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by Cindy Jeffery of Gweek Morgans |
(Cream dilutes) |
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| One of the most important issues we face when dealing with an acute crisis is cost. Although many of us love our horses beyond words, it can still come down to dollars and cents. A colic surgery can run into the thousands of dollars quite easily, and no surgery is ever a guarantee that the horse will recover fully. Follow up care from the veterinarian can also run high, especially in the case of broken bones that require multiple x-rays to compare healing rates. Most serious surgeries will require the horse to spend a certain amount of convalescence time at the vet clinic - more board costs you may not have thought of. Veterinary hospitals are expensive to operate and maintain - just like a human hospital, there is equipment to be purchased, new techniques to be learned, and so on. These costs are reflected in the charges you will have to pay if your horse ends up a vet clinic for a serious condition. Also factor in your personal costs - transportation to get the horse to the hospital, your meals and place to stay, travel back and forth if the horse requires a longer recovery or treatment period at the clinic, and don't forget to factor in your time away from work and home! You can see now how quickly those costs can add up. One option is to purchase surgical coverage on your horse's insurance policy, but in that case, you still need to consider the distance travelled. For instance, I have mortality insurance on Tori, but not surgical - I am not willing to haul her all the way to Alberta if she is suffering that badly. While we hate to put a dollar figure on a horse's life, sometimes it does come down to that. Can you afford a several thousand dollar bill, and only a 60% chance of full recovery? What if it is a 90% chance of full recovery - does that make a difference? Can you afford it? It does come down to the bottom line, and it is a line that ought to be set well ahead of time, when your emotions aren't running high with anguish. Take some time to set some realistic figures, cash money that you can get your hands on at short notice - consider setting up an emergency fund and paying into it each month. Set your limits both for transportation time and costs. Run through some scenarios - even call some of the vet clinics to get an estimate of costs for different occurrences. Continued January 1st, 2002.
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Not long ago I had a beautiful black Morgan colt from Magic and Smokey. He was a year younger than Parka - he would be 4 now. He was sweet and kind, easy to train and handle. But I noticed when he was about 6 months old and it was weaning time that he wasn't quite right. He continued to go down hill gradually at first than when he was about 10 months more quickly.
Eventually he couldn't walk very far - he had trouble breathing, and huge swelling under his belly, between his front legs, including his scrotum. I felt terrible for the little guy and Britt (our vet) and I tried whatever we could within our knowledge to help him, but nothing seemed to work. Eventually, he was so bad that he slipped on some damp ground and couldn't get up, and I had to make a decision. It was not easy, let me tell you. So many questions, How could this happen? What did I do wrong? Should I have weaned him at that time? Should I have put him in with the yearling? Why such a good and kind fellow like him? He would have been a perfect western pleasure horse. On and on it went. I had a lot of guilt, but I knew I had to do the best thing for him and stop thinking of myself. There would be more foals to replace him, besides maybe an autopsy would reveal why it happened. So the vet was called and when it was evident he was not getting up no way no how, we put him to sleep. I cried hard especially when his dam Magic came by to say goodbye, she knew he was dying; I could see it in her eyes, the way she sniffed him then me as if to say she understood and it was okay. We have been closer ever since. I still have some pain when I think of him or look at the sad pictures of his condition. But I believe taking part in performing the autopsy with the vet helped me heal, I had to know immediately why my beautiful colt had to be taken so soon. It turned out he had an enlarged heart the size of a basketball, it weighed 16 lbs. His gut and intestines could not process protein, which was probably why he couldn't eat any thing but blades of new grass (this happened in April). I still don't really know why all this happened to him, but I am at peace now about it, and it has taken 3 years, you see he died 1 day before his first birthday.
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The cream dilute gene is the one responsible for the beautiful golden tones of the palomino and buckskin horse. If the cream gene is passed onto a horse whose base coat is red-red (ie, sorrel), then the resulting colour is palomino - the cream gene dilutes the red to gold. Same goes for crossing a cream dilute gene on a bay base coat (which if you read last week is a horse with one red, one black, and one agouti gene). The black has already been restricted to the points. The red makes up the base coat, and it is then diluted to gold by the cream gene, same as a palomino - but with the black points that make up a buckskin. Those are the two best known colours involving the cream dilute, but there are quite a few others depending on the other genes involved. The cremello horse, like my reining horse Raime, is what they call a double dilute. He received two copies of the cream gene, perhaps from a breeding of palomino to palomino, or perhaps palomino to buckskin. As I mentioned in the December 4 issue, the percentages do allow for this to happen 25% of the time when breeding palomino to palomino. Technically speaking, from a colour breeder's point of view, a cremello would be highly desirable - the horse would be guaranteed to throw the dilute gene as it would have two copies of it. However, the American Quarter Horse Association has never allowed cremello horses to be registered in their association, which is why Raime has no papers. Originally thought to be albinos, and therefore to have some sort of physical problems, eventually it became known that the white colour was caused by the doubling of the dilute gene and not albinoism. However, AQHA still feels that these horses are prone to vision problems due to their blue eyes, and other various reasons to continue to deny them registry, which is unfortunate in this day and age of DNA testing and bloodtyping to prove parentage - the cremello foals that are born each year to two AQHA parents are not eligible for AQHA registry, period. Fortunately for dilute fans, the American Paint Horse Association will allow these horses registry in their association, as breeding stock (no pinto pattern) animals. It is still a loss for the QH group, but at least these foals are no longer being sold as grade stock (which I'm sure is how I ended up with Raime so many years ago!). There is also a group of people trying to get AQHA to change the Rule 227i which keeps these horses out of the registry. You can find out more about them at www.doubledilute.com or by joining the email list group at http://groups.yahoo.com/group /rule227i/join More on dilutes January 1st, 2002.
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If you have tips or questions you'd like to share with other local equestrians, please mail them to kristi@hiway16.com
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