North Coast Equine

05/11/2026

Fascinating

05/10/2026

Just a snippet of the history of the horse in warfare…

03/20/2026

6 Million Lost Horses

A Black-and-White Cry of War
This is not just a photograph of old saddles, it’s a silent scream from the past — a haunting echo of pain endured not only by soldiers, but by those too often forgotten: the horses.

These saddles once rested on the backs of loyal, powerful animals who never chose war.
They didn’t understand the cause — they simply followed, through snow, starvation, fire, and chaos.

An estimated 2.7 million German army horses died during World War II, with the vast majority lost on the Eastern Front. In the battle for Stalingrad specifically, the German Sixth Army and its allies lost approximately 52,000 horses.

During Operation Barbarossa, over 200,000 horses died from starvation, exposure, or combat wounds.

The German army lost over 179,000 to 189,000 horses in December 1941 and January 1942 alone.

Stalingrad Encirclement: Along with the 6th Army, Romanian forces reported around 3,300 horses remaining at the time of encirclement, with massive losses of these animals due to freezing, starvation, and consumption by soldiers as food.

While many died from artillery fire, a vast number died of heart failure due to overwork, extreme cold, and starvation, often serving a 6-week lifespan in combat conditions.

While German forces used an estimated 2.75 million horses, the Soviet Union used over 3.5 million horses.

03/14/2026

03/12/2026

This old man became a patient in 2015 - he was known to be at least 28 years old at the time.

He lives full time on a sloped 3 acre pasture with a young mare as a companion, is fed a combination of soaked beet, pulp shreds & alfalfa-teff cubes, Purina equine senior raised to the level of his carpii and alfalfa hay. He shows very little signs of slowing down, has almost no teeth left, and has been seen to “kick, stretch, rear, and kick” like Sally O’Malley.

And like Clint Eastwood he
“just doesn’t let the old man in”

In human years -
that’s approximately 120.

02/04/2026

** Horse owners**

There’s currently a UK Government consultation on reform of the Veterinary Surgeons Act. This really matters because it will influence how veterinary care teams are regulated in future — including how different professional titles are used, what “scope of practice” looks like, and how animal welfare and public protection are safeguarded.

At EDC, we strongly support a multidisciplinary team approach for veterinary care, especially in equine dentistry. Qualified Equine Dental Technicians (EDT's) can play a valuable role in routine maintenance within a clear scope. But it’s important that veterinary surgeons remain the clinical leaders of the team, for one simple reason: training and accountability.

A veterinary degree is a whole-animal medical and surgical education. Over 5 years, vets learn anatomy, physiology, pathology, pharmacology, diagnostic reasoning, pain recognition, imaging principles, anaesthesia/analgesia, infection control, complications, and emergency management — across all body systems. That breadth is extremely important, even in “routine” dentistry because routine dental work often involves holistic care and bigger questions:

Is the horse in pain, and why?

Is sedation appropriate, and what are the risks (only vets may legally give or prescribe sedation)?

Is this actually a dental problem — or musculoskeletal, neurological, metabolic, sinus or systemic disease?

What’s the correct escalation pathway if we find a diseased tooth, a non-vital pulp defect, a fracture, or advanced periodontal disease?

Equine dentistry is not only rasping. It includes diagnosis, interpretation, decision-making, safe sedation / pain management, and the management of complications. Those are fundamentally veterinary responsibilities, taught to veterinary surgeons over a 5-year university training period.

We have seen claims that EDTs have “higher level” training than vets. That can sound persuasive — but it confuses depth in a narrow skillset with overall clinical training and responsibility. EDT training is typically highly focused on practical routine dental maintenance / rasping. Veterinary training is significantly broader and medically grounded, and that foundation is exactly what allows vets to deliver safe, holistic care and to recognise when routine becomes complex.

In addtion, there’s a further “top tier” within veterinary practice: vets who have pursued advanced postgraduate training. At Equine Dental Clinic, our specialists have spent many additional years in supervised training, undergoing examinations, and high caseload referral work to develop deep expertise specifically in equine dentistry. In the same way you’d expect a specialist surgeon to lead in complex orthopaedics, you should expect appropriately trained dental specialists to lead in advanced dental disease.

So our message to owners for this consultation is simple:

1. Support a regulated team approach — collaboration, not replacement.

2. Ask for clear protected titles and clear scope of practice.

3. Expect vets to remain responsible for diagnosis, prescribing, sedation/anaesthesia, advanced procedures, and complications.

4. And for complex cases, seek clinicians with the highest level of training and experience in that field.

If you have a view, please consider responding to the consultation. Constructive owner feedback helps ensure regulation protects horses, supports access to care, and keeps standards high.

The consultation link can be found here:

https://consult.defra.gov.uk/reform-of-the-veterinary-surgeons-act/consultation/

Here is our mini-response that owners can use or adapt that contain key elements of the above and will ensure that future care of your horse remains led by the most suitably trained and qualified perons:

"As a horse owner, I support modernising regulation to protect animal welfare and public confidence. I value a multidisciplinary veterinary team, but I want clear scope of practice and protected titles so owners can make informed choices.

I support risk-based delegation of low-risk routine procedures within a defined scope, with consistent standards, CPD and accountability. However, diagnosis, clinical decision-making, prescribing medicines, sedation/anaesthesia, and management of complications should remain under veterinary responsibility.

In dentistry, “routine” can quickly become complex (pain, sedation risk, non-dental disease, fractures, pulp/apical disease), and I rely on veterinary training and referral pathways to keep my horse safe."

02/01/2026

From fires to floods, today’s reality is no longer if a disaster will strike, but when.

01/27/2026

Admiration for the innovation and effort!
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

01/25/2026

12/10/2025

Horses exposed early in life to an allergen were less likely to react when exposed again later in life, according to a new study of Icelandic horses at the Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine that has implications for human allergies.

Horses that were exposed at birth to a midge that can cause an extreme skin allergy never succumbed to the condition, while 62.5% of horses that were first introduced to the midges in adulthood developed an itchy eczema-like reaction, the 13-year study found.

The results, published on Oct. 21 in Frontiers in Immunology, were only possible because these midges, called Culicoides, don’t exist in Iceland, allowing the researchers to test their theories on naïve horses, as well as offspring whose exposures to the allergen varied in timing.

The findings support the idea that early exposure to an allergen can prime an individual’s immune system to tolerate it and not become allergic later in life.

Since the horse’s immune systems has many similarities to humans, the study corroborates related findings in humans, including the hygiene hypothesis, which is based on the observation that children who grew up on farms with multiple animal and environmental exposures developed far fewer allergies than children raised in clean, more sterile homes.

Read more at https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2025/12/early-exposure-curbed-allergies-icelandic-horses.

11/10/2025

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=807959861993707&id=100083391022117