Greener Pastures - Alyssa Brugman [26]
Lydia put her hand over her mouth.
'This one here is standing like your horse does, leaning back on its heels. Wow, it looks pretty painful, doesn't it?' Shelby said. 'You should probably call a vet. Or you could talk to Clint. He's our farrier. He has experience doing founder rehabilitation.'
'It might not be that, though,' Lydia said, although her face was pale.
Shelby scribbled Clint's mobile number on a scrap of paper and handed it to Lydia. 'Clint can come to your place and do a consultation. He's really nice. Will you ring him? Today?'
Lydia stared at the piece of paper. 'I'll ask my dad if I can.'
Erin walked up behind them. 'What's this?' When she saw the images on the monitor she gasped. 'That's the grossest thing ever! That poor horse! Anyone who lets their horse get like that should be arrested. Don't you reckon?'
Shelby frowned over her shoulder at Erin. Lydia pushed her chair back from the desk. 'I'll . . . I've got to go for a minute,' she mumbled.
Erin took the seat she had just vacated.
Shelby glared at her.
'What?' Erin asked.
'I just told her she might be killing her horse and then you come over and tell her she should be arrested,' Shelby told her.
'Oh,' said Erin. 'I can go and apologise.'
'Forget it. It's too late,' Shelby said, biting her lip. Maybe she should have approached it a different way? Maybe she should have researched more about laminitis beforehand. Instead she had scared Lydia.
'What's this anyway?' Erin asked.
Shelby explained about the Jenny Craig paddock at Wanada Park and what she had discovered about the disease from Clint.
'Shelby and Erin, I don't think you girls are working on your project,' the teacher warned.
'So what causes it?' Erin asked quietly.
'This is the thing I don't get,' Shelby said. 'Most of these sites say it's because a horse is overweight. They say it's from grain and rich feeds. It's says even just normal grass can do it. Here, look at this page.' Shelby clicked through to the pages she and Lydia had read before. '"Rich new spring grasses are a common cause, but any grass that has suffered stress from frost or frequent mowing will produce more fructans. Like diabetes in humans, a diet high in fructose and other sugars is the underlying cause of most cases of laminitis",' she quoted. 'But Lydia doesn't feed him grain, and we saw what his paddock was like. It was just scrubby stuff. It was almost a perfect paddock, with something to pick at but nothing too rich. So it must be something else.'
'What's this "mechanical founder"?' Erin asked, reading ahead.
'It's also sometimes called "road founder". That happens when you ride them too much on a hard surface they're not used to. Sometimes racehorses get it. Do you remember that horse Barbaro a few years back? But I just can't see a beginner riding a horse that hard.'
Erin nodded. 'I guess we're not going to know unless we ask Lydia.'
The two girls glanced over at Lydia, who had taken a seat on the opposite side of the room.
Their computer teacher turned on the data projector at the front of the room, and as he waited for it to warm up, he leaned over the computer on his desk. He glanced up at Shelby and Erin, and then there on the screen at the front of the room was the image from Shelby's monitor – a horse, back hunched, feet splayed, with its face contorted in pain.
'What's this?' he asked, smiling. 'This isn't the project I gave you!'
'Neigh!' called Ethan Agnew, turning to grin at the girls. Another boy cupped his hands together, making a clip-clop sound.
Erin blushed, but Shelby wasn't embarrassed.
They don't see the distress, Shelby thought as she looked at their faces. To the other students it was just a horse. They were looking at an almost life-size picture of a tortured animal and they were laughing.
She looked over at Lydia. She had her head down, staring at her hands in her lap.
Does she see it? Shelby wondered.
After everyone had finished their laugh at her expense they all got