If you happen to follow me on Instagram, you might have seen my mild grievances towards horses. Okay, not horses themselves, but all the horse terms. Why do they need their own special terms?! Remembering what terms like quittor, side bone, splints, and bone spavin mean in addition to what the medical diagnosis is called is challenging. Not to mention the large variety of breeds, disciplines, temperaments, and colors and patterns if you want to impress someone—the list goes on and on!
I am currently writing this while I enjoy a quiet night in the equine ICU (someone out there is yelling at me for saying it’s quiet…I’m sorry, I’m just not that superstitious I guess!). Today is the end of the first week of my equine medicine rotation, and I have to say I am really enjoying it! I was incredibly nervous the night before my first day. I really like horses, I just have no experience with them, and I have taken every opportunity during this first week to learn about them. Not just medicine either, I’m learning about behavior, how they act, what you should do if they do this, and so on. I have been asking a lot of questions of my more experienced classmates, such as why they do certain things when they are holding the horse while I do my TPR, or what to do in certain, possibly scary (for me at least) situations so I can be prepared.
I have learned a lot of medical knowledge about horses so far in just this one week. But one thing I have learned for sure is that horses are certainly special! Maybe for that, they deserve their own terms.
