Washington State University - Chinook Yearbook (Pullman, WA)

Page 31 text:

Racing... WSU, Mrs. Hitchcock is quick to point out others who were involved in making the research track a reality, including siz¬ able donations from the Washington Jockey Club (owners of Seattle Slew) as well as Richard and Dixie Hitchcock. “It was really ajoint effort all the way around,” she said, “and the credit should really go to the fine people here in the department.” Mrs. Hitchcock also credits Dr. Penny, the Hitchcock’s veter¬ inarian, for introducing them to Dr. Grant several years ago. “Dr. Penny had tremendous faith in Dr. Grant and felt it was iriiportant to let people with good ideas develop them,” Mrs. Hitchcock said. Today, WSU leads the field in equine sports medicine and boasts a stable of successful racehorses. Many of the horses are given to the vet sciences department as geldings and fillies. Often these horses have Wobblers Syndrome, a congenital disease that affects the vertebrae of the horse. Until Dr. Grant perfected the surgery, these animals were considered useless. In most cases, they were put to sleep. Now, Grant and his team travel all over the country giving demonstrations and performing the surgery. Several colts have undergone the surgery and then gone on to win races. Dr. Grant’s office is covered with trophies and photographs of WSU horses that have won. From Hollywood Park to Playfair, “Cougar” horses run for the money and win. The money goes back into the program, providing extra dollars for research. The locomotion lab, run by Dr. Marc Ratzlaff, was not part of the original pla ns for the research track. Yet today, impor¬ tant work is being done through the locomotion lab that will further advance WSU’s position as a leader in equine sports medicine. The lab started in January of 1976, with the main goal of learning more about how horses run as well as learning more about the causes of lameness and reducing the stress that causes it. Ratzlaff and his colleagues have been working on special transducer horseshoes. A small electronic implant in the horseshoe measures the amount of force exerted by galloping horses. A small tape recording device records the data which is later analyzed by a computer. This information will help answer many long standing questions regarding causes of lameness, and will likely save owners a considerable amount of money, and enable trainers to keep their horses healthy. The locomotion lab also has the capability of detecting and pinpointing the location of lameness through sophisticated high speed photography. Dr. Ratzlaff said, “with current di¬ agnostic technique, you can’t pinpoint the specific site of lame¬ ness.” After a considerable amount of hard work and trial and error, Ratzlaff can locate even obscure lameness. The service fees for an evaluation of a horse by Ratzlaff locomotion lab goes “right back into the program that generated it, to improve it and buy new surgical instruments.” Although Drs. Grant and Ratzlaff may be partial to WSU, both agree that the Hitchcock Research Track is just about the only place where this type of research is going on. Other universities simply don’t have the facilities. Dr. Ratzlaff points out that “this is a good track, and it’s the only one we know of in the Western Hemisphere. This is one of the few places in the world where this type of research is carried out. We are a land grant university and this helps keep us in the public eye.” — Nancy Schlarmann Expressions 27