I can answer some of these questions from my personal experience, to show that especially in rural parts of the country, where one must drive a ways to find a decent equine vet, the gray areas we talk about are much more gray. The farrier is often the authority to many owners on all horse related problems and questions. Especially when we have mixed practice vets with questionable reputations. The owner also sees the farrier much more often than the vet, and builds a confidence in the farrier's knowledge that they may not have in their veterinary options.
When is the last time a farrier had to make a decision to put a horse down?
I think the farriers opinion often dominates the owner's choice. I get asked often by owners, whether they should put a horse down. I think the opinion of the owner is often dependent on the professional opinion of whichever person they have the most faith in (in many situations). When to throw the towel in, is often when I tell them its time.
Perform a PPE and the horse gets lame shortly after?
We are often asked to do a PPE in relation to soundness and hoof quality, I have evaluated many horses for owners prior to purchase. A poor man's PPE, lol.
Put needles into joints?[
no we do not put needles in joints, at least most of us don't, (but I do know some that do.)
Get a call at 3am that they had to go deal with a sick horse?
I have this sort of thing happen regularly, I have had 1AM calls, horse colic, lacerations, hurt leg, they very often call the farrier. Why, because many of our local vets have business hours, and when they are closed some just leave the name of a vet an hour and a half away to contact for emergencies (some of the mixed practice vets leave only the number for a small animal emergency hospital 2 hours away), often even if they contact an equine vet who is 1.5- 2 hours away, the vet either will not see them because they do not have an existing relationship, or would require the owner to bring the horse to their facility, if the owner cannot afford for this vet to drive down (if they could talk them into it) for an emergency at night or they dont have a horse trailer, they call the farrier to see if he can help. Some local vets don't return the owner's frantic messages in time to suit the owner, so the owner calls the farrier to find out what to do. The owners call the farrier often in the middle of the night to say "Dr so and so won't call me back, do you think you could get ahold of him for me or do you have another number, or who else would you recommend, or do you think you could come out here and handle this for me, or what should I be doing for the horse while I wait?" "Well have you tried Dr x?" "Yes no answer and no voice mail" "What about Dr Y, down in such and such town?" "I left a message on his emergency number 3 times and haven't heard back, but I don't think he comes this far." (so on and so on)
Had a horse die in there care?
Not often granted, but I have tried to help owners when a horse was in the process of dying and the owner had exhausted all efforts to get a vet out with no response.
Not be able to go to the family for holiday because of being on call?
OH My, a vacation is a pipe dream. As is a weekend. So far this year I have had 1 day off and thats on par, with my average of 7-14 days off per year. However, many of the vets I know and work with not only take weekends off and close the office at 5pm, but have already taken vacations this year.
So on and so on..........
exactly..
Though I don't think most vets know much about farriery I at least acknowledge their daily routine is much more intense than a farriers.
I couldn't disagree more with the intensity of the days comment. In this economy especially, I know very good vets that are twittling their thumbs all day or having a coggins at 1pm and 2 vaccinations at 3, for their entire day. Some days more, and some days nothing. I cover a pretty large area, of my state, and I travel a ways a few days a week to work in an area where quality equine veterinary care is available, unlike what the situation is close to my house or further south, but still these good vets are still mighty slow business wise and have been for a few months now. Yet the farriers are still hard at it all day every day, most of the time till dark. Maybe the situation is different in your part of the country.
I wouldn't expect a vet to get home from work and go on forums talking about their cases.
no I wouldn't either, and that is too bad. But are you saying you wouldn't expect them to come home and spend time trying to educate themselves because their days are just soo intense and difficult? The good ones are always trying to educate themselves. Even during the day when they have nothing to do but sit in the office they are very often looking up and reading stuff on-line. I think it is a shame however that more are not involved in this sort of exchange of knowledge as we have here on this site. They may, have similar private access sites, so the general public cannot view their insecurities. Maybe there is some merit to that, but it reminds me of the days where farriers would not share any information.
From what I know, if a vet has a question about farriery they call a farrier. They don't go asking other vets on a forum about farriery
probably true with some, but definitely not all.