I’ve been obsessed with western medicine my whole life. I don’t remember a time when I didn’t ask for bandaids for my birthday or want crutches and ACE bandages for Christmas. I even wanted a subscription to Muscle and Fitness magazine -not because I wanted to grow up to be a body builder, but because I was fascinated by the human form.

Still, every time I hear the word “doxycycline”, I think about a wiener dog riding a bicycle. That’s where the water starts to get muddy.

I’m not talking about a nice long game of Telephone. I’m talking about how our own experience influences what every single thing that happens to us means. I’d like to begin with this story:

We met Ray and Brenda Nash when they bought one of our horses for their daughter, Bella. The story has a lot of twists and turns, but the gist is that Brenda and Bella both love to ride and it was time for Bella to have a horse of her own. Several months ago, Ashley and Brenda were going back and forth about something horse when Brenda made a reference to Bella’s PC instructor. I was taken aback. What in the hell could this kid need a PC instructor for?! I couldn’t imagine her stomping around leaving a wake of slurs and hate in her path; she likes fluffy things and helping others FFS. Maybe they’re just making sure? Maybe she used to be a flagrant bigot and this PC instructor had just done THAT good of a job? I tried to roll with it and not reveal my genuine shock, but I had to know. I can’t remember exactly how I worked my question into the conversation, but it was basically, “So…did Bella used to be a stupid asshole or are you just trying to prevent her from turning out to be one?”. Brenda was all, “Wait, what?” and I’m like, “you said she has someone that teaches her how to be politically correct…?” and I got hit with several *puh-CHING* messenger notification sounds at once from both Ashley and Brenda, “PONY CLUB. It’s PONY CLUB. PC stands for PONY CLUB. OMG. You’re the one that needs a PC instructor you stupid asshole.” or something like that. Or something that should have been like that.

This post is pretty much a public service announcement to help with the confusion and hopefully save some embarrassment. I consider myself to be fairly abreast of anatomy and physiology. If you’re also someone who was obsessed with western medicine, fascinated by the human form, knowledgable about human anatomy and physiology, and are comfortable with our culture’s acronyms: take all that you know, ball it all up, and throw it in the trash the SECOND YOU’RE AROUND HORSE PEOPLE and keep your mouth shut until you have the following in your head or else you might as well go around asking women that have gained a little weight if they’re pregnant.

Acronyms

GSP is a good place to start. If you live near upstate South Carolina, it’s Greenville Spartanburg International Airport. If you like cage fighting, it’s Georges St-Pierre. If you’re a horsey person, it’s German Sport Pony. If you’re all three, watch your ass. BLM is the Black Lives Matter Global Network, unless you’re a horsey person and then it means that only wild mustangs rounded up by the Bureau of Land Management matter. Similarly, RRP is widely accepted as a reference to the Recommended Retail Price unless you’re a horsey person, and then it is used exclusively in reference to the Retired Racehorse Project. OCD changes aren’t really a thing in humans; once someone has developed a particular combination of obsessive compulsive symptoms they tend to remain fairly consistent over time. Unless you’re talking with a horsey person, that is. In that case, OCD stands for osteochondritis dissecans which means the cartilage failed to mature properly in a joint and what that *actually* means is you shouldn’t buy the horse. Whether or not a horse has OCD is something you’ll find out when you get the PPE (a pre-purchase exam. Not personal protective equipment) that horsey people would sooner skip the mask and gloves than go without (another slow clap for COVID19). POA stands for Pony of the Americas and I’ll leave the rest of that one alone.

Confusing Shit

Do you think you can infer what “chef d’equipe” means? WRONG. It’s not an equipment cook. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have anything to do with food at all. It’s a person appointed to manage an equestrian team (usually the big ones, but I guess you could have one for your backyard team penning operation, too). If you overhear someone talking about “live cover” and you want to jump in with a blow-by-blow of the Guns N’ Roses tribute band you saw last weekend, better make sure they aren’t wearing cowboy boots or breeches because they talkin’ bout horses getting knocked up the regular tried and true way. If they are in fact wearing breeches and they say “nobo wraps“, they’re not asking you to hand them the No Boundaries brand cardigan they got at Wal Mart. They want you to hand them thin pillows and chiffon ACE bandages to put on their horse’s legs and proceed to call them “standing wraps” thereafter and before you ask, there aren’t “sitting” or “laying down” wraps to differentiate or necessitate the “standing” part. I freaked the fuck out when Ashley came ripping up from the arena freaking the fuck out in hysterics screaming “Marty’s tying up! He’s TYING UP!!” and then I looked at my feet and thought, “I have absolutely no idea what that means.”. After a little research, I found out it does not mean he lassoed himself and tied his own feet together then screamed “TIME!!!” while another horse was dragging him backwards like they do at the rodeos. Its the horsey person term for exertional rhabdomyolysis, a condition I understand and am completely comfortable settling down and working with. Incidentally, Marty also has “hind gut ulcers“. The hind gut in a horse is also known as their colon. Which is cute, except hind gut ulcers has little resemblance to ulcerative colitis – what we call it when people get “hind gut ulcers”. While I’m chasing that rabbit, “colic” means a fussy baby to normal people. To horsely people, colic is a dead panic abdominal emergency that requires a DVM yester-fucking-day. Unless you can take them for a trailer ride in order to get them to take a dump, that is. Then you’re back to golden. Incidentally, these majestic creatures cannot vomit and they have no sensor in their brain that tells them when they’re full, so they can literally eat themselves to death. Another cute little design flaw for equines residing in Holocene, the Earth’s current geological epoch, is that the laryngeal nerve that innervates the muscles that open their AIRWAY travels from the brain, all the way down the neck into the chest, makes a u-turn, then travels back out of the chest then all the way back up the neck to the larynx. The left branch is even longer than the right because it makes a turn around the aorta while its down there in the chest. That’s such an egregious overuse of cable even BellSouth wouldn’t have approved it. The vet diagnosed one of our horses with a “bone spavin” and I was all “Jesus!! We gonna have to put ‘er down?” and that’s when I learned that that’s a horsey term for osteoarthritis (which it seems like “osteoarthritis” was probably the word for arthritis before anybody cared enough to do more than shoot a lame horse to put it out of it’s misery – much less reinvent the wheel with bone spavin – but I guess arthritis is for commoners). Speaking of “lame“, it isn’t a reference to someone or something that is boring or crappy or just plain sucks, it means the horse is limping. “Broke” horses, ironically, are NOT limping horses – they’re horses that are considered safe to ride and have all the basic manners. If the horse is not limping, they say it’s “sound” (but between us chickens, there’s no such thing. Unicorns are less rare followed by the snipes my grandmother used to get me to hunt). The “Hunters” are an equestrian discipline and NO THEY DON’T HUNT. Don’t be preposterous. Those are the “Fox Hunters” but: there isn’t a real fox involved. “Cold bloods” are the heavier draft horses like Budweiser horses and that has nothing to do with whether the beer is draft out of a keg or served in a can. “Hot bloods” have nothing to do with what Foreigner was singing about in 1978 but are instead faster, lighter horses like the Thoroughbreds and the Arabians. “Warmbloods” are what happens when you mix the two. None of the three aforementioned terms relate to body temperature in any way whatsoever. Come on, people. Keep up. We’re almost there.

Other Shit

Horse anatomy corresponds with human anatomy as shown in this diagram:

I appreciate that, as our vet pointed out, horses are all walking around giving us the middle finger all day long every day. A foundation sire is essentially an heirloom tomato. A frog on a horse is the triangle shaped fleshy part on the bottom of their hoof (which looks absolutely nothing like a frog). If someone says they’re taking their horse for a hack, they don’t mean into itty bitty pieces. If they say they WON a piece of the hack, it doesn’t mean they can feed their family for the next month in the Hunger Games. Mares (adult female horses) that are complete and total bitches in every way are often referred to as “mareish”. The next time an adult female human is being a complete bitch to you, tell her she’s acting womanish and see how that goes. The bridle path is a short section of mane just behind the ears that is trimmed down in order to accommodate the bridle. If one more person writes “bridal path”, I’m getting some decorative cake people to glue a wedding diorama on my horse’s neck. “Prix St. George” is pronounced “pre-saint george” but do not assume the next level up is St. George. That is a punishable offense. And, whatever else you do, Do NOT say that a dressage horse has a “toe flick” in front of any dressage trainer worth his or her salt or YOU will be part of the hack.