Welcome To The Laminitis Page

This is a place I use to organize my information about LAMINITIS. This Page is under construction, and so, very incomplete. It has been difficult to provide useful information to my clients regarding the care of their laminitic horses. The information available is often hard to find, contradictory, and incomplete. MY OWN OPINIONS are biased towards those therapies that have worked well for me. I will attempt to present as much information as I can gather in an unbiased manner.

PRESS PANIC BUTTON FOR FIRST AID HELP
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS ABOUT LAMINITIS
THE HOLE

Page Last Upadated: 10/21/2004

Check here for remarks from unhappy readers

Since the beginning of our relationship with horses we have been confounded by laminitis and the founder that it can cause. From a managerial point of view we will most likely remain confounded by laminitis for a long time to come. Confusing as laminitis often is, we now know enough about laminitis to do more than just stand by and watch as it claims our horses.

We know that good stable management reduces the risk of laminitis dramatically. We know that some medical conditions increase the risk of laminitis dramatically.

We also know that Poo Poo occurs. Horses get into the grain room and binge. We think certain breeds are supposed to have "crests". The neighbor kid joy rides old Daubin, and he road founders. Your mare retains some of her membranes after giving birth and founders. There are many reasons a horse might founder.

We do our best to properly care for our horses, but things can and do go wrong. Sometimes several seemingly insignificant conditions combine leaving no obvious clues as to the cause of the laminitis. Sometimes all we have is a horse we think might be laminitic, but don't have enough evidence to force us to respond aggressively

We can radiographically diagnose developmental laminitis. We can identify hematological precursors. We can withhold pharmacological and nutritional substances known to exacerbate laminitis.

Another thing we can do is apply a therapy that is equally effective independent of the cause of laminitis. This is a therapy that will not harm the horse should it turn out that there was no laminitis in the first place. This is a therapy that does not ask why the laminitis is present. This is a therapy that need not be expensive, especially when applied before or during developmental laminitis.

In fact this may be more of a concept than a therapy. The concept is simple. It goes like this: When faced with the prospect of imminent lamellar failure, provide an alternate means of P₃ support.

You will find the most valuable information in these pages in the Questions and Answers Dept.

Take a look at Sequence of Events too.

By popular request I have gone through these pages looking for "typos". Most of them were just plain misspellings. I can't spell. If you are disturbed by typos I will correct them for you if you alert me to them. Thank you.

Try clicking on my foot!