‘Big personality’ horse wins many fans in nine-month stay at Veterinary Teaching Hospital

Many horses are treated each week at the Veterinary Teaching Hospital, but few stay as long as Glinda or get sent off with as much fanfare.

Sporting a sash and a bow and surrounded by about 30 friends and fans, Glinda, a 18-year-old Lipizzaner finally went back home to her home near Smith Mountain Lake earlier this spring after a nine-month stay in the teaching hospital at the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine.

Glinda was treated for laminitis, a painful and often debilitating hoof condition as well as the underlying metabolic disease that caused it.

“She has a bit of a fan club,” said Margaret “Muffin” Smith, who along with her husband, George, owns Glinda and three other horses. “She's been here so long, she has a whole history of fourth-year students who come by even after they're off her case officially. They come back to speak to her and say hi to her.”

“Glinda really seemed to love the attention of everyone in the hospital, and everybody loved having her here,” said Jamie Secoura, chief of farrier services at the teaching hospital. “So many students got to work with her while they were on their clinical rotations, and that was really special.”

A slow healing process

Laminitis is a common disease treated at the teaching hospital in Blacksburg, said Amy Santonastaso, clinical assistant professor in the Equine Field Service.

“It’s when we see failure of the attachments of the hoof to connect to the bony column in the leg,” Santonastaso said. “That can happen for a variety of different reasons. In her case, it was secondary to metabolic disease, which is probably the most common reason horses get laminitis, in general, but especially in our area. So we deal with a lot of it.”

The severity of Glinda’s condition was surprising even for her owners.

“She was really much worse off than we thought,” said Smith. “Lipizzaners are pretty stoic about pain, being an ex-cavalry horse breed from the Habsburg monarchy. So that's their breeding, to just be tough, and they usually have very hard hooves.”

Glinda’s long hospital stay was necessary both from the need to get the metabolic disease under control through medication and diet and for her hoof to regrow its attachments to the leg.

“When the detachment of the hoof occurs, it doesn't heal,” Santonastaso said. “What you basically have to do is support the leg somehow while also addressing the underlying cause, which in Glinda’s case was metabolic disease. You have to fix the metabolic disease so that we stop getting injury to the hoof capsule, and then we have to support the foot mechanically until she can grow a whole new hoof capsule.”

The hoof capsule takes eight to 12 months to grow, from top to bottom. “Throughout most of that time, the further you get away from the inciting cause, the more optimistic we become," Santonastaso said, “because every centimeter of growth you get of the new hoof capsule that's not compromised, the more stable that whole thing is.”

Laminitis often proves fatal, or leads to a decision to euthanize the horse, as it becomes too painful for the horse to stand up, and many health problems ensue if a horse is not on its feet for long periods of time.

“The owners were willing to do everything we recommended, so that was a big component of it,”  Santonastaso said. “We had as much time as we needed. We could pursue any treatment we wanted. But also, she never got some of the major secondary complications that cause us to stop.”

A collaborative effort 

This was not the first time the Smiths had a horse make a monthslong hospital stay, and a veterinary college team regularly makes a checkup visit of their four horses on their farm near Moneta.

Glinda’s treatment required many different hospital teams, as the effects of various medications had to be monitored, as well as orthopedic and muscular issues.

Santonastaso described laminitis as the “ultimate disease that exemplifies the veterinarian-farrier team.” 

“That was crucial, because we have to come at it from both sides, the veterinary side and the farrier side,” Secoura said. “Neither team can do it all, or know all of what to do or what to expect. We saw her every single day for months and we would watch her walk, we would re-radiograph her, we would see if there were any changes. We would discuss what our next steps would be, what our steps would be if those didn't work. We just were constantly communicating and going over this case.”

Secoura’s team members tried a variety of different shoeing setups for Glinda, including periods of barefoot and Soft-Ride boots, as they faced the challenges of protecting parts of the hoof that were abscessing, loading healthy areas of the feet with more of the weight while not causing more pain and pressure on the injured foot and allowing for draining of the abscesses.

“It throws a lot of traditional shoeing out the window,” Secoura said.

Smith and Santonastaso praised the work of Victoria Whitworth, resident in large animal surgery, in helping coordinate the day-to-day care of Glinda.  
 
“She implemented many of the medical procedures and was instrumental in making sure Glinda's care was cohesive between everyone and that nothing was missed,” Santonastaso said.  “She directed the students on the case, communicated with the various clinicians, and overall ensured that everything Glinda needed was taken care of."

'She felt like a VIP'

All the while, they were dealing with a lovable but sometimes cantankerous horse.

“She has a very big personality, which was difficult for us sometimes,” Secoura said. “She kept it interesting.”

“Glinda is opinionated, you always know what she's thinking,” Santonastaso said. “She means to be in the center of everything. Honestly, I think she loved being in the hospital because she had people walk by her stall. She felt like she was the VIP, which, I mean, she was treated that way. For Glinda, that was like her best life.”

Back at Moneta, Glinda was warmly greeted by her pasture mates and is being monitored on regular visits by the Equine Field Service.

“It’s been amazing to be here,” Smith said just before Glinda was walked onto the trailer to leave Blacksburg. “The people here have been super experts from the start. We’re taking home a horse that's more than just cared for, but perfectly cared for the entire time.”