Shameful

As can be construed from your entire post, lidocaine is used to facilitate minor surgical procedures and lameness diagnosis. Certainly horses are able to perform within a couple of weeks of such procedures (ie lacerations, throat surgery, etc) if given the go-ahead. The recommended withdrawal is 5 to 10 days depending on the amount used.

It would be interesting in these cases of local anesthetic positives to see whether or not the horses in question underwent any sort of treatment necessitating local anesthetic use. I'd imagine such information could be found on the daily reports private veterinarians are required to submit in most jurisdictions. Otherwise, its hard to swallow these so called "contamination" excuses.

What jurisdictions require this?

Good thing CD gave him that extra cash for the Foster. Karen Murphy sends her thanks.

As an aside, fairly recently, didn't a girl pass away due to overdose of lidocaine because she used skin creams often ? In other words (read the label), this lidocaine positive was the result of applying lidocaine directly to the horse.

How do you know?

I believe that here in California, vets have to document every treatment done to a horse. If they are going to do something illegal, they are obviously not going to abide by this rule.

But in terms of injecting ankles with substances that are legal including cortisone, this is all supposed to be documented. So when a horse breaks down, they could actually check to see how many times the horse has been injected.

Do they have to turn the records over to the racing commission?

You said the lidocaine was in the aloe gel.

Here's just one link to a lidocaine overdose from topical cream.
http://www.ncsu.edu/news/dailyclips/1205/122205.htm#2

I don't know if it's the racing commision or the racing office. I wasn't even aware of this until just recently. With everything that has been going on lately, I was telling one of my trainers that I thought that the track should have a record of anything that a vet does to a horse on the backstretch. He told me that they do have these records. I was totally surprised.

I know that it has happened before. I have no idea if this is the case with this horse

I know that the racing commission can request the Vet records but i didnt know any state was actually collecting them on a daily basis.

Unless I misunderstood my trainer, the records are turned over to either the racing office or the commision. I'm not sure which. I don't know if they are turned over every day, once a week, or once a month. I will find out.

It is possible that I misunderstood and they are only turned over if a horse breaks down.

I guess i thought that if the commission had the vet records than why hadnt i ever heard of a trainer using them to "prove" that a positive has mitigating circumstances. example. Drug X has a 72 hour withdrawl. Trainer gets a positive for it. Checks records and sees that it was given by vet further than 72 hours out. since the records are already turned in and not doctored, they would have some ammo to dispute the test. Maybe they would still be liable but would get a reduced penalty. wouldnt that be possible?

California, Kentucky, Delaware, and Florida, for instance. New York and New Jersey don't require daily reports, but do require vets to submit reports of any joint injections performed. I assume all jurisdictions require veterinarians to maintain medical records in general and some if not most retain the right to have those records submitted in certain instances, namely, when investigating positive post-race tests.

I have never heard that they collected daily reports in KY or FL. i dont race much in the other states.

Despite the medical records, they seem to always fall back on the absolute insurer rule. But at least publicly these guys getting mepivacaine and lidocaine positives would have something to save face on.

I don't know how much enforcing of these rules actually goes on.

I believe that does happen sometimes. If a trainer with a good reputation(good in terms of honesty) has a positive and he has a good explanation as to how it happened, the stewards and commission may not come down hard on him. I think the stewards and commissions are usually willing to consider extenuating circumstances when making their decisions on what type of penalty to administer.

wow had no idea testing was that sensative!