Horse sense

A proposal for a new U Equine Center would concentrate horse experts in one state-of-the-art facility

Tracy Turner, professor of large animal surgery, examines a horse for signs of injury.

Photo by Michelle Mero Riedel

by Joel Hoekstra

From M, spring 2003

There was no blood or scar or visible injury, but after one of her horses spooked and bolted into a fence last fall, Jill Beim grew worried. Sweetie, a 22-year-old quarterhorse gelding, moved gingerly, as if in pain. Despite therapy, the condition seemed to worsen. Beim, of Becker, Minnesota, and her husband briefly considered having the horse put down. Finally, in January, a veterinarian suggested Sweetie be examined by equine specialists at the University of Minnesota.

An ultrasound and radiographs revealed a torn tendon in Sweetie's right shoulder. Tracy Turner, a professor of large animal surgery, recommended a standard operation, but during the procedure he found that the tendon was more severely damaged than he expected. Acting on a hunch, he decided to use a corrective technique successfully performed on three horses outside of Minnesota, but one that he himself had never done: he snipped the tendon from the bone.

The rare operation took stress off the ravaged muscle, shifting it to the shoulder's other tendons, and in time, scar tissue is expected to reconnect the snipped sinew. Almost immediately, Sweetie showed improvement. "By the time he called me the day after the surgery, Sweetie had already gotten up and was moving better than before the surgery," Beim says, adding that the animal continues to make steady progress toward full recovery.

The University of Minnesota is home to more than a dozen equine experts like Turner--specialists who serve a growing community of horse owners and breeders in Minnesota. "The state's horse industry is huge," says Trevor Ames, director of the College of Veterinary Medicine's Large Animal Hospital. "Minnesota's horse population ranks among the 10 largest in the nation." And Hennepin County has the second-largest per capita horse population in the country.

Many horse owners, like Beim, depend on the University for services and support. The U's extension programs and its satellite campus programs help 4-Hers learn horsemanship and undergraduates learn stable management. But equine research and technical expertise are most heavily concentrated at the Large Animal Hospital on the U's campus in St. Paul, the only place in the state where specialists in cardiology, ophthalmology, radiology, anesthesiology, pathology, and reproduction can be found together in a single facility. Each year, more than 3,000 horses are treated there.

While roughly 40 percent of the Large Animal Hospital is devoted to equine medicine and research, it was originally built in 1951 to serve dairy cows. The quarters are now outdated and cramped. On a recent winter afternoon, a young girl walked her saddlebred through the halls of the building as lameness experts checked its gait. The animal's head came within inches of overhanging ducts and pipes.

Ames and others have their eye on a remedy: a new 50,000-square-foot building devoted to horses. The University of Minnesota Equine Center, to be built on an empty parcel of the campus, would serve as a national and regional hub for equine education, veterinary services, research, and outreach programs. The College of Veterinary Medicine is seeking $6 million in private contributions for the project, and since the campaign was launched two years ago, nearly $1.3 million in gifts have been received.

Initial blueprints for the facility include an operating room and labs, 44 stalls (up from 30 in the current facility), a lunge area, an indoor arena, and specially designed loading and exercise areas. The facility will also house the U's clinical programs in lameness and reproduction. Eventually, Ames hopes, it will be the launching pad for a Twin Cities undergraduate "equine program," bringing together students who are currently split between programs in the Department of Animal Science and the College of Veterinary Medicine.

A similar facility has already been built at Michigan State University, and schools in Texas, Colorado, and Kansas are considering similar investments. "But our facility would be somewhat different in that it would bring together animal science and veterinary medicine," Ames says. Adds Turner, "We're already better than most in our ability to provide state-of-the-art medical care for horses, but we're not as good as we'd like to be. Bringing all our experts together under one roof would be a step in the right direction."