SOME people just like things to look clean as in ‘neat and tidy’, perhaps to impress their clients – fair enough! For vets working with performance horses, cleanliness is about the surface appearance being truly reflective of a healthy state underneath and not simply for appearances’ sake.

Vets are borderline obsessed with disease prevention and control, hyper-aware that beneath the surface lie infectious disease-causing organisms (‘pathogens’) that represent a real risk of loss of health, poor welfare and diminished athletic performance. We also recognise that it is increasingly difficult to kill pathogens when we really need to – the drugs we use (antibiotics, anti-parasitics) are simply not as effective as they once were – and thus we need to place more and more emphasis on disease prevention. Where possible, reduce stocking densities and the infective load e.g. by increasing ventilation to reduce exposure to pathogens. Best practice is to keep your horses healthy, avoid the poor performance associated with illness, and rarely need to reach for the drugs cupboard.