It Comes Down to You

Whether we are a horse owner or a trainer, or any horse person, really, figuring out if a horse is in pain might come down to you. I kind of hate to say that, but horses “slip through the cracks” all the time. The buck could stop with you, and you may be the ONLY person who can stand up and speak for that horse. I never wanted the “buck to stop” with me, I didn’t ever want this to be part of my job. Sometimes I feel a bit like the kid who “sees dead people”, except I see horses in pain. It’s a dubious “gift”. I don’t care for this gift. But my point is that like me, you, YOU could be the only person in a horse’s life who believes he’s in pain and can advocate for him.

I’ll tell the story of one of those horses who “slipped through the cracks”, but I’ve got dozens of these stories, literally. The details change, but the basic story remains the same. The horse usually comes with a “clean bill of health” in some way, and has been approved to work by other professionals who actually do that for a living. But when a horse comes to me for training, I get to live with them and notice lots of small behaviors, and those often add up to a horse in pain.

My husband Glenn and I met when a mutual friend suggested he send two of his horses to me for training. All I knew about the horses initially was that he had taken a professional trainer with him to see the horses out west, had not had them vetted, and was having different troubles with both of them.

Levi, the horse we’re going to talk about here was touted as the “ranch’s best horse”, was six years old, and a pretty grey gelding. He had done all the jobs on the ranch, and the guys there liked riding him and using him for jobs. The professional who Glenn took with him really liked the horse, so Glenn purchased the horse.

Not long after they got the horse home, Glenn was taking lessons with his teacher, and they started to think that the horse looked “off” sometimes. It wasn’t anything very obvious, and it seemed like it was different legs, so they got confused about it. Because it wasn’t consistent, and there was no obvious head bob, Glenn continued to ride the horse and take lessons with his teacher.

After months of this, Glenn decided to have a lameness exam with Levi and his vet. The vet couldn’t figure it out either, and didn’t think that the horse was “lame enough” to warrant x-rays or further diagnostics. He said to let him know if it got worse.

It wasn’t long after that that Glenn sent the horse to me. As I got to know the horse, I got suspicious, and then concerned. He was a sweet, willing horse. He tried really hard, and didn’t really have a “no” in him. He knew quite a bit, and obviously had quite a few miles and some experience. What didn’t add up for me was that he was hard to catch. For me, that was a huge red flag, because it didn’t make sense in the context of who he was in other ways. Refusal to catch is an “opt out”, where the horse is kind of “saying”, “If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather not.” But once he was caught, he’d do everything he knew how to do. So why was he opting out? I just couldn’t get that to make sense.

I called our vet (who is also trained as a chiropractor and massage therapist), and she came to see Levi and listened to my story and concerns. I told her that he’d been “off” before, but it appeared to be in different legs, according to Glenn. The first thing she wanted to do was shoot x-rays of his hocks and his front feet as a starting point. She thought that was a pretty “safe” place to start, and we could do more from there if we needed to.

In short, Levi was a train wreck. He had big “changes” in his front feet, and arthritis in his pedal joints. In his hocks, it appeared that some of his carpals were deformed. The vet wondered out loud if perhaps Levi was born in a drought year, where his mother may have been malnourished while carrying him. The vet did not think that any of these issues were treatable, and that they’d only get worse over time, so Levi was retired at six years old.

Glenn kept Levi as a pasture pet for about a year, but it became so painful for him to stand on three legs to get his feet trimmed that the decision was made to put him down. He was put down at seven years old.

In this case, the buck stopped with me. Levi had “fallen through the cracks.” In this case, it was me, but it could have been any of us. We can’t rely on other people to see “it”, feel “it” or do something about “it.”

I don’t think anyone set out to “rip Glenn off.” I think rather than malice, a lot of these situations are fueled by a simple lack of knowledge. The ranch that sold Levi missed it (though they did give Glenn his money back, as the horse had sold as “guaranteed sound”), the other trainer missed it and Glenn’s vet missed it. I think what got them, and it turns out this is really common, is that the horse was lame in all four legs, which is why the lameness seemed to move around. In my career, I have seen several horses who were lame in all four legs, and it’s unbelievably difficult to get people to believe it. I’ve also seen horses who were lame in three legs, and two legs (a “symmetrical lameness), and seen horses who were “unsound” rather than lame, meaning that they have pain other places in their body aside from their legs.

The “science” and practice behind this is imperfect, in my experience. Horses can’t talk, and it can be so difficult to interpret their actions. There can be things wrong with horses that are, as of yet, undiagnosable, or only diagnosable after death, by autopsy. There are genetic diseases we have not learned how to test for yet. There is birth trauma, accidents, illness, compensation, conformation issues, gosh, there’s so much that can go wrong. I’m not sure why people are so surprised when they figure out there’s something wrong with their horse.

And people, owners, can get really funny about this. I know that it must be a shock to send your horse for training, or go to a lesson, only to find out our horse has physical issues. But people can respond to the news in very strange ways, including anger (at the messenger) of all things.

So my point is, it may come down to you, to you personally, to determine if a horse is in pain or not. You may be the only hope that horse has.

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