Leah Guitard practices a specific kind of sports medicine: she's a doctor
devoted to high-performance athletes. But all her patients have one thing
in common: they're horses. Guitard is better known as an equine veterinarian.
Guitard remembers driving for an hour to pay a "farm call" on a sick horse.
She says during the time she was the vet for the outlying farms, she had plenty
of late-night calls. "It would take me forever to drive to the farm," she
says, "and then the actual medical visit was only 20 minutes. Then I'd have
to drive home. I must have put 100,000 kilometers on my car that year."
Nowadays, Guitard has only to drive across the road to a racetrack. She's
the vet for the race horses, as she specializes in sports medicine. "I'm at
the track at 5:45 a.m. and finish my rounds about 2 p.m. I've got about 100
clients. Then I'm on call during the races, which mostly take place during
the day, sometimes at night. But I don't get many late-night calls," she says
with a laugh.
She says her practice is somewhat different than most equine vets. Because
she deals with athlete horses, she does a lot more "needle pushing. The horses
are worth so much money," she explains, "and there's so much money at stake,
and the owners put out a lot of money to keep their horses healthy, that it's
a different kind of medicine."
She says there's not as much pressure on her as you'd think. "I only deal
with the trainers, not the owners," she explains.
"Working with horses, for me, is like being at home," she says. Guitard
grew up with horses: her dad was a trainer and she worked with him after school.
And the smell? "Kennels are worse than barns, in my opinion," she says. "At
least barns are mucked out and kept clean all the time.
"It's a hard practice to get into," she warns. "It's quite a niche, working
at a racetrack. You have to know the lingo and outsiders are frowned upon."
James Hamilton is an equine vet in North Carolina. He and his partners
own a clinic where they work "much like a doctor. We do preventive care, like
vaccines, as well as diagnosis and treatment. Our clinic has surgical suites,
too," he says. "But if it's serious, like colic, which is a gastrointestinal
upset, we'll send the horse to the university vet school. Colic surgery is
very labor-intensive."
Hamilton's clinic has 10 stalls for healthy and sick horses, an examination
area, an operating room and a heavily padded recovery stall. "When a horse
is induced and then recovers from anesthetic, it can go a little nuts," he
says.
As an equine vet, Hamilton's operating room is larger than what you'll
find in a regular hospital. "The tables are obviously bigger," he explains,
"and the instruments are much larger. A horse can weigh between 900 and 1,500
pounds. We've got equipment to haul and manipulate the horse on to the table
as well."
Hamilton is considered the "resident vet" for his parts. There are a lot
of people with horses in that region. Most are kept for such purposes as fox
hunting, showing and jumping.
"There's an advantage to having partners," says Hamilton. "With several
vets, we share emergency calls, so I'm not always racing out at night. Our
busy reproductive work is from mid-January through May when the mares are
foaling. Also, people bring their racehorses down here between
January and May. They'll come from New England, Chicago and the Midwest. These
are very committed horse owners. They'll spend six months of the year here
with their horses."
Hamilton notes how difficult it is to get into vet school now that there
are so few schools in North America. He thinks the single most important thing
is to spend time before school exposing yourself to the profession.
"Be a volunteer," he suggests, "because a lot of people become vets and
then leave it. It's a very demanding job. The reward is not always commensurate
with the effort. Rather than go through all the time and money, try it out
thoroughly. Make an aggressive effort -- don't just clean stables."
The hardest part for Hamilton is dealing with the owners. "People are strange,"
he says. "You've got to keep clients happy, along with taking care of their
horses. You have to be a good communicator and have an excellent bedside manner,
even for a horse."
Guitard loves working outside and having such close contact with her patients.
"You really get to know them, the horses," she says. "You can have a lot of
fun with them. I remember all my dad's 'kids.' They all have such distinct
personalities."
She agrees with Hamilton, though. "Horses are easy," she says. "It's people
who are tough."