White hairs on a chestnut

[Roberta Jo Lieberman <woik@home.com>]

Hold your horses! There are other reasons for white hairs to appear on
horses than bad saddle fit. For example, a story in the Sept 99 issue of
[Michael Plumb's] Horse Journal discusses white spots as a result of
aluminum toxicity. I don't have the article right in front of me, but if
anyone is interested I can dig it out.
--Bobbie (buried under back issues)
Found it!! There is a major sidebar called "Red Alert: Aluminium
Levels." I can't go into the lengthy details here, but the horse with
the white spots had documented aluminum toxicity. The horse (who is
pictured in the article) was started on malic acid supplements and the
white spots began to disappear. It looks from the photos that the small
white spots were scattered over the entire hair coat. He was, by the
way, a chestnut with wide blaze and three white socks. Hypersensitivity
to light touch was also observed in some of the high-aluminum horses.
Does anyone remember a foundation Thoroughbred named Birdcatcher with
small white spots all over, prompting the colloquialism "Birdcatcher
spots" in similarly adorned horses? I believe that he, too, was
chestnut. I'm remembering this from way back early EQUUS days so could
be all wet (as you know, aluminum is also suspected to play a role in
memory loss ;-)....)


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