Rood & Riddle Equine Hospital

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This week, I promised My Stable Life readers that I\’d take y\’all for tours of various equine facilities that I have traveled to over the last little while. Today, however, I\’d like to share with you a facility that a friend of mine had the chance to tour (so not myself personally,) but I\’m sure you will all agree, it is a facility worth seeing nonetheless!

Recently, Nancy Pratch had the opportunity to tour Rood & Riddle Equine Hospital near Lexington, Kentucky. She sent her pictures to me, so I thought I would share them all with you here…

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Rood & Riddle Equine Hospital is a full-service equine hospital established in 1986 as a referral center for horses requiring specialized medical and surgical care. Today the center is known and respected throughout the world for innovative and highly skilled treatment of horses.

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The hospital offers a full range of services including a focused podiatry center with advanced diagnostics including MRI and video gait analysis. This way, Rood & Riddle can provide optimum foot care from corrective shoeing to medical treatment and management of special conditions. This center possesses 2 treatment areas; 3 holding stalls, and a fully outfitted farrier shop. The treatment area is equipped with hoists to support severe laminitis cases in a sling, when necessary.

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In this center of the clinic, farriers design and make therapeutic shoes, pads, and boots to fit changing foot conditions as well as custom-fit braces for surgical patients.

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Rood & Riddle performs over 5,000 surgeries each year. The hospital has 2 surgery facilities and Surgery I in the main building houses 3 general anesthesia operating rooms, 2 prep areas and 5 recovery stalls.

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There is also a special procedures room for standing surgeries. Surgery II is available to support additional case load of the 5 surgeons and has 2 main operating areas with 3 recovery stalls.

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Every case is handled by a surgical team headed by the chief surgeon, who is assisted by an anesthesiologist, a team of interns and a technical support staff that is responsible for monitoring every case from pre-op through follow-up care.

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Following surgery, patients are then hoisted into a special recovery room:

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In one area of the hospital, a treadmill endoscopy is also offered to clients. This innovative high speed treadmill allows clinicians to examine the upper airway of a horse while it is exercising at high speed. Certain types of abnormalities of the upper airway may only become evident during exercise and will not be seen during a resting endoscopic evaluation.

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