November 7, 2012 was cold, windy, and sleeting, a fitting day for the dedication ceremony of the Ilona English Equine Performance Evaluation Facility (EPEF) (Fig 1). The day was very similar to the day Mrs. English brought one of her horses to New Bolton Center for a lameness evaluation. The atrocious weather inspired her to spearhead an initiative and provide the initial funds to build an indoor arena. Her generosity, along with others, culminated in the construction of the newest building on Penn Vet’s New Bolton Center campus, the EPEF. This facility provides a safe and comfortable place for patients, clients, clinicians, nurses, and students to evaluate horses.

The EPEF is a completely enclosed indoor arena. The building measures 80’ x 120’ and is light and airy due to the large span of windows along the all sides and its high ceiling (Fig 2). Along the north end of the building an elevated observation deck provides a view of horses working in the ring, a great place for students to learn. The footing in the arena is MC Ecotrack® by Martin Collins, a FEI-approved wax-coated blend of high-grade sand, CLOPF® fibers, and soft rubber. It has the European Union stamp of approval from an environmental standpoint and New Bolton Center is the first US veterinary hospital to install this world class footing.

This beautiful new building is an integral element in our Sports Medicine Program as we continue to expand our services. The facility will help us to excel in patient care by giving us the ability to evaluate horses, regardless of the weather, in a safe environment. The facility is a quiet place to perform lameness evaluations, prepurchase examinations, and diagnostic procedures involving riding and exercising horses.

The EPEF is the ideal location to perform gait analysis of horses using the Lameness Locator®, a wireless inertial sensor system which can easily be applied to the horse while trotting in hand or while ridden. The Lameness Locator® objectively detects and quantifies lameness in the horse (Fig 3) and is quick, easy, and completely non-invasive. Small, wireless accelerometers (measures up and down movement) are mounted to the horse’s head and pelvis and a gyroscope (measures orientation) is secured to the right front pastern. Results are depicted in graphs that are easy to interpret.

The EPEF is the initial phase of a two-phase project that will culminate in a state-of-the-art Equine Performance Clinic. The proposed complex will include holding stalls, an enclosed hard surface trot up track, hard surface lunge area, diagnostic center, procedure room, client services, and more. Our new EPEF and proposed future facility will be a vital part of the Sports Medicine team at New Bolton Center which offers a wide range of specialty services with which to assess horses with performance limiting abnormalities. State-of-the-art imaging capabilities include MRI, CT, digital radiography, nuclear imaging, high-speed treadmill evaluations, ultrasound, and echocardiology. We also have an onsite farrier that can apply a multitude of horseshoes from the traditional nail-on shoe, to rim pads, to bar shoes, to custom glue-on shoes. Stay tuned for our Open House date in the spring.