Equine Pediatric Medicine

As a student with a keen interest in all things stud medicine, I found this text extremely useful in bridging the gaps in knowledge and my confidence in this field. At veterinary school, we don't get much in our classroom teaching in terms of paediatric medicine for equine. Our clinical stud medicine teaching is primarily focused on breeding and mare management. The book will be hugely beneficial to my future career path for knowledge of the field, and it will be a nice thing to have on hand at the practice to open up when in need. The book is most appropriate to the clinically taught years of vet school, but I also believe that it's a good book to have (at least knowledge of its existence!) if attending a stud on a pre-clinical-years placement (AHEMS). I personally would have found the resuscitation chapter and the introductory information very useful during my stud placement in 2nd year. It offers a good, broad knowledge and coverage of all body systems, organised into such which makes it really easy to orientate through. I feel like it goes into a lot of detail within each of the sections too. There isn't one chapter that lacks detail compared to the others. I also like how it gives a range of treatment options for each of the conditions, acknowledging author preference but also stating why that may not always be an option. The only suggestion I have to improve this part would be to make reference to the costs of treatments (not specific numbers, but which is cheapest/ most expensive and reference to which is most useful- means vets can weigh up treatment options). Admittedly, I already have a very keen interest in the subject, but I found it very useful and readable. I picked it up day after day to read with excitement. Sometimes the odd sentence can be a little long and therefore at times hard to make sense of, but generally I really enjoyed the layout and flow of the text. The chapters followed each other well. Within the chapters, the layout of each of the diseases was really good. Each section was thorough and well structured. I liked the links to other sections and tables. I also really enjoyed the large amount of images used. Especially when demonstrating a procedure, it was nice to have a step by step guide. Some of the images are a little grainy or out of focus, perhaps because they're older. As an undergraduate student with not much imaging experience, I did find ultrasound images hard to interpret, despite the descriptions below. Quite a lot of the images would therefore benefit from additional aids to interpret them: use of more arrows/ circling or even improved descriptions would help. They're a very big part of the clinical content of the text and therefore more emphasis should be put on them. There are definitely gaps in the teaching at vet school, simply because there's not enough time to go through everything for every species. I feel this textbook would aid me significantly in practice, especially as stud medicine is something I wish to go into long term. It is sectioned nicely, which is useful in a practice setting where often you need to read quickly. The key points at the start of most sections are extremely useful for this purpose - these could even be made into longer summaries, with treatment options/management added in bullet point format too, rather than stopping at testing. I really loved the image of the DIY foal nebuliser from a milk carton! I'm going to have a go at putting one together as I'm sure they're be useful on a small pony too (and a damn sight cheaper!) The resuscitation chapter was most useful to myself personally. Having been present at a lot of foalings, and many more to come this year, I wish I'd have read this sooner! No doubt the other chapters will become more significant as I complete further stud medicine placements this season. I also really enjoyed the case scenarios, and they could become more of a feature. To a student, this is a huge selling point, especially if made into a self-assessment section e.g. what would you do and an answer. It would also be nice to have some of the reference studies mentioned actually cited in the text. Even though they are present at the end of the chapter, I think numbering them in the text will just enable people to pick out which reference is the one mentioned easier. - Harriette Smart, undergraduate veterinary student, Royal Veterinary College, UK This is an invaluable addition to the libraries of experienced and novice practitioners, veterinary and animal science students, and horsemen who are responsible for caring for foals. The photographic, radiographic, and ultrasonographic illustrations are particularly helpful. This edition includes a useful 10-case series in the last chapter that provides illustrated examples of the most common foal problems encountered in equine practice. -Jonathan Hale Foreman, University of Illinois College of Veterinary Medicine