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California Riding Magazine • August, 2009 Road To Recovery |
President Obama could take a page or two from Kate Roth’s approach to health care. “It’s all about the patient,” says the former manager of a hospital operating room in Orange County. As the owner of Canyon Oaks Ranch rehabilitation, lay-up and retirement facility, Roth has a less daunting challenge than our President, but she takes the task no less seriously.
Her 10-acre property in inland San Juan Capistrano typically handles about 17 patients. Ninety-five percent come from veterinary referrals and their backgrounds range from hunter/jumper and high-level dressage to recreational trail riding. Whatever their circumstances, Roth’s equine patients can count on getting the care their veterinarians prescribe. Roth purchased the lovely, oak-shaded property eight years ago. “I felt there was a need for this type of service in Orange County,” explains Roth, whose daughter Sarah rode competitively with hunter/jumper trainer Mickey Hayden for many years. “If you own working horses, you are inevitably going to have a horse that needs to be laid up.” In Orange County, particularly coastal Orange County, lay-up options were few and far between and typically meant sending the horse out of the area. Worse than the geographical inconvenience for the owner is the fact that this scenario makes it virtually impossible for the horse’s regular veterinarian to provide the continuity of care that is critical to recovery. “We need to start thinking about our horses with the same perspective we apply to our family pets,” Roth asserts. “No one knows your horse’s medical needs better than their own vet.” The majority of Canyon Oaks Ranch’s referrals come from the veterinarians at Equine Medical Associations in Tustin, Drs. Bettey, Colladay, Cox and Carr; along with those from fellow Orange County veterinarians Drs. Mark Secor and Janice Posnikoff. “I have good rapport and communications with all the vets we work with,” notes Roth. She is very clear with prospective clients about her role as a caregiver: “I am not a vet or a farrier. I don’t pretend to be and I’m too old to become one!” Instead, Roth prides herself on following the veterinarian’s orders to the letter. If a horse needs to be hand walked, have its dressings monitored or changed or its hooves iced and meds given multiple times per day, that’s exactly what happens. When rehab routines are attempted at busy training barns, these details are sometimes difficult to ensure, Roth notes. “Training barns are really good at what they do: training,” she explains. “But grooms get busy and it’s rarely productive or cost effective to have them doing things like administering medications or doing wound management. We are set up to comply with the veterinarians’ treatment plans so their patients will get well and back to work.”
Equine Medical Associates’ Dr. Adam Carr checks the Every Amenity: Even Maggots if Needed! Canyon Oaks Ranch features a treatment room where veterinarians can perform minor procedures, an emergency stall for incoming patients that need immediate stall rest, plus various stall, paddock and pasture options with a full slate of amenities that enable Roth to meet each horse’s highly customized recovery routine. Owners are treated well, too. Roth maintains a home on the private property that is available to owners who want to visit their horse. The quiet atmosphere of its canyon location has a healing effect on everybody, horse or human, that spends time there. Clientele in the eight years that Roth has run Canyon Oaks have included a variety of medical and surgical patients. A prolonged withers abscess presented one of the most unusual cases she’s seen in that time. The horse suffers from Cushings disease, making his treatment even more difficult because that condition slows the body’s ability to recover. Six months of traditional treatments were unsuccessful when Roth suggested maggot therapy to veterinarian Dr. Adam Carr of EMA. He was receptive to trying the treatment. They consulted with Dr. Ronald Sherman of Monarch Labs for his advice on how to adapt this primarily human treatment to horses. “It’s an ancient therapy,” Roth explains. “It has been successful in wounds that don’t heal properly, including decubitus and foot ulcers in diabetic patients.” Maggot Debridement Therapy (MDT) is done only under the supervision of a medical doctor or veterinarian. Maggots work their wonders by eating devitalized tissue and releasing an enzyme that kills bacteria. This cleans the wound and stimulates the tissue to encourage healing. It wasn’t easy adapting specialty dressings designed for human use to the horse anatomy, but Roth and her team got the job done and the horse is, at long last, on his way to recovery. Dramatic recoveries are an added bonus in work that has the every day gratification of helping horses get better. “It’s very rewarding to do things that get positive results for the horse, the veterinarians and the family involved,” Roth concludes.
For more information on Canyon Oaks Ranch, call Kate Roth at 714-321-6767. |
