On Saturday, January 19th of 2019, the Student Chapter of the American Association of Equine Practitioners at the Texas A&M Veterinary School hosted hundreds of veterinary students from schools all over the country to attend their annual wet lab. They had about twenty labs for students to choose four to participate in. When I arrived to the veterinary school with two other Illinois students and one student from Missouri, we saw the beautiful veterinary school that Texas A&M has. We were told that it is a relatively new building, and it was fantastic – fireplaces in an indoor study room, outdoor study spaces, relaxing courtyard, and the list goes on.

The first lab that I participated in was on alternative medicine. We learned about acupuncture and even got to practice placing acupuncture needles! However, first we had the opportunity to place an acupuncture needle in our own arms (so that we had a better idea how it feels for the horse) in a point that was supposed to be relaxing. I wasn’t able to push the needle in as far as it was supposed to go for my arm (it was weird placing a needle into my own skin), but I did better than I had anticipated I would be able to do! Placing needles in the horse were so much easier, and I definitely think that he became more relaxed during our session, because he dropped his head lower and lower. Alternative medicine has been growing in popularity and I am interested in pursuing some of these techniques following my graduation from veterinary school.

My second lab was all about hind-limb lameness. There was an equine veterinarian from Texas that enjoys lameness that was there to teach us about different ways to look for hindlimb lameness – what sorts of things he looks at when he is looking for lameness in the hind end – stuff like hip hike and drop, and also the fetlock drop. He also talked about various hind limb flexions that we can perform in order to help focus the lameness to various aspects of the limb. The best part was that we were able to watch two lame horses jog (trot) so that we could figure out which limb was lame and also practice our flexions.

My third lab of the day was an ophthalmology lab. Here we learned how to perform an auriculopalpebral block in order to desensitize a branch of the facial nerve. This is a good block for doing eye exams on horses where you will be touching the eye because it blocks their blinking so that you can examine their eye easier. One of our ophthalmologists at school said, “I don’t care what anyone says, the eyelids are the strongest muscles in the body – if they don’t want you to look in their eye, you won’t be able to.” Next, we got to use an ophthalmoscope to find the optic disc and look for any sorts of abnormalities present in their eyes. After this, we got to place a sub-palpebral lavage in a cadaver. This can be performed in horses that are receiving frequent medications, won’t let their owners administer medicine into the eye directly, are head shy etc. This is a procedure that veterinarians can perform so that medicine administration can be done not directly next to the face and also not holding the horses face, because it contains a very small, flexible tube that runs from the horses eye, through the mane, to the withers and can be loaded with medication that can be given over the course of days.

My last lab was on field anesthesia, where we learned about how to anesthetize and recover a horse safely in the field. This can be done to perform a castration. All in all, I really enjoyed the wet labs that I participated in at Texas because I enjoyed the hands-on ability that all of the labs had and the huge variety of labs that we could choose from.