Ponies, Poo, and Gravel

When I was in high-school I was a member of Pony Club. Not to be confused with ‘Saddle Club’ the children’s show:

Pony Club was a riding club for local riders below the age of 25. Apart from the monthly meeting and events, one of the best parts of pony club was the annual camp every Easter. I rode at this camp from year 8-11 and made some great friends and learned a lot. For this reason one of the things I’ve done while at vet school is go back to the camp to share some information about horse health and horse care to the 250-odd riders at the camp. From toddlers to 25 year-olds I was covering topics such as bandaging, feeding, dentistry, laminitis, colic and taking vital signs.

When I wasn’t teaching I was worming horses, treating conjuctivitis, checking horses before and after exercise, and having the difficult task of telling a young boys and girls that their week at camp was over because their pony was just too sore to ride… Those difficult times were definitely made up for by the fun I had teaching. Anybody who works with children knows that they come up with some gems, this is the story of one of my favourites:

I was speaking to a group of riders that were aged around 7. I’d gone through how to tell if a horse looked healthy and had given them all a listen to the heart using the bright pink stethoscope I had borrowed for the sessions. All that was left in the general health section was to check the horses temperature. When asked how to take the temperature one of the more unruly and excitable girls gleefully answered:

“up his bum!”

As you can expect, there was a chorus of “ewwwwww”, “yucky” and “that’s disgusting”. One of the riders even spat out the lolly they had just received for guessing the average heart-rate for a horse!

The girl was right though, so I continued with the session  – demonstrating the correct technique before I had an army of pint-sized horse riders loosely interpreting “up his bum” as sufficient instruction for taking a temperature. As hilarious a YouTube compilation that would no-doubt make I wasn’t comfortable with that on my conscience!

As I moved to the horse the same girl piped up:

“Do rocks come out of their bum?”

Needless to say, I was stunned “um… no I don’t think so”

“No, they doooo. Jerry [her pony] does it all the time.”

Struggling to respond to this question, a million responses came to mind. Does she mean the bumps in horse poo (which are normal)? Maybe her horse has been passing sand? Maybe she’s picked up some gravel on the ground while cleaning his yard… I really had no idea!

In the end I compromised “That’s really interesting! Maybe you can show me next time he does it”, and moved on with the rest of the lesson.  But the sheer randomness of the question (and the token parent who jokingly asked me the same question at many of my later lessons) meant that I couldn’t leave it unaddressed. So I wrote her a special award to be presented at the awards ceremony at the end of the camp. The award read: “Best Vet Question All Camp” but everybody knew what it should have said:

“So, do horses poop rocks?”