On Thursday in Part 5 of this excerpt from the new book Equine ER, we returned to the operating room where surgeon Scott Hopper was trying to remove a portion of the small colon trapped in a diaphragmatic hernia of Thoroughbred Marching Orders. Today, we go back to the operating room.

The mood in the operating room was relaxed and a little chatty. Dr. Scott Hopper had his left arm in the horse’s abdomen up to his armpit. Somehow the conversation got off onto people whose arms were double-jointed or abnormally flexible like Hopper’s. Dr. Megan Romano, an intern doing the anesthesia, came over for a moment and commented about how Dr. Embertson and Dr. Brett Woodie could bend some of the joints of their fingers so they looked clawed. She said she found it bizarre: “It’s so gross,” she added, as she stood right next to the horse’s guts, with blood and feces all over the floor. Then she went back to monitoring the anesthesia.

Hopper couldn’t get the hernia dilated with his fingers; he had to cut the scar tissue to widen the hole. That done, the muscle tore easily and he got the opening big enough to pull the colon out. But now the problem was trying to close the hole. The muscle comprising the diaphragm is thin, flexible, and hard to suture. And now, because of the hernia’s location, he couldn’t see what he was doing. He’d have to close by feel.

With a headlamp on even though the light added almost nothing to help guide him, Hopper plunged his left arm into the horse’s abdomen up to his armpit again to draw back some of the bowel and liver away from the hole, followed by his right arm and hand to suture it closed. The curve of his right index finger shielded the point of the needle to keep it from piercing the horse’s gastrointestinal tract. “There’s almost no way in hell I can get to this,” he muttered after about an hour. He didn’t need to suture the hole completely closed – as he would with a laceration – he just needed to get enough sutures in to keep anything from going back through it. But the muscle around the opening kept splitting. Hopper kept trying. The muscle kept splitting.

Another half hour passed: “C’mon, bastard,” said Hopper.

Thursday: What happened to Marching Orders. 

We recently got a letter from reader Jackie Betts, telling us what she thought about the new book Equine ER (Eclipse Press, 2009). She wrote: "I found myself swept up in the day-to-day, sometimes minute-to-minute drama of this group of dedicated [vets] ... [the book shows] their private moments of fatigue and doubt and tears; all of this information is accessible and captivating."  To order Equine ER, click here.

On Monday in Part 4 of this excerpt from the new book Equine ER, we took a deeper look at the prison farm program where an inmate met Marching Orders, the stoic Thoroughbred with the big heart. Today, we go back into the operating room and find out what the surgeon discovered with Marching Orders on the table.

In the operating room, what surgeon Scott Hopper found was a diaphragmatic hernia – a hole in the diaphragm between the chest and the abdominal cavity – and a section of the small colon had gotten trapped inside the opening. The ultrasound hadn’t picked it up because of the amount of gas distention and the hernia’s location, higher on the diaphragm, more toward the horse’s back. It wasn’t your everyday colic.



Dr. Scott Hopper operates on Thoroughbred Marching Orders.

Horses can live with diaphragmatic hernias for years (some are born with them). One original cause of a hernia is trauma – getting kicked, for example.  Often, diaphragmatic hernias are small, and because the lung capacity of a horse is one of the largest of all species, horses don’t necessarily need all that capacity to function, especially a horse like Marching Orders who was retired and not running on the track.

A vet student visiting from New Zealand who was observing the surgery asked Hopper how big the hernia it was.

“Not very big,” he replied, “it’s fibrous,” meaning it had a ring of thick scar tissue around the edges, signifying it had likely been there a while.

The gastrointestinal tract of a horse is not only much larger than a person’s, it moves around more. The small intestine is more mobile than the small colon, so Hopper was surprised it was the latter not the former that had, for some reason, found its way up to the hernia that day and gotten trapped inside.

The surprise factor is one of the things that Hopper actually enjoys about his work. He isn’t burned out even though he’s been a surgeon for more than a decade. He likes that you never truly know what is going on inside a horse until you open the animal up (kind of like a Christmas package, he told me once), and that he can take something broken and fix it.

To fix Marching Orders, the vet couldn’t just pull the small colon out. The section that had gotten stuck was now bigger than the hole; that’s why it had gotten stuck to begin with. Nor could he manipulate the colon from the other side and try and milk the gas back out – the location made that impossible. He first attempted to reach deep inside the horse and expand the hernia with his finger so he could remove the colon.

Monday: Was surgeon Hopper able to extricate the small colon?

Equine ER was recently the cover story of Ace Weekly in Lexington, Ky. Writer Kim Thomas calls the book a "must-read" for horse lovers. To order Equine ER, click here. Thanks for visiting this blog. 

On Thursday in Part 3 of this excerpt from the new book Equine ER, Marching Orders, the stoic Thoroughbred with the big heart, ran into trouble in the operating room. Today, we look further at the prison farm program where an inmate's life was transformed by Marching Orders.

From the outside, Blackburn Correctional Complex looks like a former boy’s school – old-fashioned brick buildings with tall windows curved at the top – but it has always been a prison. The prison farm program is on 100 acres at the back end of the property. Headquarters is a converted dairy barn. It is white with green shutters, an octagonal window in the middle, and old-fashioned lanterns on either side. It looks like Anne of Green Gables mucks out the stalls inside, not men who have been convicted for dealing and selling drugs, DUIs with manslaughter, burglary, or writing illegal OxyContin prescriptions.

Horses graze in paddocks of the Blackburn prison farm program. 

The need is great for racehorse retirement homes such as Blackburn’s. In 2008, approximately 35,000 live Thoroughbred foals were reported born in North America, according to The Jockey Club. When I looked at the yearly foal report published by The Blood-Horse, its blue ledgers listing name after name, it was mind-boggling to think about the competition they would face at the track. A study done by the Thoroughbred Times analyzing data from 1990-99 found that out of the 360,741 foals born during that nine-year period, 48.1 percent would win a race but only 3.7 percent would be stakes winners, 0.8 percent graded stakes winners. As one inmate in the Blackburn farm program told North American Trainer magazine in 2008, “If they were humans, they’d have their players union and they’d have their retirement package. They don’t have a voice.”

Linda Dyer, who runs the Blackburn program, is a Lexington native and veteran manager of various farms in the area. She teaches the inmates everything she knows: from worming and giving vaccines … to how to wrap a horse’s legs and feet … to recognizing lameness, colic, and other problems. Since Rood & Riddle vets treat the horses, with access to technology you might not have outside the Bluegrass, inmates have gotten to see things they wouldn’t elsewhere – on-site digital X-rays and sinus scoping, for example.

Inmate Chris Huckleby was one of the best horsemen Dyer had ever had. She hoped he would get a job at one of the Lexington horse farms when he got out. One of the bigger operations had hired Blackburn inmates before, with good salaries and benefits. But the law is that a prisoner has to get a job fourteen days after he gets out, and inmates receive bus tokens but no money for other transportation. Farms want to see you in person and looking sharp. The buses don’t go out to many of the farms, numerous inmates don’t have family to take them, and the clothes they are given come from Goodwill.

Huckleby was transferred from Blackburn to another prison in 2006 and got out in 2008. He relocated to Lexington so he could adopt Marching Orders once he saved up enough money. He had already lined up a barn where he could board him. He soon got a job with a plumbing company making a decent salary. He thought about the horse all the time. The horse’s previous owners, a Bluegrass couple, had acquired the Thoroughbred in a claiming race. After donating him to Blackburn, they visited the horse regularly. Huckleby had become friendly with them during their visits, and now wrote and called the two constantly to find out how Marching Orders was doing. When the place Huckleby had lined up to board the horse fell through, Huckleby knew he’d find someplace else. He had to. It was as if he were separated from one of his kids. But it had to be the right place, one where it felt safe to leave the horse.

Thursday: What Marching Orders’ surgeon found in the operating room.

Equine ER is currently the cover story of Ace Weekly in Lexington, Ky. Writer Kim Thomas calls the book a "must-read" for horse lovers. To order Equine ER, click here. Thanks for visiting this blog. 

Equine ER author Leslie Guttman will be signing books at Keeneland Racecourse this Sunday 10/25 at the gift shop from 11 a.m.-1 p.m.  Also: big story in this week's Ace Weekly.

On Monday in Part 2 of the excerpt from the chapter entitled "Marching Orders" from the new book Equine ER we met the inmate whose life was transformed by the stoic Thoroughbred with the big heart. Today, we head back into the operating room where Marching Orders is on the table for surgery. 

With Marching Orders now on the operating table, Dr. Scott Hopper stood over the horse’s open abdomen. A horse’s intestinal tract is seventy to ninety feet from end to end, but packed tight inside its abdomen, it winds back and forth, with changes in diameter. Colic is a broad term to describe pain caused by the intestinal tract being irritated, blocked or bloated for any number of reasons, and it is believed to be responsible for more deaths in horses than any other condition. That said, 80 to 85 percent of colics are considered “simple,” and can be treated without surgery or resolve on their own. Many mild cases are what’s called gas/spasmodic colic, believed to be caused by gas build-up in the colon, resulting in distension and pain. Food can also back up (from dehydration, for example) causing an impaction, which may or may not lead to surgery.

Dr. Scott Hopper operates on Marching Orders. 

More serious cases occur when part of the large colon becomes displaced (moving out of its regular position). By doing so, a portion is subsequently shut off, like a kink in a hose, which doesn't allow the passage of food or the gas created as a normal byproduct of digestion. The large colon can also twist, cutting off blood flow. Hopper found no obvious reasons for the horse's condition in the large colon and moved on to the small colon, looking for blockage or other problems.

At Blackburn, farm program workers had found Marching Orders a few hours earlier out in the paddock trying to lie down and attempting to bite his left side, classic signs of colic. They called Linda Dyer, the farm manager, who was out of town. She was baffled when they told her the horse was colicking. Marching Orders had already been out on new spring grass for a while, and usually horses don’t colic when they’re used to it.

Dyer called Dr. Nick Smith, the Rood & Riddle ambulatory vet who treats the Blackburn horses. When the vet got there, the horse was down and still biting at his side, and he was in a cold sweat. His temperature was low. Smith gave him anti-inflammatories, painkillers, and other drugs hoping that would help him ride it out. But after about forty-five minutes, the horse was still in pain. Smith was worried about a rupture. He called Dyer back. “I tried to smooth him out, but he didn’t smooth out,” he said, recommending the hospital. I visited Marching Orders in his stall shortly after he had arrived at Rood & Riddle. He was covered with sweat, with pieces of hay stuck to his coat. He was heavy on his feet and lethargic. But even though he was doped up, he gave me a deep look.

Back on the operating table, Hopper plunged his arm back in the horse’s abdomen and started feeling around. After a while he said, “Oh crap,” And then, “… that ultrasound doesn’t tell me shit, ever.”

Hopper felt around some more and then stopped. He said a phrase he often did when something wasn’t right. It was from Sesame Street: “One of these things is not like the other.”

Monday: What did the surgeon find?

Equine ER was recently made a "Staff Pick" by Bill Gordon, a longtime bookseller at Joseph-Beth Books in Lexington, Kentucky, one of the largest bookstores in the South. Gordon calls Equine ER "fascinating." To order the book, click here.   

News flash! Equine ER author Leslie Guttman will be signing books at Keeneland Racecourse this Sunday 10/25 at the gift shop from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. 

Last week in Part 1 of the excerpt from the chapter entitled Marching Orders from the new book Equine ER we met Marching Orders, a former racehorse, as he headed into surgery. In Part 2 today we meet the inmate whose life was transformed by the stoic Thoroughbred with the big heart.

Marching Orders had a noble way about him. He was big and resolute; he had a paddock to himself because he played too rough. He didn’t get lonely like other horses do. He talked to the occasional cow and horses across the fence, but he preferred solitude. At the Blackburn Correctional Complex’s prison farm program in Lexington, the inmates called him The Viking because he would stand outside by himself through the wind and rain and cold. The only time they ever saw him go in his shed was once during a bad snowstorm.

 The barn at the Blackburn prison farm program.

The farm program started at Blackburn in 1999, in conjunction with the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation, a national nonprofit that saves racehorses that can no longer earn their keep, preventing them from ending up abused, abandoned, or in foreign slaughterhouses. The Blackburn program’s intention is to teach inmates skills to get a job at a horse farm when they leave, as well as instill responsibility, structure, and provide a therapeutic connection to the animals. In the summer of 2008, the program had about seventy horses, ranging in age from four to twenty-six.

In March 2005, Chris Huckleby arrived at Blackburn and started working in the program, where each inmate is assigned an ex-racehorse to care for. He is in his mid-30s, from Western Kentucky, with blond hair, light blue eyes, and an inmate’s complexion: stark-white. He has been in and out of prison for a decade or so. He has a flatness about him, as if prison – and life – has compressed his life force. Huckleby was incarcerated at Blackburn on drug-related charges.

Some inmates at the minimum-security prison sign up for the farm program just for the freedom they get working in the barn, and while this was one of the Huckleby’s reasons, he also grew up with horses. He understood and respected them. When he saw Marching Orders walk off the trailer, the horse fixed what Huckleby called a “spooky eye” – his right eye had white in the pupil – on him. It felt like the horse was following his every move. Huckleby begged: “Assign me that horse; I want that horse.” The two became inseparable. Every time Huckleby would walk out the barn door, Marching Orders, or Mo as he was called, would run up to him. The horse would lean on Huckleby, lick him like a dog, twirl his hair with his lips.

“I don’t want to sound crazy or anything, but I think this horse is trying to tell me he loves me,” Huckleby told the farm manager. Horses do things like that, she replied.

Huckleby started reading books on natural horsemanship to try and decipher equine communication. He was going through a divorce and had three kids he missed. He felt like the horse knew he was having a difficult time, especially during occasions such as his children’s birthdays, when Huckleby got particularly depressed. The horse would bump him with his muzzle, pull on his shirt, or play hide and seek, running behind the barn. When Huckleby came down to the barn at dusk, Marching Orders ran to meet him across the paddock. He became known as “Huck’s horse.” The inmate told himself and everybody else that when he was done serving time, he was going to adopt him.

Thursday: Trouble for Marching Orders in the operating room. 

Equine ER was recently made a "Staff Pick" by Bill Gordon, a longtime bookseller at Joseph-Beth Books in Lexington, Kentucky, one of the largest bookstores in the South. Gordon calls Equine ER "fascinating." To order the book, click here.  

Today begins Part 1 of the story of how a former racehorse transformed the life of an inmate in this excerpt from the new book Equine ER by Leslie Guttman (Eclipse Press, 2009). 

On Sunday, April 6, 2008, a large dark bay gelding was on his back, anesthetized for colic surgery. Ten years earlier to the day, Marching Orders had slipped into this world, son of Captain Bodgit and Miss Stamper. Almost exactly six years earlier, he had been hurtling across the wire at Oaklawn Park in Hot Springs, Arkansas, six furlongs in 1:10:1, nabbing the winning purse of $28,500. Now, outside the operating room, nurses sheared the big country that was his stomach with electric clippers, and then shaved a strip down the middle for the coming incision with a disposable razor. Plastic gloves were placed on his hooves to keep the operating room sterile. Dr. Scott Hopper tucked the horse’s penis inside its sheath and began suturing the sheath closed to keep urine from contaminating the surgical site. (The sutures would be removed after surgery.)

 Racehorse Marching Orders in his prime.

The staff was exhausted and cranky; it was late afternoon, and they had spent the day attending to nonstop emergencies, after being up all night with successive emergencies. The backup team had been called, which was unusual because the hospital was well-staffed.

Jennie Rhoads, the 4 p.m. to midnight nursing supervisor, popped her head in the door. “That second colic got called off,” she said to the surgery team.

Dr. Travis Tull, the hospital’s surgical resident, looked up. “Great, so they’ll be here at 2 this morning?”

“Tell them if they call back a second time it’ll cost twice as much,” Hopper said, finishing his suturing. He didn’t mean it; he was just tired. The nurses gave the Thoroughbred’s abdomen what they called a rough scrub – a first cleaning with antiseptic – followed by a sterile prep. They wheeled the horse in for surgery.

Monday: Meet the inmate whose life was transformed by Marching Orders. And what happened to the horse in the operating room?

Equine ER was recently made a "Staff Pick" by Bill Gordon, a longtime bookseller at Joseph-Beth Books in Lexington, Kentucky, one of the largest bookstores in the South. Gordon calls Equine ER "fascinating." To order the book, click here. 

Today we're looking back at one of blog readers' favorite Equine ER videos: Befores and Afters, which features dramatic cases from the new book from Eclipse Press by Leslie Guttman. If you can't access the video below, click right here.

On Thursday, we'll pick back up again with a new chapter excerpt from Equine ER entitled Prison Horse, about the unusual and poignant relationship between an inmate and a horse. Thanks for visiting this blog.

Today we have an interview with Dr. Claire Latimer, the veterinary ophthalmologist who treated Selena, the polo pony whose story was recently serialized on this blog, excerpted from Equine ER, the new book from Eclipse Press. Selena was found with devastating injuries at the farm where she was boarded one morning. Although the farm told Selena's owner that the horse ran through a fence, the owner suspected Selena was actually harmed by a bully horse. Latimer works at Rood & Riddle Equine Hospital where Equine ER takes place. 

Q. Was Selena one of the worst cases you’ve seen where the third eyelid had received such damage?
A. Yes ... in over 30 years of practicing.

 Selena in the emergency room.

Q. Her swelling was so dramatic, and yet it went down within two weeks or so. Why so fast?

A. Well, swelling in the acute phase of an injury can be really dramatic, but with good management the tissues can recover quite quickly. … and we did wrap it. It’s kind of like when you wrench your ankle: If you get a good tight wrap on it, it will never reach the maximize size of swelling it would if you left it unwrapped. But (the eye) is a hard area to wrap, and that particular horse needed a hospital (with people skilled in knowing how to do it). That would not have been a good outcome outside of a hospital.

Q. Did Selena’s level of fitness contribute to her recovery?
A. She had the type of temperament that makes for a good polo pony, a little on the tough side … a horse with patience and perseverance. Plus her particular body-type, a medium-size endurance body type, may also have been a factor (in such a strong recovery).

Selena, with owner, months later after making a full recovery.

Q. Overall, what can owners do to help assure the health of their horses’ eyesight?
A. I think the biggest thing is observation. We’re all guilty of being a little quick bringing our horses in and out and not looking at them. We need to be in the habit of visually inspecting their legs, and their faces are the same way. You think you’re looking, but unless you make a habit of looking you can miss things (on both sides of the face). I think just being observant of your horses is the thing that keeps them safe.

Q. I see a lot of vitamin supplements in the grocery and health food stores that say they promote healthy eyesight in humans. Would such supplements benefit horses, especially as they age?
A. Horses don’t have a lot of age issues that cause significant problems (with their eyes). Just being familiar with your horse’s “normal” is important so you can detect abnormal. A wide variety of things can go wrong in any age group; the big thing is detecting there’s been a change.

There is a big body of evidence that antioxidant supplements help human beings suffering from progressive retinal degeneration … and if I have a patient
who is suffering from a condition involving early stages of degeneration in the eye, for example, early cataracts … antioxidants could play a beneficial role, but it depends on the patient and the client. Horses have a lot of antioxidants in their diet – grass, carrots – and I think you have to be extremely careful about what you choose to give your horse. As with humans, there’s not a lot of regulation, so there are some dangers … thinking that “natural” is safe is not always true. You want to be very careful of putting your horse on supplements. You need to look at the whole package of diet and supplements and check with your vet to make sure you’re not getting some of those nutrients in the toxic range.

Equine ER was recently made a "Staff Pick" by Bill Gordon, a longtime bookseller at Joseph-Beth Books in Lexington, Kentucky, one of the largest bookstores in the South. Gordon calls Equine ER "fascinating." To order the book, click here.

Equine ER author Leslie Guttman was featured recently on noted animal communicator Maureen Harmonay's book club. Harmonay's in-depth interview, full of background on how Equine ER was written and Leslie's various adventures at Rood & Riddle Equine Hospital, can be found by clicking here.  Harmonay also reviewed the book, saying:

"Leslie deftly weaves information about cutting-edge veterinary medical initiatives into her gripping life-and-death accounts of horses whose fates are anything but certain. ... (she) writes with suspense, not sentimentality. ... accurately capturing the clinical details of each case, but infusing them with so much more. You can feel the tension in an examining room, the achey 'spent' feeling of the vets, interns, and techs who seem never to run out of gas, even after they've already put in a full shift and a horse's condition suddenly spirals out of control. And besides the dignity of the horses themselves, what also pours through these pages is the emotional investment made by the veterinarians and their staff in each patient." 

A treat from Sat.'s book party.

The full review can be found by clicking here

More special features and original content coming soon. Thank you for visiting this blog. 

Farriers rushed in to trim the feet of horse with Wobbler's syndrome right after the horse had spinal surgery to correct the problem and was still anesthetized. 

Equine ER author Leslie Guttman will be a featured guest Saturday (10/3) on Horsetales with host Ercel Ellis on central Kentucky's WLXG 1300 AM, 10 a.m.-noon. 

In this last installment of an excerpt from the new book Equine ER, spring comes for Selena, a Bluegrass polo pony who was found critically injured in a field, and who struggled over many months to heal from devastating injuries.

In the stall at the hospital barn, Selena looks healthy and serene – just a little cloudy spot in her eye, her leg looks like it’s healing, you can barely see the tracheotomy wound. Mia brushes the dust from her coat while her father fusses over this nice old lady, as he calls her. He’s relieved to see Selena fat – she’s gained 42 pounds. Mia’s relieved that her personality hasn’t changed; she’s still somewhat dignified and reticent. The co-owner of the hospital barn, Linda Caddel, says upon arrival, Selena was one of the worst trauma cases Caddel has ever seen.

A recovered Selena and her owner.

Almost everyone knows someone who has experienced a near miss – like a kid in a car accident whose spinal cord was an inch from being severed. In Selena’s case, a little more eye damage, and she could have lost the eye. She was close to severe skull fractures. She could have had nerve damage in and around the upper part of her airway, causing paralysis. The laceration on her left hind leg could have reached the joint, setting her up for an infection, and the laminitis had the potential to be fatal. “She walked the edge,” says Dr. Brett Woodie, “and luckily she was on the right side.”

Back in the truck, as father and daughter head out, they tell me that ever since she started playing polo, Mia has been routinely thrown at walls without serious injury. OK, she’s sprained her ankle, broken some fingers, and her right arm is scarred from where she was tossed into the chicken wire above the boards at one match. But her luck has held, too. We talk on and Frank recalls how they got her excused from gym growing up – Mia had to prove she had six hours of physical activity a week – that came from only one polo practice. We turn off onto the freeway. “She’s the best polo player in the family,” Frank says, and then admonishes his daughter again to slow down.

Coming soon: An update on Selena, plus an interview with her ophthalmologist.

The reviews have started to come in for Equine ER, the new book by Leslie Guttman published by Blood-Horse's Eclipse Press. Maryjean Wall, one of the country's most noted turf writers, wrote this in a review on her blog, "... (Guttman) weaves engaging tales in telling of the heroic lengths to which veterinarians and horse owners go in trying to save sick and injured equines ... we highly recommend it." To order Equine ER, click here. Thank you for visiting this blog.    

In Part Five of this excerpt from the new book Equine ER, spring comes for Selena, a Bluegrass polo pony who was found critically injured in a field, and who struggled over many months to heal from devastating injuries.

Now picture the father: It is May and Frank Proto drives down from New York to take his daughter home from college for the summer and to see Selena at the hospital barn. The horse is continuing to recover but she’ll likely never play polo again. She’ll be shipped back up to New York when she’s ready. Frank Proto once dreamed of being a horse doc, as he puts it. (His daughter tells me one of the reasons he’s not is because he couldn’t stand to put horses down.) Now he’s a county legislator and bank vice president. He has thick gray hair and green eyes, wears a corduroy jacket and smokes a pipe. He has an ease about him; he’s probably a great party guest. He played polo in college at Cornell under “Doc” Roberts, the well-known veterinary professor and notoriously tough polo coach who died in 2005 at 89. Roberts once pinned an overly aggressive player against the boards in a Madison Square Garden match not soon forgotten by anyone who was there.

Selena before the trauma that changed her life.

I ask Frank what kind of person plays polo, the game Gonzalo Pieres, the Argentine player, once said “should be played with hot blood and a cool head.”

 “To play polo,” Frank says, “you have to be a little nuts. Who in their right mind would get on a pony going 45 miles an hour waving a stick?” We’re in his silver truck, his daughter is driving, he’s shotgun, I’m in the back. We’re en route to see Selena. The power steering went out on Frank’s drive down from New York, and he keeps telling his daughter to slow down on the narrow country roads. “And we didn’t even have the helmets you guys have now,” he says. “We had these leather helmets that looked like something out of an old Ronald Reagan war movie.”

A great polo horse, Frank says, is gutsy. “Size is important but not key; they shouldn’t be more than 16 hands and should be smart, quick learners. They have to want to play. Winning depends as much on the horse as it does on you.”

As we drive on, Frank tells me his daughter got her first polo lesson at age twelve, when she weighed forty pounds soaking wet. They got her up on Speedy, now passed away, who in his prime was one of Cornell’s top polo ponies. Selena was bought the following year and Mia started to play seriously. In talking about the sport once, Mia told me, “It’s a rush. In a car, if you’re going 40 to 45 miles an hour … it doesn’t seem very fast, but when you’re on the back of a horse, you’re flying. The ground is a blur. When I play, I don’t hear the crowd. I can only hear the horses, and the people I’m playing with. It’s like being in your own world, flying around completely unprotected, about an inch from death.”

We finally arrive at the hospital barn to see Selena.

Thursday: How did Selena look?

The reviews have started to come in for Equine ER, the new book by Leslie Guttman published by Blood-Horse's Eclipse Press. Maryjean Wall, one of the country's most noted turf writers, wrote this in a review on her blog, "... (Guttman) weaves engaging tales in telling of the heroic lengths to which veterinarians and horse owners go in trying to save sick and injured equines ... we highly recommend it." To order Equine ER, click here. Thank you for visiting this blog.   

In Part Four of this excerpt from the new book Equine ER, Selena, a Bluegrass polo pony who was found critically injured in a field, struggles with a setback after finally leaving the clinic.

When she is released from the hospital, Selena appears fully on the mend. But during the polo pony’s rehabilitation, after it is apparent the pain is increasing in her left hind limb, she is diagnosed with laminitis and has to return to the clinic. The edema (swelling) in her left hind leg has resulted in significant inflammation and restricted blood flow to her left hind foot. The situation is serious. However, her laminitis is in a hind leg not a front, which carries more of the horse’s weight, and X-rays show her coffin bone, while rotating, is not sinking.

Selena and her owner several days before the trauma occurred.

Dr. Robert Agne treats Selena aggressively with specialized shoes, anti-inflammatories, and various other medications and treatments. Her supporting hind limb stays healthy. The laminitis begins to mend, and after two weeks, she leaves Rood & Riddle Equine Hospital again for a hospital barn at Caddel Equine Therapy Center in nearby Georgetown, Kentucky, for further recovery. The bills are getting higher.

People assume Selena’s owner, Mia Proto, is wealthy because her dad is a politician and a banker, because she plays polo and went to private school. Her family has a Thoroughbred breeding farm (albeit a small one) and the home in which she grew up is historic. Her great-grandmother was even an Italian baroness on the island of Capri.

But now at nineteen, Proto tells me she is expected by her family to pay her own way as much as possible. Her dad takes care of her tuition, but she pays the rest – room, board, and expenses – by working two jobs. Because her family is helping her with Selena’s bills (around $32,000, more than $16,000 at Rood & Riddle alone), that means that she is now also expected to graduate in three years instead of four from the University of Kentucky’s new equine science and management program. However, a horse owner is often no different from a mother (or father): If sacrifices need to be made, Proto will make them: She moves to an apartment in a bad neighborhood, lives on Ramen noodles, forgoes new clothes and sneakers, and thoughts of spring breaks in the sun.

The college student is more mature than many, which makes it easier. She has her life planned out: She wants to own and run a Thoroughbred broodmare farm similar to the larger, neighboring one she worked on growing up where stakes-winner Sharp Humor, a son of noted sire Distorted Humor, was foaled. She’s so serious and well-spoken – no “ums” or “likes” or statements sounding as if they’re ending in questions – that I’m relieved when the following information is revealed because it reassures me that she hasn’t been body-snatched by a thirty-five-year-old: She has the Pussycat Dolls on her iPod; she remains a big fan of Walter Farley’s classic children’s book, The Black Stallion; and she grew up watching AMC’s 8 a.m. morning Westerns while eating her cereal, resulting in a passion for John Wayne. 

Monday: Spring arrives: Did Selena recover?

The reviews have started to come in for Equine ER, the new book by Leslie Guttman published by Blood-Horse's Eclipse Press. Maryjean Wall, one of the country's most noted turf writers, wrote this in a review on her blog, "... (Guttman) weaves engaging tales in telling of the heroic lengths to which veterinarians and horse owners go in trying to save sick and injured equines ... we highly recommend it." To order Equine ER, click here. Thank you for visiting this blog.  

In Part Three of this excerpt from the new book Equine ER, Selena, a Bluegrass polo pony found critically injured in a field, struggles to recover in the intensive care unit. Will she survive?

One of the biggest problems for veterinarians is that their patients can’t talk. No one will ever know what truly happened to Selena. But Dr. Brett Woodie doesn’t need Selena to talk to see how much pain she is in over the next forty-eight hours. Despite the fentanyl patches and pain medications, he can tell it hurts her to even move. She appears terribly depressed, her head constantly down. Yet it turns out that Selena knows how to take care of herself.

Selena roughly two and half months after being in the hospital.

Horses have two kinds of sleep: slow-wave, while standing, and paradoxical, a deeper REM sleep where they must lie down. (They also have a drowsy standing state.) Horses guard each other while they sleep, both in the wild and in paddocks; they are creatures of flight, genetically wired to escape predators. But an injured horse needs more rest and more sleep than normal. Despite being alone in a strange place that must be frightening, Selena immediately lies down and gives herself the rest and sleep she needs to heal. But she doesn’t overdo it, which would make her vulnerable to secondary problems (like sores and pneumonia).

In only two days, the swelling in her left hind leg is down enough for Woodie to clean and debride (remove dead tissue) the wounds and put a drain in the largest one to evacuate fluid. After three days of treatment, the swelling is down in her eye and Latimer can see the globe is intact. But the horse can’t blink correctly; it’s unclear at this stage whether it’s a mechanical or neurological problem, but without being able to spread her tear film, she won’t be able to take care of her cornea. Also, Latimer sees Selena has hemorrhaged into the cornea itself, which is unusual; it doesn’t endanger her eyesight but it does signify the strength of the blow to her head.

But despite her age, Selena is trim and strong and healthy, an athlete, not an out-of-shape paddock potato, a tubby binge eater. This makes all the difference, as it would with a human. Over the coming weeks, the healing of her multiple wounds progresses steadily, including her eye. She stays at Rood & Riddle Equine Hospital until mid-February. When she is released, her vision appears normal.

Thursday: Laminitis rears its head for Selena. 

The reviews have started to come in for Equine ER, the new book by Leslie Guttman published by Eclipse Press. Maryjean Wall, one of the country's most noted turf writers, wrote this in a review on her blog, "... (Guttman) weaves engaging tales in telling of the heroic lengths to which veterinarians and horse owners go in trying to save sick and injured equines ... we highly recommend it." To order Equine ER, click here. Thank you for visiting this blog.  

In Part Two of this excerpt from the new book Equine ER, Selena, a Bluegrass polo pony, is rushed to the emergency room after being found critically injured in a field. Will she survive?

The farm’s theory that her horse ran through a fence doesn’t hold up with Mia Proto because Selena’s front legs and chest aren’t torn up; no pressure lines are evident on her skin. As Proto looks around the pasture, she doesn’t see any ripped bushes near the fences or any new fence posts being put in or old ones being straightened. Later, she drives around the entire farm twice: same thing.

Proto believes what really happened that night in the pasture was that Selena got attacked by another horse at the farm, a bully Proto says she had previously seen picking on other horses, chasing them across the property, teeth bared. After playing so much polo, she cannot imagine Selena running around the pasture and putting herself through a fence; her normal routine after a match is to eat and immediately go to sleep. Proto believes the mare was so exhausted from her third chukker – the one she made her play – that the twenty-one-year-old mare got chased around the pasture by the dominant horse, run through bushes and other foliage, dropped from exhaustion, and was kicked in the head. Proto can’t forgive herself.

Selena in the emergency room.

Dr. Nick Smith, one of Rood & Riddle’s field vets, follows behind the trailer taking Selena to the hospital. He is scared the mare won’t make it. He was the first vet called to the farm, and the sight of the mare was one of the most gruesome scenes he has encountered since getting out of vet school in 2007.

Selena is whisked to a stall outside radiology the moment she arrives at Rood & Riddle. Dr. Brett Woodie performs an emergency tracheotomy so she can breathe. While nursing techs and doctors work to stabilize Selena, clean off the mud and dirt all over her body, and radiograph her head and lacerated limbs, Dr. Claire Latimer, the clinic’s specialist in veterinary ophthalmology, talks with Proto outside the emergency stall.

Latimer explains that it’s not actually the eyeball hanging out of Selena’s eye, but her third eyelid, or what’s called the nictitating membrane. It is normally tucked behind the lid in the inner corner of the eye, but on Selena, it is so swollen it can’t fit. The third eyelid acts as a windshield wiper: Horses can pull their globes back in and flash the membrane across the surface of the cornea to protect it, or get something out of it such as dust. Latimer has seen her share of exploded eyeballs, but often when she has a horse with a third eyelid as swollen as Selena’s, the globe behind it is intact. They will have to wait until the swelling goes down to know for sure. However, even if it is intact, Latimer doesn’t know if the third eyelid will survive; for now, the vet will have to keep the exposed tissue from drying out until it can fit back in its inside pocket.

Selena’s radiographs show that despite the lacerations and swelling, the horse doesn’t have any damage to her skull or left hind cannon bone. She needs surgery to repair the wounds on her legs and clean out dirt that could cause infection, but she won't be anesthetized until she's stable. Her immediate treatment includes fluids, antibiotics, and analgesics given intravenously, as well as anti-inflammatory drugs. The bulging eyelid is packed with gel and Selena’s head wrapped with gauze and bandages. She is moved to the intensive care unit.

Monday: Somehow, amid all the pain, Selena knows how to take care of herself.

Readers have been weighing in with their feedback on Equine ER, the new book by Leslie Guttman published by Eclipse Press. Here's what Paul Groffie of Marlton, N.J., recently wrote us: "... I cannot thank you enough for taking a subject that you do not get to hear about that much and sharing it with your readers.  ... Barbaro opened up a new desire in me to learn a little more about what horses (& owners) go through and your book WAS AWESOME!"  To order Equine ER, click here. Thank you for visiting this blog.  

In Part One of this excerpt from the new book Equine ER, Selena, a Bluegrass polo pony belonging to a college student, was found critically injured in a field. Will she survive?

“The horizon is the edge of your polo field, the earth is the ball in the curve of your polo stick. Until you are blotted out of existence as the dust, gallop and press on your horse, for the ground is yours.”
– Twelfth century Persian poet Nizami’s advice on how to live a full life

Picture the college sophomore: She is slender, long black hair, green eyes, a face that belongs on a Roman coin. It is late January. Mia Proto is beat; she played six chukkers (seven-minute periods) of polo, round-robin style, last night at the Kentucky Horse Park on the University of Kentucky polo team. In her calculus class, she gets a text message from the farm where her horse, Selena, is boarded. It says to call right away, it’s about her horse, the vet is coming. Proto runs out of class and speeds to the barn in her old blue Volvo.

Selena five days before being severely injured. 

Picture the horse: The day before, Selena’s dark bay coat shone in the arena, all 880 pounds of her doing exactly what Proto wanted in this hockey game on horseback. She held ponies twice her size off the line, galloping full-throttle the length of the arena and stopping five feet from the wall. Proto played Selena again for the third chukker instead of the normal two periods per pony because there weren’t any fresh horses, but Selena was fit enough. Now at the barn, as Proto looks at Selena, it’s an unbearable sight. Her eyeball appears to be hanging out of her left socket; it’s a red jelly-like blob. Her left hind leg, haphazardly bandaged with someone’s T-shirt, has one severe laceration down to the cannon bone, along with a couple of smaller ones. Her head and neck are so swollen, she can barely hold her head up or breathe; the swelling is blocking her airway. Selena looks like a crime victim. The people at the farm say she ran through a fence.

Picture the night before in the pasture: You can’t. Humans know very little about what goes on at night between horses. During the day, they look so peaceful out there … that is not always true. In many pastures, rivalries and competition are everywhere, especially when horses are thrown together at boarding facilities. (With bands in the wild, however, that’s usually not the case, save for stallions vying for a mare.)

Proto asks me: Do you ever notice how they’re grazing and roaming in different corners, some alone, some bunched together? Those are cliques, she says. “Once the pecking order is established with horses,” Proto says, “very rarely does a high-ranked horse get marked down. It’s kind of like working in an office.” Down here in Lexington, at a strange farm away from home, Selena is submissive, one of the lowest on the totem pole. She is the type of horse, according to Proto, who “needs a human next to her to make her feel strong. Someone to protect her. But she also needs someone she can push against.”

Thursday: Selena's owner doesn't think her injuries are from running through a fence. And will the polo pony make it?

In her advance praise for Equine ER  the new book from Eclipse Press by Leslie Guttman, Susan Richards, author of the New York Times best-seller "Chosen by a Horse," says the book is “as thrilling and drama-filled as any of the popular hospital shows on television today.”  To order Equine ER, click here. Thank you for visiting this blog.