Horse Savaging - Part II (Long)

["guest@endurance.net" <guest@endurance.net>]

Jennifer Heim cowgirl_30_98@yahoo.com
First off, I want to apologize for the length of my emails.  When you type 130wpm, the thoughts leave your head, travel down your arms and next thing you know, you have 20 pages of material.

In the spirit of the Oscars, I want to thank the *dozens* of people who emailed privately and gave me their thoughts, hopes, advice and prayers.  Although with my time constraints I cannot thank all of you personally, I will try my darndest!  With my poor memory, right off the cuff thanks to Karen Chaton, Bette Lamore, Lif Strand, Kat Swigart, Sarah Ralston and Robyn Burgess.  But once again, I will try to respond to all emails that people wonderfully sent.

Anyway, back to the story you wanna hear!  :)

The big, rawboned chestnut gelding that peeled skin from my bone in a horse attack is still alive and breathing.  Out of the very many msgs I received, 90% of them were for putting him down before he put me down; 8% were for checking for physical abnormalities, and 2% were keep him and work thru the problems.  I was ready for the ol' ear-to-eye "X" and was whistling happy cleaning out my .357; then the owner calls me.

With crocodile tears, she tells me she cannot keep him anymore for liability reasons, she's ready to make the appointment with the vet and the knacker man.  But.... she can't personally do it.  She's wants to give me the horse, wash her hands of it and now breed cockatoos.  Ignoring the immediate beating about the shoulders that I was receiving from my fiancee (speaker phone), I tell her if she gives me the horse he'll be inside a can in a week.  Fine, that works for her.

Now I have two non-riding equids.  One is too young to work safely, one is too aggressive to work safely.  With the fiancee howling indignacies and checking up on my whole life coverage; I load the horse up and bring him to where I think he'll get the snot kicked out of him by the meanest group of mares this side of the Rockies.  I arrange to have the vet come out and recommend him for either "dog food" or "glue" and gleefully watch the mares chew on this nasty horse.

The vet comes out and immediately starts ooo-ing and aahh-ing over him - he really is a fantastically well put together individual.  I explain for the zillionth time why this horse is a safety issue.  The vet tells me that she has problems putting down such an animal without finding out a reason why he's aggressive.  Ignoring my "that's why there's necropies" blatherings, she starts to examine him briefly.  I blurt out that I cannot possibly put more money into this horse, and she replies that this is pro-bono; we've been friends for a long time.  After the horse mistakes her for a Big Mac and tries to take a hunk out of her shoulder, she sedates him and continues her exam.

Teeth checked first thing.  And the first issue is revealed:  a molar had abscessed, chipped out and now there was a rotted stump.  Mouth agape, I stammer that the horse just had a teeth floating not two months ago; vet replies, somewhat resigned that quite often some vets don't take the time to do a thorough exam, just float the teeth and get out of harm's way.  After dealing with this shark, I see their argument.  Treatment, drill thru sinus cavity (if necessary), drain abscess & remove bits of tooth.  Prognosis for recovery:  excellent.

Blood taken second thing.  Results:  this *gelding* produces more testosterone than a stallion.  Treatment:  hormone therapy.

Digressing for a moment (imagine that!), let me tell you that this horse has an aversion to having his RH picked up.  He'll do it after lots of baby steps and gratitude rubs, but it's always slam the foot back down.  Vet examines this hoof - there was an old wood chip deeply embedded in his coronary band.  Somewhat mystified, I tell her that there's never been any heat (still isn't) and he's never been off on it, just reactionary.  The hoof grows well, with nothing to indicate an insult to the band.  I truly thought his reaction to having his hind foot picked up was because the owner *never* picked out his hind feet until she sent him to me.  

Feeling more and more mortified, I stand back and fight back tears as I watch my friend dig out this ugly, encapsulated wood chip out of his coronary band.  She tells me:  "now let's see if he's going to be a jerk."  Utterly floored, supremely humbled, I ask her somewhat rhetorically where my head was at not to notice such obvious trauma.  God bless the vets; she comforts me by telling me that with truly aggressive horses (such as this gelding), the reaction to pain is more a fight response than a flight response and this guy has learned to react violently.  And humans, with our easily-bruised Ids, react in kind.  

Since the horse started his hormone therapy, had the abscess in his tooth treated and had his hoof finally treated, he's starting to come around.  Don't get me wrong, I still carry a graphite wand when I'm around this horse; but I haven't had to remind him of it for about 10 days now.  

A lot of our work right now is simply sacking out and increasing the pressure on him bit by bit.  Since the hormone therapy, his curiousity streak has developed, I'm starting to wonder if anything scares this horse.  Just the other day I was grooming him (the urge to chew on the mutual *groomer* is sometimes too much for him; I keep a bag of hay in front of him now and that helps him tremendously about reminding him what he can legally chew on) and a very bad car accident happened just 30 yards in front of us.  Municipal bus, two cars and a haz mat big rig.  Gotta love California!  This creates a huge ruckus with clean up crews, insurance teams, news coverage, you name it.  I was more than a bit amazed that with all the sirens, helicopters, noise and big lights that this horse let me lead him right past the confusion, across the street and into the pasture.  He barely looked at them and I took his pulse for giggles at the paddock gate:  36.

Do I have a second horse?  Does Alpo get the big, strapping gelding .... coincidentally named Chance?  Enquiring minds wanna know - including mine!

Stay tuned!  Same bat station, same bat channel!

Jen