There are Horse People...

And Then There are People with Horses

As a young veterinarian, my husband Matt, used to get asked this question often: “Didn’t you want to be a real doctor?”

At the time, I wasn’t sure if the question came from a place of curiosity or if they thought that being a veterinarian was a consolation prize for those who didn’t make it into medical school.

Perspective is everything. Just as those who asked if he wanted to be a real doctor didn’t know him well enough to know that he worked all day around horses, came home only to go over lab work, reach out to referring vets, study new treatments and then scroll through the TV guide in search of a rodeo or horse race, I couldn’t imagine that my husband’s clients might not be just as focused on horses as he was.

Because I’d been trying to make sense of the world of equine veterinary medicine, I began observing the humans that own them. And I’ve come up with a theory: there are horse people like my husband and then there are people who simply have horses.

While answering the phone at the clinic, this bit of information was important to have. Horse owners calling in needed help and it was my job to interpret what was going on based on what they were telling me, so that I could determine how urgent the call was.

One owner might say that a cut needs instant attention that turns out to be a scrape. Another owner may say that their cut is no big deal while it is a cut that has affected a tendon. I had to try and discern who under-reacted, who overreacted and who saw the situation clearly by learning to ask the right questions.

One night, while we lived near Cleveland Ohio, Matt’s pager went off. In the days before cell phones, if he wasn’t at the office or at home, he’d have to drive to a pay phone to return the page. That night we were home and I heard his side of the conversation.

The young man on the phone was concerned because his horse had been laying down all day and seemed unable to move. I heard Matt ask him a few preliminary questions to try and understand the problem, then I heard him pause. His demeanor seemed cautious. “Sir, I hate to ask you this but is there any chance that your horse is dead?”

“Oh no. He’s looking right at me.” Since Matt couldn’t determine the problem over the phone, he agreed to go out to see the horse in-person to diagnose the problem. He gathered his coat and boots and left for the farm call.

When he arrived, he found an open barn without stalls. Horses, goats and a calf or two were quietly munching on hay. It was a nice small hobby-style farm. The owner was new to living on the farm. He’d always dreamed of leaving the city to raise animals.

He took Matt to area of the barn where the downed horse laid. He looked down at the horse and realized that no examination was necessary. The horse was dead. I’m talking full rigor. To a new owner, his body appeared to be laying in a normal resting position and his eyelid remained open. However, his sides did not rise and fall.

Matt looked around the barn. The man had other animals that seemed to be well cared for. Still, he was dumbfounded that he couldn’t see that his horse was already dead. “Sir, I don’t know how to tell you this, but your horse is dead.”

“He can’t be. He’s looking right at me.” He repeated. Matt went over to the dead horse and checked his corneal reflex. When he gently touched the surface of his eye, and the horse did not blink, the man realized that Matt was right.

Matt grew up on the farm. So much of what he knew seemed almost innate. But the folks who are brand new to animal husbandry need a little extra education. He stayed at the farm and began sharing the importance of taking care of the basics including vaccination and deworming.

The man asked him to deworm every animal on the farm. They walked around together and Matt got to meet each of his animals as he administered their dewormer. A relationship (client-doctor-animal) began to grow out of that experience. It is one of the beautiful parts of veterinary medicine.

Every once in a while on a warm summer day at the clinic, we would get a call from someone driving down the road, telling us that there’s a horse down in a pasture at ‘a certain address.’ They wanted to know if we knew who lived there so that the owner could be notified that their horse was dead. Many times, after the owner was notified, we’d get a call back letting us know that the horse was actually taking a nap.

Perspective is everything. There are people who own horses. And there are horse people. Sometimes the people who own horses turn into horse people, if they are given a chance.