There are some weird people out there

by Brent Kelley, D.V.M.

IN WORKING with horses, I also have been required to work with people. And the horses have always been the easier of the two.

When I first got out of school, I worked in a practice in another state. It was a mixed practice--dogs, cats, horses, cows, pigs, etc.--but I did mostly horses. After I had been there for a few months, I received a call from a man who was interested in my services. He had Tennessee Walking Horses. I had never worked on a Walking Horse, but I figured a horse is a horse, right?

Walkers vs. 'Thurbreds'

I went to the farm where I met the owner, a man in his 60s. (That occurred more than 30 years ago, and I thought of him as an old man. Now, 30 or so years down the road, it does not seem so old after all.)

He introduced me to his farm employee, a fellow about his age. He showed me his horses: a stallion, a dozen mares, and 12 or 13 younger animals, mostly weanlings and yearlings. There was nothing to do to them that day, so I had no real contact with them.

As I got ready to leave, the owner said, "Kelley, my horses should be a pleasant change of pace for you."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Well, you been workin' on those damn crazy Thurbreds. Now you'll work on some easy horses," he said.

A week later he called and set up an appointment for me to deworm all his horses. As we went through the farm, "easy" was not a word that exactly came to mind. They reared, they struck, one even tried to bite. They dragged the elderly employee everywhere. What should have taken about two hours ended up taking nearly four.

And the two men--owner and employee--were among the most inept horse handlers I have ever come across.

When it came time to deworm again, I brought with me a friend who was an accomplished horse handler. But it was the same story: crazy horses.

At the end of that day's battle, I was packing up my gear and getting ready to depart when the owner came to me and said, "Kelley, aren't you glad you weren't workin' on some damn crazy Thurbreds?"

Rank stallion

Another client was primarily a trainer, but he had a small farm where he bred a few mares each year. On this farm, he had a stallion, a cheap allowance winner in his racing days that had never been gelded (but should have been). He was rank and difficult to handle.

My client had five of his own mares, and he bred all of them to his stallion and raced the offspring, unsuccessfully for the most part.

One day when I arrived at the farm, Robert, the farm's only employee, was standing about 30 feet from the barn holding a mare. She was twitched and had her left foreleg strapped up.

My client was in the barn. "Hold on, Doc," he said. "Let me breed this mare."

He got his stallion and led him down the barn aisle. As they reached daylight, the stallion saw the mare. He roared like a lion and reared, pulling free from my client's grasp. Then he leaped forward, almost covering the 30 or so feet in a single bound.

The mare, hearing the roar, jerked loose from Robert's hold and began hopping three-legged down the driveway. But the stallion caught her and bred her on the run.

And all the while, my client was shouting, "Catch her, Robert! Hold her!" But Robert had no chance.

The two horses were finally caught, and peace was restored. And the mare got in foal from that cover.

'He's not moving'

A new client had four horses that he was racing. Things had not been going well on the track, so he took all four home for a break from the rigors of training. He called me and set up an appointment to deworm them.

It was my first trip to his farm. He was a contractor and had no regular employee to care for the horses, so he sent some of his construction crew to do whatever was necessary on the farm. These men had no experience with horses.

When I arrived to do the deworming, I saw five men standing around a man lying on his back outside the barn.

"Are you the vet?" one asked me. I said I was.

"Come look at this guy. He's not moving."

He was right. He was not moving and would never move again. He was dead.

"What happened?" I asked.

They did not know. The dead man was sent to bring a horse in, and the horse ran into the barn with a shank attached to his halter. They looked for the man who was sent to get him and that was the way they found him.

The dead man had about a one-inch, horizontal red line below his throat. Apparently, the horse had pulled away from him and kicked.

Kill her

A woman client owned only one horse, Molly, a middle-aged mare that she rode for pleasure. I had tended to the mare's health needs for several months.

One day after deworming, the woman said to me, "I have a job in another state, and I'll be moving in a few weeks."

"I'll miss you and Molly," I replied.

"Molly won't be going," she said. "I want you to put her to sleep just before I go."

"Put her to sleep!?" I was shocked. "Why? There's nothing wrong with her. She can be a fine horse for someone," I told the woman.

"I've had her for eight years and have taken good care of her. I'm afraid someone else will not take proper care of her. That would worry me."

"But killing her wouldn't?" I asked.

I told her I would not put down a healthy horse for a lousy reason. I never went back there; I do not know if she found someone else to do her killing for her.

Pampered rogues

A young man owned and trained three horses. He was not a gifted trainer; if he had trained Secretariat, that great horse probably would have been running--and losing--for a $2,500 claiming price.

The first (and last) work I did for him was to deworm his three horses. I got my equipment together: dewormer, bucket, tube, and twitch.

"You won't need that," he said, pointing to the twitch. "I never twitch my horses."

Fine, I thought. I had come across a few horses that did not need a twitch to be tubed.

But these were not among them. They were terrible! They fought, they reared, they struck, they tried to bite. One of them jumped on my bucket and bent it badly. I got two of them dewormed, but he had saved the best for last.

My patience was wearing thin when we got to that last horse. When the miserable beast hit me in the face with his head, I lost my cool. I punched him in muzzle with my fist. I shouldn't have, but I did.

The owner blew up. "Get out of here!" he shouted. "Never touch my horses again!"

I said that that was a good idea. As I was leaving, I saw him kiss the horse on his nose as he was talking baby talk to him.

Brent Kelley, D.V.M., is a retired veterinarian living in Paris, Kentucky.