The colt born to my mare, Mikk's Gay Glady, on Memorial Day, 1989, was a hard-luck horse right from the start--born with three strikes against him. First of all, he was a colt (everyone concerned had wanted a filly). Second, he'd been promised as a birthday gift to Jim May, outgoing president of our five-state regional storytelling association, because Jim had just bought a farm and had always wanted a driving horse. But Jim's farm wasn't fenced, and so there was a question as to whether he would have a home for the foal--so the colt's ownership was up in the air. Third, he was a chestnut. For a registered Morgan, traditionally, the preferred color was bay; then came black. Some breeders considered chestnut common as dirt. And the colorfuls--forget it! In the 1980s they were barely Morgans! But Bobby rose above it all.
He was a darling colt. One white star, and right hind sock white, he was in love with the world from the time he opened his eyes--the world, and the people in it. Even the vet, who came to give Bobby his shots when Bobby was one day old. Bobby didn't hold a grudge about those shots--he tried to follow the vet out of the stall for further attention. When he grew old enough to be turned out in the big field by the road with his mother, passing motorists would pull over their cars to gaze at the handsome colt posed like a statue on the rise. Bobby basked in their attention--in fact, his attitude seemed to be "I'm Bobby--admire me!" His theme song could have been "Love Me Do".
But the hard luck continued too. Jim May's new farmhouse proved to be infested with asbestos, and he had to sell off 3/4 of the farm to pay for it's removal--so there went Bobby's potential first owner! So, since my daughter was starting her second year of college, Bobby was for sale as soon as he was weaned. But as a new weanling, playing at sliding stops in the pasture, as young colts do, he came to a quick stop up by the fence. That how five-month-olds play, you know. They'll come running, fast as they can, until you're sure they're going to toss themselves violently at the fence--hurt themselves--impale themselves--and then they'll use their back legs as brakes! And like "chicken", the game is to see how long you can wait before braking. Bobby was playing that game. That night, when he came into the barn, the knees of his back legs--called the stifles--were swollen. That swelling is called gonitis.
Well, it's not uncommon for weanlings to injure themselves, and the Epleys, where Bobby and his mother were being boarded, weren't too concerned initially. But when the gonitis persisted a day or two, the local vet, Dr. McNutt, was called in. He gave Bobby a shot to reduce the swelling, and when that didn't take effect, started him on steroids. When that didn't help, he took x-rays. He didn't like the look of them, so he sent them off for consultation to the vet school, at Ames (the Epleys are located in Iowa). A tentative diagnosis came back--osteochondrosis.
Well, by that time Bobby was six months old, and it was time for him and his mother to move to Wisconsin. They had no problems on the long trailer ride. When it was time for them to meet their new vet, Dr. Gieche, and to have him take a look at Bobby's stifles, Dr. Gieche didn't like the gonitis-- but he also didn't like Dr. McNutt's x-rays. So he ordered a new set. And he felt it was definitely osteochondrosis. So he sent to the vet school at Madison, and they concurred. So here we have Bobby, at seven months, and the diagnosis is chronic gonitis, caused by congenital osteocchondrosis. For it was just now coming to the awareness of vets all across the upper Midwest that the drought of 1988 had leached all the minerals (especially copper, zinc, and calcium) out of the hay the pregnant mares and cows had eaten, and so many of the foals and calves born in 1989 were subject to congenital bone deficiencies--among them, osteochondrosis. Osteochondrosis, you must understand, means that the cartilege in the joints is brittle, and liable to chip, and crack, at the least movement. So every time Bobby moved suddenly, or ran hard, or played, or sometimes even walked, the bits of cartilege would chip off in the joints of his rear legs, and rub against each other, and rip, and tear, causing pain, and bleeding, and swelling, and this would happen for the rest of his life, as far as the vets could tell. They suggested an operation, a laser orthoscopy, which would be performed in Madison, and cost a thousand dollars. They wanted to take lasers, and go into Bobby's stifles, and burn away all the little chips of cartilege, but that didn't mean more chips wouldn't form, so the operation would only have a 20% chance of success. The alternatives would be to keep Bobby from moving for the rest of his life, which wasn't really practical, or to put him down. Weighing everything--including Meg's tuition at Northwestern--a day was set aside for the vet to put Bobby down--February 4, 1990. The Epleys sent a floral pick-me-up bouquet from Iowa. We were all heartbroken because he was such a good and willing and gentle and loving little colt.
The 4th of February was a Tuesday. The Friday before, I was talking long- distance with my friend and fellow storyteller, Cynthia Sorenson, in Minneapolis. Cynthia is a vegetarian, very knowledgeable in holistic healing and acupuncture. She suggested before we put Bobby down we contact a vet knowledgeable in acupuncture. She knew of one--Dr. Ralph Johnson, in Minnesota. So off went Bobby's x-rays. We postponed the euthanasia. When Dr. Johnson looked at the x-rays, he said "we can save this horse through nutrition".
Now you've got to remember that at this point Bobby had had three vets, two vet school faculties, plus his farrier (blacksmith) and a circle of friends. Now he was to get a nutritionist. Her name was Ann Enck. She's a former apprentice White House chef who studied equine nutrition at Harvard--bet you didn't know Harvard covered that. She's based in Iowa, but she dashed to our rescue in Wisconsin. She analyzed Bobby's hay, she checked Bobby over, and she put him on a special program. We started him off on 13% protein, and that was too much--he started to get contracted tendons, and the gonitis didn't go down--so we pulled him back to 11% protein, and the contracted tendons healed, the gonitis subsided.
We saw Bobby through a number of other ailments: a small benign lump on his cheekbone, viral papilomae (warts), recurrent thrush. But by the time he was two years old, he seemed a picture of health. We took annual x-rays, and each year there was less calcification in his stifles. (By the time he was five, the vet passed him for jumping.)
Each year I sent him for training to June Strelcheck, at Dancastle Morgans in Crystal Lake, Illinois. June, who has both a B.S. and M.S. in equine management, specializes in rehabbing injured horses. She could bring Bobby along slowly, as he needed, continuing his wheat germ, and vitamin E. We left him a stallion because as a stallion, thyroxin, one of the hormones he produced, would stimulate bone production.
Bobby, dashing my dreams, hated carriage driving. He decided to be a dressage horse (I ride western). So, reluctantly, in 1994 he was again for sale. As I was getting ready to bring him home that year, June approached me. She'd decided she would miss Bobby too much to have him return to Wisconsin--in fact, she caught herself thinking of him as "her" horse. Well, luckily Bobby was still a stallion, because we worked a trade for two of his foals and two breedings in exchange for Bobby. (I think he was pleased, too.)
1995 was a great year for Bobby. Under June's undivided attention, he went all the way to schooling second level dressage, winning the Midstates Morgan Horse Club's high-point trophy for an English horse. His first two foals hit the ground--both chestnuts, a filly, Anne McCaffrey, and a colt, Dancastle Timeline, looking as if Bobby had been run through a xerox machine. But in the spring of 1996, trouble surfaced.
Remember that benign cyst Bobby had on his cheekbone as a yearling? Well, in May of 1996 he had started a swelling in his right upper jaw--at first June thought he was teething. But the biopsy revealed a malignancy. Bobby was rushed to Purdue (more vets) where two teeth were extracted to allow the removal of the cancer. The follow-up pathology report said they'd gotten it all. Bobby returned to Illinois, where he dropped 200 pounds on a semi-liquid (apple juice mash) diet, until his jaw mended enough so he could chew.
Bobby was turned out in his paddock every day, and lightly free-lunged and free-jumped in the indoor ring for exercise when the weather was bad. His German Olympian instructor said he wouldn't make the 2000 Olympics now, but maybe 2004. And the Olympian talked about breeding Bobby to a warmblood mare for his own future dressage mount. He said he enjoyed working with Bobby the most--he had so much "try" whenever anything new was introduced. Bobby was put on a anti-cancer holistic regimen now--he didn't like the taste, but he was stuck with it. People from all over the world sent Bobby good wishes, and prayed for or imaged his recovery.
But the cancer recurred. Bobby had to be fed corn oil through a tube, because his throat was too tight to swallow. His beautiful head looked like someone slammed a soccer ball into the right side, and the skin had grown over it--sort of an equine "elephant man". Finally, on Good Friday, March 28, 1997, Bobby was put down. He had started to refuse the tubing, so there was nothing else to do, unless we wanted to watch him starve to death. Before the vet arrived his friends bathed him, and groomed him, and plaited ribbons into his beautiful wavy mane. He is buried under a tree in the broodmare pasture at Castle Ridge Keep, where the new foals play in the summertime.
Cynthia says I shouldn't call Bobby a hard-luck horse--that I should title this story "the luckiest horse", because of the many friends Bobby made who cared for him, who will keep him in their hearts. Tony Fennelly, the mystery author/astrologer, remarked that Bobby chose a hard chart before he was born. I hope he felt the love he earned was worth the suffering. I think June's husband James summed it up best when he said, "I've lost a friend". As did we all.
(c) 1997 Marsha Valance
To learn about the original Robert A. Heinlein, the author for whom Bobby was named, check out the Heinlein-Related Web Links in "My Favorite Links" list on the Tribute Farm homepage. To see Bobby's pedigree, click on Pedigree of Robert A. Heinlein
