While an intern at Littleton Large Animal Clinic in 1993, Dr. Thal invented an innovative tail-hoist recovery system for safer recoveries after surgery. (He should have published a paper at the time but didn’t !!) That used a block and tackle from a sailboat to much more aggressively support horses to their feet.
Dubbed the “Thal-Master”, the system he developed at Littleton is still used nearly 30 years later to recover horses!
In 2005, a paper was presented by faculty at Texas A&M University detailing the use of Dr Thal’s method. Since then, it has been incorporated in a number of equine hospitals internationally. We use a variation on that system here and it works very well.
