Gordon Croissant’s body language changes a bit and his jaw clenches when he talks about a horse of his that almost died some years ago. It’s clearly still a touchy issue for him because, in his opinion, it wasn’t cared for properly. Horses may be agricultural animals, but they’re also partners, pets and friends.
That’s why he and his veterinarian wife Charmie Wright decided to open Mountain Horse Medical Center in Silver Creek.
The facility has been 14 years in the making, Wright said, from purchasing the land to celebrating a grand opening 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Sept. 19.
Wright has been practicing in the area for 23 years and plans to continue general horse care in her new facility with fellow vets Sam Hendrix, Shane Miller and Tracy Wright. They’ll still offer ambulatory services and visit animals in barns and fields. They’ll still do dentistry, pharmaceutical care, preventive medicine, vaccinations, blood tests and anything else an animal needs.
One of the differences between Mountain Horse Medical and its competitors, Wright said, is its surgeons.
Both Hendrix and Miller are residency-trained equine surgeons and are the only ones in Utah. Miller, who also serves as CEO, is the only board-certified equine surgeon in Utah and Hendrix will soon join him in that status.
This will allow the facility to perform every type of procedure from run-of-the-mill to state-of-the-art, she said.
A horse owner would have to travel almost 500 miles to Colorado or Idaho to find a facility offering an equal or superior level of care to Mountain Horse Medical Center, she said.
Sam Hendrix said it’s been a joy for him to leave a university program where equipment and procedures were cutting edge and join a company in a beautiful resort town offering the same level of care. He said what they’re doing is raising the standard of equine care for the entire region.
The hospital can treat any musculoskeletal injury the horse can endure and the owners can afford, Miller said. As long as it’s right for the animal and the person, they’re equipped and qualified to diagnose and treat it. Certain types of colic or complicated fractures in horses used to perplex owners. Now, if surgery is required, surgery can be performed, he said.
“The level of care here is a 10 plus,” Croissant said. They designed the facility to offer the level of care that they want for their own animals.
For example, most surgical centers have a padded room to sedate or awaken a horse in. Mountain Horse Medical Center has two such rooms so that no emergency is ever delayed by a planned surgery or vice versa, Dr. Wright said.
It has an x-ray machine 10 times more powerful than a normal clinic’s, and the surgery room is equipped to perform minimally invasive procedures on abdomens like with snaking cameras, she said.
Mountain Horse Medical Center is also one of only about 10 places in the country that has a specific type of computerized gait analysis system to measure a horse’s gate to evaluate lameness or performance.
Croissant said he’s proud of the fact that every brick was laid in a way to support horse care. This isn’t a place that was roughly converted for surgery.
All of these things prompted vet Tracy Wright from Salt Lake City to come to Mountain Horse Medical for an internship. She said there are few opportunities to work with a residency-trained surgeon like Hendrix and Miller.
She said small-animal vets get to do very technical procedures that are too complicated or expensive to perform on large, agricultural animals. Because of the love people have for horses, money is spent that enables a horse hospital to likewise perform the more technical aspects of the field that isn’t normally done on cattle or sheep.
Mountain Horse Medical Center
1005 Beehive Drive
649-6273
www.mountainhorsemedicalcenter.com