With all the drug fees we have to pay to show, they have enough money.
I can run the drug tests if they would hire me. It’s very easy with the chemistry and molecular analyzers of today.
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I know people that have a home vet for routine stuff and emergency care. They have a separate lameness vet or ship out to a vet hospital for anything non-routine. They could release the records for home vet but not records for lameness vet. Horse looks great- no record of suspensory injury, shock wave, hock injectons, SI injectons,.
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In my fantasy, all the medical professionals working on an animal will buy into this technology because it benefits them as well as their patients.
I suppose one could put a clause into the sales contract speciying that the medical disclosure is full and complete, and that would open them up to fraud charges if something were later discovered.
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While I love your fantasy, we can’t even get a universal EHR for people. One for horses seems a looooooong ways away 
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It’s gross to suggest any level of sedative. Even Ace isn’t benign. You can’t drug a horse into a way of going. It’s who they are. If you drug into it. You’re a cheater. Change the expectations if you need to drug. Don’t punish the freaking horses. Or endanger the riders. Or both. Jesus.
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But if you only test top placing horses and the testers show up? It is very easy to simply avoid being placed high in said class, everybody misses a lead change once in awhile or eats the vetical in leading to chipping the oxer out-nobody is perfect. Ooops.
This specific subset of exhibitors is very clever, they got everything figured out and show managers will not dare cross them in fear of them keeping their show string away from an offending managers shows. Other exhibitors fear retaliation so keep their eyes closed and mouths shut.
That is why this hair sampling might actually work better than previous efforts. MIGHT. Who knows what the lawyers will do with it.
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Although because they published that this was going to start on July 1, USEF missed their best chance to catch cheaters as those that have used drugs that last and can be caught through hair samples will now just announce that horse is retired. And move along to find a new drug to use without USEF being able to catch up with them. But I guess USEF is covering itself for the inevitable law suit that will be coming down the pike.
And the issue isn’t having enough money to hire more testers or run more tests - the issue is there aren’t enough vets out there.
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Why is a DVM needed to collect a pee sample or pull hair? Surely a technician could do that.
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Anyone who remembers the pony remeasuring at Washington knows that testing the winners or ribbon winners has its problems….
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Techs do collect urine samples, and presumably will collect the hair samples. But they’re working under a DVM, who does the blood samples. They’re not at the show on their own. And the problem is there aren’t enough equine vets, period.
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I think this is a big problem with allowing Ace - if there is any sort of horse stumble or fall that causes a rider injury, the USEF could potentially be a lawsuit target for knowingly allowing sedated 1200 pound animals to go over jumps with a rider up.
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Theoretically, if testing was done by blood samples (or equine hair), why wouldn’t a tester be able to process 20 or 30 horses per hour?
It certainly would take less time to pull blood/hair, label the samples (heck, scan the barcodes in) and off you go.
Are there any records of how many are tested, at which shows, and what percentage of samples were positive? I’m not sure I’ve seen stats (though I confess I have not gone looking!). Can an FOI request (or the like) be made to access this information?
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There is no reason techs can’t pull blood too.
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Honestly, they could do both. Mandatory testing of placing in classes over x dollars in prize money (I’m thinking derby level dollars) random sampling as done now and a random sampling of top 3 in a random selection of divisions. Not all divisions, but a viable percentage, selected at random and varying from show to show.
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It will be interesting to see how they intend to use the hair samples, because I can’t see how they can establish a solid timeline wrt when any drugs found were given.
It would probably be useful to see what pharmaceuticals are being played with, though.
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Omg.
That was really… something.
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That’s one horse per 2-3 minutes. I don’t think it’s sustainable over the course of a show day. They collect a couple of vacu tubes full so it does take some time.
IIRC urine samples are better in some way(s) than blood for some circumstances.
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My guess is that this is a liability issue. Though I’m not sure who’s legally responsible if a horse gets injured in the process of drug collection. Maybe that’s one of the things we sign off on in the USEF entry form.
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With the value of these horses, you can bet no owner or trainer will ever let a tech draw blood for a drug test. Many object to the testing vet drawing blood and ask if their own vet (who just happens to be at the show) can do it instead. I don’t think USEF would ever want to accept that liability.
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Oh my … a bit rich to object to a qualified vet tech drawing blood, when they use their horses a pincushions. Most vets have their techs draw blood, it’s not like it is hard to find a vein !? Haha. We are not talking about neonatal ICU babies here.
That can be easily made mandatory and a condition of showing. If they actually were interested in effecting change. Or is it more about making it look like something is happening, but actually allowing status quo to remain?
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