Taking it in Your Stride

skin around the sarcoid. A good first choice for sarcoids of this type, I try to seal the edges with Superglue after suturing to protect the wound and wall off flies. Laser excision with a CO2 laser is better than a scalpel, but the equipment is very expensive and very few vets have a laser. I would love to own one.

• Cryosurgery or freezing: A commonly used form of treatment but with poor success rates.

• Cytotoxic compounds such as Xterra and Cansema: These compounds produce extensive tissue necrosis (death of the cells) and scarring.

They’re a cheap and easy option, but messy. They’re sometimes successful, but because of the danger of the horse chewing the area and ingesting the compound, care should be taken in their use.

• Radiation: Offering the best overall results, this treatment is difficult to access. Targeted radiation requires very expensive equipment that is not, to my knowledge, available for horses in Australia. It is an option for dogs, who are anaesthetised and securely placed so they can be treated without the risk of them moving, and for humans who, of course, can be told not to move.

Radioactive gold implants work well and produce radiation continually over a period of time. I don’t know of any vet who’s licenced to access them, but some doctors use them to treat humans. Professor Dick Dickson of Sydney University was my go-to person before he died, and 30 years ago we had a lot of success. However, there is danger to the operator who must be a licenced radiology specialist, and also to the owner who must not get within a meter of the treated region for four to six weeks.

• Cisplatin: Biodegradable beads containing cisplatin and a stable emulsion of cisplatin in sesame oil have given some very good results, but treatment requires repeated injection into the lesion. Cisplatin, a chemotherapy medication used to treat a number of cancers, is expensive as well as being a significant hazard and dangerous to humans.

• Turmeric: This treatment involves feeding turmeric powder as well as applying a mix of curcumin and tetrahydrocurcumin (the active ingredients in turmeric) dissolved in dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) to the affected area - or a more crude option is just to use turmeric powder. This approach has had reasonable success. It’s a process I’ve experimented with, and ongoing results are available in the Facebook group https://www. facebook.com/groups/sarcoids. Feeding turmeric powder in a quantity of one teaspoon up to a half cup along with a small amount of linseed meal is best. Start small and consider adding pepper, which slows the otherwise rapid excretion of the beneficial curcuminoids.

• Acyclovir: A weak effect but there have been some good results along with feeding turmeric. Acyclovir in a gel of a five per cent or higher concentration needs daily application over many months.

With the sarcoid removed, Doug sutures the wound (All images courtesy of Sarah Gibson).

reportedly produced good results with tissue taken from the sarcoid frozen in liquid nitrogen and implanted into subcutaneous pockets in the neck. There are some trials with chimeric vaccines involving BPVs which are promising but not yet on the market. These are produced by substituting genes from the target pathogen for similar genes in a safe, but closely related organism.

• EBC46: Now called Stelfonta and developed by the Australian company

Ecobiotics, this is an excellent new product. I have used it and it works well. Now approved for use in the

US and the European Union, it will hopefully soon be available in Australia. Stelfonta produces an immune response, enabling the body to eradicate the tumour. It’s injected into the lesion by a veterinarian (if the lesion is large much of the volume may need to be surgically removed before treatment), and further treatments might be necessary. In my experience, because curcumin also stimulates the immune system to attack viruses, Stelfonta worked better when turmeric is fed at the same time. There is a synergy between the two. For more information on Stelfonta visit https://qbiotics.com/.

• BCG vaccine: This is injected repeatedly into the lesion with varying but not great success.

One aspect to consider is that there are reports of unpredictable anaphylactic (allergic) reactions which may be fatal. Also some lesions, particularly on the legs, can become worse after treatment with BCG.

• Homeopathic: There have been varying small successes with the use of Vegemite, toothpaste, aloe vera, rosemary oil, tea tree oil, and Camrosa ointment (caution is required with this option as it can be dangerous). However, these options frequently worsen the problem, which is probably a factor of interference rather than direct effect. Occasionally but not that often, sarcoids spontaneously disappear and then whatever treatment is being used at that time will get all the credit.

And on a final note, from my near 50 year experience with sarcoids, and their various treatments and outcomes, it’s become clear that turmeric can play a significant role in the success of any treatment option. Feeding horses turmeric daily is not only helpful in the prevention of sarcoids, it’s also a great way to boost their immune systems.

While most are slow growing, all types have a high propensity for recurrence and often interference or injury can make them change to a more aggressive type ...

For more information on the uses of turmeric, visit www.turmericlife.com.au.

Plan your strategy, count your strides (Image by Markus Spiske). RIGHT: Early or late take-offs can generally be avoided if you know the length of your horse’s stride (Image by Melanie Hartshorn).

FEATURE

Taking it in your stride

You’re about to start your show jumping round – but how well prepared are you? JEANNE O’MALLEY shares strategies learned from renowned equestrian coach Trevor Morris that will help you to take it all in your stride.

Of all the people walking the average show jumping course at the average horse show, it’s very possible that only a few of them actually know what they’re doing. For the rest of us, walking the course is just an opportunity to stretch our legs, and to make sure we know where the jumps are, and in what order we should take them. No doubt there’ll be some competitors taking giant leaping strides between combinations and muttering to themselves, but these gymnastics rarely affect their results!

At the Olympics and other top grade competitions, riders are given half an hour to walk the show jumping course, and those riders use every minute of it very wisely. But what do they use it for? Planning their strategy, counting their strides

If show jumping is 60 per cent confidence, that confidence comes from knowing what we’re doing, having a plan, and knowing how we’re going to put it into operation. Fear, nerves and loss of balance come from uncertainty and ignorance.

Which brings us to striding. Even when trotting and cantering through baby grids, you’ll have noticed whether your horse’s stride and the jumps have worked together harmoniously or not. If everything’s going to plan, riding down a line of jumps – one right after the other – can feel like bouncing along like a well-dribbled basketball. Alternatively, get the stride wrong and it’s more like a terrifying smash and grab in which you have no idea when the next jump is coming up in relation to your horse’s stride, and even less idea of what to do about it.

Determining your horse’s stride

But there’s a simple remedy: learn to determine your horse’s stride. In spite of the assertion that an average horse’s stride is 3.66 metres, this measurement can differ from horse to horse. Course designers deal in increments of 3.66m or fractions thereof, but different horses might work in strides of 3.35 metres, 3.05 metres, or even less.

An easy way to identify your horse’s stride involves three observers. It’s a good riding school or Pony Club activity when there are plenty of people around, all just longing to be put to work.

First set up two easy crossbars 21.95 metres apart on a straight line. Now put the horse on a comfortable 20 metre circle, with a jumping rhythm canter and satisfactory impulsion. When you’re both established in the rhythm (and this may take several laps) swing onto the straight line and take the jumps.

Each observer, armed with a cone or similar marker, watches as the horse canters by their position on the straight line, and marks the inside hind footprint. Now measure the distance from the first marker to the second, and from the second to the third.

Repeat this exercise several times, and from both directions. The measurements you take will determine the average length of your horse’s stride (keeping in mind that the figure represents the length of their stride at

The importance of stride is vital to successfully negotiating a two or three fence combination (Image by Mitch Hodge).

this particular stage in their training).

The length of a horse’s stride is not carved in stone, it can change with maturity and training. A young horse often has a long stride of perhaps 3.5 metres, while an older horse may move with a shorter stride of 3.2 metres. If you discover that your horse has a lot of variation in the length of their stride, they need more training on the flat to develop their balance. The same applies if there’s a lack of rhythm and impulsion, a lunging forward or a holding back - it’s back to balance enhancing basics. Developing an eye

Assessing and determining stride can be a laborious process. However, some lucky people have a natural aptitude, or in this case ‘eye’, and can ‘see’ stride, with very little preparation or practice. But most of us average people have to develop or learn eye through application and technique. While this may take a long time for some riders, most will learn and become proficient in a matter of months.

If a rider is slow in learning to see stride, that doesn’t necessarily mean that their eye or adjustment of stride will be significantly less accurate than someone who has picked it up quickly. Although anyone who has learned stride is unlikely to have the degree of accuracy of someone with a natural eye. But that doesn’t mean they’ll be an inferior show jumper. Usually it means that the taught rider will compensate by either having or developing strengths in other aspects of the sport.

One of those aspects is attention to detail. Because taught riders can never take eye for granted, we pay a lot of attention to detail when measuring and walking a course. We measure the stride between the elements of a combination jump, and we learn to walk a course not in multiples of meters, but in multiples of our particular horse’s stride.

If you discover that your horse has a lot of variation in the length of their stride, they need more training on the flat to develop their balance.

Here’s how we do it

While you’re at home in the comfort of your own paddock, here’s what to do: if you know your horse’s stride is 3.35 metres, measure 3.35 metres out on the ground. Now see how many of your strides fit into one of these 3.35 metre lengths. Practice until you can repeatedly stride out one of your horse’s strides accurately. Of course, you may have to make your strides a little longer or shorter than your usual walking pace in order to fit into your horse’s stride length. Try not to deal in half strides because what we want to be thinking is ‘three of mine to one of theirs’ or ‘four of mine to one of theirs’. It just makes it easier.

So, next time we’re walking a jumping course, we stride out our horse’s stride between jumps and count them on our fingers – and remember, we are thinking in terms of strides, not in meters. Start at the first jump and on the landing side, step out 1.83 metres from the upright. That’s where your horse will land. Now begin pacing

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