You come out to ride, you groom, you tack up, you hop on… and your horse is lame. What do you do? You certainly can call the vet right away, but there’s a few things I like to rule out first, when I encounter a mild lameness.

First, I like to check for my favorite problem: acute foot pain. Dismount and check your horse’s feet. Did he step on a rock? (By the way, this is why you should pick your horse’s feet like Al Capone voted: early and often) Take out hoof testers, and put them to good use. Is there heat in the foot? Any discoloration? Is the shoe on correctly, or has he stepped on a nail? It’s a good starting place, and if you don’t know how to check out a foot, make sure your vet or farrier shows you next time you’re in their company.

On that note, you need to know when your horse was last shod, because if he comes up tender a day or two after shoeing, you could be dealing with a hot nail, a nail that was driven into the soft interior of the hoof instead of the exterior, which has no pain receptors, like our hair or fingernails.

If you’ve ruled out the foot, time to check up the leg. Skin irritations or “crud,” like scabs from dermatitis, can really irritate. If your horse has some crud, and is also wearing boots or wraps, pull the boot or wrap off and see if he’s sounder. I’ve had horses act like they had a broken leg simply because his skin hurt when rubbing against a soft polo wrap, poor delicate flower.

Swelling is the same – sometimes a horse gets a teeny tiny cut and it blows the whole leg up. Check for those sorts of things, and make sure to also take your horse’s temperature. A puffy leg plus a temperature can mean a serious infection, and your horse could need veterinary attention right away.

The last thing I check is for back pain. A lot of horses can experience lameness of limb because they’re trying to guard their backs or necks, which can hurt because of a myriad of reasons, including saddle fit, blanket fit, or just straight up hard work.

If there’s no obvious wounds, cuts, swelling, heat or scabs, no obvious foot pain, no obvious source of injury, you get to choose how much of an alarmist you would like to be. Unless I have a horse with an important outing on his event horizon, I like to take the Very Scientific Approach of waiting three days. I recently rolled my own ankle while undertaking a very serious and complicated athletic endeavor – walking on flat ground in appropriate shoes – and I figure if I’m that clumsy on two legs, a horse is capable of being that clumsy on four. A few days of “tack walking” for me, where I rode and strolled around and did not much else, and I was good as new.

So I give my horses the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they’re sore and tired from training hard, maybe they slept funny, maybe they spooked in the field overnight and tripped and tweaked something. I personally don’t use NSAIDs to get through these timeframes, because I don’t want to mask anything more sinister. But I know others who do, and that works for them. I don’t think there’s a hard and fast wrong answer.

And it’s amazing how many come around the very next day, or maybe a day after that.

Of course, when things don’t resolve, I’m the first one in line at the vet’s office, using a quality sports medicine vet to guide me through the steps on whatever comes next. But I’ve never ever regretted a few days off for one of my horses out of an abundance of caution, and it’s often just what the doctor ordered.

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When I was ten, I broke my femur, and had a pin put through my left knee for a month. It was removed, but that trauma, combined with years of running and triathlons, a genetic predisposition to crummy joints, and a lifetime of mounting from the left, that knee has ached for years. It’s been getting worse, so I finally made an appointment with a local orthopedist.

I was quizzed about my symptoms – aching or stabbing? localized or specific? when moving, or all the time? – on a form, and then shepherded into an exam room. The doctor spent about 2 minutes with me, moving my knee, putting her hand on it while it moved, and then sent me off to x-ray. 2, maybe 3 views? The doctor reviewed them, diagnosed me with deterioration of the cartilage above my knee, and then gave me three choices: a daily NSAID, joint injection with a steroid, or joint injection with Hyluronic Acid (which, by the way, she said was unlikely to be covered by my insurance until I’d tried the steroid, given my age).

It should go without saying that I had some questions.

When I think about how my horses are treated when they go see my exceptional sports medicine veterinary practice, Virginia Equine Imaging, it’s a very different experience. Their exam is thorough and holistic, even if I have a specific complaint; they watch my horses at rest and in motion, both free and with the rider if possible, and perform flexion tests. They rule things out one at a time, and it takes time.

Now horses can’t talk, so for sure the exam has a practical reason to look at the whole body instead of just the specific complaining part. And I recognize that VEI, and my vet, Dr. Cricket Russillo, are elite-level, world class sports medicine specialists, and so it’s not an apples-to-apples comparison to the local human orthopedist in my wee town. But whenever I have a horse see Dr. Russillo, the conversation always goes beyond pain management.

That was my first question for my orthopedist. Ok, cartilage doesn’t grow back, I know. But my options are whole body painkiller or local painkiller? What about something to help condition the cartilage? Not until I’d tried the painkiller, according to insurance.

Ok, I said, let’s think outside the box. Is there something like Adequan for humans? Nope. Legend? Nope. What about a biologic, like Platelet Rich Plasma? That exists in humans… but isn’t covered by insurance, so I’d have to pay for it out of pocket.

So that’s that. Apparently we do more to help slow the decline of a horse’s joints – horses, with a lifespan of 20 years – than we can do for humans. And it would seem to me that there would be some wisdom in getting ahead of problems like mine, that will inevitably be more expensive to treat down the road, with things like joint replacements. Fortunately for me, the NSAID is working great, and I’m able to go about my life like before. And also fortunately for me, I’ve got time, hopefully such that modern human medicine can catch up to all that we’ve learned to do to help our equine friends.

Here’s a list of things that make me nutsy. Most aren’t actual crimes, they’re just Lauren crimes. But crimes they are, in my mind, so spare my delicate sensibilities and don’t do them in my presence.

1. White ear bonnets. Just… don’t. It’s a FLASHING NEON SIGN drawing the eye of all – including the judge – to any moments of imperfection in the contact or self-carriage your horse may have. (Unless your horse is gray, obviously.)

2. Dirty bits. You should clean at LEAST your bridles and girths daily, and as part of bridle cleaning, you need to clean the bits. The goo that comes out of your horse’s mouth during work is bad for leather, and then hardens and gets icky when you have to put it back in your horse’s mouth. Water, a towel, and a little elbow grease. You can do it.

3. People who do it wrong the same way over and over. Whatever “it” is, in your lessons, make a new mistake. A fair amount of my annual income is spent repeating myself, so this is really against my financial interest to fix in humanity, but it can be rather annoying. Don’t worry about whether you’ll fail or not; just fail different. That’s how you figure out where the right answer is!

4. Hand walking around the arena at shows. You can’t see through your horse’s head, so you’re going to walk your horse in front of me. And either you’re nervous, in which case you should walk yourself around the arena and leave your poor horse alone in front of his fan with some hay, or your horse is a wing nut, in which case you’re going to cause a ruckus for those who are riding. Lunge it, get a trainer to ride it, something, but hand walking around the show ring is a good way to get someone hurt.

5. People who park badly at shows. In the parking lot, take your time and do it right. Others have to share that space with you. If you don’t know how to drive your trailer backwards, don’t drive it to the show until you do. And when you’re loading or unloading, do your best to not be a tool and block access into or around the barn. Easier said than done at some horse shows, but it’s better that you have to walk a bit than that you make everyone else’s life harder.

6. People who bitch at ring stewards, or rely on them to be their brains. Ring stewards are almost always volunteers, and sometimes they’re relatively new to the sport. Check in when you show up. Ask who you follow. Ask if the ring is on time. And then be a responsible adult and pay attention to what’s going on. The ring steward is not your mommy; it’s up to you to get yourself into the ring on time.

7. Nosebands that aren’t level. Cavessons need to be parallel to the ground, not up on one side and down on the other, but more importantly they need to be level from front of nose to back. If your flash is pulling your noseband down, your bridle isn’t the right size. Get some help in getting the right gear, because the wrong gear is both ineffective and uncomfortable for your horse.

8. Test readers. Memorize! Using a reader is like failing an open-book test. You have the answers in advance! And if you’re relying on a reader, you’re riding the moment, rather than riding the moment ten steps from now. You will score better when you know where you’re going.

Invisibility? Nah. Super speed? Only if it came with Super Strength, so I could just carry horses in from the field in the mornings. But there’s three superpowers I would definitely take, if made available.

1. The ability to know whose damn wraps these are. Hey, guys? Whose wraps are these? They’re navy. I can’t read the initials that someone wrote onto them with Sharpie two wash cycles ago. I think they’re the SmartPak ones? Not the Dover ones? The velcro looks the same. Do they have a corner cut out of them? Which corner? Who is the one who cuts the corners out of their wraps? Is that me, or is that someone else? Oh, do they have initials embroidered on them? Crap, they do, but they’re on the velcro, so I’m not going to see it until I’ve already wrapped someone else’s horse in them. … see why I want this superpower? Life would be easier.
2. The ability to make anything clean and waterproof at the touch of my hand. Like Midas, turning anything he touches to gold, I’d like to be able to pick up the ten-year-old turnout sheet and – voila! – good as new. White polos? Done! Show pads and white breeches? Like magic, and Scotchguarded for easy stain removal the next time!
3. Lastly, and I hope this can be taken in the spirit in which it is intended, the ability to be a human electric fence, at a distance. Stop touching each other, horses next to each other in the field playing bitey-face, six paddocks away! Stop pawing on the crossties, bitch mare at the other end of the aisle! COME WHEN CALLED, GEORGIA THE DOG! And maybe, just maybe, HEY STUDENT, STOP LOOKING DOWN! Not enough of a shock to cause pain, just enough to say HEY!

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I have a coat bag – in my farm colors, brown and blue – that I’ve been schlepping around with me for more than a decade. It had to be a custom order, because I’m so tall that standard size bags scrunch my tails up at the bottom. And over the years, I’ve collected a few things that I carry with me to shows. I’m not a superstitious person, but they’re little mementos that help me remember what’s important, and think of a few old friends.

– tail hair bracelets from a few special horses. Whether they’ve moved on from me or just moved on, I have a collection of bracelets from Pony Locks that come with me. Bellinger, Clairvoya, Victorious, Stratocaster, Ellegria and Danny Ocean are all represented, and I like to think that they come with me (and, for a few of them, heckle me) down the centerline.

– a buckeye. One of my dearest former students gave me a buckeye nut from a tree in her family’s back yard. It’s supposed to bring luck; I like it because it reminds me of a fun kid, and the times we shared.

– a stock tie pin made by another former student. Sometimes I wear it, and sometimes it just travels with me, but it’s incredibly beautiful, an oversized pin with a collection of blue beads, and it also reminds me of how long I’ve been doing this, because the maker was one of my first students.

– a rubber duck. A friend of mine gave me the duck at my last NAYRC (2005!); she called it my lucky duck, which it may be, but it also makes me think of days gone by, and how far I’ve come.

– a little elephant figurine. The elephant itself is meaningless, but it was inside a bag of things that were given to me after my amazing student and friend Beverley Thomas’ passing last year, and carrying it is like carrying a little talisman from her.

There’s also an assortment of safety pins, mascara, sunscreen and a sewing kit in case of disasters, plus at least three emergency pairs of semi-retired Roeckl white gloves. But they’re not as poetic as the keepsakes!