General Health & Wellness

Preventive Care and Diagnostic

Scoping | Tioga, Texas

 

Not every problem is a lameness. Performance horses lose ground to ulcers, airway disease, and gaps in preventive care as often as they do to a bad hock — and those are frequently the causes nobody checks until the lameness workup comes back clean.

 

Gastroscopy

— Stomach & Esophageal Evaluation

 

Gastric ulcers are common in performance horses and the signs are easy to attribute to something else: girthiness, poor appetite, weight loss, dull coat, resistance under saddle, a horse that's gotten sour about work.Gastroscopy is the only way to diagnose them. A three-meter endoscope allows direct visual examination of the esophagus, the full stomach lining, and the entry to the small intestine — showing whether ulcers are present, where they are, and how severe.

 

That matters because treatment differs by location. Squamous ulcers in the upper stomach and glandular ulcers in the lower stomach respond to different protocols, and treating blind means guessing at both the diagnosis and the drug.

 

Horses are fasted before the procedure and sedated for it. We'll give you fasting instructions when you schedule. Rescoping after treatment confirms healing rather than assuming it.

 

Upper Airway Endoscopy

 

Endoscopic examination of the upper airway at rest — pharynx, larynx, guttural pouches, and trachea.

 

Indications include:

Abnormal respiratory noise

Exercise intolerance and poor performance

Nasal discharge

Coughing

Laryngeal hemiplegia (roaring)

Guttural pouch disease

Pre-purchase airway evaluation

 

Dynamic Endoscopy

— Airway Evaluation Under Exercise

 

Some airway problems only appear under work.

A horse can scope completely normal standing in the aisle and collapse its airway at speed under saddle. Dynamic laryngeal collapse, palatal displacement, and pharyngeal collapse are frequently missed on a resting scope for exactly this reason — which is why "the vet scoped him and he was clean" doesn't rule out an airway problem.

 

Dynamic endoscopy images the airway while the horse is exercising, showing what actually happens when the horse is working and breathing hard. It's the appropriate next step when a horse makes noise, quits, or won't finish a run despite a normal resting scope.

 

This is specialized equipment that relatively few practices in this region offer.

 

Herd Health

— Vaccinations & Deworming

 

Vaccination protocols are built around your horses' actual risk: age, travel schedule, show exposure, and regional disease pressure. A show horse hauling to Congress and a retired pasture horse in the same barn don't need the same program.

 

Core vaccines cover Eastern and Western encephalomyelitis, tetanus, West Nile, and rabies. Risk-based vaccines — influenza, rhinopneumonitis, strangles, botulism — depend on your operation.

 

Deworming is handled by fecal egg count rather than a rotating calendar. Blanket deworming has driven widespread resistance in parasite populations, and the current standard is to identify which horses are actually shedding and treat those. In most barns, a minority of horses carry the majority of the parasite load.

 

For barns and training operations, we schedule herd health visits to handle vaccinations, fecal, and dentistry across the string in one trip.

 

Call 940-230-6611 for pricing and scheduling.