You may recall that in more than one of my most recent columns I detailed the problems involved with my lease horse, Bit. Initially, I thought the symptoms of his EPM were flaring: he would stumble repeatedly, during our walks. It got so bad that I wasn’t willing to risk cantering because I didn’t know whether he could remain upright. Every time I rode him, I reported to barn owner Wendy the same thing, over and over again: “He keeps tripping and stumbling.” Wendy said she would increase his dose of supplements, but it didn’t seem to do any good.
Next – because I could hear his joints creaking when I worked him – I thought perhaps that age was finally catching up with him. I would walk him around the area, listening to all that clicking, and when I did the math, I realized that he wasn’t the eighteen-year old horse I started out with seven years ago. Clearly, I was going to have to rethink everything about our time together, in order to accommodate his limitations.
Then, as his physical issues continued over the course of the summer and early fall, I decided that perhaps his heart wasn’t in it anymore. Mind you, we’d never done anything more taxing than cantering down the trail a time or two. I knew at the time that he didn’t enjoy it – it took him away from his head-of-herd duties – but he always came through for me regardless. By the end of September, I had decided to tell Wendy that his heart wasn’t in it anymore, and though it pained me mightily, I considered dropping my lease. There was no point in continuing to pay for a horse who couldn’t/wouldn’t work with me any longer.
I had all of this in mind when I went to a meeting at the barn. I’m the Event Coordinator, currently in the process of trying to find sponsors to help fund our Spring fete. I ran through the list of possibilities I’d come up with, ticking off the ones that Wendy was agreeable to, and crossing off the ones she wasn’t – one of which was AgriWest, where she got her grain. I was puzzled by that because she’d been buying the horses’ grain from them for years.
“Really?” I inquired.
Wendy shook her head. “I got some tainted grain from them a while back. It made everyone in the barn sick. I have to get all my ducks in a row and figure out how to approach the problem with Agri, so hold off on sending them a sponsorship request.”
“Did Bit eat this stuff?” I wanted to know.
“They all did,” Wendy replied. “Some of the horses went off the stuff, but Bit kept eating it. They were all acting punky, but I didn’t put it all together until I called the vet out. He suggested that I send a sample of the grain off to be tested, and it came back positive for a myto-toxin. I’ve got them all on a 30-day detox now. They should be fine by the end of the month.”
The wheels were spinning madly in my head. “Would this explain why Bit’s EPM symptoms kept flaring up all summer?”
Wendy nodded.
“And why he wouldn’t finish eating his apple?” Bit loves apples. There was never a time when he refused one, but he came close last summer, when a big chunk fell out of his mouth. Instead of picking it up and eating it, he walked away. It was unprecedented.
Wendy nodded again.
“And what about all those times I told you that he would stop walking and refuse to take another step. Could that have been because of the tainted grain, too?”
Another nod. “I took them off that food already,” she said, “I started giving them something else the minute I realized that the food was the problem. They’ll be fine. Bit will be fine.”
Except that he isn’t, quite. I had one decent ride on him, a week or so ago. I kept it short and didn’t push him, and everything did indeed seem fine. But when I rode him a day later, he was back to that stopping-walking-and-refusing-to-go-thing. Evidently, more time is needed to get him healthy again.
In the meantime, I’ve had a good deal of time to think about how hard he tried to tell me that something was wrong, and how I couldn’t figure it out. I knew he was trying to tell me something, but all I could think of was that he didn’t want to work with me anymore, that he wanted to retire, as it were. For someone who’s generally on the same wavelength with her pets, I really fell short of the mark on this one. My only excuse is that I don’t have any dealings with the feed, nor would I have any knowledge of whether the other horses were sick; those things simply weren’t on my radar. They never have been.
So I’ll be patient and wait however long it takes for my boy to feel 100% again. Christmas is coming, and with it, my usual effort to spoil him rotten with a new salt lick and one of those ridiculously oversized peppermint sticks that I give him every year. It’s a festive time at the barn, and I’m glad that all the horses will be happy and healthy once more. I hope the same for you and yours.
*Author’s note: The problem of the tainted grain was dealt with a couple of months ago, so no need to write to me about it. Your horses aren’t in any danger.
