Village Horse Doctor (13 page)

The possibility of law suits and the question of my diagnosis suddenly died. The Hayes Brothers and others began to be awful nice to me in hopes I might forget about the whole incident, and there was a greater respect for my professional opinion that suddenly prevailed around the damn bank.

Early
in April I was in Pecos, Texas, tending to some land business and I dropped by the lobby of the Brandon Hotel to visit with Buck Jackson in his office, which was the gathering ground for loafin’ stockmen. After a few “Hidy’s” and light conversation, I told Buck that I needed to get back to Fort Stockton. Maybe somebody had some trouble with their livestock while I was gone and I could take up the slack in the money I’d been spending during the day.

As I was about to leave, Old Man Sanhill, who stuttered pretty bad, came up and we shook hands. After a polite remark or two, he started changin’ feet and stompin’ the tile lobby floor tryin’ to get around to quizzin’ me about a
horse he had. When he finally came to the question he said, “I-I got a c-c-olt that’s s-s-she-ddin’ his two-year-old t-t-t-eeth t-too early, and I-I’m a-a-fra-id it might s-s-s-tunt his growth. I wonder i-i-if there is s-s-s-ome-t-thin’ you could give him that would k-k-k-eep them front baby t-t-t-eeth from comin’ out s-so s-s-s-oon.”

“Mr. Sanhill, I never heard of any colt shedding his first teeth before he was two years and six months old. This means that those two front permanent teeth will be grown at three years old.”

This made him nervous and as he stomped and stuttered, he explained to me that he knowed when the colt was born that the old mare had had a colt once before that shed its teeth too soon, and he was afraid that this would stunt this colt’s growth.

I said, “No, when any horse gets part of his permanent teeth, he can bite off grass and chew feed better and he’ll grow faster, and if that old mare always has a colt that sheds its teeth too early, you better keep her. However, in my years in the horse business and in general practice, I’ve never seen a case like this.”

He insisted that what he was telling me was the facts and since he lived on the road between there and Fort Stockton, he wished I’d stop on the way back and look at the colt’s mouth. He was figurin’ that this wouldn’t be a call, and I would give him some information free. I don’t know what his real plans were for the day, but he said, “I-I’m goin’ home right now, and I-I-’ll be t-t-here when you s-s-s-stop.”

I drove up in front of Old Stutter’s shack and it was a typical camp for an oldtime race-horseman who raced on the brush tracks. There were half a dozen single stalls built wide apart from each other with separate corrals around each one and a little half-mile training track scraped off
in the pasture behind the two-room shack and the stalls.

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’.