Dr. Nicola Pusterla, professor of equine medicine and dentistry, was awarded the 2025 Advancement in Equine Research Award presented by Boehringer Ingelheim, a biopharmaceutical company active in both human and animal health. The award was given during the 71st annual American Association of Equine Practitioners Convention held last week in Denver. Recipients of the award are chosen based on their research proposals which focused on this year’s subject matter of equine infectious disease.
Two years ago, Brandon and Lisa Bacon were looking to purchase a horse for their 12-year-old son Jackson. Through their contacts as the owners of a horse supply company in Northern California, they discovered Ricky, a then 13-year-old American Quarter Horse gelding.
“Jackson has big ‘Gold Buckle’ dreams,” Lisa said. “We’re so proud of how hard he works at this, and we were thrilled to find Ricky, who was already an experienced roping horse.”
An extremely specialized equine surgery performed by only about a dozen veterinarians nationwide is now available at UC Davis. Thanks to the addition of Dr. Carter Judy to the faculty, as well as a dedicated large bore equine CT scanner, the UC Davis William R. Pritchard Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital (VMTH) now offers foraminotomy surgery for horses with cervical foraminal stenosis—a narrowing of an intervertebral opening where the limb nerve root exits the spinal column.
Along with the usual seasonal suspects of summer sores and pigeon fever, summer and fall are also prime time for increases in disease caused by West Nile virus.
UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine Professor Sue Stover delivered the Milne Lecture at 68th Annual American Association of Equine Practitioners (AAEP) Convention in San Antonio.
When Bella, a 7-year-old Thoroughbred maiden mare, went into labor last month, her owners Tom and Nicole Bachman were excited and sprang into action. But they soon realized something was terribly wrong.
One year ago, on December 12, 2019, Santa Anita Park installed the world’s first MILE-PET device, a positron emission tomography (PET) scanner specifically designed to image standing racehorses. This installation, one of several measures to reduce breakdowns at the racetrack, received a lot of attention at a time when Santa Anita was just coming out of a challenging racing season, with a cluster of horse fatalities early in the year.
Georgia, an 18-year-old warmblood mare, was brought to the UC Davis veterinary hospital after a recent change of ownership. The previous owners disclosed she had been treated medically for chronic endometritis (inflammation of the uterine lining) over the past several years without resolution of the condition.
Researchers at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine have identified a genetic cause for the fatal condition equine familial isolated hypoparathyroidism in Thoroughbreds, marking the first genetic variant for hypoparathyroidism identified in any domestic animal species. Additionally, this is the first widely available genetic test for Thoroughbreds.
Dr. Mathieu Spriet, an associate professor in the Department of Surgical and Radiological Sciences, recently passed boarding examinations to become a founding member of the American College of Veterinary Radiology’s (ACVR) new subspecialty of Equine Diagnostic Imaging.
