Alamo Pintado Equine Medical Center AAEVT Continuing Educational Event March 6-8, 2020
Amazing locations, fantastic speakers and great food kicked off the first of the AAEVT CE events for 2020! About 30 of us gathered in the Santa Ynez Valley for a weekend of learning and camaraderie. We started Friday night at Platinum Performance’s headquarters in Buellton, CA for a tour of the facilities as well as a lecture from one of their resident nutritional advisors capped off with drinks and an amazing spread of food by La Botte bistro! Saturday morning found us all at the world-renowned Alamo Pintado Equine Medical Center. We started the morning with breakfast provided by sponsor Evolve and launched into some amazing lectures by Dr. Carter Judy DACVS about MRI, Dr. Wade Walker DACVS about cancer and cancer therapies including electrochemotherapy and Dr. Phoebe Smith DACVIM about the medicine in sports medicine. Next, Plasvacc sponsored a plasma transfusion demo by Dr. Erin Byrne DACVIM and Dr. Carolina Lopez DVM. Drs. Byrne and Lopez also ran us through long-term guidewire catheter placement as well as how to identify a plasma reaction and some guidelines on how many units of plasma you can safely administer to a foal.
Lunch was co-sponsored by Dechra and Merck and we jumped right back into a combination of lectures and demonstrations with regenerative laser technology by Sound, iStat and Stable Lab SAA as well as an overview of vaccine handling with Zoetis and an interactive, hands-on demo of the Butterfly ultrasound and discussion of different classes of NSAIDs with Kindred Bio. The highlight of the afternoon was probably the water recovery demonstration with Dr. Mark Rick DVM! He anesthetized a horse and did a real-time demo of the water recovery pool. I didn’t realize that were so few water recovery pool setups in the United States so the chance to watch this demo was special and unique! Dr. Rick then gave us a tour of the clinic, including a look at both their high-field and low-field MRIs, hyperbaric oxygen chamber, ICU and aquatred.
We capped off the day with a fantastic Santa Maria-style BBQ dinner catered by the Agin family, with more food and drink and conversations with new friends!
Sunday morning started a little early since we had Daylight Savings Time but everyone managed to get out to Flag Is Up farm for a tour and demo of their famous “joining up” with Monty and Pat Roberts. The afternoon was free to explore the richness of the Santa Ynez Valley and soak up some California sunshine!
A huge THANK YOU to all who attended, as well as, all our Sponsors who supported the event and especially to Alamo Pintado Equine Medical Center, Dr. Mark Rick for helping to organize and give our attendees such a memorable learning experience, Platinum Performance, and Flag Is Up Farms for hosting us!
-Elyse Rowley, AAEVT president elect & Nicole Lagrange, AAEVT past president, Regional Contact (RC)
