The Walking Wounded My horse, Sonny, is pretty much of a disaster when it comes to injury and illness. I’ve had Sonny for seven years and so far he has cost me over $11,000 in vet bills. Now I know that owning a horse isn’t an inexpensive venture but I had my first horse, Max, for over 23 years and in all that time, I only had to call the vet out twice for something that wasn’t routine care. Sonny on the other hand, is good for some kind of a $500 vet visit about every six months and he is pretty inventive about his mishaps. Sonny’s first misadventure involved a puncture wound that was in such an odd spot, even the vet couldn’t figure out how he had managed to do it. I noticed some blood on Sonny’s front leg up near where his leg connects with his chest. After cleaning the blood, I discovered a puncture located on the inside of his right leg, in what would be our armpit. It was so deep that the vet was able to put her entire index finger inside the hole. She told me that if it had been a quarter inch further to the right, it would have punctured a major artery and he would have bled to death. Fortunately for me he didn’t but between vet visits and medicine, we’d had out first $500 event. Six months after that, he scratched his cornea, we think grazing in some tall grass, and ended up wearing an eye patch until it healed. That wasn’t his only eye injury. A few months after that, he was cantering inside of the round pen and somehow managed to get one hind leg over the lowest rail of the pen. During his struggle to get out, he permanently bent the pen and he whacked his head against the top rail. When he calmed down, I noticed he had cut himself below his right eye. The vet was called for that little adventure and we discovered another scratch on the cornea which resulted in a second stint in an eye patch. I was beginning to think I should be calling him “Pirate Pete”! Sonny’s next misadventure almost cost him his life. I was keeping him at the horse rescue where I was working at the time and he was pastured on a field that was fairly rich in clover. It had been a particularly wet spring and one day I noticed that his muzzle, which is white, was tinged orange. I didn’t think much of it at the time since the soil in these parts has a lot of red clay, but two days later, the rescue director called me and told me that Sonny’s nose was pretty sun burned. I went down to take a lot and what I saw shocked me. Although it was only May and it hadn’t been particularly hot, Sonny’s nose was burned and peeling. I call our vet, Dr. Cushing. He took one look at Sonny’s burnt and orange colored nose and thought right away that he looked a bit jaundiced. It turned out that Sonny had a case of alsike clover poisoning which had affected his liver function. Because the liver was compromised, he was no longer able to digest grass properly and photoactive chemicals were getting into his bloodstream. All of his white skin, where the blood vessels are close to the surface and there is little pigment to protect the skin, had suffered second degree burns. He was a mess. It took us 53 days of doctoring and confinement, during which time he wasn’t allowed to be in the sun. He was miserable (we both were) but he finally recovered. I moved Sonny to a new barn after that and the year after the alsike clover incident was relative trouble free. Then fourteen days before he was supposed to ship to Florida so I could attend the Fast Track course, I noticed a large lump on his sheath. Since shipping across state lines requires a clean bill of health, I called the vet. The lump turned out to be a pocket of infection, probably from a bug bite. Dr. Cushing opened the area and drained it. For days afterwards, I had to swab the opening with antiseptic , squeezing out some really vile looking gunk that gradually decreased until two days before we were scheduled to leave, he finally passed his vet check. For the seven years I have owned Sonny, he has had some on and off lameness problems. He is slightly crooked in the front and his right front foot is pretty upright. We’ve done multiple x-rays, which haven’t shown much in the way of navicular changes and managed the problem with supplements and occasional anti-inflammatory medicine. I have probably aggravated the problem as I progressed to level 3 work and spent more time with circling exercises both on line and when riding but the problem has always been manageable until 2012. I returned from vacation in March and discovered Sonny was lame. We treated, as usual, with Bute and he improved enough for me to attend a Carol Coppinger clinic but the problem proved to be persistent and in June, I finally had the vet come out to evaluate Sonny. Dr. Cushing blocked his right front foot and he immediately because sound so we proceeded with x-rays, which didn’t show much in the way of changes. A test for Lyme’s disease was negative so we assumed we were dealing with a soft tissue injury. With rest and a change in shoeing, Sonny was showing good improvement and I felt we were on the right track until I received a call from our barn manager one morning informing me that Sonny had come in from the field dead lame. When I say he was dead lame, I mean he didn’t want to walk. This was the kind of lameness that usually indicates an abscess. He was miserable. We treated him as if it was an abscess but when nothing developed in a couple of days, we called Dr. Cushing. Sonny didn’t show much sensitivity to the hoof tester and didn’t have much of a pronounced pulse in his hoof so Dr. Cushing put him on a course of Previcox and Recovery EQ. Slowly he began to improve and I thought we were out of the woods until I received another call from the barn manger to tell me that Sonny had ulcers all over his lips and inside his mouth. Really? I was beginning to wonder why I couldn’t catch a break with this horse. I was afraid that he was allergic to the medicine that seemed to be making him better so I called the vet. Dr. Cushing took one look at Sonny’s mouth and asked to see what kind of hay he was eating. The barn had recently taken delivery of some nice grass hay. Because Sonny had been confined either to his stall or the round pen while we were treating his foot injury, he had been eating a lot of this new hay and quite frankly, he loved it. Dr. Cushing looked at the hay and picked out some foxtail seed heads. He was pretty sure this was the culprit. Apparently some horses react to foxtail heads in just this way and of course, given Sonny’s predilection for unusual medical issues, he was sensitive. We changed Sonny’s hay, treated the ulcers with medicine and his mouth is now healed up. We are continuing to treat the lameness and new x-rays have revealed some arthritis so we have added injections to his regiment. I am hopeful that it will resolve enough for me to ride again at some point but have come to the conclusion that Sonny’s days as my levels horse have come to an end. I’ve been playing with him at liberty lately, not doing anything strenuous and he is feeling good enough that he offered to jump a fence the other day. I stopped him before he could but felt encouraged that he would offer. When you buy a horse, you don’t really know what the future will hold in terms of the animal’s health. With Sonny’s confirmation, I probably accelerated his arthritis when I started advancing in my Parelli work, but I am hopeful that by switching Sonny to trail riding, he and I can have many good years together. Given his history, I expect he will figure out some other original ways to injure himself so at this point, I have given the vet my credit card number. It is just easier that way!