Village Horse Doctor

by Ben K. Green

  He had this young horse haltered and led out into the yard. I got out of the car and Old Stutter began intendin’ to make me know that this was just a comin’ two-year-old and not a comin’ three-year-old that would be shedding his teeth. I noticed at a glance that there was no colt curl left in the hair of the tail and he had roached his mane. The forearms and stifles were showing more muscular development than would be found on a two-year-old.

  While I was takin’ all this in, I opened the colt’s mouth and the two baby teeth in front in the lower jaw had already shed out and the permanent teeth were barely breaking the gums. This was not a colt and was going to have a firm three-year-old mouth by midsummer. I told Old Stutter that from what he said, it was a freak, but it looked normal to me and the only knowledge I had of a horse’s mouth was how to develop teeth, not how to keep them from growin’.

  He followed me to the car stutterin’ and slobberin’ and tellin’ me that until he found a horse doctor that knew something, he was going to put this here colt on “soft” feed. As I drove the rest of the way home, I tried to figure out why Old Stutter would want that young horse to be a two-year-old, but the only answer that crossed my mind was maybe he was trying to switch registration papers that he had that would fit a two-year-old that he had sold or has possibly died.

  A few days later an oil-field worker from over close to Crane called and asked me if I could do anything to help straighten a young horse’s feet. After some conversation, I told him if it wasn’t an urgent call, I would come by his barn in the next few days and look at the horse. This was all right with him.

  I made it by there before the week was over. He had a nice, well-built two-year-old filly that had good body conformation except for her left foreleg from the knee to the ground, and she was a little low at the withers. The leg was turned at the knee joint outward and when she moved, the foot was way out of line with the back foot on the same side.

  I explained to him that this was what was termed as a splay foot and was caused by the twist in the knee that he hadn’t noticed. I told him that it would need to be trimmed to cause the foot to come to the ground level, but that it could never be turned by any means to where she would travel straight on it.

  He said, “Doc, this filly is bred to knock a hole in the wind, and I sure did want to run her in that Fourth of July two-year-old race over on the edge of New Mexico. The entrance fee is $100 and the tracks are adding $1,000 to the purse.”

  “That leg will never stand the strain of racin’, and I wouldn’t spend the money that it would take to get her ready knowin’ that she might break that leg.”

  As I left his barn, it dawned on me why Old Stutter was trying to keep the baby teeth in that three-year-old horse’s mouth: a three-year-old would be so much better developed for a race when the rest of the horses would only be two years old.

  When I left Crane, I drove on to Midland, where I was to do work on some horses’ teeth and do a little surgery on some horses’ backs. While I was in this man’s stable, he brought a fat, overkept two-year-old filly out of the stall and said, “Doc, I’ve paid the entrance fee on this filly for that New Mexico two-year-old race, and we’re goin’ to start training her right away. But, she’s pigeon-toed in front, and I was wondering how to shoe her to help her front feet.”

  “That won’t be too big a chore. You cut the wall of the inside of the foot down and round out the toe and leave as much of the outside wall as possible. You see, it’s not the feet that are actually crooked in the filly’s make-up. She has a swinging pastern from her ankle to her foot that is crooked, and that causes the foot to hit the ground with more pressure on the outside and wear down, and with less pressure on the inside, the length of the walls of the foot don’t stay even with the outside that’s catchin’ the weight.”

  “That sure makes sense, and I never knew before that the trouble was in the pastern and not in the foot.”

  As I looked at the filly, I realized that she had beautiful slopin’ shoulders, a short back, and powerful hindquarters and was not low in front. I said, “She sure looks like a fireball.”

  He told me about the winners in her bloodline and said he had high hopes for this filly if he could keep her sound, and that they would follow my instructions on the front feet.

  The next day a fellow hauled a two-year-old colt to my office from Orla, which was right up on the line of New Mexico. He unloaded a good-lookin’ chestnut colt with a lot of body, an honest two-year-old mouth, and a badly sickled pair of hocks. He said he was training the colt for the race over in the edge of New Mexico on the Fourth of July and that the colt had “sored up” in his hind legs.

  This old boy wasn’t dumb and he said, “Doc, I know his hocks ain’t good, but I wondered if there was some kind of a rub or maybe even a blister that would tighten his hocks up to where he could run a few races.”

  “Yeah, I can furnish you a good liquid liniment and if you use it lightly every day, it’s a tightener. If you rub it too much or put it under bandage, it’s a blister. Since you’re a horseman, I’ll furnish you with the liniment and you use it the way you see fit.”

  A few days before the last of April, Juan came in my office. He had been raised and worked on ranches around Fort Stockton and had a new job as foreman on a ranch just over the line in New Mexico. After a short visit he said, “Doc, you know de colt I raise from my Monte Cordor mare and your stud you got, heem is just a leetle bit too young to run theese other two year old what will be in theese race July 4. I sure theenk he might outrun the other colts preety bad, but he needs to get some more big on heem before theen.”

  “Juan, I remember when you brought the mare to the stud in November and that colt should have been born in late October, but I’ve never seen him.”

  “I weesh you would come to see heem. Maybe so you tell if he ween that $1,000 what I need so bad.”

  The deadline to enter a two-year-old in the race was May 1 and time was running short, so I told Juan I would be by his place late the next day.

  Horses all have their birthdays on the first day of January, so far as racing purposes are concerned. If a foal is born as late as December 31, for racing-record purposes, it will be a year old the next morning, January 1. This is the reason that all breeders raising racing horses try to breed their mares to foal as soon after the first day of January as possible so that the next January when the colt is considered a year old, he will almost be a year old. Then when the second January passes, this same colt races as a two-year-old until the third January.

  This explains why many horses in a two-year-old race can be closer to three years old, and it’s easy to see the handicap that a late colt would be racing under. Several months in the second year of a colt’s life can make a great deal of difference in his size and development. This is the reason that Juan was worried about getting some more “big” on his colt.

  When I drove up, the mare that was the mother of this colt was in the front yard. She was an outstanding mare and a family pet and was nursing a new baby colt. Juan’s flock of small children were playing with the colt and crawlin’ around on the old mare, and the baby that was just old enough to walk was holdin’ on to her tail to stand up. This is the kind of a mare that money can’t buy and will live in the memory of those children.

  The colt that Juan had talked to me about was in the back yard behind the house and every time he nickered, the old mare would still answer him even though she had a new baby colt. Juan said she was so gentle that she had never weaned him and would still let him suck on one side while the baby colt sucked on the other and so he had to keep him in the back yard.

  We sat on the back porch and looked at the colt. He was a glossy seal-brown color with no white markings on his feet and legs and just a few white hairs in his forehead. He was small because of his age; however, he was perfectly sound in his legs and his body was ideally proportioned for balance and speed, and for his size he had an unbelievably deep girth that housed big lungs and
a strong heart.

  Juan talked about the $100 entrance fee and said that he had it saved up and he would sure like to win that $1,000 purse. I told Juan to put his money down and enter the colt and I would prescribe some strong medicine, and if he would train and feed and take care of the colt, he would have a good chance of winnin’.

  Juan was a hard-workin’ young man with a large family of small children. He was a good citizen and fair in his thinking and didn’t intend to do anything to win the race except to do the best job of training and caring for his colt that he could. According to my acquaintance with brush-track racemen, his intentions were far more honorable than most, and I was glad to be helping him develop a race horse that was sired by my stallion.

  In the next few weeks, I saw Old Stutter several times and he would barely grunt as he passed me. I would’ve asked him if he was training his two-year-old, but if I had he would have lied, so I didn’t mention it.

  I was in Crane several times and they were training the splay-footed filly. When I saw her in late June, it looked like they were about to make a dummy out of me because she was training good and musclin’ up as much as a two-year-old can, and that crooked leg hadn’t given her any trouble.

  Then I saw the bad-hocked horse up at Orla one time, and the man told me that the liniment as a rub had quit doing enough good and he had finally put a blister on the horse’s hocks and wrapped them under bandages. When I watched the colt move, it seemed there was no pain in his hind legs.

  I hadn’t had an occasion to see the pigeon-toed horse that I told the owner corrective shoeing would probably help. Anywhere that race-horse men gathered, the conversation would soon turn to the race for two-year-olds the Fourth of July.

  I went by Juan’s on an average of once a week to see how he was comin’ along with his colt, which he had named Pronto. One time when I was there he was feeding Pronto a little corn in his feed, and I told him to take the corn out and to feed him clean dried oats and be sure that he got his strong medicine. As he trained the colt and gave him the best of care, I continued to emphasize that Pronto shouldn’t get his medicine until he finished the day’s training.

  On another visit Juan was so anxious to get some more “big” on Pronto that he had bought some horse sweet feeds, and I had to explain to him that this might cause Pronto to not want to take his medicine and to put him back on dry clean oats and good hay. Juan was always grateful and very obedient in carryin’ out my instructions. He trained Pronto late every afternoon when he had finished his ranch work, and his whole family was counting the days until the big race.

  The Fourth of July is celebrated by various patriotic festivities and ceremonies across the United States, but in the West there are two great patriotic forms of entertainment—rodeos and horse races—and the flag-waving is done by the winners.

  There is just one kind of weather on the Fourth of July in the West—hot, dry, and windy. The natives and the horses thrive on it. Being wet with sweat and covered with dust is not out of style at a rodeo or horse race and anyone that complains is a tourist, a newcomer, or a weakling. High-heeled boots, tight-legged duckin’ britches, loud shirts, and big hats were the most stylish attire for kids just older than cradle size all the way to the grandpas and grandmas. Anybody wearin’ low quarters or a white shirt and was bare-headed was bound to be a stranger.

  There were to be other races during the day for horses of various ages, colors, and sizes, but the race for two-year-olds caused more conversation than all the rest. The crowd gathered at the track early in the morning and there was a fair amount of racin’, bettin’, winnin’, and losin’ by noon.

  A brush racetrack is usually the product of local race-horse owners and some small-town Chamber of Commerce or other civic organization. The track will be graded out of an open spot in somebody’s pasture and usually not over three fourths of a mile long. A committee of local citizens sets up rules that are supposed to be abided by, but there is actually no legal supervision of the conduct of racing conditions that are enforceable at a brush racetrack. There may be a few stalls and other buildings and in some cases a small grandstand, but, for the most part, the race-horse fans line the fence of the track and most onlookers would like to be as close to the finish line as possible.

  There’s just one kind of grub at a Western outdoor festivity: namely, barbecued beef, beans, ’taters, and bread with black coffee and other strong drink. It usually takes about two hours of this part of the day for the kids to get their clothes nasty and the grown folks to stretch out in the shade and try to get over the mórnin’s doin’s.

  Juan brought his whole family and all of his horses in his pickup truck and stopped just beyond the finish line. Close to two thirty the first race of the afternoon called was for the two-year-olds. As Juan led Pronto away from the pickup, the smaller children were rubbin’ and talkin’ to him and the old mare was standing tied to the pickup and the little colt was wanderin’ around with the kids. As Juan’s son, Pedro, rode Pronto and Juan led him away from the pickup, the old mare and Pronto carried on a lot of conversation in high nickerin’ horse tones.

  The two-year-olds were brought out into a fenced-off spot and the race committee went over them to see if they were all eligible to run. There were eight entered in the race and as the committee went through and inspected them, they found Old Stutter’s two-year-old colt to be a three-year-old horse and began to explain and later try to convince him that his three-year-old horse could not be entered in a two-year-old race. There was a hell of an argument and a fair cuss fight but no blood was shed, and I doubt seriously from the toughness of the characters that anybody’s feelings were hurt. The rest of the two-year-olds were declared eligible and were being saddled and gettin’ ready for the start of the race.

  This was a race of five hundred yards, which is just a little over a quarter of a mile. The pigeon-toed two-year-old from Midland had been drawn down into good racing flesh and condition and her feet had been improved a whole lot by shoein’. The splay-footed two-year-old was still splay-footed, and the bad-hocked chestnut had been blistered until the hair was all off of his hocks, but he traveled and showed no pain. There were three others I had never seen before that all appeared to be in racing condition, and Pronto was as ready for a race as any little horse could ever be.

  The jockeys were quite an assortment of ages and sizes. Juan’s thirteen-year-old son, Pedro, was a small boy and an ideal jockey for Pronto. There was a little bitty dried-up old Indian who would have had to have been over seventy jockeying the pigeon-toed horse. The rest were in-between ages and sizes. One boy, who was ridin’ the splay-footed filly, looked like he would weigh one hundred and fifty pounds, which was awful heavy for a jockey and especially for a two-year-old.

  The seven head were standing on a line drawn across the track and were to run to the finish line, where the crowd gathered. When Pronto was lined up with the rest of the starting line, he nickered plaintively and the old mare answered him in very strong motherly tones. It was easy to see that he was younger and much smaller than the other horses. However, he was to a horseman the best made, the soundest, and in the most perfect racing condition with good manners and proud of his little jockey.

  When the starting judge fired the pistol and the race was on, Pronto broke out of the pack neck in neck with the pigeon-toed horse from Midland. Since nobody had thought the little horse had a chance to win, the crowd went wild. When Pronto remembered the strong medicine that he got at the end of every race, the closer he got, the faster he went, and he left the Midland horse behind. At the finish line, he was four lengths ahead.

  About the time he stuck his nose over the finish line, a loud noise was heard down the track that sounded like a shot; the splay-footed filly had broke a leg. The other horses were scattered out between the Midland horse and the crippled filly. Pronto nickered real loud and Pedro didn’t try to hold him back as he rushed up to the old mare and went to nursin’ that STRONG MEDICINE that I had be
en prescribing all during trainin’.

  All my life my first interest has been and still is horses. For a number of years I had been interested in the color of horses. Horses do not breed true to color—a mare and a stallion may produce a foal much lighter or much darker than themselves. During mankind’s efforts to improve horses by selection, there have been very few cases where any stability of color has been possible in a breed, and there has never been a breed of horses that run true to a definite color without exception. This fact and other oddities about horse color caused me to develop an interest in the research on the color of horses.

  The West had thousands of brood mares and other range horses in herds owned by individuals with as few as forty or fifty head and one of the largest horse ranches in the Trans-Pecos Region had four thousand head as late as the early fifties. Many of the horses in the Far Southwest had good blood infused in them, and there was quite an array of colors and shades available, which made the research of color interesting to “play” with when I had the time to spare away from my general practice.

  Sometimes I would find a horse of a good solid color and clip hair from different parts of his body and take a sample from his mane and tail. I would run these various specimens through my laboratory tests and by various chemical methods and techniques, I would attempt to extract the pigmentation. Information could be gathered by this process; however, it actually took the fresh hide from a dead horse to extract the purest pigments in quantities from the dermis tissue. The more I worked on this project as a hobby, the more I became interested in the fascinating subject of a horse’s color.

  A number of the cowboys in the territory were watching this research because nearly every horseman has a preference in the color of his horses, and very likely without any logical explanation other than he just likes them—dun, bay, grey, or so forth. I would put out the word that I was looking for the hide of a horse a certain color. When range horses were being rounded up either for brandin’, weanin,’ or breakin’ young horses and a horse got a leg broke or killed accidentally, if he was the color I had told somebody about, they’d call me to come and get the hide or in some cases, they would bring it to me.