No shoes required for this successful junior hunter.

At this year’s West Coast Junior Hunter Finals in San Juan Capistrano, Calif., a group of farriers gathered at the in-gate as riders were called back for the under saddle phase. Catering to an old tradition, they quickly pulled front shoes left and right before the horses returned to the ring for the final flat test.

A mare comes in from the field one afternoon with an eye that is red, irritated and tearing. Her owners chalk it up to flies and buy a fly mask. While the mask helps keep insects away from her eyes, the mare continues to suffer with painfully puffy, weepy eyes. By the end of the week, they notice that the eye looks cloudy and the mare is reluctant to come out of her stall into the sunlight. Alarmed, they call the veterinarian who concludes the examination with a worrisome diagnosis: uveitis, which is more formally known as periodic ophthalmia, or ERU, for equine recurrent uveitis.

These benign but bothersome tumors are as individual as the array of potential treatments

They’re the most common type of skin tumor in horses, and they’re usually not all that alarming—but although they’re categorized as benign, sarcoids have plenty of troublesome potential.

The thing about sarcoids is, they’re devilishly difficult to defeat. Although they seem to have a common cause—a virus called bovine papilloma, which causes warts in cows—they are masters of disguise, taking any number of different forms and casually defying any kind of easy cure. 

Riders need to consider a boot’s weight and breathability, as well as how effective it may be in preventing concussion and protecting a leg from trauma.

Dressage horses sport signature white polo wraps in the warm-up; eventers wear rugged cross-country boots, and jumpers often have open-fronts. But are these boots doing what we expect?

When you call the veterinarian to help you pinpoint the intermittent lameness in your horse, the last two words you want to hear are “suspensory injury.”

“Like tendons, suspensory ligaments can take a very long time to heal,” said Lisa Fortier, DVM, PhD, ACVS, associate professor of large animal surgery at Cornell University (N.Y.). “When the suspensory ligament does heal, re-injury is very common. Most people, when they hear their horse has a suspensory injury, have the same gasping response because there’s no quick fix.”