ABQ / Santa Fe News

Horsin Around

Post-Surgery on the Horse Show Circuit

By Emily Esterson, 2-07-06

In a photograph taken in 1997, my horse Volare is looking right at the camera, his mouth open as if laughing. My friend Cecile took the photograph, on a sunny winter day near Boston.

If you look at it closely, you can spot a tiny white mark on the inside of Volare’s right ear. It’s nothing to notice, really; just a blemish or maybe even a spot on the lens when the photo was taken. I’ve had the photograph on my refrigerator since Cecile gave it to me, and in the past four years, that barely noticeable spot became an elephant.

Volare has always been a horse with a gentle soul and a big personality. He’s huge (17.1 and wears a size 86 blanket), but children as young as three have ridden him confidently. He has that horse’s innate ability to take care of his humans. He was a bargain for me, because he was bred to be a fancy horse but by the age of two (or four, the stories differ) he was hanging his tongue out of his mouth nearly all the time, a big pink slab flopping in rhythm to his big-strided trot. It didn’t matter to me. I loved him the moment I met him, and promised him a home for life, whether or not he’d be competitive.

The first few years I admit tried different nosebands and bits; different trainers had different solutions, and to this day I have a trunk full of bits and rubber tongue depressors and nosebands. None of the fixes was severe, and none of it worked, either. Before entering the competition arena, I’d spread a glob of peanut butter over the hinge in his snaffle bit (his slobber turned tan). At a particularly important competition, we tried Marshmellow Fluff, which kept his tongue in for as long as it took me to trot in, salute the judge, and continue forward. The fluff stuck so intensely to the bit I had to scrub it with steel wool. Over the years different judges have had both harsh and surprising reactions to Volare’s tongue with some taking off 2 points every time they saw it (ouch) to some not noticing it all. One judge (and note that horse show judges are not known for their levity) wrote the following on the comments section of the scorecard: “Very nice ride. Lovely horse. That tongue is a problem, but it sure is cute.�

And cute he is. After leaving the snowfields of Boston for the southwest sun, though, that little spot on the inside of Volare’s ear became somewhat bigger. And bigger, and bigger, until it was the size of a golf ball inside his ear. My veterinarian and I worked on that ear dozens of different ways and with a dozen different treatments. The diagnosis, a benign cancer called a sarcoid, wasn’t life threatening, but it was unsightly. For a horse with such a dignity problem already, I felt compelled to help him.

We surgically removed it. It came back. We did experimental chemotherapy on it. It came back. We surgically removed it and then cauterized it. It came back. We froze it off (three different times). We surgically removed it, then froze it. It came back. We ordered three different kinds of herbal remedies of various sources, and applied it in different ways. By this time Volare was getting so head shy the only way I could apply anything to his ear was from the saddle on his back. The technique went like this: I’d put a surgical glove on under my riding glove. I’d put the jar of the medicine du jour in my pocket. I’d ride for awhile, and then, when Volare was relaxed and quiet, I’d whip off my riding glove, undo the jar in my pocket, scoop out two fingers of medicine, lean forward and slap it on before he noticed. It came back bigger than ever.

And then it spread.

By summer 2005, Volare’s ear was so irritated, bloody and heavy from the sarcoid (now covering both sides of his ear and roughly baseball-sized) that he’d lost the ability to prick his ear, and it had begun to affect his overall health. He moped, lost weight, seemed droopy. My vet (who had long been encouraging me to amputate) gave me the phone number of a surgeon.

It isn’t an easy decision to put a horse under full anesthesia (or, as they say in horse lingo, “lay him down,� which is interestingly not so different from the euphemism for euthanasia, “put him down.�). All kinds of problems can occur, from a reaction to the drug to hurting himself as he comes out of it. Horses have been known to survive a difficult surgery under full anesthesia only to break a leg thrashing around afterwards. I put it off. Then in the space of an afternoon, I made the call and scheduled the appointment.

For a couple of months before the surgery we fattened Volare up, as much as we could. He didn’t hold much weight so we fed him almost 20 pounds of high fat grain and a bale of hay a day. He ate, but he didn’t gain. He came out of surgery beautifully, and the surgeon, Dr. Stephen Derwelis, was so proud of the job he did on Volare’s ear that he made a CD of the surgery, sent it to my regular vet and me, and when I came to get him after surgery, handed me a bloody plastic bag with Volare’s ear inside.

On Sunday, I took Volare to his first post-surgery horse show. Despite the fact that the old man is in his dotage, he acted like he was three years old, spooky and energetic and full of beans. His coat glistens and he’s putting on weight and muscle. Now, people stop me to tell me that one of Volare’s ears is stuck under his bridle. But I just laugh and say, no, he’s my one-eared, tongue-hanging horse.

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