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EQUINE ER: FOUR HOOVES TO THE SUN
ER, the television show tracking medical personnel and patients in a fictional Chicago hospital, conditioned us for Equine ER. Or perhaps not.
Consider why some persons choose a veterinary career over human medicine. Equine patients “look a lot better with their clothes off,” author Leslie Guttman learned in a ribald comment from a veterinarian during a Guttman’s year spent at Rood & Riddle Equine Hospital in Lexington. We never heard that one on ER.
In a more serious vein, the stories Guttman gathered reveal an intense pace of work along with a joy and pathos that differ little between veterinary and human hospitals. She found that “equine medicine is as multi-layered and complicated as human medicine.”
Picture the scene unfolding as a badly injured polo mare named Selena arrives at the equine hospital:
“Selena is whisked to a stall outside radiology the moment she arrives…Dr. Brett Woodie performs an emergency tracheotomy so she can breathe. While nursing techs and vets work to stabilize Selena, clean the mud and dirt off her body, and radiograph her head and lacerated limbs, Dr. Claire Latimer, the clinic’s specialist in veterinary ophthalmology talks with [owner Mia] Proto outside the emergency stall…She needs surgery…she won’t be anesthetized until she’s stable. Her immediate treatment includes fluids, antibiotics, and analgesics given intravenously, as well as anti-inflammatory drugs.”
Sounds like ER. But remember, this is Equine ER. In another chapter, another scene, the same Dr. Woodie recounted what happened to his tech while he examined a horse on a high-speed treadmill: “ ‘We heard a scream and she [the tech] was down on the ground,’” Woodie told the vets and techs in the small radiology room.
The horse had kicked the tech. We don’t suppose anything like this happens on ER.
Guttman is a first-time author whose who writes with accomplished style and with a tight pace that matches the intensity of an equine ER. Her book takes us through difficult foalings, into surgery, and on rounds with the vet who meditates and keeps a Buddha talisman in his vetmobile. She weaves engaging tales in telling of the heroic lengths to which veterinarians and horse owners go in trying to save sick and injured equines.
It is important to point out that not all the patients are valuable race horses. Many are beloved companion animals or show horses. One owner read The Kite Runner aloud to her horse while he lay in his stall following a tenotomy and realignment of his coffin bone. The horse recovered; Guttman wrote that after his recovery, he “would run full blast down the expanse and then lie down and roll around for the joy of it, his hooves to the sun.”
Equine ER is an engaging read for any horse lover or anyone wanting to learn more about the great amount of care provided for equines. We highly recommend it, giving the book four hooves to the sun.
