Weird vet stories

[Caol Ila]

I am working on my third novel, and I've pivoted away from the crime/police procedural stuff of the last two.

This one is about a hapless equine vet. What I'm after is inspiration -- any stories of bizarre scrapes horses have got themselves into that required veterinary intervention, something to spice up my vet's life between the all mystery lamenesses, colics, and minor injuries.

I've got some from 30 years of horses, but there have got to be better ones.

 

[Roxylola]

A horse on that was on the same yard as me somehow got injured on a cable off a pylon - we think she ran in to it and the cable cut between her chest and armpit - really big deep cut that needed stitching and months of care. Happy to supply more info if you'd like

 

[fankino04]

Maybe there's an owner who invents some problems just to spend time with their vet, I think there's been some threads on here to inspire that

 

[Fransurrey]

My friend's horse once got caught on a rusty gate latch out hacking and peeled the skin off his offside quarter in a perfect square! He looked like somebody had taken a giant quilting patch and stitched it on after the vet had been!

 

[Mrs G]

A horse on that was on the same yard as me somehow got injured on a cable off a pylon - we think she ran in to it and the cable cut between her chest and armpit - really big deep cut that needed stitching and months of care. Happy to supply more info if you'd like

Oh dont! One of my paddocks has a pylon and cable in it - Ive got non electrified tape and poles around them and pipe lagging round the cable but I still worry!

 

[Cowpony]

One at our yard decided to jump the stable door, got her front legs over, pivoted on the top of the door and smashed her front teeth on the floor as she rocked forwards.

I'm sure there are more. We are constantly saying "you couldn't make it up!" I'll be back. ....

 

[Maryann]

A pony tried to climb over a breeze block wall and got a front hoof stuck in the holes in the breeze blocks at the top. Straw bales were used to support the pony while the hoof was extracted as it would only come out exactly the same way it went in. It was all a bit scary but I don't think even any bales were broken.

 

[shortstuff99]

One of mine got salmonella and had explosive, violent diarrhoea which went EVERYWHERE. most disgusting week of my life

 

[SDMabel]

Two horses being taken for a gallop round the mowed headlands of a field, Horse A in front throws a shoe - shoe gets flung back at some pace, strikes horse B in the face - narrowly misses Horse B's rider . Horse B hits the floor like a sack of spuds, jockey ends up on the floor too .

Horse B did get up, blood coming from nose, deep cut to face that would require stitching, walked him back to the yard (jockey was very lucky and injury free ) vet called out urgently - sustained a Fracture to his skull !!

Incredibly unlucky and certainly stuck with you when cantering behind another !!

 

[Birker2020]

Maybe there's an owner who invents some problems just to spend time with their vet, I think there's been some threads on here to inspire that

OMG they must be very rich

 

[Rowreach]

Does your vet have a wife? One of my vets delivered his own baby at the side of the road when taking his wife to hospital.

 

[Birker2020]

One of mine was tied outside his stable, on a four horse yard. The owner of one of the horses insisted hers was to have a leg stretch loose on the yard, went up behind my horse, his owner screamed at it, set my horse off, he panicked thinking she was shouting at him, pulled back, string broke, ended up going over backwards, slid down the slope and pushed his head through part of the fence. I was on the other yard at the time filling his water buckets up, she came running over to say he'd had an accident, I found him legs spread out like a giraffe, head down, severely concussed. Into a dark stable, top door shut to keep him in the dark till the vet could arrive.

Another horse tied up outside his stable, walked back a little to scratch his bum on the wall, broom was leaning against the wall and somehow (and I don't know how to this day how he did it) it got impaled up his bottom with the handle of the broom. Went mad bucking and broncing before managing to get rid of offending item.

Another horse I know (belonged to a fellow livery) got stuck in a five bar gate, vet arrived and sedated and the fire brigade arrived to get it out, said this was one of the things they'd received training on as it was quite a common incident amongst horses!

I had to call the vet because Bailey was stood at the stable door staring at the wall behind her and box walking and generally unsettled. Like she was going to try and jump over the stable door. I took her into the indoor school where she rolled, but she often did in the school and having been through hundreds of mild colics with her over the years I was unconvinced that was what it was and thought she'd possibly had some sort of head injury as she was acting so strange.

It took 3 of us and a tap from a schooling whip to get her back in the stable, she put the brakes on! In the stable she kept standing at the door pushing against it whilst staring behind her. On call vet was duly called, came from 50 mins away! Arrived and sedated her.

Said her back end looked colicky but her eyes, ears, and vital signs told of huge stress but no colic. Her heart rate was through the roof. Even sedated loose in the stable with us she'd stand by the door and would bravely grab a mouthful of hay from the hay bar before shooting back to the door to stand with us clearly terrified looking behind her. We were perplexed. Hay barn behind but no rats, cats, foxes or dogs in there and anyway she was used to noises behind there.

Vet felt she wouldn't attempt to jump out and said by the next day she'd have forgotten all about it. I was very sceptical, thought " there's no way she will forget"

Didn't sleep a wink that night expecting to find her in the morning with her front end hanging over the door trying to escape from whatever she'd been terrified of only to find her asleep on her shavings bed with her back to the 'bogey monster wall'!!

Blo*dy horses!! £250 quid down! Never did find out what had scared her so much. Still wonder if she'd had a stroke or something but then this was a horse that snorted and spooked going up the track daily to and from the same paddock she'd been in for five years!

 

[ycbm]

One of mine got a fat leg. Vet was perplexed, and when I inspected it really carefully after a couple of days there were two perfectly round holes about the size of an adder's teeth apart.

I heard about a person hacking with a ring on her finger who caught it on a gate and her finger was amputated.

A horse of mine got wedged in a narrow staircase trying to get up it into the hay loft. I had to climb through a hole in the ceiling to push him back down it backwards.

You could convert a true foot and mouth story to a strangles story. Locally there was an unexplained outbreak of foot and mouth at a farm that was outside the control zones. One of the vets involved said he had seen his first case of sexually transmitted foot and mouth. It turned out that the farmer's wife had been visiting her lover on a neighbouring farm without disinfecting her car tyres and changing her clothes.

 

[Roxylola]

Oh dont! One of my paddocks has a pylon and cable in it - Ive got non electrified tape and poles around them and pipe lagging round the cable but I still worry!

If it helps I was there years, the yard was open years before and it only ever happened once - so much so that until then they hadn't even put anything round the cable

 

[Northern Hare]

Removed, as probably very unsuitable for a new storyline!

 

[Quadro]

Had to speak to a vet in regards to a parrot rattleing from methadone......!!

 

[Melody Grey]

I had the vet out for a ‘not quite colic’, ‘not quite choke’ looking situation. They removed a foot long blackthorn branch complete with thorns from the back of my horses throat- nobody expected it or could quite believe it!

 

[Errin Paddywack]

The farm where we have our agility training has a few horses and one small pony. They had a large field shelter which they moved regularly as the horses moved paddocks. The farmer was hitched up and moving it one day when his wife suddenly noticed that the pony was missing and stopped him. Pony had gone back into the field shelter and was being dragged on his side up their very stony drive. Virtually degloved his hindquarters and years later still has a large patch of hair missing. After that the farmer was so upset he refused to move the field shelter any more and it now has a permanent location.

 

[The Xmas Furry]

Riding with friend, had to undo bridleway gate which is std wooden 5 bar gate, 12ft long. Lever handle to pull sideways to release catch.
Her horse titted about and somehow got the bit ring over the gate lever, pulled back, stood up, did a full on 70s disco set of moves till eventually the cheek piece snapped. As bit flopped onto lever the rest of bridle came off, 2 teeth fell out.
Neighbour phoned vet (days before house brick phones) and vet had a lot of patching to do, inc a huge tongue laceration. Tit of horse recovered to run inters the following year.

 

[expanding_horizon]

I am working on my third novel, and I've pivoted away from the crime/police procedural stuff of the last two.

This one is about a hapless equine vet. What I'm after is inspiration -- any stories of bizarre scrapes horses have got themselves into that required veterinary intervention, something to spice up my vet's life between the all mystery lamenesses, colics, and minor injuries.

I've got some from 30 years of horses, but there have got to be better ones.

Horse ran over neighbors swimming pool cover and sank.

 

[Caol Ila]

Riding with friend, had to undo bridleway gate which is std wooden 5 bar gate, 12ft long. Lever handle to pull sideways to release catch.
Her horse titted about and somehow got the bit ring over the gate lever, pulled back, stood up, did a full on 70s disco set of moves till eventually the cheek piece snapped. As bit flopped onto lever the rest of bridle came off, 2 teeth fell out.
Neighbour phoned vet (days before house brick phones) and vet had a lot of patching to do, inc a huge tongue laceration. Tit of horse recovered to run inters the following year.

I hate those 'horse friendly' gates because I can all too easily visualise that exact thing happening. They are even dodgier when they are self-closing and snap shut as soon as you let them go. I always get off if I have to use one.

Keep the stories coming, guys! These are amazing.

What happened to the horse who fell into the swimming pool? Did they get it out in once piece?

 

[Gloi]

My poor vet on her first week in practice had a chunk bitten out of her finger when checking my pony's teeth. She still has the scar many years later.

 

[smolmaus]

A horse I loaned had one eye. The story was they had just put a horse down on the yard and were letting their others say goodbye when one of them very uncharacteristically kicked out and popped out poor Danny's eyeball. Vet was still on site from the euth at least so they saved an extra call out

 

[Snowfilly]

There’s the ever popular urban legend of the pony that won a class at a big show and was awarded a bottle of champagne / wine / cider that the handler left open and the pony got drunk on it and fell over. (I did once see a genuinely drunk cow which had escaped into an orchard and gorged on fermented windfalls)

I’ve seen a pony with ‘bloody diarrhoea’ which turned out to be too many blackberries!

And, although there was an actual issue, a foot abscess which miraculously cured itself when the vet arrived… horse lashed out with a front leg, vet dodged, hoof hit concrete wall and pus exploded out the sole.

 

[Peglo]

Ok slightly embarrassing and not a treatment story

So I got the vet out to my horse for an infected tooth. The vet wanted to sedate her (unfortunately as she was brilliant with her teeth and since a vet had just rasped them 6 months before I don’t believe she needed them done)

So vet went in with the needle to sedate her and somehow made a right arse of it and was pulling the the syringe in and out and blood was filling the tube bit (technical term ) horse was being a saint.
Seeing her blood drip to the floor and fill the tube I could feel the blood draining from my head. I turned around and tried to concentrate on the small white pony in front of me
“Think of Squeege, think of Squeege, small and annoying and white” but it was no use.

I woke up bent over with my head on the gate, still on my feet. I was in a literal L shape lead rope still in hand.
I turned around to look at the vet and meet my embarrassment and there he was still dicking about with the syringe in my horses neck oblivious to the fact I’d just fainted stood up.

Horse recovered from her tooth infection and dealt beautifully with the bumbling vet and me being an idiot.

 

[SEL]

Young female vet out to wash big M's willy after it wasn't retracting into his sheath properly. He was very well endowed

Says to me she has a new boyfriend and they were going out on a date that night (whilst pulling off crud from a sedated Ardennes willy) and he keeps asking her what she's been up to in her job. She'd been on a call out before me for an impaction colic so her update over dinner that night was going to be hand up a horse's arse followed by washing the biggest willy she'd ever seen. No idea how that date went.....

To make it really grim we suddenly realised the yard labrador was eating the bits of crud. Got to love a lab.

 

[Celtic Fringe]

We once broke the vet He arrived to remove two or three stitches from pony's stifle following some keyhole surgery. Pony twitched a tiny bit, nervous vet dropped the scalpel he had ready to cut the stitches and sliced open his own hand right down the side of his thumb. Bone was clearly visible in the gap that opened up! We patched him up with some Animalintex and Vetwrap. He phoned a colleague to ask if staples would work and she said that horse staples are too large for humans (Yikes - someone had obviously tried this already!). We sent our hapless vet off the A&E where they closed the wound with 10 stitches.
We had to phone the practice office and ask for another vet as we had broken the first one! I later heard that the vet made a full recovery and went to Australia for the (horse) breeding season.

My dear old cob died in his 30s a few years ago - he simply laid down in the field one morning and was clearly not going to get up again. My lovely YO called me and the vet and by coincidence we both arrived about 20 minutes later. My lovely old horse looked me straight in the eye and breathed his last - I am absolutely sure he waited for me to be there. The poor vet could only tell us what was extremely obvious - that he had just passed away. I think she was a bit mortified that she couldn't do more. We did laugh about it later once we all had a good cry.

 

[The Xmas Furry]

One of mine.... pony had colic, mid Sunday afternoon early 80s, I called vet.
Half hour later vet (that I wasnt expecting but part of the practice) rocked up, tottered up yard to see pony. Vet clearly worse for wear, had been at rugby club, was listed as 2nd on call.
The next few minutes was a farce as he couldnt get an iv in, so in my gung ho way, I shoved him out of the way and he fell and just laid there in the straw....
Cue practice owner (and friend of family) shooting in, he took 1 look at the situation, cracked on with dealing with the pony. Once that was sorted to some degree, he bodily lifted grunting vet out of stable and threw him in jeep. Called that vets wife to come and collect him.
We had a cuppa and pony much more comfortable.
Pissed vets wife turned up and took him home, I kept the car overnight in yard till junior from practice collected next day.
Apparently it wasnt the 1st time, he left veterinary practice completely.....
Never got a bill for that

 

[TinseLeneHorse]

Not really weird but quite amusing. Many years ago my friend got her first horse from a dealer, just off the boat from Ireland. Over the next few months said horse became increasingly lethargic and developed a big tummy. Vet was called and diagnosed her as extremely overweight, a laminitis risk and to be put in a starvation paddock. Two weeks later same vet is out again as the horse had foaled during the night. A bit red faced he pronounced mare and foal to be well and said, that's a fine colt you've got there. The colt was actually a filly and went on to live a long and happy life with the same owner who bought her mum all those years ago. However she did change vets.

 

[Spotherisk]

the importance of having a receptionist with some animal knowledge.

My horse went down on his knees on the road, it was made worse by me being thrown onto his neck and him pushing himself along the road on his knees, trying to get up. Knees were mullered looking but obviously you have all fingers crossed it’s not gone into the joint. Ring vet - I have a horse with two broken knees.

Vet turns up with gun to shoot the horse with two broken legs.

PS horse made a full recovery and lived another 19 sound years!