When the three-year-old racehorse, Miz Pinnacle, went unsound for no apparent reason, her owner, Lesley Delaney, spent a fortune on conventional diagnostic methods to establish the cause of her horse's lameness.

Delaney, having heard of a revolutionary new technology that was being used by other owners to uncover potential causes of soundness problems in their racehorses, contacted Jeanri Mellanby of Comtest. In addition to being a distributor of test and measurement equipment, Comtest also has a trained professional (Mellanby) who uses a thermal imager to -detect potential problems in horses.

Mellanby, a qualified Level II thermo-grapher, explains: "Thermography is becoming increasingly popular as an aid to assist with the diagnosis of musculoskeletal and neurological injuries in horses, particularly non-specific lameness. As thermography is completely non-invasive, it allows the horse to be examined without being touched, thus causing no stress or discomfort to the animal."

Holistic therapy
Mellanby worked together with -holistic -therapist, Hein van Spaendonck, to -detect and treat the sources of Miz Pinnacle's -discomfort. By January this year, Miz -Pinnacle was sound and by February was ready to resume her racehorse training at Randjesfontein.

When Van Spaendonck first saw Miz -Pinnacle in November 2008, he was -confronted with a horse that was having an adverse reaction to a recent inoculation, showed symptoms of kissing spine and a slightly swollen near front fetlock. After four laser treatments, the horse was still slightly unsound. At this point, Delaney suggested thermography as another route to analysing the horse's condition.

On 30 November 2008, Mellanby used a Fluke Ti40 thermal imager to analyse Miz Pinnacle and the resulting images showed up some new problems in places previously not considered problem areas, such as the point of the shoulder. Van Spaendonck treated the horse ten times during December, concentrating on the newly pointed out hot spots, and the animal's progress was swift.

On 2 January 2009 Miz Pinnacle was -fundamentally sound although still slightly -uneven, which was attributed to muscle -deterioration owing to incorrect work in the past. The horse's treatment continued through January and she is now ready to return to her training regime.

Officially recognised and used at the 1996 Olympic Games to assess that horses weren't suffering from any strains or injuries that would affect their ability to compete, infrared thermography has proven to be invaluable in the hands of an experienced practitioner.

While nothing can replace the experience of vets and horsemen gained over many years of working with horses, thermography is now being recognised throughout Europe, the USA, Asia and Australia as an effective method to assist veterinary diagnosis.