George the Experimental Rescue horse
It was mid winter 2001. I was working for the University of Waikato as a Research Technician in the Psychology Department’s animal behaviour lab. We usually worked with hens and had recently started with possums – these are the Australian Brushtail possum which is a pest in New Zealand not the less cute American Opossum – and also at this time we had horses at the lab, which was great!
We University people shared the building with the Ag Research behaviour group and they had a visitor coming over from Europe who wanted to try some equipment on horses which had been developed for use with red deer – the Dracpac. This equipment was really special, it was a remote blood sampling device which allowed blood samples to be taken in the field via catheter and stored in ice in a backpack fastened saddle-like to the animals back. For the first time baseline cortisol levels (the stress hormone) had been taken in deer.
I had already supplied and borrowed horses for the current experiment we were running, so it was given to me to get a horse for the Dracpac trial. But the ponies I had borrowed from my friend were showing and/or children’s ponies… there was a chance we could end up putting a catheter in, and thus a chance that it could go wrong and the horse might end up with a haematoma… not a big problem but not something you want to do to someone else’s horse. So it was decided that we would see if we could hire one from the local knacker (horse meat purchaser). Actually a nice guy he would always rehome horses when possible, in fact I had bought a pony from him to be a paddock mate for my old horse.
And so on a cold and wet July day the truck rolls up and off comes a bay standardbred clearly straight off the track, fit and not ready to be in the New Zealand winter without a cover on. Not the grey mare with a stone bruise I had been expecting. Apparently she was a bit too sore and this horse had been standing there poking his nose into everyone else’s business, so he got put on the truck instead. “What’s his name?” “You don’t name them” was the reply. Sad. He looked like another standardbred I had ridden some time before (bay colour, not too large) and so I resisted for a few days naming him the same… but he just wanted to be called George too, so George it was. A colleague who had standardbrerds herself looked up George’s brands online, he was not quite four years old.
George was perfect for the Dracpac experiment, one big difference between horses and deer for this sort of thing is that horses like to roll. Every time we put the backpack on after making an adjustment George would oblige with rolling immediately and every time the backpack would slide sideways. Apparently this would also happen with the deer and the solution had been to stick Velcro to the animal’s backs, just as well this was a hired death-row horse and not someone’s show pony! But still all animal experiments require approval from an Animal Ethics Committee and so the Velcro needed approval and to get that we needed permission from the owner… so I had to ring the knacker and ask him if it was ok to glue Velcro to his horses’ back! It was fine, he didn’t care, so George got Velcro glued on and the backpack stayed where it was supposed to.
When George had arrived we had given him a worm drench. Now I’d never had to consider it before but these things come with withholding periods, a time after medication is given when you can’t slaughter the animal for human consumption. Apparently while New Zealanders don’t eat horsemeat we do export it, so George couldn’t be sent home until three months had passed. And by the time three months was nearly up one of the academics who had had ponies as a child declared that as part of the Animal Behaviour and Welfare Research Centre it went against everything we stood for to send George back to the knacker, well none of us were feeling too good about it, so we all clubbed together to raise $300 to buy George.
George then went on to take part in the other horse experiment we had going on – Investigating colour vision in horses – and then as I had horses already I got to take George home. My intention was to teach him to be ridden as standardbreds are harness racers and most do not get ridden until after their racing career if at all, and then to sell him. I did the first part but never seemed to get around to the second part!
