Nichole and I had a special day at the equine vet convention in San Antonio today. In the morning we met Dr. Dennis Brooks, a veterinary ophthalmologist at the University of Florida College of Veterinary Medicine, for the first time. We've "met" Dr. Brooks many times via email but never in person; he provided a lot of information for our BlindHorses.org Web site when we launched it two years ago, and he has always been very generous with his time in helping me respond to emails we get from people with blind horse questions. He also is very willing to talk with the media whenever I refer journalists to him. I took this photo of Nichole with Dr. Brooks in front of our exhibit this morning.
Dr. Brooks has published a book called Ophthalmology for the Equine Practitioner, and he has pioneered corneal transplants in horses. In fact, he's done more of these specialized operations than any other veterinary ophthalmologist in the country. During his talks and seminars at veterinary conferences, he frequently talks about blind horses and how they can have a great quality of life. One of his patients was Valiant, the blind dressage horse we feature on our BlindHorses.org site.
Then Dr. Ann Dwyer, an equine vet from upstate New York and another wonderful supporter of our work with blind horses, stopped by to visit. Dr. Dwyer has a special interest in ophthalmology and frequently lectures on equine ophthalmology at veterinary conferences, sometimes in conjunction with Dr. Brooks. Dr. Dwyer also provided a lot of material for our BlindHorses.org Web site and often closes her lectures by mentioning the site and referring vets to it.
Dr. Dwyer owns a large equine practice called Genesee Valley Equine Clinic, and counts a number of blind horses among her patients. She authored a chapter about caring for blind horses in a recent equine ophthalmology textbook, the first time anything on the subject has been written by a veterinarian. She helped us get permission to post the chapter on our Web site. Here's Nichole with Dr. Dwyer this afternoon.
Nichole and I took turns today attending different seminars, so one of us was staffing the booth at all times. Nichole attended a lecture on state-of-the-art treatment for colic in the morning, while I sat in on a talk Dr. Dwyer gave on ophthalmology for veterinary technicians. This afternoon we traded off again, and Nichole joined a session on treating performance-related injuries. Then I attended an ophthalmology seminar for veterinarians hosted jointly by Dr. Dwyer and Dr. Brooks. At the end of the session, with some 200 equine veterinarians in attendance, Dr. Dwyer introduced me to the group (I wasn't expecting that, needless to say) and then told them about BlindHorses.org. After explaining what was on the site, she told the vets, "Now, write this Web site down, because you will need it for your clients!"
I can't think of a better way to get the word out than that!
(Click on photos for larger image.)
The wonderful folks at Bark Magazine kindly emailed us a PDF of the terrific article on the ranch from their November/December 2006 issue and gave us permission to post it online. So we did -- this evening! You can find it by going to our sanctuary Web site home page and clicking on the image that looks like this one.
