PA R K E R C O U N T Y T O D AY
MAY 2016
the practice in November 2015.
The vets at NTVH see lots of cutting horses but not
exclusively.
“A lot of them will start as cutters and become rejects
and the next thing you know, they’re turned into rodeo
horses,” Dr. Sweatt explained. “Also, my partner will look
at eventing-type horses — jumpers, some race horses.
Cutters make up the vast majority…. We live in a really
good area, lots of expensive horses — yeah, people tend
to spend the money. The mare is the first to know, the
person watching her is the second and the veterinarian is
the third.”
Asked if he is seeing more instances of mares carrying twins, Dr. Sweatt said, “Maybe we do, [because]
we’re doing a better job of monitoring, you know, from
an ultrasound standpoint. We tend to use a lot more drugs
now to help these mares cycle. So some of that may be
man-induced ovulation — we give the drugs to make them
ovulate. Just based on the drugs we use we may see more
ovulation, more twins based upon that.”
Twins in mares are considered problematic and one of
the fetuses is terminated.
“We tend to catch it more because we’re ultra-sounding them,” Dr. Sweatt said. “We tend to catch it early, so
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we’re able to terminate one of those pregnancies fairly
quickly. We’re ultra-sounding them fourteen or fifteen
days post insemination.” Mares carry their foals about 11
months — 330 days.
The good doctor has been here fourteen years, arriving
in 2002. He grew up in Plainview, Texas, north of Amarillo
on the South Plains. He attended Texas A&M College Station where he completed his undergraduate, masters and
vet school work, ten years total. Out of vet school he practiced in Spearman, Texas, in the extreme northern Panhandle from 2000 to 2002. He owned a mobile practice in
Parker County before merging with Dr. Hutchins.
Dr. Sweatt does what he does because he enjoys practicing ever-evolving medicine.
“We get to do things in veterinary medicine that we
don’t get to do in human medicine, whether it’s [because
of the] FDA or the insurance saying what we can and can’t
do. We don’t have those restraints in veterinary medicine,”
he said. “We have a little longer leash in veterinary medicine so we can practice medicine … . When your horse
has a problem, 95 percent of the time you learn what that
horse has, the day you are here … . As a veterinarian you
are the OB, you’re the pharmacist, surgeon — you’re pretty
much everything. I enjoy that.”