Not many horses are cow kickers, but it hurts when they hit their mark

by Brent Kelley, D.V.M.

TOM BALL was a horse trader. It is a difficult way to make a living and very few can do it, but Tom was successful at it. He did not live high on the hog from it, but then Tom's tastes were rather simple. He fed and housed his family and paid his bills. That is more than a lot of folks can manage.

The thing I liked best about Tom was that last attribute: bill paying. He insisted on paying for everything the minute it was done or delivered. He would not buy new furniture or clothes unless he had the cash in hand to pay for it when he got it.

"Cash in hand" was the key phrase here. Tom did not have a checking account. "I had one once and never knew how much money I had," he explained to me one day.

He would drive a truck forever, and when he finally did get rid of it, he paid cash for the next one, which was not always new. The same was true for his wife's car. With proper care--and he did give them that--he figured he could get ten years out of a car. With the amount his wife drove, that probably was fewer than 70,000 miles.

Given his choice, I suspect Tom would like to have paid for his electricity and water the same way: Watch an evening of television, give the electric company a dollar or so; take a bath, pay the water company. Unfortunately for him, they did not work that way.

No matter how much work I did for him, I had the cash in my hand before I left the farm. He insisted on a receipt from me and from everyone he dealt with. "You got to have records," he said.

Tom had run up some healthy bills at times. He sold a lot of horses at the local stockyards, and they all had to have Coggins tests run on them before they could be shipped in. Usually, he had maybe five or six to test, but once he received a truckload of animals from goodness knows where. Twenty-two of them shipped in at one time, and they all needed Coggins tests. He paid me on the spot--$330 in fives and tens.

Drawing blood for the tests was especially fun--considering the horses Tom got in. Many of them were close to wild, so the experience was a true test of our fitness. But we always got it done.

Tom bought horses from the stockyards, too. If he saw something he felt he could sell privately for a profit, he would bring it home. Once he bought an aged Thoroughbred mare that had failed to get in foal for a couple of years, but he thought she was in good enough shape to give her another chance. He bought her for $300 and talked the seller into giving him her registration certificate.

"My vet said she'd never have another foal," the guy told Tom. Maybe he was right, but it did not matter. Her two-year-old won more than $200,000 that year, and Tom sold her unbred for $3,500 to a man who wanted to see if his veterinarian could accomplish anything with her.

That kind of profit was rare, but Tom frequently would buy ponies for $50 to $70, keep them for a few weeks, and then sell them to doting parents for $250 to $300. Profits usually were not very large, but he would make $100 on 15 to 20 transactions a month, and the result was a decent living.

Kick in the head

One time Tom came up with a couple of honest-to-goodness, full-sized plow horses, just like the ones you see on prints at the framing gallery or in "country-cookin'" restaurants. He picked them up somewhere in the mountains of eastern Kentucky from an old farmer who finally had retired. I would not have believed plow horses still were being used in the late 1970s; maybe these were the last two. Both horses were much taller than a typical 16-hand Thoroughbred and weighed at least 1,500 pounds each--very imposing indeed.

Tom called me out one day. "Doc, we need Coggins tests on these two, but one of 'em's got a problem," he told me. Tom showed me a swelling about the size of a baseball on the belly of one horse, five or six inches behind the left elbow. There was a hairless spot as big as a quarter on the surface of it.

"That looks like an abscess," I said, and I reached out toward it. I was standing by the horse's shoulder, facing his rear end. I bent over to get a better look and touched the swelling with my left hand.

The next thing I knew I was flat on my back, seeing stars. The horse had cow kicked, struck forward with a hind foot, as some are able to do. I had had another cow-kicking patient a few years before. He got me square on the kneecap when I was attempting to geld him.

I guess if I had been standing any closer to the plow horse's rear, I would not be writing this today. I most likely would be arguing my merits with St. Peter just outside the Pearly Gates.

Tom's horse had gotten me in the forehead with its foot, just at the forward end of its reach. My forehead swelled to the size of an embedded softball, and over the next few days my whole face turned first black, then purple and blue, followed by a sickly yellow with a pale-green tinge. The real fun part, though, came when the swelling gravitated downward to my eyelids, making each one weigh about eight pounds. I had a greatly reduced perspective for several days.

But back to the problem at hand, or at foot. After several minutes I regrouped and began to consider anew the problem of this beast's apparent abscess. I now was sure it indeed was an abscess because it obviously had caused him some pain when I touched it. I really had not handled it long enough to tell, but I would continue on the assumption that what we were dealing with was an abscess.

So the next step was to lance it to allow drainage. One of the inherent aspects of lancing, however, is the fact that it cannot be achieved without coming in contact with the abscess. If my fingers had hurt him enough for him to kick, what would a scalpel blade induce?

"Pick up his right foreleg," I told Tom. "Maybe he won't kick then."

He did as I said. The horse was not crazy about his leg being lifted, but he allowed it. Very warily and carefully, standing as far back as I could, I slowly reached toward the abscess with a scalpel and blade. My intention was to make a small jab into the hairless area, but the horse was on to me.

He fired! It was so quick, he did not even lose his balance from the other foot being held up. I had my head out of range, but he caught my left forearm, the one reaching for the abscess. He got me right above the wrist, and I dropped the scalpel. Other than pain and eventual swelling and discoloration, though, no damage was done.

Horses respond well to being "tailed"--forcibly holding the tail up over the back. It turns off the kicking mechanism in most horses if you have someone strong enough to do it. Or you can tie a rope to the tail and swing the rope over something and pull hard, thereby exerting some upward pressure; the effect is the same, but this also requires a pretty strong person.

So we tried twitching him. I reached in with a broom handle after the twitch was applied--a procedure that took five full minutes--and he fired just as hard as before.

I told Tom to "ear" him--grab an ear and twist it. This hurts, and I don't like to do it, which was just as well because he would not let us do it anyhow.

Next came tranquilization. He accepted the needle surprisingly well, but I might as well have blown in his ear. He did not tranquilize.

Thrust and parry

I was about ready to give up when Tom made a suggestion. "Doc, why not tie your little blade there to the end of that broomstick and see if you can poke him real quick?"

It was worth a try, if I could aim that well. I taped the scalpel, with a new blade--the old one had lost considerable sterility when it was kicked out of my hand earlier--and stood as far away as I could from Lightfoot, as Tom had begun to call him.

I thrust and he parried. He kicked the broomstick away from his side, but I held on to it.

"I don't know, Tom," I said. "He's a lot quicker than I am. And less scared."

"I can't sell him with that thing on him."

"It'll burst on its own in time. Just wait it out," I suggested.

"Doc, you know that I depend on quick turnover to make money. I can't keep him around here for long."

I told him we would try again. I did not think we would succeed; the only time I had even touched the abscess was on the first attempt, when I got kicked in the head. All these other times the horse had not allowed me within six inches of it.

I armed myself again with the broomstick rapier. Lightfoot already was anticipating his response. I lunged. He kicked. I missed my mark--I actually missed the whole animal--and he missed his mark (me), too. Possibly anticipating my target, he had kicked farther inward, actually hitting himself on the side of his own belly.

Or, to be more precise, he kicked himself in the abscess. It ruptured. Problem solved.

Tom sold Lightfoot and his buddy a few days later for twice what he had given for them.

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