Wellington Equestrian cover Feb - March

WELLINGTON EQUESTRIAN // FEBRUARY-MARCH
Timothy Ober
When this well respected equine veterinarian talks, people tend to listen
Dr. Timothy Ober has seen a lot of
technologies come and go. Many
companies make grand promises only
to flame out with a muffled whimper
and fade away to become part of the
background noise.
What’s refreshing about Dr. Ober is not
that he wants to get right at treating an injury,
he wants to understand why the injury occurred
in the first place. “When I have a horse that’s incurred
an injury, I want to understand what lead
to that injury in the first place by identifying the
root problem,” Dr. Ober says.
“Once you identify why an injury happens,
only then can you decide upon the best course
of action to promote healing and then we want
to focus on the injury, healing both in short term
and the long term for return to function and a
return to performance.”
Like many top equine professionals, Dr.
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Ober embraces a number of modalities
and Cytowave is one of them. “So
when we’re doing that and focusing
on the tendon or soft tissue aspect of
the problem we’re usually using several
different approaches and the Cytowave
has become one of those several
approaches that we use to try to
optimize healing and stimulate the soft
tissues to move in the right direction
to regain strength and get the horse
back to the ring.”
Because Cytowave is quite different
from all other modalities, it takes
quite awhile to wrap your head around
what it is doing, but once it is used,
it’s undeniable that there is something
going on. “We’ve used Cytowave most
effectively for tendon injuries, some
suspensory branch injuries, it’s been
very helpful.”
Dr. Ober said he sees a wide variety
of issues and gave one particular
example of when Cytowave helped.
“We were struggling to get the edema
to fully resolve and we were struggling
to get normal fiber alignment and I
would say when we started Cytowave,
we pushed the tendon forward in that
direction, on both counts. “
Cytowave has quickly earned a
spot in the collective tool box along
with stem cell, PRP, Shockwave and
other modalities. Cytowave works well
by itself and plays well with others.
With his experience, Dr. Ober understands
how Cytowave can fit into a
routine. “I think that anytime you can