The Healing Agent- By Kartikeya Ramanathan (Indian Express)
Posted on - 27 Jul 2010
The Healing Agent- By Kartikeya Ramanathan
As the horses gallop towards the end of the race course, each desperate to reach the finishing line no more than a quarter-mile away , one of the horses trips and goes down, taking its jockey with it, as the other horses race past. When this happens, a small white van which has been following the horses, almost unnoticed, screeches to a halt, and a doctor jumps out. The felled jockey walks away, fortunately uninjured, but it isn’t the man that the doctor is worried about.
“Horse-racing has an equal number of perils for the horse as well as for the jockey riding it,” says Dr. S K Kulkarni, the senior veterinary officer, RWITC Ltd. “An accident can take place any time, and we have to be prepared for any eventuality.”
The horse ambulance, ever-present at the race track, is the vehicle that transports injured horses to the equine hospital. Thus, as one could expect, this vehicles is large, big enough to comfortably house a horse. Usually, the vet quickly attends to the horse, and if he feels that it requires more than just simple first-aid, then he signals for the horse ambulance, which drives on to the tracks. However, if uninjured, then the horse is walked back towards the enclosure.
Dr. Kulkarni has seven other vets who work under him, and they all work in shifts, taking turns to ride in the van, to assess the horse on the track, “We are, of course, also always on call to help any of our equine patients,” says Dr. Kulkarni.
But how do they lift a horse that weighs between 380 and 550 kilograms into the ambulance? “When a human is injured, then stretchers are used to take him or her to an ambulance. But, as one can easily understand, it is next to impossible to stretcher a horse to an ambulance. So, we do the opposite: we take the ambulance to the horse,” chuckles Dr. Kulkarni. “Our first job is to attend to the horse. We have to assess the situation at the scene. If we feel it necessary, we call for the horse ambulance using walkie-talkies with which we are equipped. Inside the ambulance is a sort of platform which is then lowered to be level with the ground. After that, using levers and pulleys the horse is brought inside the vehicle and then sped away to the Royal Western India Turf Club (RWITC) equine hospital,” he adds.
However, there are times when the horse gets injured so badly that it needs to be put down to put it out of its misery, as an act of mercy. “In such situations, the decision to put down the horse lies solely with me, as the senior vet,” says Dr. Kulkarni, adding, “however, such a situation rarely occurs, and even then, unless the horse is mortally injured and in great pain, the horse is almost never put down on the track itself. Instead, it is taken to the equine hospital, where its situation is re-assessed.”
Due to the speed at which a horse runs on the tracks, the proximity of its neighbor, and the very weight of the animal, a horse can very easily sustain injuries. “The most common injury that a horse sustains is a fracture, usually compound in nature. Another common problem experienced is a cardiac arrest, which is usually due to over-exertion. The horse is a big, strong, athletic animal, and cannot recognize the signs of its own fatigue,” says Dr. Kulkarni. “Due to the city’s weather in general, such an incident does not occur in Pune, but in cities like Mumbai and Delhi, a third very common problem faced by horses is heatstroke, usually due to dehydration,” he concludes.
