Fractures, more fractures and surgeries – Horse ownership is testing

In the Beginning, there was naivete

I gazed out the passenger window, my eyes the size of saucers. Waves of excitement and anxiety washed over me in turns. My then trainer Halliea was in the driver’s seat, hauling my brand new project horse home. He was a big athletic three-year-old right off the track, and though we had high hopes for him, we had no idea how broke he actually was. She shared my excitement but offered me a colloquial little prophecy that fate has never allowed me to forget: “You’re going to have a long row to hoe with this one.”

I nodded in agreement, lost in daydreams about ground poles and green horse milestones.

I had no idea how freaking long a row it would be.

–

A few weeks later, the fantasy came crashing down. The OTTB, who I had unofficially named Andy, had fractured a sesamoid while on the track, a fact concealed by the third party seller. Under vet orders, we started a regimen of stall rest and shockwave therapy, plus vitamin E, MSM, previcox, and (eventually) hand walking on a firm surface. Fortunately, I was able to ride my trainer’s wonderful horse, because it’d be months before I could swing a leg over my new project horse.

Out of the Frying Pan and Into the Fire

Eventually, I was able to ride Andy again.

At the walk.

In straight lines only.

In November.

Our straight lines often devolved into squiggly ones. There were squeals, bucks, and farts (some from him, some from me). Eventually- yes, another ‘eventually’- he was all clear for real work again. I sent him to a trainer to work some of the kinks out while I prepped for my wedding, and after a few weeks of preliminary groundwork, she informed me before ever setting foot in a stirrup that he had an infected ingrown tooth.

Okay, no big deal, Stupid Optimistic Me thought. I’ll get all of the crazy vet bills I’ll ever have with this horse out of the way early. (Author’s note to past self: Haha, guess again bitch.)

Andy made a few trips to the animal hospital to get not just one, but two teeth removed. The \vet may or may not have described him as a “circus freak.” After several weeks, the surgical wound continued to drain. We treated it with antibiotics until finally, the vet was satisfied with its progress. He eventually (we’re up to four of those now, for those keeping count) cleared him to go back to work, and so we began the process of restarting him…again.

That lasted a grand total of two days.

Here We Go Again…

In perhaps the only stroke of good luck, Andy has ever experienced, the vet just so happened to be out to see him for a routine check-up of his surgical wound. As the vet tech led him out of his stall, he lurched like a drunken sailor and almost fell down. The vet, who clearly shared my suspicion of EPM, wordlessly changed gears and began looking at his neurological reflexes and responses, which were mercifully normal.

It wasn’t until the vet had his hand buried in my horse’s rectum palpating his pelvis that I noticed the swelling around his stifle. Out came the X-ray machine, and there it was – a fracture in his tibia. There was no way to tell if it was a spiral or not; and so there was no way to know yet how life-threatening the injury actually was. The vet left me with a timeline: four months. It would be four months before we could see what the bone would do: If it would calcify and heal or splinter and shatter.

What do you do when you’re not sure if your horse will live or die?

You invent puzzles, games, and boredom busters for them to ease your worried mind, and then you put them on instagram.

Time eventually (Author’s note: I realize that the ‘eventually’ trope might be getting old but WELCOME TO THE FREAKING CIRCUS PEOPLE) revealed my poor horse was safe from the devastation of a spiral fracture, but he wasn’t out of the woods. He’d developed a massive seroma from the trauma of the break. It was (of course) the biggest seroma the vet had ever seen, and the process of draining it was so gory that he featured the video on the practice’s facebook page for Halloween. After that, Andy had a giant, bloody maw on his stifle. Surprisingly, that was the least complicated disaster of all: it healed right up in weeks without so much as a scar.

Eventually, Andy and I were able to get started again, and we actually began to get somewhere. I was pleased to discover that the horse I had been waiting for was really fun to ride. Not only was he beautiful, athletic and scopey; he was generous, forgiving and intelligent (sometimes too intelligent). Finally! My dream horse was really becoming my dream horse!

And then the dream horse bubble popped and the proverbial stormclouds rolled back in.

By this time, I had taken on a position as a working student with a new trainer, Nicky, and we were scheduled to take the horses for a cross country outing. In the calm moments before the storm, I entered Andy’s paddock to find him happily standing on his hind legs in an attempt to entice his mildly annoyed pasture mates to play. As I brought him toward the barn, Nicky waved me around the back of it. Somewhere in a parallel universe, the thunder rolled.

“Don’t go in the barn. His lab report just came back,” she said. The week prior, a member of the practice that had performed the dental surgery had swabbed Andy’s still intermittently draining surgical wound.

The next three words were devastating: “He’s got strangles.”

What the #^*%?!

This fit, impish horse who was just doing his best two-legged circus tricks out in the field not two minutes ago, who stormed and bucked around a 20 meter circle 12 hours ago, whose bright, clear eyes and dry nostrils were currently scoping me for treats as I stood there slack-jawed?

Though strangles is rarely deadly, receiving the diagnosis felt like a death sentence. The dream of starting my bright young horse as an eventer was once again squashed in its inception.

The barn was quarantined. Andy was cooped up and isolated per state vet orders. Though everyone at the barn was totally gracious about it, we were all perplexed. If Andy had strangles, where were the symptoms? Surely, even if he was among the 10% of carriers that exhibited no signs of the illness, someone else would have shown symptoms. State inspectors came out and shook their heads in confusion: this case was “atypical,” they said. (Author’s note: This was neither a surprising nor useful revelation.)

Unsurprisingly, it turned out that Andy didn’t have strangles. A PCR test came back negative, but the quarantine stayed put anyway. Even with the intervention of a second vet, and the acknowledgement from two state inspectors that none of the horses at the facility were symptomatic, the state wouldn’t budge. Andy was jailed for a sickness he did not commit. I could kick rocks, howl at the moon and shake my fists at the sky, but it wouldn’t change anything.

I was lucky once again: my trainer allowed me to ride a fantastic horse of hers while mine was down and out. It gave me time to work on my many (many, many, many) position flaws and have fun on a talented, educated horse. But that didn’t stop me from self pity. One, two, three shows had now passed us by over some stupid mistake.

Onward and Upward (but knock on wood)

Andy had surgery to correct the infection in his mandible, which, as it turns out, was caused by lingering fragments of bone from the first surgery. And so he did was he does best: heal.

And I did what I do best: sulk in the corner of his stall. I sat and watched him peacefully eating hay, occasionally pointing a sharp little thoroughbred ear my way or rolling one large, liquid eye toward me in polite acknowledgement. It’s worth mentioning that through all his injuries and non-illnesses, he’s never cribbed, weaved, or become aggressive or sullen. Even when I’ve hurt his feelings by painfully removing surgical gauze, making him walk in boring straight lines, flushing wounds or cold hosing ad-nauseum, he’s always forgiven and forgotten.

Actual footage of my horse’s reaction when I removed the gauze from his surgical wound



Andy is a horse, and horses have no concept of the future. They do not mourn missed opportunities or count the days down. For all he ever knew, every time he went on stall rest, he might have stayed inside that stall forever. He may have never filed his lungs with fresh open air, stretched his legs, rolled in the sand or played with his pasture mates again.

Some days he was full of pent-up energy, and on those days I stood outside his stall. However, most days, he simply blinked happily and tore mouthful after mouthful from his dense flakes of alfalfa. When fresh shavings came every day, he could hardly wait for the wheelbarrow to come out of the stall before he sank to his knees, groaning, and enjoyed a good roll in the clean pine bedding. To him, there is only ever the present moment, and he learned to enjoy the simple pleasures available to him. He lives inside of the now and somewhere along the way, he learned to accept that “right now” just freaking sucks the big one.

All I know is, if he can roll with the punches and be patient, so can I.

Final Author’s Note: The quarantine was finally lifted several weeks ago without so much as an apology from the state. Andy celebrated by cavorting non-stop for a solid three hours, and we got back to work a few days later. We’re well on our way to becoming eventers again, but keep your fingers crossed for us just in case.