These boards should not be used to take the place of emergency veterinary care. If you have an emergency, please call your veterinarian now.
To Search or Not to Search
If you know what you are looking for the search engine will rapidly display all the articles and discussions with a particular word or term in Horseadvice. It will present them in order of relevance. But what if you are not sure what you are looking for? For instance, you have symptoms but don’t know what diseases might be related to those symptoms. Or if you are looking for general information on nutrition. These are cases where perusing menus of related articles and discussions may help you answer your questions. Don’t forget by using the rollout menus on the navigation frame on the left of every page you can rapidly review the “branching tree” organization of topics and subtopics on the site.
Topics are arranged logically
The topics and subtopics are arranged on menus in logical hierarchies by subject matter. Starting at the homepage and working your way down to your specific subject often works best for problem-solving for a couple of reasons:
The Menus help organize your thoughts.
The menus help organize your thoughts. Menus allow you to view other related information that you may not have thought of. As you bore down the subtopic menus, examine the choices carefully. Pay close attention to overview and diagnosis topics that further help explain a topic or diagnose a condition. Study the menu itself. It often contains helpful information. Articles are grouped on the menus by their relationship to each other. If the article you selected did not apply, look at the articles around it or look for a more general article. Article Pages and New Discussions.
The Article Page
The article page will contain both the article and a forum with a list of preexisting discussions. Also note at the bottom of every article but before the discussions is a button to search PubMed the largest veterinary information database in the world. The proper keywords are already entered you just push the button. Each article has its own forum associated with it at the bottom of the page where you can read others topics, post a question or reply to another’s topic.
Forums and Discussions
If the article on your subject did not answer your question or raised more questions you cannot find an answer to, study the Discussions below the article. Before posting study the preexisting discussions, frequently you will find your question answered there. If not, it is time to post a New Discussion. At the bottom of the list of discussions there will be a “Create New Discussion” button. Do not add your question to the bottom of someone else’s discussion, this is reserved for when you want to respond or ask about the original poster’s topic.
Horseadvice has a open forum system and full service members can post a question or reply. Posts are not reviewed before they are put on the board. DrO attempts to look at every health or disease post in a timely manner but he is not always readily available.