Married with Horses: Paging Dr. Sherlock Holmes

Continued from Married with Horses: Another Lame Story

© Andy Myer

It was a nice, quiet afternoon in the barn. The horses were out and the stalls were clean. I'd finished mending what few broken fence boards we had, and it was not yet warm enough for any grass or weeds to need mowing or spraying. Did I mention there wasn't a boarder in sight? It was indeed a beautiful afternoon. A light breeze blew through the barn aisle. I sat on a bale of hay, sleepily watching the horses in their pastures.

You can't take moments like this for granted because you never know when a horse, a boarder or anyone else will interrupt. The only thing scheduled before feeding time this day was a possible visit from our farrier, Ronald. He was coming over to shoe some of the boarders' horses and take another look at Skip. Perhaps he could solve the mystery of our barely lame horse.

It had been little more than six months since Skip's pre-purchase X-rays were taken, and they showed a horse with perfect hocks and feet. Two vets had been out to see him in the past few weeks, but with no real progress. The closest we got to a diagnosis was a suspicion of polysaccharide storage myopathy (PSSM), the symptoms of which most closely mimic tying-up, and include the shifting lameness we'd observed in Skip. That vet recommended we make some changes to Skip's diet until the results of his creatine kinase (CK) test--which could detect the muscle damage associated with PSSM--came back. We eliminated his grain ration, feeding instead soaked beet pulp with corn oil, and switched to a low-protein hay. The CK test came back negative, and we were no closer to knowing the cause or how to restore Skip's soundness.

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Despite our lack of progress, a visit from Ronald gave us hope. In addition to being an amazing farrier, he has actually been surprisingly accurate in diagnosing some of our horses' problems. We've used numerous farriers in our area of North Carolina and even a few others during shows in Virginia. None has ever been as good or as reasonably priced as Ronald. Many other horse owners agree, and subsequently, we never know exactly when Ronald can or will show up.

Trying to predict when a farrier is going to arrive was like dealing with the weather when it runs counter to your turnout schedule. (I believe it to be an annoying variant of Murphy's Law.) For example: You were planning to turn your horses out in the morning, but the weather predictions call for rain between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m., so you leave the horses in. Leaving the horses in literally causes a rain delay. If you leave your horses in, then it will start raining at exactly the time you would have normally brought the horses inside. On the other hand, if you know that leaving the horses in negates the forecast, and you decide to turn them out as usual, that simply makes it rain earlier. In fact, a torrential downpour will begin the instant you lock the gate behind the last horse you turn out. There's no way to win.

I thought I would try anyway. I had a plan: I would give Skip a bath. If all went according to my plan, Ronald would show up right when Skip was covered in sudsy bubbles. All right, so my plan didn't work. I was wrong, and Skip got a bath. I was anxious to get Skip taken care of, and desperate times call for desperate measures. As soon as Kimberly arrived home, I told her she really needed to ride Skip. As long as Kimberly was planning on riding the same horse who needed Ronald's attention, her changing clothes and tacking up the horse always seemed to make Ronald appear. Kimberly changed into her riding clothes and had Skip all saddled-up when Ronald pulled up to the barn. Victory was mine!

"Isn't that always how it goes?" I said to Kimberly. "Boy! And you were all ready to ride, too. Geez." Kimberly looked a little irritated. I'm not sure, but I may have had to sleep on the couch that night. Anything for the horses, right?

It was like déjà vu, all over again. There we were standing in the round pen with Skip running in circles around us. There were minor improvements since Ronald changed Skip's angles and added pads, but Skip's head still bobbed slightly at the trot. We had already tried time off with bare feet, but that didn't help either. An hour observing Skip--even with Ronald's expert eyes--yielded nothing new. We decided we'd trailer Skip up to the vet's for some tests. Fortunately, it wasn't a wasted trip for Ronald. He took care of Vander and a couple other horses before driving off into the sunset.