The Business of Practice 130: 2025 AAEP Convention Highlights

0:00You are listening to the Horse Radio Network, part of the Equine Network family. Welcome to this episode of the Business of Practice podcast, where we focus on the business and human sides of Equine Veterinary Medicine. In this episode, we're going to talk about some highlights of the 2025 AAP Convention in Denver. There was so much wonderful information. I'm your host, Dr. Amy Greiss, Business Consultant and former Equine Practice owner. The Business of Practice podcast is brought to you in 2026 by Care Credit. As always, the AAP was a fabulous event and there were lots of amazing presentations.

1:00After the opening session introducing our new president, Dr. Sarah Rousse, the program continued with the keynote speaker, Temple Grandin. She talked about how she thinks in pictures and how animals are visual thinkers as well. She talked about how animals live in a sensory based world and language isn't required for their thinking. Interestingly, she talked about how two horses, new things are attractive, if they're allowed to approach voluntarily. They're attracted to novelty. However, we all know, a sudden introduction can be frightening. She discussed some research that showed that if you had a children's playset, like one of those plastic things with a slide and a house up a ladder or whatever, in the yard and the horses got used to it, accustomed to what it looked like and they got so that they would just graze around it. But if they changed its position, if they rotated it,

2:03just 90 degrees, it looked totally different and the horse became scared of it again. Now we all know that this is true. You move one little thing around the barn and the horses notice. This is why getting used to an umbrella is not the same as getting used to a tarp or a flag, she said. Then she talked about cattle, like on a bright sunny day, sharp shadows, like inside a shoot that cattle won't move through the shoot and they won't get in a trailer because it looks like a big dark hole. She talked a lot about these visual things. She shared that animals fears are very specific and she used this cool example of a horse that was really afraid of anybody that wore a black hat on their head. That's where people mostly wear hats as a matter of fact. She conjectured that the horse must

3:07have had a really bad experience with somebody wearing a black hat and so it took a long time to acclimate that horse to having a black hat around. She talked about how animals remember their first experiences very clearly with a particular scenario and they remember those experiences and then they used them to decide whether or not they should be afraid in new experiences that are similar. By creating consistently good experiences, fear can be reduced and she used this example with this cool picture of this very big lion who was getting the claws on his paws trimmed and he was putting them through the fence and just holding them there to get his nails trimmed because he was being fed delicious treats. I'd imagine they

4:09were meat. One of the things that was most memorable about her presentation was the advice that she gave never allow the bad to become the normal. As an example of this, she discussed how really valuable young thoroughbreds at high-end sales in Kentucky often are really afraid and act out in the sales ring because there's all this new stuff like a loud speaker squawking that they haven't heard before and instead of being led around the sales ring by their trusted normal handler, they get handed off to somebody they don't know and so she talked about how we can do so much better. She also talked about when animals are forced to do things like, you know, frightened, you know, waved at with a flag or shocked with a shocker to get them down, say a shoot, it increases their stress quite a lot so she recommends that you always train animals to

5:16cooperate voluntarily like the lion. I had never heard Dr. Grandin speak before so it was really wonderful to have that opportunity and if you miss this session there is a recording on demand that you can access with your registration. In fact, almost all the sessions are available after the fact as long as you've registered. The Business of Practice podcast is brought to you by CareCredit. CareCredit keeps equine veterinarians at the heart of care by providing course owners with simple, budget-friendly financing options. By helping to bridge the gap between costing care, careCredit supports healthy financial relationships between veterinarians and their clients. Clients have a flexible way to pay over time for all types of care and practices get paid in two business days. It's a payment experience that everyone can feel good about. One of the big draws in the business sessions is always the business news hour and this year it did not disappoint so much data and you know how much I love data. I couldn't

6:22possibly share all that was presented so you'll need to watch the recording. It's like drinking from a fire hose but some highlights that I managed to remember included the 2025 American Horse Publications Survey sponsored by Zawaitis where the top issues of horse owners included the cost of horse keeping. That was number one. Number two is land use like you know trails going away and not having room for pastures. And third was access to veterinary care which was a new one to pop up in the top three. Then they touched on disease outbreaks. The new world's screw worm, God that's hard to say, new world screw worm invasion. The deaths of those 21 horses from equine infectious anemia that was spread Iatrogenically. There's a little bit of vesticular stomatitis in Arizona and then the big one those the ongoing neurologic herpes outbreak in eight

7:29states at that point which is a big deal following that barrel racing vinyl. They also included global economic data, equine industry, economic data, some legislative updates and the 2024 mark wellness study at that connected a lack of control in scheduling increased on call hours and low financial stability with less measures of wellness. There was so much to digest in this hour of information and I highly recommend it. Another great presentation in the business sessions was Dr. Barb Krab and Dr. Kara what right who tag team to deliver 40 minutes about moral distress in equine practice. So they said moral distress is the consequence of a moral dilemma when a person

8:30is forced to act in a way that they believe is morally wrong. Dr. Wright talked about how most equine practitioners face something like this every single week. Unfortunately, episodes of moral distress are cumulative and each one leads to like a residue that's piling up and people can become just numb or maybe they step up and have a conscientious objection which could you know be negative in the workplace they could get punished for it or sometimes people simply get burned out and this is one of the ways we lose practitioners to other fields. So they suggested by utilizing a decision framework veterinarians can minimize the harm. And so they talked about identifying all possible outcomes and establishing all the different

9:31stakeholders interests and then formalizing a decision about what to do based on minimizing the impact on the animal. It's important to share all of these different possibilities with stakeholders and look for the highest gradient of optimal according to Dr. Wright. She recommended that practice owners model ethical behavior and create psychological safety respect anybody who has conscientious objections to something they're being asked to do and make sure that mental health resources are available because doing all of those things can reduce the consequences of moral dilemma. Dr. Christine Staten the owner of a big mixed animal practice gave several presentations that could be helpful for other big practices. She talked about recruiting and managing employees developing a strategic plan and implementing performance-based

10:37compensation. They were really good talks with some good information. Dr. Katie Larson and Megan Graves gave an excellent tutorial on establishing an emergency only practice which was so full of actionable advice and clarity and they answered all kinds of questions from the audience that were you know really well thought out. Another great session was by Professionals Tim Skirba and Michelle Sinning who work with the AVMA to help people manage their online reputation for over well actually it was not over they had an hour and a half of time and they gave a really thorough coverage to building a strong brand identity and protecting it protecting the trust that people have in your practice because when you lose trust you really have lost your reputation they said they provided really detailed recommendations

11:43for different scenarios when a practice reputation could be destroyed and answered a number of questions from the audience it had really excellent information and we've all seen if we're on social media at all we've seen places where particular practices are just being hammered for things that are you know present in everyday veterinary life they haven't done anything wrong and so this was a really good presentation and I encourage you to watch the recording if you missed it my favorite session was an early morning session at 6.30 called practical performance horse ethics members of the early career the performance horse and the ethics committees work together to create this great panel discussion that was case-based there were six panel

12:43members and they responded to various I think they had four scenarios and then they open the discussion after they talked a little about each scenario they open the discussion to the audience and then after each scenario had been really well covered and discussed and debated then the AAP ethical guideline was projected up on the screen to further sort of support ethical decision making the scenarios included a pre-purchase exam where the examining veterinarian knew the horse the second was an appointment where the boss was comfortable doing things that the associate felt really crossed their ethics and their values the third scenario dealt with second opinions and the worry of the first opinion the first vet that saw the horse being tossed under the bus

13:48and the final scenario was an emergency call that was made to a local practitioner for a complication from a treatment like a joint injection given by a traveling lameness veterinarian who had then promptly left town you can imagine the discussions were amazing they were thoughtful transparent and oh my god undeniably real like it really felt like real practice and discussions about how to make it better there were differences of opinion but a great deal of respect and consideration of all the different viewpoints such a terrific session and this one's available as a recording on demand too like all of the others it was a great meeting I encourage you to explore the sessions that you missed by utilizing the AAP anywhere platform there is so much good information waiting for you I just I had a great time at the meeting just sucking up information

14:58it was fabulous thank you all for joining us for the business of practice podcast and a big thank you to our sponsor care credit and to all my listeners out there be brave embrace change