There's a lot of trash talk going on this week in St. Paul. Some of it is directed, still, at people who hope. People who hope for change. Take a break from the political effluvia emanating from Minnesota this week to remember what hope means, expressed in a story that isn't about economics, wars, morality or health care. Well, sort of about health care, but not really. It's a story about hoping to change the course of a deteriorating medical condition, and hoping to ease the pain and suffering of a friend who couldn't help herself.
In the spring of 2005, about six months after we moved to our little farm east of Madison, we bought a middle-aged mare named Magic Star. I noticed the ad her owners had placed in the paper, and she seemed like a nice horse, especially because she's gaited. In other words, she's not nearly as bouncy a ride... perfect for me. We had her checked out, bought her and brought her home with a new name: Sam.
About a week after Sam joined us, we had the farrier out to trim her feet. From ten feet away, he squinted as her looked at her, then said, "You know about the laminitis, right?" No, we didn't. The vet who checked her out didn't report it, but the fact that the farrier noticed from a distance suggested the vet (who was recommended by the seller, don't you know) was either incompetent or crooked. Laminitis is a painful and sometimes devastating condition for a horse to develop, and the horse often founders when this happens. You can follow the links if you want to know in detail how screwed a horse and owner are if this happens. Suffice to say that Sam was not going to be ridable for a long time if ever. Since the causes of laminitis are varied, so too are the possible treatments. But Sam was ours, and we were going to live up to the obligation we felt toward her to make her comfortable and hopefully heal her. That's a hell of a lot more than her previous owner ever did for her, so it seemed.
Over the next three years, we tried a lot of stuff. Corrective shoes. Special trimming of her hooves. Special food. Natural healing agents like cinnamon in her diet. Care by a therapeutic (meaning twice the price) farrier, and some kind of electro-stimulation which i still think was junk science. Nothing seemed to be helping her much. She had trouble standing, lay down a lot, and always seemed to be in pain. We put her on a regular regimen of pain medicine, but eventually that led to a near-ulceric condition so we had to stop with it.
Sam, we thought, was f***ed. A friend who breeds and trains horses for a living came by one day and told us, as gently as she could, that keeping Sam alive was bordering on animal abuse and we should put her down. Animal abuse? I felt terrible, and guilty. Tom left it up to me. I couldn't do it. Not yet. We had put down two dogs a year earlier. We had to put down a yearling with a birth defect. Tom's dad was terminally ill. There was just too much death. But we just didn't know what to do.
Elaine Burkhart, a veterinarian who just doesn't give up, kept looking for treatment options, and one day this spring, she found a new one. She had read about a thyroid supplement that jumpstarts the metabolism, and was seeing some success with a few other horses and a donkey that had generally similar problems to Sam's condition. We bought a bucket of the medication (that's how it works with horses... buckets) for $150 and figured Sam was worth another, perhaps last, try. We were only going on hope at this point.
Today, maybe four months since trying this thyroid treatment, Sam seems to be very much on the mend. Bill Hill, the farrier who first noticed the laminitis, said Sam was "a whole new horse" when he was by to trim her hooves last week. This horse that could barely walk in February is cantering... uphill. She is able to stay out for hours eating pasture grass, which once used to set her condition off for the worse. She runs into the barn for her evening feed. She' seems to be sound for riding. Most importantly, she seems to be free of pain and has a full range of mobility. I'm still having trouble believing what I am seeing in this animal.
These days, she is out nearly all the time with Gigger, our adolescent miniature donkey. He is her sidekick and defender, and he has a total meltdown if he is separated from her. Sam's not nearly so attached to him, based on how she chases him away from her food. But considering how she didn't used to be able to muster any enthusiasm for keeping him at bay when we got him in January, I love that she tries to bite him when he intrudes too much.
Hope. Hope for change. It seemed pretty much the end of the story for Sam this spring. But Elaine urged us not to give up hope, and we didn't. Sam is running proof that it was right to hope. To hope for change.
I like supporting people who hope for change. Know anyone like that?
[cross-posted with pictures at Kerfuffle]