All the Pretty Horses
Catherine Foreman-Hesterberg (left), director of the College of Veterinary Medicine’s Midwest Equine clinic, conducts a routine examination of a Tennessee walker stallion, assisted by vet med student Sarah Graham. (Image by Fred Zwicky)
The thing about horses is that they’re—big. Large enough to trample a person underfoot. Horses can be curious, docile and loving. They can also rear, kick and gallop away uncontrolled. It is a long-time caveat of veterinary medicine that to be a horse doctor, one must have grown up around horses. That is not Victoria Morales.
Dark haired and slender, Morales grew up in New Jersey and loves animals. Especially her cat, Selina. A black domestic shorthair, Selina has been at Morales’ side—also in her lap and rubbing against her ankles—through the years that have taken them from family life in Montclair to college in Delaware to the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, from whence Victoria graduates shortly with a doctorate in veterinary medicine.
In most vet med programs, students choose a track or specialty. But at the U. of I. College of Veterinary Medicine, students get up close and medical with all manner of creatures, from miniscule reptiles to enormous bovines. This range in heft is something to think about when one is a petite size 4, like Morales. She had always been drawn to horses, but was midway through her third year of studies and feeling “not very confident” about working with large animals. So she deliberately chose clinical rotations in equine lameness and equine junior surgery.
“Previously, I didn’t believe that I could work as an equine vet,” Morales says. “And then I knew that it was what I wanted to do.” The revelation came on the cusp of a year of two-week rotations, a solid 52 weeks, vacation-free, externing at clinics and hospitals around the country. Not a kitty-friendly lifestyle. Selina was dispatched back to Montclair and Grandma, while Victoria went walkabout in Florida, Connecticut, New York and New Jersey.
Morales confirms that, yep, horses are big. Half a ton up from cats. Even wee ponies hit the scales at hundreds of pounds. A trusted veterinary technician holding the halter is invaluable. Sedation can come in handy. Most of all, one needs to be brave. And that’s Morales.
Graham grew up riding horses. “I just always wanted to be an equine vet,” she says. She is also pursuing a master’s degree in public health from UIC. (Image by Fred Zwicky)
Sarah Graham, ACES ’21, is likewise brave, headed for a DVM from Illinois and plans to treat horses. Graham does have the advantage of a girlhood of riding—lessons, jumping and showing. She favors a Western saddle, and with her spillway of elbow-length auburn hair and barn-friendly canvas pants and vest, would look great atop a quarter horse in the Rose Bowl Parade. “I just always wanted to be an equine doctor,” Graham says. Beyond her DVM, she expects to receive a master’s in public health next year from the University of Illinois Chicago. And, also like Morales, Graham has a beloved animal pal—Lincoln, her English springer spaniel. Lincoln, like Selina, went to ground at the grandparental home in Wilmette, Ill., as Graham ranged through a year of rotations in several states.
Vet school is tough and beyond vet school, equine medicine itself is tough and not just because the patients can kick you in the head. The hours are brutal: being on call goes around the clock. The pay is low, considering the years of expensive training. The problems can be scary and the outcomes painful. Fewer and fewer vet-med students are going into equine and large animal medicine. Morales and Graham are exceptions. Morales wants to have her own clinic one day, treating “cats, dogs and horses,” she says. She’d like the practice to be back home in New Jersey and she plans to earn an MBA so she can finance and manage the whole thing. For Graham, the goal is more immediate and personal: a job with a great mentor at an excellent veterinary clinic or hospital somewhere in the greater Chicago area. “My Dad has given me a radius of three hours,” she says, smiling.
Students in equine medicine at Illinois work at two university clinics—the state-of-the-art Veterinary Teaching Hospital on campus and out in DeWitt County at Midwest Equine, also a University of Illinois facility. For both Morales and Graham, the last stop before graduation is a two-week rotation at Midwest in equine ambulatory care. This means farm visits, as well as time in the clinic, when Graham and Morales each work one-on-one with vets on staff, notably clinic director Catherine Foreman-Hesterberg, DVM ’16—“Cat” to her colleagues, friends and students.
Foreman-Hesterberg knows equine medicine top to bottom, forelock to fetlock, from the horses themselves and their personalities and sometimes complicated medical needs, to what veterinarians deal with on all kinds of levels, to the outlook for future practitioners such as Morales and Graham. One night, as an intern vet in South Carolina, she received an emergency call during a thunderstorm. Two horses had been struck by lightning and were lying dead in a field. The horses were expensive and heavily insured. “I was berated over the phone by the farm owner, a prominent client, because I wasn’t willing to come immediately and do a full necropsy—an autopsy—in the dark, in the rain, by truck headlight,” she recalls.
“And the language that he used was very demeaning and sexist,” she adds, noting that “though the majority of veterinarians now are women, there is still an older-male-owner -versus-young-female-veterinarian dynamic.” Pitch in long hours, low pay and backbreaking stress and, Foreman-Hesterberg says, “within the first five years of graduating, something crazy, like 60 percent of people who enter equine medicine leave.” Practitioners are harder and harder to come by. “We need all the vets we can get,” she affirms.
Midwest is located off a rural highway southwest of Farmer City and was founded by an esteemed local vet who has since cantered off to higher pastures. Acquired by the university in 2018, the clinic sports handsome white clapboard on the outside and tidy barn-board paneling within, hung with occasional items wrought from horseshoes. There is a farrier shop complete with forge and anvil, a lab, a pharmacy, portable X-ray and ultrasound machines, and spacious treatment areas accessed by barn-size doors. A 20-stall stable on one end of the building serves as “the waiting room.”
“Previously, I didn’t believe that I could work as an equine vet,” Morales says. “And then I knew that it was what I wanted to do.” (Image by Fred Zwicky)
Certainly, veterinary medicine has its tragic moments. But for every horse in distress, uncounted more horses—all of them, actually—require routine maintenance. On Morales’ first morning of rounds at Midwest, several horses are queued for physicals. She stands by in the main examination room as the vet-tech, Mallory Grosvenor, steadies each animal with a hold on the halter and Foreman-Hesterberg does a physical. If the horse is calm (and most of them are), Morales moves in to inject vaccines and draw blood. Equine vaccinations comprise two injections, a rabies shot on the right side of the neck and a six-way shot on the left. “What are the diseases covered by the vaccines in the six-way injection?” Foreman-Hesterberg quizzes Morales. Morales: “eastern equine encephalitis, western equine encephalitis, West Nile virus, tetanus, equine influenza, and equine herpes virus 1 & 4.” “What is the name of the shot?” “Vetera Gold XP.” “What is the pharmaceutical name?” “Mmm.”
More delicate—meaning more painful and invasive—procedures call for the stock, a steel frame that encloses the horse and is gated at the back. Dental work is best done in the stock. A lot of horses need dental work. Horse teeth grow lifelong, getting worn and uneven, and sometimes developing sharp points that interfere with proper chewing. Poorly masticated hay is hard to digest and can make a horse sick to the point of being life-threatening. The solution is a vet with steady hands and an instrument called a “float” that’s the size of a gardening wand.
Fancy is a tall brown gelding who has been ridden in Civil War reenactments. Today, he’s facing a different kind of drill. “What sedative do you want to use?”
Foreman-Hesterberg quizzes Morales, using every opportunity to teach. “Dexmedetomidine,” Morales says. Foreman-Hesterberg mildly corrects her. Dexmedetomidine is a sedative for cats and dogs. Detomidine is used for horses. Morales acknowledges and injects the drug. Grosvenor leads Fancy into the stock, suspends his head in a pulley harness and supports it as it begins to droop on her shoulder. Morales uses an enormous plastic syringe to douse Fancy’s mouth with a blue-green antiseptic solution called chlorhexidine. Foreman-Hesterberg dons a headlamp so she can see inside Fancy’s mouth as she goes in, first with a rasp and then with the float, reducing the overgrown molar in a procedure also known as a float. Fancy rolls his eyes and flexes his tongue, spewing chlorhexidine. Morales’ turn. She likes doing floats. Small hands are an advantage in a horse’s mouth. Foreman-Hesterberg finishes the float. Morales squirts another inundation of chlorhexidine. Fancy, still sedated, rests in the stock. Time for lunch.
Horses often require dental work. Here DVM student Victoria Morales (left) performs the dental procedure known as a “float.” (Image by Fred Zwicky)
During the afternoon, more horses come through the clinic. The last, a docile chestnut gelding, has a severe laceration on his left rear leg. The skin has been torn away, exposing flesh and bone. Foreman-Hesterberg assesses the injury. “That’s pretty gnarly,” she says. With Grosvenor holding, she flushes the wound with saline, then swabs it with iodine-soaked compresses that Morales hands to her one by one. Bloodied compresses go plap on the floor as Foreman-Hesterberg throws them aside. The floor is equipped with a drain and will later be cleaned up and hosed down. The horse stands quietly, injured leg cocked to keep off his weight. Clearly, he understands that help is here. Foreman-Hesterberg and Morales put on lead aprons and deploy a machine the size of a briefcase to X-ray the injury. Relief. No bone fragments are present. Foreman-Hesterberg bandages the leg extensively, injects the horse with an antibiotic and advises the owner about care.
The lives of horses have been braided into the life of Foreman-Hesterberg’s family for generations. She grew up on a horse farm that’s still run by her mother, a show rider and trainer who coaches the Illinois undergraduate riding team. Her father is a longtime vet-med professor and administrator at the U. of I. Veterinary Teaching Hospital, and her sister is a staff veterinarian at Midwest. Foreman-Hesterberg’s three-year-old rides the family pony, Dorey. There’s probably a second pony in the future of her second child, born last November. Foreman-Hesterberg’s own mount is Mac, a venerable thoroughbred. Both horses live at the family farm.
With her bright gray eyes, arched nose and pale complexion, Foreman-Hesterberg commands attention from students, horse owners and the steeds themselves. But her warmth and humor reliably break through. She likes to observe that “Horses do horses.” Whether resisting the bridle or chewing their teeth into oblivion or lacerating a leg on a galvanized steel fence, horses do horses. And it’s on the vet to fix things when horses doing horses goes wrong.
For farm calls, the Midwest veterinarians and students deploy in a vehicle reminiscent of a food truck. Steel sides hinge up to reveal not burgers and tacos, but drawers full of medicine and gear, from buckets and clippers to IV fluids and microchips. Sites visited may range from expansive stables with interior riding arenas to backyards where horses are kept as pets. Steeds lope across the spectrum from pedigreed show mounts and rodeo horses to pleasure horses, ponies and mules.
For farm calls, Midwest Equine vets use a truck outfitted with medicine and gear, ranging from buckets and clippers to IV fluids and microchips. (Image by Fred Zwicky)
The week after Morales wraps up at Midwest, Graham goes on rotations there. A farm call lands her, Foreman-Hesterberg and Grosvenor in a barn full of beautiful Tennessee walkers sporting many colors—buckskin, red, chestnut and black, all vigorously shedding hair as the winter climbs toward spring. Roomy stalls line three sides of the barn. The fourth wall is loaded with ribbons, medals and cups amassed by the stable owner, who is also a trainer, from years of shows and competitions.
A dozen horses are slated for care, mostly physical checkups, vaccines and blood draws. As with Morales, Foreman-Hesterberg advises Graham on technique, observing how she’s holding and angling the needles as she administers vaccine injections on each side of the neck. “You’re overthinking on the right,” Foreman-Hesterberg tells her. “But you’re fine on the left.” Some of the horses need special attention. Queen Isabella has a low-grade heart murmur. Tara has a hoof turned out. Diamond also is experiencing foot problems.
For Sugar, a black mount with a white blaze, it’s trouble with his teeth. Absent a stock, the float procedure takes place in a stall. Grosvenor harnesses a sedated Sugar, then pulleys and supports his head. Foreman-Hesterberg comes in with the headlamp, the rasp and the float. Graham takes a turn. Foreman-Hesterberg finishes up and contemplates how crazy-long the float is. “Doing this right is like playing really good pool,” she quips.
Ray, an ungelded yearling in frisky good health, needs a physical. It will be tricky getting him to acquiesce. Graham and Grosvenor don helmets and enter Ray’s stall to hold his head. Foreman-Hesterberg squeezes in at Ray’s other end with a thermometer. Ray isn’t happy about that. But his temperature is 98 degrees. Perfect.
Stormy, a big brown stud, is walking high in the hip. With so much flesh on such large frames, horses go out of whack all the time. A doctor of veterinary medicine, Foreman-Hesterberg is also a certified equine chiropractor. The adjustments she makes along Stormy’s spine are quick and seemingly small. She also scratches his coat to put him at ease. Vets and owners everywhere agree that this technique works. “The animals,” Foreman-Hesterberg says, “appear to feel much better afterward.”
Foreman-Hesterberg gives a chiropractic adjustment to a horse. “The animals appear to feel much better afterward,” she says. (Image by Fred Zwicky)
Chiropractor and dentist. Podiatrist and anesthetist. Obstetrician. Euthanist. Being many things to many horses is the calling of the equine vet. Sadness is inevitable. A year ago, during clinical rounds at the Veterinary Teaching Hospital on campus, Morales helped foal Lilac, whose mother had a tumor and was euthanized after the birth. Baby Lilac got bonded to a new mom named Mabel. Both are Haflingers, a palomino-pale breed that comes in many sizes. Lilac and Mabel now live at a Haflinger rescue stable not far from campus. Morales visits them there on one of her farm calls with Foreman-Hesterberg and Grosvenor. “Sometimes mares are terrible mothers—they reject and even kill the foals,” Morales says, as she strokes Lilac’s nose. “Lilac was grafted onto Mabel using hormones, and it worked. Mabel nursed her.”
On the same call, Morales moves in with an injection for Bitsy, a waist-high miniature Haflinger who is afraid of needles. The tiny horse suddenly gets much taller, pawing the air with her front hooves. Morales steps smartly out of the way and the stable owner calms Bitsy with a treat. “If ponies don’t want to be held,” observes Foreman-Hesterberg, “they go up.” Another day in the life of the equine vet. Actually, another hour. With several more hours to go.
Graham, whose undergraduate degree from Illinois is in animal science, is well acquainted with how fragile big creatures can sometimes be. Beyond horses, she has spent many hours with ailing cattle and swine in pastures, barns and feedlots. Vets, Graham believes, are “in an amazing position” to help ensure the well-being of meat and dairy production animals, creatures who lack the charisma of animal companions and are largely out of public view. With respect to how they’re treated during their short lives, “producer and consumer goals usually align,” she says. “But not always.” The UIC degree in public health that she’s pursuing is tied to this concern. So is her interest in One Health, an international initiative to explore the potent ties between human and animal health, including zoonotic diseases, which jump from animals to humans. Bird flu is one example. COVID-19 is another.
Earlier this winter, while on rotation at a rural veterinary practice, Graham went on back-to-back farm calls. Her grueling day began at 7:30 a.m., ended at 9 p.m. that night, and included a lambing and two calvings. And all of it, according to Graham, was “in single-digit temperatures in barns or in the open air.” The lamb died, but the ewe was saved. One calf made it, but the cow did not. The other calf perished but the mother lived, thanks to a C-section. “It’s always disappointing not to have a live calf,” Graham says. “But we got a live cow at the end. Which is good.”
Pitfalls and pain, chaos and unpredictability, joy at helping animals and sadness at losing them—this is the rocky but rewarding bridle path on which two newly licensed veterinarians now ride off from the University of Illinois. Sarah Graham, DVM ’25, has accepted a position as an associate veterinarian at a rural facility, which is in northwestern Illinois in the area where she rode horses as a girl. “It’s the clinic I feel can give me the most mentorship to be the veterinarian I want to be,” she says. Beyond, await her graduate degree in public health and a career that may carry her to the confluence of human and animal well-being.
Victoria Morales, DVM ’25, will join a clinic in Texas specializing in equine surgery and sports medicine. As an intern, she’ll continue rotations in these areas, including work on racehorses. Thanks to her already extensive clinical experience, she appreciates the importance of specialties and referrals, and views veterinary medicine as “a team effort.” She hopes to be head of her own team at her own practice “by the time I’m 40.” Selina, the cat, heads south with Morales. And Graham gets back life with Lincoln, her spaniel. “I would never have made it through vet school without him,” she says.
For Catherine Foreman-Hesterberg, the equine bridle path leads on, a path of treating horses and mentoring students. She, too, has a beloved pet—a pit bull terrier named Petri, adopted when Foreman-Hesterberg was a third-year vet-med student at Illinois. Alongside her infant, toddler and spouse, Petri is an inner member of the family, nestled within a life of horses and students. That life is shaped by Foreman-Hesterberg’s formidable expertise and her commitment to equine medicine. And, yes, her love.
Not that the horses know. Or will ever know. Or will ever need to know. As Foreman-Hesterberg says, again, “Horses do horses.” Adding, with affection and wisdom: “Horses are kind, tractable, stoic and tolerant.” Like people should be. And sometimes are.
