http://news.aol.com/article/21-horses-die-before-polo-match/435339?icid=main|main|dl1|link1|http%3A%2F%2Fnews.aol.com%2Farticle%2F21-horses-die-before-polo-match%2F435339

Wow this is tragic....I actually dont have words to describe how I feel about it. I wouldnt rule out foul play there...it is very competative at that level and a lot of those people (I know I am generalizing here) dont really care for their horses...the only time they see them is when they play...

Lets hope they get to the bottom of it.

Nick.... How many years would it take to put together or build up a string of horses that would be competitive on this level?

Hi Retento

I dont really think you could ever replace them....

good horses are born with talent, so the trick is finding them...so you just start buying new horses with the breeding and confirmation you like, then start training them...about 80% or even more will be sold on within the 1st two or three months. If I were to guess, it would probably take about 4 or 5 years for these guys, cos they will most probably have a few second string horses comeing on. The best Polo horses are about 10yrs old and finding suitable candidated can be hard. Most of them are horses off the track, which are trained and brought on slowly....well thats the idea anyway.

Unfortunately Polo does not have the best name when it comes to careing for their horses. Sure they are fed ok and look the part under saddle...but they are just numbers unfortunately. I have bought quite a few horses from Polo and not one of them knew what a carrot was.

Polocrosse on the other hand is a one horse sport - so the individuals actually know their horses name and tend to care more for them.

It is very sad to see something like this happen, no matter in what dicipline....lets just hope the find out what caused it and deal with the senario properly...

    I live about 30 miles from Wellington and trail ride there regularly.  During the "season - Nov -April, Wellington is the horse capital of Fla as about 25,000 high calibur horses come in to compete in Gran Prix show jumping (Olympic horses), Dressage, Hunter/Jumper, and Polo.  Full board during this time period will run $1,500-$2,000 a month for the seasonal horses.

    I have several friends that live there and I trailer up and we'll ride their rather nice trail system and ride past homes and matching barns worth millions.  The huge warmbloods will be out in the pastures kicking up their heels and they do ride them on the trail system as well which has over 50 miles in this surburban town.

     It's pretty neat how they exercise the polo ponies, as one rider will ride one horse and have 3-5 on a lead trotting them around a huge track.

    Palm Beach Equine is one of the top equine faciltiies in the world and they have 20+ vets there.  I had to take my horse there last year for surgery and got to mingle with million dollar warmbloods that were also there for various illness.  The staff there are VERY caring as I spent the day there waiting for my horse's surgery.  His got bumped when a colic emergency came up and I certainly let them take that horse first.  I noticed the vet techs grooming horses, kissing them, really loving on them, and it was nice to see how much they cared about the horses.

     This has been a tremendous blow to the people there and the local TV stations have shown the strong sad reactions by many of the grooms, vet techs, and the vets. 

    I sure hope they figure out what went wrong and quickly, but it's gotta be some kind of poison to affect so many.  

I agree with GONE.  If this was deliberate someone needs to get the same treatment.

Marla

It is hard for me to imagine insurance on 21 horses at the same time...kind of like having all of your trucks and trailers stolen at the same time. Could happen, but logic says no.

The news is still all over the place on it. I read three or four different articles dated today or late yesterday, and they still don't know anything other than it was something put into their system. I have to wonder if they were given any required shots that came from the same batch and were bad. Hard for me to imagine a trainer for a team using something new right before a match and using it on the whole team of horses. Also hard for me to imagine someone poisoning 21 horses.

My first thought was maybe something was bad in the feed. Fifteen years ago I lost a bunch of lambs because they used corn with aflitoxin when the feed was mixed. It took three weeks to find out for sure, but we had a good hunch it was in the feed and pulled that right away to limit our loss. We never got anything from the feed company because they were not aware of the aflitoxin.

Aflitoxin is a naturally occurring enzyme that can show up in corn that has been stressed.

My heart goes out to the people who cared for these horses because they will be the most affected.

Just read that all but 5 of 26 horses just recieved a vitamin injection of Biodol. Every horse that recieved the vitamin injection died.

http://www.tcpalm.com/news/2009/apr/22/polo-team-captain-21-dead-wellington-horses-all-go/?partner=yahoo_headlines

Can someone get the dosage wrong? Was it a "bad batch?"

When we go to a serious match we dose our horses with vatamine B-Complex...and this is done 4 days prior to the event....not much good doing it the same day.

I'm not sure you could over dose as vits are normally given in 30mm doses...how much more could you give....One thing that could happen is if it was given in the vein....instead of intramuscular.....--- That's a posability

This is really tragic - and yest the grooms are the ones that will be affected the most....

Our thoughts are with them.

http://news.aol.com/article/horses-die-before-polo-match/435339?icid=main|main|dl1|link1|http%3A%2F%2Fnews.aol.com%2Farticle%2Fhorses-die-before-polo-match%2F435339

Ocala pharmacy says it incorrectly prepared medication for 21 polo horses that died.

http://www.newsday.com/iphone/sfl-horses-dead-polo-wellington-palm-beach-042309,0,4248435.story?track=rss

What doesn't make sense is why it isn't approved. From everything that i have read, the overseas version is nothing more than a combination of individual vitamins and minerals. It would be kind of like saying you can't feed your horse sweet feed as a mix, but you can feed all of the things in sweet feed individually.

And that being said does anybody know why they don't administer the individual vitamins rather than the mixture? The effect should be the same shouldn't it?

That is different stuff.

According to Merial Limited, the manufacturer of Biodyl, the compound is made of vitamin B12, selenium, potassium and magnesium. 

I just read that the pharmacy stated that they had put in ten times too much selenium which is toxic to horses in large doses.

Edited to add;

"Dr. Loyd V. Allen Jr., a pharmacist and editor-in-chief of the Oklahoma-based International Journal of Pharmaceutical Compounding, said he believes it is legal to make the Biodyl substitute. "All of the ingredients in it... are components of drugs here in the United States that are legal or have been in use," Allen said."

You wouldn't ride in a car with me if I was all jacked up on crack, so why would you throw a leg over a horse that is all jacked up on some potion from a vet, be it legal or not. This is the very reason that I don't show horses or compete at any kind of National level, they should be testing all horses and if they find so much as an asprin in one the trainer/owner should be banned for life in any kind of competition. Walking horses don't do all that action naturally, Quarter horses don't lope around in the field with their noses on the ground, Standardbreds tails don't naturally have a kink in them at the base, ect.... ect.....

I think the vet that ordered it should never be allowed to own/treat/train another horse.

HWBar... You can come test my, sound, flat shod Walking Horses anytime you want.... Only thing they may be OD'n on is Bermuda grass, Oat Hay, a little Omolene 100 sweet feed, carrots and maybe an occasional Diet Dr. Pepper!!

HWBar - Here are the four ingredients listed as being in Biodyl sold seperately. Nowhere in there is crack listed. These do everything from promoting red blood cells to electrolytes for preventing dehydration. Not much different than the vitamin pack that I take each morning.

http://www.valleyvet.com/ct_detail.html?pgguid=30e07e0d-7b6a-11d5-a192-00b0d0204ae5

http://www.valleyvet.com/ct_detail.html?pgguid=919d8dfd-b759-4473-841b-89db0d69169f

http://www.valleyvet.com/ct_detail.html?pgguid=2e87c065-7b6a-11d5-a192-00b0d0204ae5

http://www.valleyvet.com/ct_detail.html?pgguid=ae42f5dd-180d-4fa9-a2a0-8dd0460c294a

And as a last note...this one is a supplement with all four ingredients, including 20 or so other ingredients.

http://www.valleyvet.com/ct_detail.html?pgguid=ec2487f8-4130-468a-a90a-4f7528bcaaba

Nothing against your horses Retento, but the Walking horses I see at shows are not sound, and not in a natural gait. If yours are then I applaud you, but I'm pretty sure you know what I'm talking about.

The ingredient list I saw this morning had 12 ingredients plus whatever pain medication you wanted for a base, it may not have crack in it, but it give the same results as crack, "it's used to alleviate exhaustion", from what I hear so does crack.

I haven't seen anything listing 12 ingredients, not saying that there wasn't. According to Merial that makes Biodyl, there are four main ingredients, and that it is basically a vitamin/mineral supplement. No painkillers in the original that I have been able to find anything on. Now the mixture that the pharmacy made...that is another question.

Nothing against your horses Retento, but the Walking horses I see at shows are not sound, and not in a natural gait. If yours are then I applaud you, but I'm pretty sure you know what I'm talking about.

It depends on which horse show you go too. I know what you are talking about though. Saw it myself at a big show. Pretty obvious and I thought the horse was awesome but I would dare not do that to my horse. I couldn't stand myself if I did. Don't care to see it again, once I thougth about it. Rentento's is flat shod, He's in a plantation shoe or the like. About as natural as you can get for showing, if he shows.

A couple shots of one of our "walking horses" 2007 NWHA horse of the year, "She's Doubly Delightful"...... Wife shows NWHA versatility classes, over fences-jumping, hunter hack, trail obstacle, pleasure driving, obstacle driving, western riding, reining, Dressage levels 1, 2 and 3. Around the ring classes trail pleasure open 3 gait western, etc. Not all walking horses are padded up and "fixed". Biggest shoe we use is a 3/8" thick x 3/4" wide flat shoe, kegs or either barefoot on the rear.... Need some of those sliding plates on the rear for those western versatility classes!!

http://www.nwhapoints.com/nwhahplist.asp

Running walk... If you're putting on a show, you got to be carefull as to who you contact for a Dressage judge.... There's finally a few Dressage judges out there that can distinguish the difference between a flat walk and a running walk. And there's some that will never "get it".

 Here's a copy of the NWHA Versatility Rule Book, that includes Dressage.   http://www.nwha.com/NWHAVersatilityRulesFinalApril08.pdf