Successful efforts over the past few years in California to shrink the number of catastrophic equine injuries have seen the numerical pendulum swing in the opposite direction when it comes a key ingredient.
“Before, there was a state vet and that was enough for a single track, single meeting,” says Tim Grande, the California Horse Racing Board’s (CHRB) newly minted chief official veterinarian, about an increased presence of official veterinarians in California due to the state’s expanded suite of safety programs.
“Now we want — I may be exaggerating a bit — but maybe we want half a dozen people active during a race meet.”
Filling the ranks, however, is no breeze thanks to a dearth of qualified and readily available veterinarians. This shortage isn’t confined to California, or even the nation. “It’s actually, to some extent, international,” says Grande. “I certainly know that the international jurisdictions take a lot of overseas candidates.”
The reason? Blame is fragmented, from shifting societal tastes and economic pragmatism.
But, with the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act (HISA), pencilled in for implementation on July 1 next year, expected to expand the need for official veterinarians, experts are predicting the shortage to heighten in the years ahead.
“It’s something I’ve pointed out to USADA [the United States Anti-Doping Agency] because there’s no quick fix,” warns Mary Scollay, executive director and chief operating officer of the Racing Medication and Testing Consortium (RMTC) and member of HISA’s Anti-Doping and Medication Control standing committee.
‘Things can get contentious’
Official veterinarians are essentially split between two camps: Those employed by their corresponding state commissions, and those employed by the tracks. An exam is required (in the case of California one the CHRB issues).
And, also in the case of California, the hoops and jumps of its newer safety programs have seen the official veterinarian’s remit broadened beyond just that of a pre-race examiner.
You’ll now find them trackside of a morning, monitoring training, helping with the state’s necropsy review program, and perched on entry review panels.
“There are also rules that increase the workload in terms of official workouts to make horses eligible for race-day after performing an official workout,” says Grande.
Thankless can sometimes prove an apropos descriptor of the role, one that has traditionally fallen to older veterinarians considering retirement.
Their assessments should be singularly focused on horse welfare. But a decision that pulls a horse from a race or places it on the vet’s list can ignite all sorts of residual blow-back from connections with no small amount of time and money invested.
“Things can get contentious when somebody is displeased with your assessment of a horse,” says Scollay, with diplomatic understatement. And so her ideal candidate “would be someone who’s had experience not only in equine medicine and surgery and practice, but also experience dealing with people.”
But the nation’s shortage of official veterinarians, however, isn’t necessarily a consequence only of these peculiar demands.
‘Equine practice is in trouble’
Several of those interviewed for this story suggested that veterinary college enrolment in equine studies has shrunk in recent years. But that’s a tough one to quantify.
At the University of California, Davis — one of America’s more prestigious veterinary institutions — the number of equine-focused students has vacillated between approximately ten and 20 “for as long as I can remember”, wrote Joie Watson, associate dean and professor of veterinary medicine and epidemiology at the university.
“And I have been here 33 years,” she added.
Greater certainty revolves around the matter of fewer young veterinarians heading into large animal work, lured instead into small animal practice by the twin promises of generally higher pay (at least initially) and a better quality of life, says Dionne Benson, chief veterinary officer for The Stronach Group (TSG).
“In general, equine practice is in trouble,” Benson says, including in that grim prognostication all equine fields, and not just horseracing.
“You very rarely have to work weekends in small animal practice,” Benson adds. “There are exceptions, like emergency medicine. But with small animals, you have a quality of life which is very important to graduates nowadays.”
Veterinary students can graduate college with as much as $300,000 in debt, says Benson. And the equine world as a whole hasn’t necessarily kept pace with the salaries offered in the small animal world. “When I did my internship, I think I made less than $30,000 for my first year out of vet’s school,” says Benson of a position at the famed Kentucky practice of Rood & Riddle. “That was 2011, so it wasn’t that long ago.”
On top of that, when future practitioners — equine or otherwise — are considering their options out of college, racing isn’t always discussed in the most flattering of lights, she warns.
“There is a perception that, in order to be an equine vet [in the racing field], you cannot be ethical,” said Benson. “There’s a perception that the only reason you’d go into it is for the financial [incentive].”
Mental health problems
Warning signs of shortages and other related problems have bubbled away within the broader veterinary field for a while, one of which concerns a workforce greying around the temples.
In 2018, the American Veterinary Medicine Association (AVMA) conducted an analysis of its membership and found that, of the nearly 113,400 veterinarians living in the U.S., one third were baby boomers, 60 percent of whom were practice owners.
Another significant concern — one exacerbated by the Covid crisis — is burnout, and a workforce pushed to the brink. In 2015, the AVMA found that one in six veterinarians had considered suicide. Then last year in a follow-up study, the organization found that veterinarians are 2.7 times more likely to attempt suicide than members of the general public.
So trenchant is this problem, a non-profit (Not One More Vet) was founded in 2014 to provide a forum for animal doctors struggling with mental health problems.
Implications for HISA
So, what can be done to stem the tide?
Many of those interviewed pointed to evolving attitudes towards animals, and a society increasingly disconnected from an agrarian lifestyle. This decade-old paper taps into this notion. The authors suggest that a veterinary student’s professional track — with small or mixed animals, for example — is highly determined by their exposure prior to admission to that same animal world.
Benson explained that she’s developing a fellowship program to usher new blood into the regulatory world.
“It would be for somebody graduated from vet school, has finished an internship, and who wants to do something more,” she says.
Though still in the developmental stage, Benson suggested it could be a 2-year course, split between practical experience and academic studies, culminating with a master’s degree in regulatory or sports medicine. “Ultimately that’s what we do — sports medicine,” she says.
If, as some expect, HISA increases the number of official veterinary positions around the country — or at least expands the tasks they perform — the situation needn’t become dire.
Written into the language of the law is implementation of a “nationwide database” geared around “racehorse safety, performance, health, and injury information” for the purpose of an “epidemiological study”.
Work-life balance
Utilized correctly, this database could perform some of the everyday heavy-lifting that official veterinarians perform, Scollay says. Efficiencies can also be made elsewhere.
“There are states where we’ve got veterinarians in the test barn drawing blood samples because the regulations require that only a veterinarian draw a blood sample,” Scollay says, pointing out that such a role could go instead to a vet technician.
At the end of the day, at a time when many are looking for greater equilibrium in their work-life balance, perhaps the biggest draw to the regulatory world for private equine practitioners run-ragged by long irregular hours is the job itself.
While renumeration in private practice can sometimes far exceed an official veterinarian’s salary, the latter’s work week can hue more closely to the typical 9-to-5.
“I will tell you my best recruiting is through my own vets. They meet people, they talk about their job. They’re very excited about their job,” says Benson. “They feel it’s very fulfilling.”