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From: Lary Trocha
Category: Health
Date: 12 Mar 2008
Time: 05:57:39 -0700
Remote Name: 198.146.206.51
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HORSE FUNGUS RESPONSE... BOTH GOOD AND BAD Hi Bill, Larry Trocha here, I just got home from the PCCHA Derby held in Paso Robles, CA. Last Wednesday I sent out an email telling how my DERBY filly had a bad reaction to the fungus medication the vet gave me. And that there was a high probability I'd have to leave the filly home and substitute a different horse in her place. Well, I DID leave the good filly HOME and I did substitute another filly in her place. Unfortunately, the substituted filly wasn't nearly as good and she didn't win anything at the DERBY. Bummer! Anyway, I wanted to send this email just as soon as possible to THANK all the people who responded to my last email. Your concern is greatly appreciated. The response was very informative and HUGE. There were so many, I couldn't read them all. So I just kind of picked the emails to read at random. Here is some of the information, my readers shared with me. It's pretty interesting. The most popular product that people recommended to fight fungus was a product called Shapley's MTG. It appears a lot of folks have had good luck with this. Several people said that women's "vaginal cream" works well for horse fungus and it won't cause a bad reaction. I'm not familiar with this but it sounds logical. Many wrote and said they had good luck using Tea Tree Oil. And a few, highly recommended EZ-All shampoo. One lady, who is the wife of a good horse trainer, also sent an email. She said she has fungus problems herself and suggested topical "Colloidal Silver". She swears this kills fungus on contact and works without fail. Sounds good to me. I also received a few emails CRITICIZING me for even thinking of TORTURING my filly by showing her after she had a fungus infection. Well, anybody who knows me even a little bit, knows that I put my horse's well being first. And because of that, I didn't take my filly to the show. So as far as I'm concerned, those people can kiss my a--. There were also some emails saying if my cinches were clean, my Derby filly wouldn't have gotten the girth itch in the first place. Sorry, I know that's not the case.I have a ton of cinches and they are rotated and cleaned on regular basis. So are all my saddle pads. Plus, if dirty cinches caused fungus, 75% of the horse population would have it. There are plenty of riders who NEVER clean their cinch and their horses don't have fungus. Because fungus can be a very bad and expensive situation, I've conducted many TESTS to see if it can be PREVENTED with good hygiene. I'm a firm believer that it CAN'T. At least not in a PRACTICAL way. I've had groups of horses in training where each horse had its own set of clean cinches, brushes, pads, saddle and bridle. Everything that touched the horse was cleaned after each ride and used on that horse only. Result... some of those horses STILL got a case of girth itch. The MAIN reason (but not the only one) horses get fungus is because their SKIN has been COMPROMISED or DAMAGED in some way. They get "girth itch" usually because the skin in that area has become irritated or inflamed. Horses get funguses like "rain rot" and "scratches" because their skin has been damaged by too much moisture like rain, mud, etc. The weakened skin is what allows the fungus to take hold. Okay, I better wrap this up.I'm driving back down to Paso Robles for the horse sale. There are a couple of 3-year-olds in that sale that look promising and I'd like to get a good one to show at the fall futurities. If you are at the sale, be sure to say hello. Also, if you are planning to buy a horse at the sale, use caution. Do your pre-purchase examination very carefully. In every sale, there will be horses you want to avoid. Make sure you don't bid on one of those. Again, I want to thank everyone who sent me an email last week. If I didn't send you a personal reply, its only because I received more emails than I could handle. Take care, Larry Trocha
www.HorseTrainingVideos.com HORSE FUNGUS UPDATE Hi Bill, Larry Trocha here. I just got home from the cutting held at the new show facility in Rancho Murrieta, California. What a great place to have a cutting competition! The footing is great, the arena layout is good and the spectators have the best seating I've ever seen at a cutting facility. I'll definitely go back there to show again. The horse I showed is named Agardiente. What a good horse! Showed him in the open class, marked a 74 and won it. Agardiente (his barn name is Argie) is owned by one of my favorite customers, Fiina Ugrin-Jolley. Fiina showed her other horse, Leathal Dually in one of the non-pro classes and got a check. Actually, I think all my customers won money at this show so it was a good day for all of us. Anyway, I wanted to send this email to give you an update on the fungus situation. I hope this information is of value. FUNGUS UPDATE In my last email, I reported that I didn't take my good filly to the Derby because of complications due to a fungus infection. The filly has very sensitive skin and had a bad reaction to the fungus medication the vet gave me. As a result, she lost all her hair and a lot of skin in her girth area. To make matters worse, the damaged skin allowed the fungus infection to really take hold. It went from a minor case of girth itch to a full-blown fungus infection. This time, the vet gave me some athlete's foot cream to put on the infected area. Saying it wouldn't cause a bad reaction. He was right, it didn't cause a bad reaction but it DID NOT kill the fungus either. In fact, the fungus began SPREADING down the mare's legs. Not good. On top of that, I was getting ready to leave for Paso Robles to the PCCHA Derby Sale. I wanted to see if I could find a decent futurity horse to buy at that auction. I figured I'd just have to find a way to deal with the filly's fungus when I got back home. Three days later, I came back home with two 3-year-old futurity prospects. And get this... When I went to saddle them up, I discovered they BOTH had a case of GIRTH ITCH!!!!! Man, when it rains, it pours. That night, I sat down at my computer and tried to catch up on all the email that had been piling up in my inbox. One email in particular really got my attention. It was from a guy named Steve Ahlberg. In his email, Steve said his business partner was a vet named Eric Witherspoon and Eric had developed a product that would get rid of my mare's fungus in 3 DAYS! Not only that, he said he sent a bottle of the stuff for me to try at NO CHARGE. After reading that, my first thought was there was no way it would kill the fungus in three days. But I figured if he had the guts to make a claim like that and the confidence to send it to me for free, I better at least give it a try. Here's what happened: I mixed up a batch Steve's product called Tea-Clenz (1oz. to a gallon of water) and applied it to the mare and the two horses with girth itch that I brought home from the sale. I did this without wearing gloves. I wanted to expose it to my own skin to make sure the product was as mild and safe as Steve claimed. You're supposed to mix it up and spray it on but my spray bottle broke so I used a sponge. I sponged it on the areas with fungus once a day for three days in a row and guess what... IT TOTALLY KILLED EVERY LAST TRACE OF GIRTH ITCH AND FUNGUS! Needless to say, I was VERY happy with these results. Three different horses and all three cured in only three days. Pretty darn good. However, in the mare's case, it did make her skin peel. Not to the point of being raw but enough that it was tender and bothering her. So, she evidently had some kind of reaction to this product but I don't think it was the products fault. I think my mare just has extremely sensitive skin. The other two horses I used the Tea-Clenz on are doing great. Their fungus is gone and they had no ill effects what so ever. Next time I have a horse with fungus, this is the product I plan to use FIRST! In case you wanted to try Tea-Clenz yourself, here is the original email Steve sent me. It contains a link to his website and his contact info:
Okay, that's all for now. Take care, Larry Trocha Larry Trocha Training Stable |