Hull Bay
April 19, 1998 -- April 13, 2011

Today my heart is breaking for what I could not fix.  It breaks for what I cannot understand though the answers are all clear.  It breaks for a life that was so big and yet so fragile.  My heart breaks for a life that was lost in spite of of the power of medicine, of love, of prayer, and of giving the best fight we could give, This is Holden's story...

Hull Bay came to me from a trainer in West Virginia.  His history is not totally clear, other than that he raced successfully, retiring a winner from the track.  He wasn't anything amazing, just another of the thirty something thousand Thoroughbred foals that made up the "crop" of 1998.  What I do know is that somehow he found himself in a rough spot, and by the hands of fate, ended up here with us.

His final exit from the racing world came with no pomp and circumstance.  He was shipped in to the track to meet Athena and loaded onto the trailer without a second thought.  His journey was normal until he fell in the trailer about twenty miles from the farm; they were stopped at a traffic light when he went down.  Athena and I have pondered since that day whether he was unwell when he left West Virginia and if his fall was our first clue to his illness, or if perhaps his fall was purely coincidence.  We will never know.

He came off the trailer pretty much okay, just a bit stiff, and somewhat off on his right hind leg.  He settled right in to his hay, was quiet, and very reserved.  I remember Athena telling me after her second or third stop on the trip down that he wouldn't interact with her or even look her in the eye.  I gave him the name Holden after the character Holden Caulfield from Catcher in the Rye, who had total disdain for anything that he deemed phony or insincere.  It seemed to me when he arrived that he'd had enough of being passed around and had become tired of not having his own people...  Little did we realize what a character we had on our hands...  It just took a while for him to figure out that he had finally found a soft place to land.

We tried riding him shortly after he arrived.  He was worried at being in a strange place, and was still off behind.  I remember his rider Katie telling us that he was "amazing" and concurring with Athena that if he ended up being sound that he was going to be a fantastic partner for his new person.  We tried again a week later and found him to be a bit worse rather than better--still off behind and at times choppy in his movements.  His final ride came about a month after his arrival, and still, there was no improvement.

I decided that we needed to let time work its magic as it so often does, and took him from being a stall horse to one who had the luxury of being outside, living like a horse, twenty four seven.  His gait improved with the freedom of movement that being outside gave him, and we began to think that maybe he was just a bit creaky in his thirteen years and that being out all the time would help with his soundness. 

He started to interact, and showed us that he had a giraffe somewhere in his pedigree:  in an endearing ploy for attention, he'd swing his head in circles, swaying as he did it, flapping his lips in a monkey face, in time to his own music.  And yes, he finally met our eyes and held them.  He engaged, and became engaging. 

Our plan worked until mid-March when we started to see a significant regression in his physical appearance.  He started to lose more weight than we could just blame on the rigors of winter, and when he walked, his front legs had become stilty and unsure. His hind legs often trailed behind, and sometimes would hitch as he walked. Standing still, he'd bring all four feet together underneath himself and balance  with his head facing one way and his hind quarters the other.  We batted around ideas for the cause of his trouble:  the seemingly-obvious fall in the trailer (but again, cause or effect?), the "catch-all" EPM, Wobblers Syndrome (but he'd raced successfully over the span of several years), arthritis in his cervical spine... 

Holden had surpassed what time alone was going to fix.  I consulted with two veterinarians, my regular vet who concurred with me that we were facing a dire situation, and then my go-to veterinarian who has many times been my "voice of reason" when I need to confirm my instincts and make sure that I'm being realistic and also being fair. 

In hopes of finding a simple solution to Holden's rapidly deteriorating condition, we pulled blood to test for EPM antibodies.  This test is useful for not much more than confirming that a horse has been exposed to the protozoa Sarcocystis neurona which is resoponsible for EPM.  Our hope was that his result would come back with a high titer (exposure) and would thus justify treating him with Marquis, a drug that kills the protozoa that has embedded itself in its host's spinal column.  Unbelievably, and against odds of 98 to 1 that he would test positive, Holden's blood work showed no exposure at all. 

Holden had regressed to not much beyond staggering.  Walking over a log or up a step had become almost impossible for him to accomplish.  Balancing to eat was becoming harder and harder.  He was graded a three on a scale of one to four for neurological compromise.  With EPM ruled out, further testing would require x-rays to show spinal damage and then contrast MRI's to show where the damage was.  To perform the MRI would in itself have escalated his deterioration from instability to inability to stand. 

The gift that we as humans have of being able to "play God" extends in two directions, the ability to prolong life beyond what is merciful and the ability to end life because our interference has perhaps prolonged it past what nature would deem possible on her own.  In reflecting on Holden's life, it became clear to me that living for him was far more painful than the peace and freedom that death would bring to him.  He was no longer able to keep up with his herd.  When they would run, he'd follow behind, a danger to his own well being and theirs as he careened around on legs with a mind of their own.  The very legs that had provided him with  freedom had dealt him the most cruel of hands.  They had become his keeper and and he their prisoner. 

I know in every experience there is a message to be heard.  For me, Holden's passing brings the reminder of how precious freedom is and also the importance of our roles as humans in assuring the comfort and well being of the animals entrusted to our care.  Holden lived his last days loved but in a constant state of fear and uncertainty--where his legs were, would he be alone and seperated from his herd because he couldn't keep up, would he be able to reach his feed without falling down. To be trapped in a body that did nothing but fight every fiber of his being, the ultimate gift that I could give him was to set him free.  From the shadow of the big oak tree that frames his picture, Holden was set free this morning to run, to swing his giraffe neck, and to make monkey faces to a music far more beautiful than any we can hear on Earth.

Godspeed, The Dixie Chicks, 2002