also think that it is one thing to try new therapies with discussion and consent from the owner–it’s another thing entirely to be practicing non-evidence based veterinary medicine without consent. I don’t care what the loan situation is–when you are responsible for another person’s animal, decisions need to be made carefully and with a basis in evidence.
Despite being a h/j rider, I work primarily with racehorses, and the explanation regarding EIPH appears to be BS to me. I think when they crafted that explanation they were counting on the unfamiliarity of the h/j world with EIPH (because it’s extremely unusual to see in h/j horses) and were hoping people wouldn’t ask questions. It would make everyone feel better if the horse’s death were related to some weird physical issue, and it certainly would protect many important parties from blame. But unfortunately this sounds exactly like a reaction to the injected substances. I’ve been in the horse business for…well…many decades. I’ve seen many cases of EIPH, none like this. I’ve also seen horses retired from racing due to severe episodes of EIPH and go on to have careers in eventing, showing and foxhunting and NEVER have another episode. I’ve also seen horses have severe reactions to and die from injections, and that’s exactly what this sounds like.
I am not a veterinarian, so I am open to reconsidering my opinions should a trustworthy veterinarian come forward and be able to explain the details of this highly unusual case.
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Am I correct that per the agreement the owner signed the “team” can basically do whatever it wants to the horses in its care without notifying or consulting owners or anyone else for that matter? Because that’s how it appears to read to me…
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I wouldn’t get too carried away with the idea they were medicating for the jog. FEI jumper jogs are not very strict and horses that are questionable are usually permitted to rejog back at the barn. Jumping 1.6 without touching the milled rail on a flat cup is what they are medicating for.
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I do think a major component of the outrage here is that the owner did not approve the medication and was not even consulted. And there was not an emergency-life-or-death situation. There is no reason she couldn’t have been called before the horse was given any medication.
There’s a separate question about whether it’s appropriate for a performance horse to be getting this medication under these circumstances… but setting that aside I am disgusted that when your horse is ridden for the team, you essentially lose all control over the horse and don’t even have the right to be consulted before the horse is treated.
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The owner signed a release that they could do that without notifying or consulting anyone . I don’t like that not one bit
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FEI rules permit you to represent once. If you choose to do it right then and there, and get spun, you are done. You might be able to represent later (i.e., back at the barn), but that is entirely at the ground jury’s discretion. It might not be too out of the norm at regular events, but iffy for them to grant that at selection events (based on an experience this winter where a bunch of us got a reeducation in this area). I would say it is far less likely to happen at the actual event. And yeah, I know that ground juries are aware that the horses that are jog have a big boy job, that’s fairly common across all FEI jogs, not just those that jump the big sticks. But if you do have a horse that has a history in the jog, I promise you that ground jury will know it. (Also, side perk of a sound horse in the jog is a sound horse in competition, or so one hopes)
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Because that’s never happened before!
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I don’t know if you are specifically referring to equine chiropractors or not. I will say that any research study on human chiros is immaterial to me, because I am very sure that mine save my quality of life, and potentially my life, period.
However!
As in every human element, there is a continuum of ability. I have had a fantastic chiro, some that were pretty useless, and some that terrified me. I don’t know how well we are able to judge that when they work on horses, nor do I know how much damage could be caused before we learned which chiro was which…
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I think it’s wild that the USEF would even ask owners to sign something like that. So the USEF could literally decide to intentionally euthanize your horse on the spot during a competition and you’d have no say in it? They shouldn’t be asking owners to agree to that.
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Yes, I suppose they could. I see the reasons for having some type of a blanket release, when you’re all the way on the other side of the world in a different time zone from the owner of the horse, anything can happen and there could be any type of an emergency. But in the case of something that’s elective and off label and so forth and really, it doesn’t sound like it was necessary and in this case and not urgent, there was plenty of time for them to contact the owner and or the regular veterinarian and discuss it.
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Has anyone linked the form yet? ATTACHMENT G (usef.org)
It sounds like when the USET no longer had horses donated where they owned them, they moved to a sort of lease structure where if they are financing the competition, they are leasing the horse and take on the ability and responsibility of management. I don’t see that it says they are allowed to administer meds without disclosing them, just that they can.
I am sure the cost of sending a team to a competition is significant enough that it makes sense that you need to have the management and care of the horses decided by the professionals chosen for the team, rather than risking that they get halfway across the world and, say, the vet at home vetoes icing feet because he doesn’t believe in it or whatever. I think theres a very reasonable interpretation here that just wasn’t what went down in this instance.
I know when I talked to a former team vet, he said the hardest part of the job was that every horse in his care had a fleet of people who had spent their whole lives trying to produce a horse to that level and were deeply passionate and invested in the outcome, but may or may not be operating under the same set of facts and depth of experience that he had. I think that was in the context of a shoeing change that he mentioned it, but at least it hasn’t historically been the practice that this agreement was used in an effort to keep everyone in the dark.
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*ETA - never mind. Apparently Snyder wasn’t the longtime vet, and that information circulating is inaccurate.
In the case of Chromatic, I read that his longtime vet is Jack Snyder… who has been a team vet in the past. I would think there must have been communication between Snyder and Ulibarri, as they both probably understand the rules and process at this level. Obviously something went tragically wrong and all signs point to a sudden reaction to the IV injection the horse was given minutes before it died. And I can definitely understand the owner being distraught and having questions. But… it seems like there are a lot of unclear aspects of the situation beyond that.
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Jack Snyder was most definitely not Chromatic BF’s longtime vet.
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