What's Hiding in Your Horse's Saliva? - Dr. Kimberley Mackenzie

So if you wouldn’t mind getting us started by telling us who you are and what it is you do. Right. So I’m Doctor Kimberly McKenzie and I am a molecular biologist by training and an equestrian as a hobby. So my original degree was in microbiology and then I went into antibody engineering, so making antibodies to use in testing for various different things and then moved into Cancer Research for a number of years. And that’s kind of where I’ve been for about probably about 15 years now.

But I got my first horse about five years ago. So look, long term horse lover, but didn’t get one until I was much later. But, and yeah, it was where I am now is I started a company called for Martin Bio. So we’re based in Aberdeen in Scotland. And what we’re doing is effectively solving my own problems.

So one day, because I’m a scientist, I’d, you know, things coming up, you know, particularly around preventative health for horses. And, you know, I realized that there was all sorts of gaps in my knowledge of what really is going on with my horse. You know, is there a better way to understand how he’s feeling? And yeah, I just realized that I had tools available to me to to be able to do that. So that’s where the the company started.

So that’s that’s where we are at the moment. And would you mind telling us a little bit about some of the projects, sort of the main project that I reached out about was this saliva testing. Would you mind touching on that? And then maybe some other things that you guys are are doing. Sure.

So, yeah, really a lot of this came out of the fact that I was working in cancer for humans particularly, but, and I study a particular facet of it, which is these sugar molecules called glycans. They are on the surface of all cells and they’re poorly understood in a lot of ways. But so they for the longest time, because they are very small, for a long time they were considered just sort of fluff that kind of got in the way. But now we’ve got an appreciation of the fact that they they actually are involved in so many of the cellular processes. And that’s in normal cells.

But we know that in cancer they are they change and they are a really key part of helping cancer cells to move around the body to attach the cells that places that they shouldn’t. And it’s part of their cloaking mechanism, particularly for the immune system, so that they they can sort of almost give the correct molecular handshake so that so that they can get to places that, you know, ordinarily they wouldn’t get to by masquerading as other kinds of cells. And it was while I was sort of working on this and I came across some research that was being done into how the glycans that are on antibodies actually are really powerful indicators of the health of the immune system. A lot of this seems to come from the fact that the the glycans on the antibodies actually affect the shape of the antibody. And so if you have a nice healthy set of glycans, they put your antibody into particular confirmation.

And that means that they are really effective interacting with the other parts of the immune system that you need to mount your defence should you have a pathogen, for example. The problem being is that if you are not so healthy, these glycans can become truncated. And depending on how truncated these glycans are, how shortened they are, it really affects the shape of the antibody. And if the antibody’s out of shape, it doesn’t fit with the arrested immune system that isn’t meant to interact with. So that is part of the way that your immune system is depleted, which then allows for more infections for various inflammation driven diseases to to get a whole.

And this research had been done in humans and they were. So they do this from blood samples and they were finding that this was a really powerful indicator of just how healthy patients were. And it was a really good indicator for things like type 2 diabetes. So in particular, that’s, that’s an area they’ve done quite a lot of research and particularly with type 2 diabetes, they were finding that it, it correlated or with the levels of, you know, the insulin and you know, to, and insulin resistance. And they could use that as a, as an indicator of use.

And it actually was almost predicted. So they could actually see something like 7 years out that somebody might have a problem. Wow, Wouldn’t it be picked up with traditional methods that we have now? But it would show up much earlier using these, these monitoring these glycans, in particular the, the, the truncation of those glycans. And let’s think to this, I was thinking, hang on a minute, this would be really powerful for conditions like ENS and horses, you know, these and these laminitic ponies, sort of could we be actually predicting that risk way earlier?

And so this this was really exciting. And then sort of listening more about what they were doing things like that. I was thinking, you know, but what would be amazing is if we could do it from saliva, because if we could do it from saliva, then it’s non invasive and it put, it also puts it in the owner’s hands. So you could do far more tests in a year than you get than you could do if you were constantly blood sampling. So where we are at the project at the moment is we’re looking at the feasibility of using saliva.

So we’re, we’re testing blood, but we’re also testing saliva. We’re looking at how they match up and to see if we can, because in theory, you know, horses and humans are, are quite similar on the molecular level, luckily. So we have slight differences in our glycan, but they’re not massive. So we, we are pretty confident that this, we can do the blood samples. But it’s the, it’s the accessibility.

And also, you know, the fewer board draws you can do in a horse, the better. And particularly, you know, I, I have friends who’ve had horses with Cushing’s, for example, and you see them now, they see the vet coming and they go, I know he’s coming. I’m getting yet another blood sample. And it’s just a way of trying to remove that burden. And, you know, so that’s, that’s kind of kind of the, the sort of the welfare piece of the really this we can put it in an owners hands, then you can do it more regularly and you can do it without causing distress.

And you can make that as comfortable as you like for your horse. And, and, and you don’t have to, you know, sort of worry about the stress of a vet visit for repeated blood draws. Yeah, it’s so funny because it’s this podcast is coming at a very interesting time where I had a client who had two horses last year get diagnosed with Cushing’s through an ACTH blood test. One of those horses is still actively competing. And so in order for him to compete, we had to declare the pergolide for Yousef, and Yousef turned around and they said we don’t actually think this horse needs this drug.

Can you do this other test that’ll definitively show that this horse has Cushing’s? And they did, and it came back that the horse actually does not have Cushings and he’s been getting treated for a year with Cushings. Yeah. And where I didn’t even realize there was an actual Cushings test, I thought, OK, I could just draw blood and get the ACTH and whatever. So on that end, we had thought that was interesting, but also this idea of maybe not necessarily false positives, but like the stress of getting the blood drawn itself can skew the the results of the test, which I don’t even think a lot of people think about.

Because, you know, we go and get our blood drawn and maybe we don’t like it or we get woozy around needles or whatever, but I don’t think we internalize it as stressful. And then but the horses are like getting poked and prodded and they’ll, they can’t rationalize why this thing keeps biting them. Hey, every time the lady shows up, she bites me. And so I think being able to even if you still have the vet out to do it, having a different path that you could take to get some results like this is super interesting. So getting into the, what are some of the things you’re seeing testing the saliva against the blood?

Like how similar are they? Are there, what differences are there, that sort of thing. Yeah. So. What is the blood versus saliva?

It’s really we’re looking at particularly at a particular subset of antibodies. So the, the, the IgG is what we’re looking at and realistically blood versus saliva, it really is a is a quantity. So with blood you can get all the antibody you need in a matter of a few drops. With a saliva, you’re using a higher volume, there’s just not quite as much. So that’s really where we are at the moment is that, you know, we’re sort of working on the feasibility because obviously that varies between saliva samples.

So we try and minimize it by we withdraw food and water for half an hour before we take the saliva samples. And we also exclude exercise immediately before so that we can maximize the saliva that we’re getting. And at the moment we’re, we’re really playing around with volumes to, to see if we can get a volume that will give us everything we need for the testing. But you know, because we just need more of it. But luckily, I mean, horses produce what, 40 liters of saliva a day or something like that, huge quantities because they’re constantly eating, they’re constantly producing it.

So it’s in that respect, you know, there’s plenty to be harvested, but it’s just how much do we really need to do? So at the moment we’re using a swab that that will gather maybe about half of a millilitre somewhere around that. So when we’re using sort of multiples of those to see just how much do you need? And we may have to get a bigger swab, but that’s that’s sort of where we’re playing with it. The the other consideration with saliva is that obviously the mouth is quite a dirty place.

So there are all sorts of things that that might sort of eat up the glycans. So at the moment, again, it’s we’re looking at stability, you know, just how quickly do we have to maybe freeze needs or what preservation levels we’re having to do. So it’s slightly more complicated than a blood sample because blood should be clean. So when you take it out and, but obviously saliva is more accessible. So obviously there are there are, there are hurdles to overcome, but they’re worth overcoming, I feel in order to be able to do it in a, in a much more welfare friendly way.

And the so how, how can you? Because it makes sense to me when you draw blood, that inside of the blood there would be these things with these glycans on them because it’s kind of inside the body, so. How? Is it the same? I guess live as technically inside the body as well?

It just feels so different than blood. How does it like show the glycans in the saliva? So the glycans are attached to the antibodies and so you have antibodies basically everywhere, as you say, mainly in the bloodstream, but they they’re on all the bodily fluids and negatively that’s we talk about you, you people are quite comfortable with the fact that your skin is an external, but pretty much every part of your digestive tract is also an external surface. Although it is on the inside of your body, it is very much outward facing because you’re putting food in and you know, sort of that’s obviously a foreign object and it passes all the way through the body. So that’s the mucosal membranes and senses when your mouth, they’re producing antibodies because they’ve they’re really trying to target anything that might hurt you as quickly as you get it into your body.

So it starts in the mouth and it continues all the way down through the digestive tract. So that’s how we can do that. So as I say, lower levels in the in the mouth and in the saliva, but you know there are the same antibodies that circulate in the mouth and circulate in your bloodstream. Interesting. And when you say swab, what does the collection process look like to actually get the saliva from the horse?

So what we have is a little cotton swab that’s, that looks a lot like what the dentist packs into your mouth, you know, when they’re trying to keep your mouth dry similar to that, but it comes on a plastic stick. And effectively what you have to do is it’s quite simple. You just pop it into the space in between their teeth onto their tongue and you just allow them to just gum away. The challenge is always not to let them crunch on it. I think kind of can happen, but there and as far as it takes maybe 5 minutes until you’ve got it sort of the ones we’re using have an indicator color on the end.

So once it’s full, the indicator color goes across the top of the swab and you know that it’s it’s full. And then we pop it in a collection tube. And at the moment, as I say, we’re we’re we’re snap freezing those at the moment. But the plan is, is that ultimately you’ll be able to pop that in the post to us with your sample and then we can screen the horse. There’s the horses saliva at that point.

So yeah, so it’s quite a simple procedure. It’s actually very similar to ones that certainly in the UK we have a saliva tapeworm test. So it’s a very similar collection process to that. So it’s something that certainly in the UK we, we have already in use for another purpose. So it’s quite simple, but it’s very similar to the procedures that are used in other studies as well.

It’s just that my, my swabs are on a stick to make it easier to get in. But yeah, so that’s it. It’s, it’s quite a simple procedure. And as I say, it’s 1/2 an hour that you’d need to withdraw food and water. And that’s purely just to make sure that you don’t contaminate or diet too much with food or with the water.

And so you’re getting as much of the saliva antibodies as you can. And yeah, they tolerate it really well. I mean, as I say, it’s already in a commercial use this kind of collection here. And I’ve used the tapeworm test for years with my horse and most of the horses tolerate it quite well. I mean, they’re a bit confused initially as to what on earth you’re up to, but they get over it pretty quickly.

It is interesting. I being in the States, I don’t know that we have any saliva testing. I actually don’t even know if we test for tapeworms in the States. And so that’s interesting because I didn’t realize that there was already sort of a proven a little bit different, but still a vessel of taking saliva and testing for a thing. So one of the things that I’m thinking is you had mentioned that when these glycans are unhealthy, they kind of change the shape of the antibody that they’re attached to.

Does that look different her disease or per the type of inflammation? Like does a cancer antibody look different than like a metabolic or whatever antibody or do they all you just know the shape is not right. It’s. Yeah, that’s a good question, because that’s something we’re still working on in humans. So I mean, this stuff’s still quite cutting edge in humans as well.

Yeah, the, the, the, as I said, the current thinking is, is that the, the size and of your, your glycans is what dictates the kind of confirmation of the antibody underneath, as it were. And that at the moment we don’t, we’re not sure that we’ll be able to distinguish between different diseases purely from that, but it will show that there is obviously something amiss elsewhere. And it is worth looking into further. As I say, they in humans, they’ve done some really good studies involving type 2 diabetes, but they’ve also looked at cardiovascular risk. They’ve also looked at actually they do, they’ve done a really nice study on aging and you can actually see how your glycans age.

So you start off so you’re you’re kind of young, fit 20 year old has pretty much full complements of, you know, full size glycans. And interestingly, there, there are sex differences in it as well in humans. So they found that men their their glycans go sort of truncate in a sort of pretty steady state down. So by by the time you get to sort of sort of 70s, eighties, you know, they’re quite truncated, but they’re quite straight line. But in women it’s quite different.

So we actually, we maintain ours a lot longer. And so when men are dipping away, we kind of stay steady until we hit menopause. And then in the menopause it suddenly goes off a cliff’s edge. I think suddenly, you know, from having nice healthy young ones to sort of a lot older. So it’s, it’s interesting how sex hormones obviously do play a role in this and that’s something that we’re really keen to look at in horses as well, because we have this really interesting third we because we have, we have stallions and we have mayors, but we have geldings that that.

Was where my brain went as well. Yeah. So, so that that so at the moment we are just looking at geldings to try and control for the the sex hormones. But yeah, definitely one of our future studies is going to be looking at, you know, Mayor’s and entire males and versus the geldings and see where where we go because we’re pretty confident that the the, that the environment will play a big role as well. So, so at the moment there’s just so many things we’re trying to control for, you know what, what does a normal voice look like?

It’s actually quite a difficult question because you know, it’s sort of as say, you know, you’ve got different sex hormones or known sex hormones in geldings, you’ve got the environmental side of things, you know, whether that you know, the grass that they’re on the turn out that they have or not. So there’s, there’s lots of variables that we’re, we’re sort of looking at and trying to, trying to sort of trip it back as closely as we can. Because obviously, you know, we, we need to, we want to understand exactly what effects this internal environment. And that that turns out to be quite complicated when you start really looking at the environmental factors involved. Yeah, it kind of reminds me, I don’t know why, but when I was a kid I did these like pony club camps and throughout the camp might be like 10 days and every morning and every afternoon you have to take your horses temperature so that by the end, you know.

OK, my horses on average 100.1 that’s like always. So I know if it has a temp of 103 that’s not normal, but also if it has a temp of 97 that’s not normal. And but before you did that, you didn’t really know what normal was for that worse. And so it kind of reminds me of the same thing like, oh, OK, when this is like something that’s some point at market owners will do like a OK, do this for a week and see what is your horses normal, whatever. And then you sort of have that baseline that you can tell variants, but at least then it’s OK.

Well, because I know specifically for horses with metabolic issues like springtime and fall can be really difficult for those sugar swings and what not. So that would be really interesting to see of like, oh, OK, in the spring these are really truncated versus in the winter or in the summer when everything’s kind of evened out of it. Yeah. So where what is your goal for this program, This project? Yeah.

Well where I where I want it to go is that, you know, I should say that the antibodies, your antibody cycle on a kind of three to four week basis. So we anticipate that ultimately this this could be a test that you could do once a month or it could be that you do it quarterly, you know, seasonally maybe sort of four times a year. You basically you could use it as much and you know, as, as frequently as monthly or as much as maybe 4 * a year, 2 * a year depending on, on, you know, your, your horses health concerns. But really we would like it to be something that you do on a regular basis. So that like you say, you’ve got this baseline, you know, you know what’s going on.

And because we need, we pretty sure there will be fluctuations depending on, you know, the grass and things like that, as you say. And it’s really understanding, you know, what’s going on internally. So you know, how how healthy are you And if yeah. Or horses. And we know from the human studies that they can see if someone has a tooth Abscess from the way the glycans respond.

One of the researchers literally did that with himself. He was doing a regular test on himself and he got a tooth Abscess. And you could see that the, you know, that the truncation spike and then he had the antibiotics and you saw it drop and it was like that’s, you know, really how sensitive it is. So from a sort of consumer point of view, I would love to have this sold out so that everybody could be taking a test from their horse and they could have the opportunity to keep a monitor on that. But on the other side of that, so that’s the sort of medical thing.

But then we also have the opportunity from a research point of view, it’s could be a really powerful tool to researchers looking at the effects of different environment changes. So potentially we’re looking at collaborating with research institutions where they want to test, you know, is a particular supplement doing anything or is, is it, or is there an optimal to turn out regime? You know, I mean, basically it’s, it’s a way of gathering data that we just haven’t had before. And so it’s, you know, and, and so much as we know now is that you can monitor a course’s behaviour, but sometimes that isn’t giving you the whole picture. And, you know, and it’s yeah, it can be so difficult to interpret what they’re doing, but there won’t be any arguing with what the glycans are doing.

That’s, that’s going to give you numbers that you can really work too. So that’s, that’s something we’re doing, but also what we’re looking at in performance sources. So one of the other things that’s been looked at in human is that they find that it’s very responsive to exercise as well. So, so in the case of people who say type 2 diabetes, you can see how in implementing better diet and exercise regimes really helps these, these glycans recover so that you and they can see that in real time with the using this technique. They’ve also looked at exercise in the context of people who are taking up exercise, people who are regular exercisers, but also elite athletes.

And what they found there is the interestingly, the ectomic glycans is quite marked. So if you are literally a couch potato that does no exercise at all, you’ll see that that you’ll get a bit of a dip in those, those glycans, it will affect it. You will go a bit more inflammatory before you get better because obviously your body is being asked to get moving in a way that it wouldn’t normally. So there’s a bit of kind of, you know, a bit of damage to be dealt with there. But once you get over that and you start getting into that regular exercise and it’s, it’s working for you and you see that and that it improves and that that sits alongside where you’ve got your, your normal exercisers.

But interestingly, elite athletes actually have quite a high inflammatory index. And that’s because obviously they’re pushing their bodies starting right at the limits. And then of course, you have the problem with where elite athletes can can go into that overtraining. So an overtraining in humans is exactly the same as in horses. So you get normally it gets the point where it’s just you’re seeing performance drop off.

And once you see performance drop off, the injury rate escalates because it’s obviously they’re operating beyond their limits. Things are not going well. And that’s when the trip happens, when the fall happens, you know, that sort of, you know, or something snaps or gives weight. And interestingly, if what they’re now looking at in human athletes is whether they can use this technique actually really highly personalized that training program. So in point of fact, you’re catching because you can see this in the glycans before you see outward symptoms.

They’ve shown this with a group of athletes they’re now looking at, well, could we use this to monitor it so that actually we don’t get to the injury, You know, we actually scale it back. And of course, the obvious progression in the horse world is you’ve got elite horses particularly same racing. Yeah. And you’ll have, you know, you’ll have a training program that all the horses are on. And obviously some of those horses will thrive in that training program and others might struggle.

And is there a way of truly personalizing those training regimes to say, actually, we were going to, you know, we weren’t going to run at this, But no, no, this, this that meets too early. We need to take it back. We’ll save them for another day. And again, that’s, that’s a huge win for welfare horses that if you’re not putting them into situations where they’re performing beyond what their bodies are going to manage, you know, every broken leg that saves is worth it. Yeah.

So that’s, that’s, that’s another progression. It’s that, you know, how do we use that to find training programs so that the horses never pushed beyond its limits. So that’s, that’s another option with it that I’m I’m quite excited to explore. Yeah, it’s so interesting. I was listening to this guy, he’s like one of those biohacker dudes and he, but before he got into the biohacking, he was in not ultra, he did Iron Man competitions, so like the biking, swimming, running deal.

And he always makes a point to talk about how, OK, if you’re trying to live longer, you actually don’t want to do Iron Man’s and ultra marathons because it’s like diminishing returns at some point. And I, I event, I’ve event horses. And that’s always something that I’m taking into consideration with the horses because I mean, there are points where you’re doing hour and a half trot sets and you’re like, you’re really training. And I’ve really started to take into consideration, OK, this one feels really lacking in its gallop. How about we swim instead of galloping in or we, you know, just so that way it’s not necessarily losing fitness, but the way we gain the fitness isn’t so hard on its body.

And it, it’ll be so interesting to be able to have data that either supports or says actually that horse just needs a week off or yeah, actually it could do 2 swims instead of, you know, whatever. So on that same vein, do you see a path where this is working with AI to kind of parse through the data that’s being collected? Yeah, yeah, I think that’s perfectly possible that, you know, once we have the data sets for these things and we, we know we can stay with confidence, You know what, what these actually mean then yeah, I, I think it’s, it’s perfectly possible to integrate some sort of intelligent thinking into it to help AI is, is such a sexy thing at the moment and he’s very excited about it. But I, I don’t think it’s ever going to take away from experienced, you know, trainers and individuals. I think you know that because I’m there’s an instinct that people have that you just, you won’t be able to replicate, but it will be an aid.

I feel you know, it will help you to make those decisions. So whether it’s taking the data, I’m currently working on something at the moment that’s a digital based assistants that will work with this as well. So it’s a way of helping people interpret what the results are telling them. And, you know, and that’s obviously it’s just as important for someone who’s, you know, got their pony club pony, you know, because obviously, you know, those of us who are not professionals and we’re juggling lots of things. Potentially you’re putting a pony or a horse through maybe into competitions that they’re not quite ready for because, you know, you don’t you just do not have the hours to be in training them to doing that versus, you know, the demands of a professional yard where they’re obviously they’re in it day in, day out.

They’re probably going to have a vet on hand. You know, with a lot of like, you know, particularly if we’re looking at racing, you know, each, each yard usually has their own vet attached and, you know, they will be able to to work with the trainers. But this, yeah, definitely AI to help some of us normally to interpret what it means and to really, you know, get the most out of it. Yeah, I think that’s definitely that’s something that’s going to come. Yeah, the the AI angle is so interesting, specifically when we’re talking data.

I know I’ve had conversations on the podcast where we’ve talked about having AI help with like movement analysis and stuff like that. But I feel like we’re AI is really strong is you give it a data set and it can put that into like you said, normal people terms. And I think where there are, I have a client who she’s a lawyer, but she also, so like that’s a 80 hour plus job. And but then she also has this breeding operation. And I go to have something where you can upload sort of all of the stuff of your horse and have a folder that’s about, OK, this has the sources X-rays, says the sources Sliva snap test results.

This has the, you know, whatever, whatever. And being able to not keep it in your personal memory, but be able to keep it in in a folder of sorts that you can reference, I think is an interesting thought that OK, it’s not necessarily about replacing anyone’s job. It’s more so about just helping make the information accessible to the people who haven’t gone to that school. Yeah, well, that’s it because AI is so good at pattern spotting and that’s the thing where it’s very difficult, especially for those of us who sort of have our leisure horses. You you don’t necessarily have one place where you keep all that information.

And it’s so easy for things to, you know, you find yourself going, oh, you know, that’s different. But how long has that been going on? Did I know that I’m was it last week or the week before? And you know, and it’s, it’s usually only when your vet is going, well, when did this start? And you’re standing there scratching your head going, it’s only tight recently and you just, you know, so it’s, it’s that sort of thing.

And like you say, it’s just the more data that you can put in and with a sort of an AI backing, you can draw your conclusions quicker. And the faster you get on top of a problem, obviously the better it is for your horse. Yeah. And so things like, you know, using imaging, for example, I’ve seen some stuff that’s certainly in the UK, we’ve had just coming over from cattle where they’ve been using sort of barn cameras to watch hard castle. And then they’re, they’re using that to trigger alerts to say that cow is not moving enough or that cow doesn’t seem to be eating or, you know, So this is actually, whereas, you know, if the farmers going in and checking a couple of times a day, they’ll just sort of look around and go, Oh yeah, everything’s fine.

Everybody’s on their feet and they might miss the fact that actually that one’s not drinking, that one’s not eating, that one’s lying down a bit more than it should or not lying down. So all that kind of thing. And I know that they’re trying to translate that over into horses now, so I’ve seen some recent stuff on that. So that’s all really exciting as well. And it’s just, yeah, the more that we can all do to give owners more tools, more information, it does become a bit information overload.

But I think that’s that’s where you like you say where the AI comes and it’s that streamlining it. It’s that kind of interpretive actually, you know, and it can be as involved or as not involved as you like, you know, if you know, it’s but it’s it’s going to flag an issue to you that you may not spotted. And especially in the case of, like these barn camps, you know, anything that sort of says actually while you’re not there, it’s not, you know, your horse is not lying down. You know, it’s not getting its recumbent sleep. You may not have known that because it’s not, you know, because it’s all happening overnight when you’re asleep.

That’s the sort of thing where I think, yeah, it would make a huge difference. Yeah. And the, I know in the United States where we’re having a little bit of a that dilemma, a lot of people aren’t wanting to become. That’s the people that are extremely overworked and thus a lot of things are getting sort of lost along the way. And I think we also in the United States have this weird culture around the horse owner actually doesn’t know anything about the horse.

The professionals, the vets, the farriers, they all know everything that’s right with your horse. But you was the owner actually don’t know anything about your horse. And I think having a more of a, Oh no, you’re the owner of this horse. Like you see this horse in a different way than everyone else does and giving them the power to say, hey, I think something’s not right. I’m going to test this and it’s I almost equated to I’m the professional, but I have six of my own personal courses and if something’s going on with them, I’ll do TP Rs and I’ll call my vet and I’ll say, hey, it’s not an emergency right now.

But this is where I’m this is where the horse is at at the moment. For an owner, I think it would be great to say I just swear something isn’t right. I’m going to go get the snap test. I’m going to while I go and get it, I’ll withhold my water and food so that by the time I get back, I can just put this thing in its mouth and I can figure out, OK, yeah, this is definitely something worth calling the vet or this is data for me to have that if I noticed something a little later. I also have this.

So I think the more we can do specifically in a place, I don’t know the culture in the UK necessarily, but I think a lot more people have horses just overall than in the United States. And so I think it’s just commonplace maybe a little bit more than like, Oh yeah, you could be a normal person. You still have your horses at home and you see them all the time and and that sort of thing where that’s not the culture here. So it is interesting to me having these tools get developed that does put the power back in the owner’s hands of it. Yeah, I mean, certainly in the UK, yeah, we, we have a lot of we board horses a lot here.

So there’s there’s you know good number of people who have workers at home, but we we also have like Liberty yards and that’s quite common. And yeah. And so vets are are difficult because certainly here there’s been quite a debate raging about the costs of that. And you know, that and we care is not cheap. And I have a lot of sympathy for the vets themselves because, you know, I know they’re not getting paid film star wages.

You know, they, they, but there, there’s a lot of costs involved. And certainly in the UK, most people would do anything to avoid a big vets bill. And so, you know, you see it on the Facebook groups. There’s but there’s a lot of that, you know, questionable advice out there about the, the number people who go on there and go like, oh, well, this is happening, that’s happening. And the answer should be call with a head.

But there will always be somebody with a sort of herbal remedy or something. Sometimes herbs work. I’m not, I’m not using myself sometimes. But yeah, I think nothing could take away from actually getting a trained professional out and actually making a proper assessment. But again, I mean, you know, it’s, it is really difficult for the vets.

And yeah, I mean, certainly in this country, we, we do struggle with having the numbers of people in veterinary school. We’ve literally just actually opened a new veterinary school in Aberdeen. So that’s the first new one in I think about 100 years or something in, in Scotland. So, but still, I mean, we struggle to have vet practices. We’ve always got vacancies.

You know, it can be quite challenging and, and equine medicine is, is quite, you know, it’s a specialism in itself. And, you know, it is quite challenging to, I think to recruit. So, yeah, it, it can be difficult, but yeah, I think, I think owners, yeah, I think a lot of owners are quite keen that as much as they can do for themselves. And because it’s certainly, I mean, your farrier will see your horse every six to eight weeks and more often than not, they’re probably the one professional that actually does see your horse regularly in this country. Barriers, you know, you might have a dentist out once or twice a year, but that’s, you know, potentially, you know, it’s, it’s annual vaccinations.

You know, if there’s nothing else wrong then and you know, it’s, it can be very difficult for them to keep tabs on what’s going on with a particular horse unless they’ve now into a situation where they happen to come to do blood draws for Cushing’s or whatever. So again, this is something where I think you know, sort of this is quite what we’re working on is quite useful because it means that you can keep a dialogue with your vet, you know, you’re testing regularly. Your vet’s got an idea of what’s going on because you can share that information with your vet and you know, and then they can pick things up. You know, you can work together with your vet to pick things up before they become a problem. And that’s really the most important thing is, you know, you don’t want your horse getting into a situation where things are really bad before you.

You don’t you can intervene and it’s no fault of anybody’s at the moment. It’s just, you know, they’re really good at hiding stuff. They don’t want to tell you they’re sick, you know, So it’s and, and, and as you say, it’s so difficult because, you know, you sort of he just doesn’t look quite right today. But, I mean, how do you articulate that to your vet? It was just like, you know, he gave me a funny look.

Yeah. And it’s just, you know, and that’s why things can escalate until the point where they’re really screaming I’m in pain or something really wrong before everybody’s like, no, we’re going to have to get the vet out. And then, yeah, you could have had the vet out 3-4 weeks earlier, you know, or it’s. So it’s, it’s, yeah. It’s just that trying to get going from that reactive to proactive kind of care.

So the, and as much as you can put that into the owner’s hands, the better. Because, you know, as you say, there are fewer vets around. They they obviously have lots of jobs to do, but if they, they can avoid having to have that Sunday night call out to the crisis, then that’s better for everyone. Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

This has been such an informative conversation. What? So typically I close out the podcast by asking the guest to give our listeners a piece of advice that would help their relationship with their horse. What would you suggest to someone who’s looking to have a better relationship with their horse? That’s a tricky one, but I think for me I spend a lot of time just observing.

I like to take 5 minutes just to sit with him and just see how he is and to watch him interact with his friends in the field and to do that. And you can learn a huge amount from that, just how they are with each other, how they are with you. And if they it’s, you know, I mean, I, I’ve had this before with my horse where I’ve turned up and he’s kind of rushing at me and, you know, oh, and, you know, thank goodness you’re here. And I know immediately that means there’s something up. And it might be this, he’s just a bit warm in the, in the rock he’s wearing, you know, or it could be that his dinner was late.

It could be that. But you know, sometimes, sometimes it is more. And, and so, you know, just be aware of that. And if there is anything you think is different, you know, don’t be afraid to phone your vet and say, I can’t put my finger on it, but he’s behaving differently. You know, there’s there’s something here.

And because I think your vets are would much rather come out and check over and reassure than to, as I say, have that Sunday night call out where it’s it’s a crisis. They and, and I think most vets are really great about that. Certainly I know mine are that, you know, if you phone them with a problem, they’ll have a chat with you and then they can say right, I’ll come out and visit or give it 24 hours and see how you are. You know, it just. Yeah, but that observation piece is really important.

And I think that’s something it’s so easy when we’re busy not to do. But yeah. And it’s just that 5 minutes of just watching and taking into account, you know, what their body language is, how how they’re interacting, it’s and that tells you an awful lot about how they are. Awesome, This has been great. How do people find what you’re doing?

Follow along, all of that good stuff. So. The website is still under construction, but we have a Facebook page, so that’s from Martin by Limited, so you can find there and I’ll keep that updated with everything. And yeah, so probably that’s the best place to do it. Great.

Well, thank you so much for joining me. Well, thank you very much for taking the time to speak to me. It’s been really fun. This has been awesome.