PrintOne of the more popular methods for calming horses might employ a commonly used mineral, but it’s safe only in certain applications.
Matthew Lawson couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing. He cocked his head, stuck his hands in his pockets and just nodded.
Lawson was taking over as trainer for a small private barn in Tennessee and was getting information from the outgoing trainer on the horses’ programs. “When he brought me into the barn and gave me the run-down on everything, he basically told me that the owners couldn’t ride worth a damn and that he drugged most of the horses to get them to perform well,” Lawson said.
“He told me his system of injecting magnesium sulfate solution [intravenously] to quiet a horse down or help one that maybe had a buck in him,” he added. “The way he described it to me, it was really quite horrifying. He was telling me that it had to be injected very slowly into the blood stream because if you did it too quickly, it would slow the heartbeat and cause them to die.
“At this point in the story, I was incredulous. He’d been telling his clients at the time that he was giving the horses vitamins, and he called the magnesium sulfate ‘Vitamin M.’ ”
Lawson was shocked and bewildered to think that these clients had been going to rated shows and even foxhunting a bit with drugged horses.
“I didn’t know how to react, so I just kind of nodded and went with it,” he said. “I didn’t want to throw a stick in the spokes and question it right then.”
In a conference later with the horses’ owners, Lawson quietly told them of the conversation and informed them he did not intend to continue the practice. “They were in shock. They didn’t know anything about the horses being drugged,” Lawson said.
“He was telling them that the horses got stressed at shows, so he was giving them Vitamin M to help,” Lawson added. “It’s become a little bit of a joke around here, now that the trainer isn’t in the area anymore. We joke about Vitamin M. But it’s scary to know that that kind of thing goes on.”
Not New—But Alarming
That kind of thing is definitely going on. Just as U.S. Equestrian Federation drugs and medication testing is continually expanding to identify more and more illegal medications used to alter equine performances, some riders and trainers are continually broadening the scope of their medicine trunks.
“There have been people using compounds that are detectable and undetectable to achieve sedation or calming in horses for time immemorial. As drug testing gets more and more sophisticated, efforts have moved toward compounds which have less detectable aspects to them,” said Midge Leitch, VMD, who works at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine, was a former U.S. Equestrian Team veterinarian and serves on the USEF Drugs and Medications Committee.
Injectable magnesium sulfate is just one of the substances popular for use in horses now—substances that aren’t actually medications but are compounded versions of substances that occur in the horse’s body naturally. Magnesium is a mineral essential for the body’s neuromuscular function, one that acts in concert with calcium to trigger muscular contraction and relaxation. Some other such substances that are showing up in medicine trunks are calcium, thiamine and tryptophan.
