‘I wouldn’t want anyone else to go through this’: owners speak up after new horse found to have incurable hoof condition

The owners of a horse who was found to be suffering from hoof wall separation disease (HWSD) days after they bought him, and retired aged four, have spoken up in hopes of sparing others the same fate.

Graham Hall told H&H his daughter Olivia was 18 last autumn when she spent the £5,000 her grandparents had saved for her on a horse she hoped to take with her to Sparsholt College. Her grandfather, who was suffering from cancer, named the horse Enzo, but died shortly afterwards.

“So she not only lost her granddad, she lost all the money,” Mr Hall said. “It was horrible.”

Mr Hall said his wife and daughter went to see the horse and liked him.

“Once she decided she wanted him, we arranged a vet check,” he said. “And the problem was – this is the twist in the tale – there was no passport available.

“At the time of looking at him, the seller said she’d got him from Ireland and she was waiting for the passport to arrive. My wife said that was no problem, as long as we got it. Then we arranged the vet check and the vet phoned and said he was happy to do the check but there was no passport available, and were we happy with that. We said that was fine.”

Genetic condition

The Halls had not realised that the Connemara Pony Breeders’ Society, and British Connemara Pony Society, require foals to be tested for HWSD and their results recorded in their passports. HWSD is a recessive genetic condition so horses must have two copies of the gene mutation to suffer from the disease. Those with one copy are carriers; they will not show the clinical signs, the hoof wall that easily cracks and breaks, but both carriers and affected horses must have their status stamped in the passport

“The vet’s report said his hooves were tatty, but no concerns,” Mr Hall said. “Then the seller said she’d found the passport the day before we went to collect him, after we’d agreed to buy him, and had realised he wasn’t a part-bred Connemara but a pure-bred.

“We got the farrier a few days after we got him, because his hooves were a bit tatty, and he said to my wife ‘Is this a pure-bred Connemara?’ My wife said yes and he said ‘Have you looked in the passport?’”

Mr Hall said the farrier was not happy with Enzo’s hooves and suspecting HWSD, advised Mrs Hall to check the passport.

“She came home and got the passport, with its lovely green wallet around it, pulled the back page out, and there was a big red stamp, saying he had hoof wall separation disease,” he said. “So of course my wife got incredibly upset and we had to tell Olivia.

“We rang the farrier back and instantly, he said ‘You can’t ride this horse; all you can do is retire him and he’ll be ok for a while if his hooves are managed carefully. Olivia was in pieces, and then four weeks later, her granddad died. I was distraught for her.”

Mr Hall said his daughter was in two minds about going to college after this experience of the industry but he encouraged her to go, and managed to “dig deep” to afford to buy her a horse.

Concerns dismissed

He added that when he rang the seller to tell her about the HWSD, she dismissed it and said Enzo would be fine to be ridden.

“She disregarded the whole thing,” he said, adding that he wanted other people to know what had happened so they would be aware of the condition.

“For someone like me, you know, I’ve been in horses all my life, I got stung, and you don’t expect that, when you think you know the business,” he said. “The whole thing is completely wrong; that he was bred in the first place, tested and had hoof wall separation disease, then sold as a regular horse to a young girl. But if we can stop one person going down this road, telling the story is worth it.”

Olivia, who is studying equine science and business management with the aim of working in equine-assisted therapy, told H&H Enzo ticked all the boxes when she went to view him.

“He was super calm, really sweet and well mannered, and he passed the five-stage vetting, there seemed nothing wrong with him,” she said. “When we got him home, we knew something was up because he was struggling to walk on the stony pathway to the field but we thought he might just need back shoes on.

“Then my mum told me our farrier had mentioned this disease, and that she’d checked the passport and saw it, and I honestly broke down in tears because he took me so long to find, and with everything with my granddad, it was very hard to hear.”

Olivia said she messaged the seller, who said she was unaware of the stamp in Enzo’s passport and gave her husband’s number to Olivia; she said he told her “loads of horses have it, and it never affects them”.

“Which is obviously not true,” Olivia said. “So now he’s retired, with a lovely lady called Claire Smilie; without her, we would probably have had to put him down.

“I wouldn’t want anyone else to go through this; it’s awful.”

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