remember too much about the competition but it turned out to be a hugely significant event for me. I struck up a friendship with Neville Goldberg, who happened to be a vet. Neville was doing his national military service and worked for the defence force equestrian unit. One of my main concerns about studying to be a vet was that I’d have to live in Pretoria for at least six years. It was far away and there would be cultural differences to be reckoned with but here was Neville – my age and my religion – who’d not only survived there, he’d thrived there. If he could do it, then so could I. The seed was beginning to germinate.
After a somewhat unsuccessful competition I returned to Cape Town. No prizes won but a pivotal friendship established. A few weeks later Neville wrote to tell me that he had been transferred to the defence force stud farm situated in De Aar in the Karoo. He invited me to visit the farm during foaling season. I jumped at the chance, applied for leave and off I went.
My days were happily spent assisting Neville and his colleague, Piet Smit. Kitted out in green overalls and white gum boots I certainly looked the part while my teachers painstakingly and patiently introduced me to the mysteries of doing internal examinations on pregnant mares. And then the moment of reckoning arrived. Neville and Piet decided to let me examine a mare in an advanced stage of pregnancy. I was to determine how the foal was lying. This is important because a foal must be born with its front legs and head coming out first, almost like a dive. I had been thoroughly briefed about what to feel and how things should feel. With great excitement I donned a plastic glove, lubricated with a liberal dose of liquid paraffin. I gently inserted my arm into the mare’s rectum. Now right up to my armpit, I moved my hand around to try and feel the uterus. Suddenly I felt something big move under my hand. The words just gushed out; I had never felt something so magical before. I felt the foal’s head and ears and then it nibbled my fingers. This was the most thrilling moment I had ever had with animals. And so there I stood with my arm as far as it could go up a mare’s rectum, a huge grin on my face and babbling about what I could feel and how the foal was moving.
Neville and Piet believed that the birth was imminent. As a treat for me, they decided to wait up through the night so that I could witness the birth. And not only that. They told me that I could deliver the foal. At about 9.30 that night, a groom called us to say that the mare’s waters had broken. We rushed to the stable and sure enough, there was a large amount of fluid soaking the shavings that lined the floor. Neville and Piet did an examination and then with great trepidation, I too had a feel. I could feel that the foal’s head was closest to the birthing canal. I could also feel feet near the head. This was a relief as it meant that the foal was lying correctly. We stood back and allowed nature to take its course.
The mare lay down and grunted and groaned with each contraction. After what seemed a long time but was probably only ten minutes or so, she suddenly stood up and with a rush of fluids, the little male foal was born.
It lay on the ground twitching. The umbilical cord linking it to its mother was still attached to the placenta inside the mare. With a little bit more pushing, this too was delivered. Neville waited a few minutes so that all the placental blood could flow into the foal and then he cut and tied the cord. The mare was enchanted with her foal and nuzzled it and encouraged it with whickering noises as it tried to get to its feet. Within half an hour it was standing, albeit rather shakily, and within an hour it was tottering about drunkenly and attempting to drink from its mother. The wonder of birth and a new life left me completely mesmerised. I think it was at that point that I finally made up my mind. More than anything, I wanted to be a vet.
The defence force has a very easy way of keeping track of their horses’ ages. All the foals born during the course of a particular year have a name starting with a specific letter. In 1977 the foals had to have a name starting with the letter K. The day after the foal was born Piet and Neville showed me the stud register. The little foal I had helped bring into the world was named K-Roy.
***
Horses seem to have played an important part in all that is good in my life. Prior to this experience I met the woman I would ultimately marry. She had a rather grand sounding name: Kathy Compton-James, although she had resigned herself to occasionally being called Captain James or Crumpet-James, to name just two variations.
Kathy had many endearing qualities. She sailed a dinghy and she loved riding. Her horse was part Arab and he was called Shakir. Although I’d been on horseback many times, I was untutored and so Kathy gave me my first formal riding lesson. She stood in the middle of the lunging ring, shouting at me to sit up tall and keep my heels down. As she had a long whip in her hands I thought it wise to obey.
I was now so enamoured of Kathy and horses that I decided our future long-term relationship would stand a much better chance if I acquired my own horse. This would also be good for my riding career. Armed with two such solid reasons I set about looking for a horse.
Kathy and I decided that I should get an Anglo-Arab. This means that usually the mother is a thoroughbred and the father is an Arab. I would then get a horse big enough for me to ride that had all the hardiness and endurance qualities of an Arab. Full of enthusiasm for our plan, I bought the very first horse I saw. His name was Little Kalahari and I loved him from day one. His mother was an Arab and his father was a thoroughbred, which meant that he was only just big enough for me. Mistake number one. He was two years old and had never been ridden, which was mistake number two. He was not castrated, which was mistake number three. And mistake number four, he had an abnormal hoof. In our inexperienced opinion it didn’t look so very bad and so we didn’t bother to get him vetted before we bought him. The prospect of owning my own horse was too much for me and besides, he looked so ‘nice’. I bought him there and then.Six hours later I was still persuading Little Kalahari to get into the horsebox. Perhaps he had a notion that he was going straight to the Blue Cross Veterinary Hospital in Newlands (Cape Town) to be gelded because he wasn’t having any of it. He danced, side-stepped and shied until I was exhausted. I eventually called Dr Duppie, resident horse vet at the Blue Cross and a legend in the horse world. He sedated Little Kalahari and we unceremoniously manhandled him into the box and took him to the Blue Cross where he was castrated.
I fetched him the next day. He looked a sorry sight but even in his weakened state he put up a spirited fight over the horse box. Once he was boxed I sought out Dr Duppie, confident that he would compliment me on my purchase. I couldn’t believe it when he merely said that Little Kalahari had a side bone and that I would need to file and trim his hoof to help prevent permanent lameness.
Little Kalahari spent the next year on a farm in Constantia. As he was only two years old, I would have to wait another year to ride him. Looking back, I must have been mad. What I needed was a big strong horse that I could ride immediately, not a frisky two-year-old with a funny foot.
What I did do during this year was find out as much as I could about side bones. I learnt that a side bone develops when the lateral cartilage of the hoof gets injured. Bone is laid down at the site of the injury in order to protect it. This condition can lead to lameness but I found out that, if trimmed in a certain way, the side-bone need not be a problem. Or so the many books I consulted claimed.
I decided to teach myself to be a farrier. I bought a great leather apron, a set of hoof shears, a hoof knife and a rasp. I also bought a book called Farrier Science. Interestingly enough, I still have this book on my shelf over thirty years later. I diligently followed word for word what the book suggested. First I had to learn how to pick up the horse’s leg and how to stand with the hoof in my lap. Little Kalahari also had to learn to give his hoof to me and between the two of us, I think he was the quicker learner. We did, however, progress and before long I became proficient at the job.
After waiting to back him for a year, we eventually placed a saddle on his back and I started riding him. Because he was now doing more work his hooves started to wear much faster. I could not continue to trim them because if you cut too much off the hoof you expose live tissues, which can of course be extremely painful. I needed to shoe him. As word gets around, I’d been trimming hooves for a number of horses now for a year but I’d never attempted to shoe a horse. And this would not be a straightforward job. Although I was not aware of the term at the time, it would call for ‘corrective shoeing’, a cornerstone of hoof care and equine health.