Comments on the dilemma in the March issue:'Looking a store horse in the mouth'

The dilemma in the March issue concerned a well-bred, four-year-old, National Hunt filly, to be vetted before the premier sales (In Practice, March 2014, volume 36, pages 158-156). The horse sounded a bit 'thick in her wind' and the owner's behaviour during the lunge phase of the examination raised suspicions that all was not as it should be. There was no surgical scar or other abnormality on palpation of the laryngeal area, but you recalled a colleague saying he had scoped some of the client's horses at the previous month's endoscopy and laser surgery clinic. In discussing how to proceed, Joe Collins suggested thinking about all the responsibilities that a vet would have in such a situation (eg, responsibility to the horse, the client, the equine industry, the profession, to oneself). While it would be difficult to reconcile all these various and conflicting responsibilities, one possibility might be to tell the owner that you had heard an abnormal respiratory noise, making it necessary to scope the horse to make sure that nothing was amiss. Alternatively, you could surreptitiously contact the surgery to find out the filly's status. Either way the client might become upset but the vet's overriding responsibility was to behave in a professionally responsible manner.