Talen: It’s A Good Thing I Love Him

                There is a grisly old horseman’s rhyme that goes:

One White Sock, Buy Him,

Two White Socks, Try Him,

Three White Socks, Deny Him,

Four White Socks and a stripe on the nose, cut off his head and feed him to crows.

Anyone that has been to Wellington, Thermal or just watched a super flashy hunter with lots of chrome win everything, knows the above is pure BS. Still, I am starting to believe line three, if not four. (That is just nasty.)

Case in point is my dear sweet, beautiful, pasture ornament, Talen.

I bought Talen in 2017. He was supposed to replace Mickey, who, for a lot of complicated and bullshit reasons, was not working out. (That itself is a long, long, story that I am still too traumatized to discuss. I still own Mickey. Enough said.)

Talen came into my life as a unicorn. He was stepping down from his job as an International Derby horse. Miraculously, he was also a super easy ride who could, in the parlance, take a joke. That means amateur-friendly. A horse that wouldn’t hold dumb mistakes and miscues against me. I need that. Badly.

 It’s a bonus that Talen is pretty. He is a 16.2 chestnut warmblood with four white socks and an adorable broken white stripe on his face.  See the above rhyme.

Talen should have been the perfect AA hunter for me.  And he was. Until he wasn’t.

Because unicorns don’t exist.

Four months after I bought him – the day before we were leaving for our first show together – he came up lame. Really lame.

He stayed that way.

Months of lay-up, vet visits and tests followed. On the advice of my vet, I he shipped up to Alamo Pintado Equine Medical Center for even more high quality and expensive exams. I am, extremely lucky to have access to Alamo. It’s an incredible clinic with amazing vets, surgeons and the latest in diagnostic equipment.

Unfortunately, I have never sent a horse to Alamo and had it come home with a positive diagnosis. I realize that’s because Alamo is usually the clinic of the last resort. My horses go there with difficult cases that my regular vets either can’t quite pin down or don’t have the equipment to confirm.

But still whenever I speak to Dr. Carter Judy, I descend into a downward spiral.  It’s not his fault; he is kind, thoughtful and a great vet. He just never gives me good news. Never.

That trend continued with Talen. Turns out he has a progressive degenerative disease in his pastern. The disease has a name -because I definitely Googled it – but my PTSD made me forget it. In layman’s terms, his pastern was collapsing. 

 This is not a good thing. The pastern joins the foot to the leg. If it’s broken, so is the horse.

My vet tried hard to fix him. She even accosted speakers at veterinary conferences looking for cures. That led to a bunch of experimental treatments, but after nine months, there was no improvement in his condition. ( But I believe he is a subject in a peer reviewed veterinary paper. )

At least he didn’t continue to deteriorate. He can walk, but has a significant limp at higher speeds. He seems comfortable which is all I care about now. Besides, moving fast was never his preference.

 Luckily I was already living in my little ranchette in Chatsworth. So I loaded him up and trailered him to Seven Hills Farm (West,) to spend the rest of his days with my other pasture ornaments, Lucy and Desi.

Talen is an easy going horse and quickly found his place with the others. He also has a sense of humor. I can always catch him but he makes the farrier chase him around for a while. Once he decided to be caught, the game is over, and Talen reverts to being the perfect gentleman.

He knows the sound of my cars. Even though he can’t see me, when I pull in the driveway, he whinnies to greet me. I think he is grateful that I didn’t put down, which I could have.

For Talen, every day is a gift. In that way he is kind of inspirational.

But lately, keeping him healthy – and alive- is a challenge. During the pandemic he got so fat – I know that is my fault – he foundered, which can be a death sentence.  A strict starvation diet – at least he thought so – and medications were prescribed. I got almost 200 pounds off of him in six months.

He is bitter, but breathing.

Last summer, he colicked for the first time ever. Four times.  Colic sounds simple and can be just a gas-caused stomach ache. Or it can be an impaction.  Either way, it can kill them if it isn’t resolved quickly.

The first times it happened was at 6:00 PM on a Friday night. Of course it was, because means that vet’s emergency farm call was super pricey.

 Repeat my new mantra: it’s a good thing I love Talen.

The vet and I decided that his tummy troubles were relatively mild and caused by wild summer temperature swings. He could be treated with medication. She left me with with potions, pastes and injectables. For the rest of the summer Talen couldn’t take an evening nap without me running out to take his temperature.

All went well until January, when the vet came for some routine health maintenance. Both horses needed their teeth checked and vaccinations. No big deal.

Since Talen was drugged for his teeth, I asked the vet to clean his sheath. I went into the house to get something, and when I returned the vet looked worried.

“Um,” she said. “There is something really wrong here. Come and take a look.”

Those are words you never want to hear from your vet.

Talen had contracted Equine Papilloma Virus. On his penis. EPV almost always develops into cancer in, and he had a number of suspicious spots. The poor guy had to have biopsies taken. On his penis.

Ouch.

The biopsies results were deemed ‘worrisome.”

I was presented with three options:

I could do nothing, and let nature take its course. Um, what are my other choices?

I could amputate his penis and do a resection of his urinary track. It’s a huge, major, painful surgery with no guarantees. Nope. Not doing that to my old man. I didn’t even consider that one.

The last alternative was chemotherapy. It seemed reasonable: slathering cream on the affected areas every two weeks for a total of seven treatments. That one! I pick that one!

Thankfully, horses (and dogs) do not react to chemo like people. They do not get exhausted, nauseated or just plain ill. They have few side effects, and rarely react in a negative way. But, like for people, chemo doesn’t always work.

It was worth a try. You know, because I love him.

The vet did the first two treatments to show me how. It seemed simple.  All she did was tranquilize Talen, clean his sheath and wipe it with chemo cream. Easy, peasy.

Not so much.

Talen is a shy pee-er. He doesn’t like to pee in public.  When he has to go, he runs into a stall and does his business in private. He is exceedingly suspicious about anyone grabbing his dick. He would have been a terrible breeding stallion.

I was dreading treating him because, yuck, but a horse girl has to do what a horse girl has to do. So every two weeks I pull on my big girl boots, dig out rubber gloves and get to work.

This involves a process: Take a deep breath and give him an oral tranquilizer. Wait ten minutes and follow up with a tranquiliizer shot. But not enough to make him lose his balance.

Then ignore him while he gets sleepy on the crossties. After 40 more minutes, get out a bucket of warm water, set out cotton for cleaning and the chemo cream. Finally pull on the gloves.

I look exceedingly professional.

Looks are deceiving.

Then it goes like this:

His eyes shut and he starts to snore a little. I give a quick peek at his undercarriage and see the tranquilizers are working. I gently start to wash his sheath. His eyes jerk open and he pulls it up with as much horsey outrage as he can muster.

I walk away and begin grooming Lucy to give him some space . Meanwhile I keep looking over at Talen. For the next 30 minutes we play peekaboo. He relaxes, I drop Lucy’s brushes in the dirt and dash over. Talen tenses up. I walk away and the whole process repeats itself.

It takes about an hour before I manage to get the chemo cream on the required areas. Finally, to the relief of both of us, I put him back in paddock and clean up.

As I head into my office to do real work, I glance over at Talen. He stands in front of the gate where I’d left him, fast asleep. Completely relaxed. Totally dropped. Not a care in the world.

I told you he had a sense of humor.

We only have to go through this four more times. It does seem to be helping. Cross your fingers.

That nasty poem reverberates in my head every time I do this. Truth be told, I probably will never buy a horse with four white socks and a blaze again.

But I really do love him.