Most veterinarians stock the drawers in their mobile units so that the easiest containers to reach when they open the drug compartments are the pain medications. Whether the situation is an emergency call to tend a horse that has acute abdominal pain, or an elective call for a horse that is an enthusiastic athlete with an ongoing lameness problem, providing better pain management in horses is a growing concern among owners and practitioners.

According to Anthony Blikslager, DVM, PhD, associate professor of equine surgery at North Carolina State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine, improvements in pain management in horses can be achieved by developing new drugs, but just as important are improving our ability to recognize more subtle signs of pain and better using drugs that are already available.

Pain Detection
Blikslager says that untreated pain has adverse effects that impede healing and tissue regeneration. Therefore, the requisite first step in improving pain management in horses is increasing our awareness of pain. Although some individuals are more tolerant of pain than others, as a species horses are stoic and can hide many conditions that cause mild or moderate pain. The horse standing quietly in his stall might not be pawing or pacing, but subtle clues in his posture and behavior might yield evidence that all is not well.

Debra Sellon, DVM, PhD, associate professor of equine medicine at Washington State University in Pullman, has described a scoring system to assess the severity of a horse’s pain. She assigns a horse a score based on posture, where the horse prefers to stand in the stall, and the degree of interaction with humans or other elements of his environment