Faced with such great numbers, managing horse health and welfare during competitions becomes a monumental task. This massive responsibility falls largely on the shoulders of FEI Official Veterinarians, who work on the ground at international competitions to ensure that our equine athletes are fit to compete.
To find out what goes into the job, Equestrian Canada (EC) spoke with three Canadians who hold the designation of FEI Official Veterinarian for multiple disciplines: Dr. Alan Manning of Erin, ON; Dr. Bernd Stanglmeier of Utopia, ON; and Dr. Yves Rossier of Saint-Hyacinthe, QC, who has also acted as National Head Veterinarian for Canada since 2009.
Equestrian Canada spoke with three Canadian FEI Official Veterinarians to find out what goes into the monumental task of ensuring horses are fit to compete at the highest level of sport
Clockwise from left: Dr. Yves Rossier, Dr. Alan Manning and Dr. Bernd Stanglmeier
Photo Credit: Cealy Tetley, Betty Cooper, ©EC
Keep reading to find out more!
EC: What is your professional background?
AM: I showed jumpers right up until I went to vet school. I graduated in 1990 from the Ontario Veterinary College and worked in a practice that did a fair bit of breeding work, lameness show horse work, as well as racehorses. About five years from there, I started my own practice and have been doing that for almost 28 years now, mainly focusing on lameness issues in sport and show horses. I have two associates, and we also breed our own horses that we train, compete with and sell, so there are a few different facets to the facility.
BS: I am from Germany and used to show horses. You come to an age where you have to decide what you want to do, so at one point I decided if I can join my hobby with my profession, it would be ideal. I became a veterinarian in Germany and then, in 1985, I came to Canada. I did an internship at the University of Guelph, did my national boards exams for North America, and then started at some local clinics. I started my own practice in 1990. I got involved first with driving horses, and then I started to work with jumping, dressage, and eventing, and just continued from there.
YR: I am a professor at the University of Montreal vet school. My specialty is sports-related problems; lameness, pre-purchase exams, bad performance, and lately all the imaging techniques like MRIs and new modalities that relate to sport problems. I’ve been an FEI vet since 1993 or so, and I’ve been doing this at many, many events, starting in Bromont in the early days and then up to the FEI World Equestrian Games in 2014 and 2018. I have an equestrian background myself and still love it.
EC: What are the responsibilities of an FEI Official Veterinarian during a competition?
YR: The underlying concern we have is to make sure our environment is biosecure. At every FEI event, each horse has a physical exam when they arrive onsite to make sure they don’t have a fever or present a risk to the other horses. We try to have the best environment possible in terms of stabling and water – I think most organizers understand that, but you have to make sure it’s maintained and organized.
Assessing the horses’ soundness and health status to make sure they’re fit to do the competition is probably the second-biggest concern after biosecurity. Each discipline has different requirements and risks, and you try to mitigate them the best you can. Some disciplines are more about the (fitness) to perform to the highest level. In driving, endurance, or eventing, you add the stamina, the conditioning, and fatigue into it, and those become part of the competition. I think we’ve made great progress into understanding what horses need to stay in this “fitness to compete” level.
Obviously anti-doping control is really important, not just in terms of hiding injuries but also in terms of making sure that we don’t have people trying to change the horse’s performance other than by normal means and training. That will always be present.
BS: Everything is for the health and welfare of the horse. We do a pre-inspection where we look at the horse and look for injuries. Sometimes you have to do corrections on their passports – if they’re major corrections then you have to send them to the national federation. Then we watch the horse in the jog and make sure they’re sound. During the competition, our main thing is to look for injuries. We work together with the ground jury and the stewards to make our rounds in the barn, go through and ask people if everything is okay and look at their horses again, just to maintain the health and welfare of the horses. We do this throughout the whole competition and hopefully it ends without any accidents for rider or horse. Then we have a great show, that’s our main objective.
EC: Who is involved in the veterinary proceedings?
BS: For a big show, you have the President of the Veterinary Commission, the Foreign Veterinarian, and then an FEI Associate Veterinarian, so the whole commission is three veterinarians.
AM: We also have the team veterinarians, and if any issues come up, then the treating veterinarian will be involved, as well. We have to liaise with them quite regularly throughout the day and even in the evening if issues pop up. We have radios between us all, and meet in the morning to see if there’s anything new. When the jogs are taking place, we’re all there to help out. Usually two of us swap off to do one horse or another because when you’re doing 150 horses it gets mentally exhausting. Then, a third veterinarian does the hold box, so if there is an issue we have someone to perform the hold and give us some information. And it’s not just the veterinarians – the ground jury is there, as well, because they have a say as well in whether these horses are fit to compete. It works quite well considering there’s a lot on the go at once.
EC: What are the veterinarians looking for during the jog?
AM: We’re looking for healthy-looking horses to start with. We do a quick cursory examination without touching the horse to see if there are any lumps, bumps or swelling present before the horse competes, and they’re noted down so if something happens, we have a note if it was there previously or not. We then watch the horses jog on a fairly short track. It’s a fairly quick examination of the horse – it’s not a pre-purchase exam, it’s just a quick jog to see if the horse is level in his tracking. Every horse moves differently than the horse before or after it, it’s just to make sure there are no signs of any unsoundness that could affect the horse’s ability to compete.
At the jog when we tell you to turn right, everybody wonders why. And that’s so we can see the horse and not the person leading it!
EC: What are the traits a veterinarian needs to be successful in this role?
BS: The main thing is your personality. Be alert, talk to people, explain to them and be available to them, which is sometimes very hard. People know immediately if you’re a horse person. If you have a touch with horses and can work with them, it’s the greatest thing that can happen if you want to be an equine vet. It’s very hard to be an equine vet if you don’t have it, that special feeling I can’t explain, but everybody who’s a horse person knows – you either have it or you don’t.
AM: Just being involved in the industry. People involved in the horse show industry realize what an FEI competition is, how it’s regulated, and the veterinarians who are involved in that. It takes time; you have to spend time with different veterinarians at horse shows, you have to follow them and then take a course and write an exam at the end of it to become certified. That has to be renewed every four or five years.
YR: When we do the FEI work, it’s to make sure a horse’s welfare is maintained during competition. You try to do it in a really fair way that’s respectful of the horses and people. You have to understand the competition and what is asked of the horses and riders, so I think having a horse background really helps relate to what both the horse and rider are really going through.
EC: What are some of the challenges of equine veterinary medicine?
BS: Thoroughbred racers have different problems than Standardbred racers, and then the draft horses have different problems. So it’s very interesting, and every day you learn more. There’s no day where you don’t learn something.
YR: A new thing is that horses travel so much now and there are so many competitions. The jumpers can compete every week all over the world, and that means traveling, competing all the time, never being at home, etc., so those are the new challenges we face in certain disciplines.
AM: It does take up a fair bit of your time. If you have very good employees and a wife that’s quite forgiving at times, it makes life a lot better. It’s hard because all the FEI commitments are on the weekends. It’s better now that things have changed in the FEI regulations: you can only do two horse shows in a row and then you have to take time off, so it helps get some younger or different people into the area.
EC: What do you love about being an FEI veterinarian?
BS: I love to see horses. I love to see horses being born that then go on to compete. I still ride with my wife every day, that’s the main part – horses keep me active.
YR: You love seeing all the people, the horses and the sport; that’s what the horses like to do, to exercise and do things. It’s great to see them achieve what they’re meant to do in a safe and healthy way.
EC: (In 2018, Dr. Rossier was elected to serve a four-year term on the FEI Veterinary Committee). What is the importance of being involved with FEI committees?
YR: The FEI Veterinary Committee is a six-member committee that has a face-to-face meeting twice a year for three days or so, where you review all the rule changes, problems and issues that have arisen and how you can prevent or help them. There is so much because you’re dealing with seven disciplines and they all have a different set of issues. I’m also on the FEI Veterinary Education Committee, and was on there between 2010 and 2014. Now we have testing technicians, testing vets and physiotherapists, so all these groups have to interact and understand each other and get better trained. Education is so important in the portfolio.
I think it’s extremely important to be on those committees because this is where the global problems are discussed. In equestrian sport in Hong Kong versus Norway versus the southern United States, you have the same concept but different problems because of weather, social and cultural environment, etc. It’s fascinating to understand and cope with that, but you better understand what the FEI does and why the rules are different. It is amazing to see one set of rules that has to apply to every discipline and every place in the world.
For more information on the role of FEI Official Veterinarians, visit https://inside.fei.org/fei/your-role/veterinarians.