An Unspoken Art by Gutkind Lee;

Author:Gutkind, Lee; [Gutkind, Lee]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 1806551
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

The Quitter

THE HORSE ERIC PARENTE has been asked to evaluate is a quitter. This horse goes like hell for five-sixths of the race and then, just about the time the owners are counting their money and computing their profits, he slows down. Parente, a thirty-three-year-old veterinarian, a graduate of Cornell School of Veterinary Medicine, whose specialty is sports medicine, is muscular and well-built, with thick brown hair lightly speckled with gray, a square jaw, and a row of perfect teeth. His office is a mess. There are sweat clothes and running shoes stashed under his desk. He’s wearing basketball shoes, white socks, khakis, a light-blue shirt with a New Bolton emblem on it, significantly wrinkled after a long semisleepless night.

Among other interests, Parente has been focusing his attention upon the many problems having to do with lameness in the hock, which is a common ailment for horses. Hocks are like human ankles. Steroids are usually used to treat these problems, Parente says. “The cheaper horses get more steroids because they’re not going to win many races, so the owners race them and forget them, whereas for a more expensive horse an owner will invest the money to permanently heal the lameness and eradicate the pain.”

As we walk from his office to the Jeffords Treadmill Facility, Parente points out that 50 percent of the horses that are bred for racing never get to the track. But in this case, the chocolate brown three-year-old with a brown mane and one white foot races well until he slows at the home stretch, the point at which he should be barreling at top speed. Preliminary examination has ruled out obvious problems, such as lameness.

First, Parente must grind off the traction-inducing toe grabs on the horse’s shoes, which would tear into the rubber of the treadmill. For this he utilizes a large carpenter’s sander with extra-coarse sandpaper. He shows the grinder to the horse and triggers it so that the horse can become familiar with its sound—and also learn to trust him. He also places his hand on the horse. He holds on when the horse tries to jerk away. In a persistently gentle manner, Parente holds on tightly until the horse is comfortable with his touch.

I’ve observed him practice a similar philosophy with the horse’s mouth during a dental examination. “Hold on, allow them to make their objections. But be relaxed and firm at the same time,” he says. Horses, Parente explained, have incisors in front and molars in the back of the mouth, and an interdental space in the middle. “So if your psychology fails, and they decide to bite down with your hands in their mouth, your fingers will be safe if you keep them in the interdental space.” As an added safeguard, a veterinarian can reposition a horse’s tongue to the side so that it lies between molars. “Then, if they do get testy and chomp down, it will be on their own tongue, and they will be in much more pain than you.

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