Google the words “cutting horse capital” and the first eight pages that come up on the search engine revolve around Weatherford or Parker County, Texas. And as the old timers would say, “Where there’s smoke there’s fire.” Translate that to: Where there are horses, there is a plethora of support/servicing industries. Veterinarian Sonny Seale of Garner Equine is the perfect example.
Lured to Parker County by the burgeoning performance-horse industry in 1995, Seale came to the “Cutting Horse Capital of the World” just one year after graduating from Texas A & M. Thirteen years later, he’s on the cutting-edge of equine medicine, employing advanced medical diagnostics and treatments to his patients.
Seale, a tall man of few words, that is until he’s in his element, examining a sick or injured horse and dealing with anxious owners, strives to keep his practice at the forefront of modern equine medicine through various diagnostic and advanced treatments. He is a partner in Animal Imaging, a joint venture with other veterinarians to bring diagnostic imaging into their personal practices.
“By partnering in Animal Imaging, we bring a referral radiologist, magnetic resonance imaging and nuclear medicine basically right into our practice,” Seale said. “Anyone can refer to the imaging center, but being partners in the venture means we interact routinely with the radiologists and on-site vets.”
The center, overseen by operating manager Dr. Jake Hersman, is located in Irving, Texas. Hersman works on a regular basis with Seale and praises him and the vets of the Metroplex and surrounding areas for being willing to transcend the day-to-day competitiveness of the horse industry in the interest of a common good, the betterment of equine care.
“We are a further diagnostic arm of Garner Equine, and it’s very rewarding to work with good practitioners like Dr. Seale who set aside competition and use modern technology to get to the bottom of difficult lamenesses,” Hersman said. “We are working together for a common goal, which is the ultimate diagnosis of a particular musculoskeletal issue. He does a great job in working up the lameness and determining what testing is needed, then we can provide the further diagnostic test that he requests to help him come to the ultimate prognosis. It’s a team effort and an enjoyable part of our situation to work with the quality vets such as Dr. Seale.”
Seale agrees that the team effort makes an enormous difference in the level of equine care he is able to provide.
“It definitely helps our diagnostic capabilities,” he said. “Let’s us utilize equipment we couldn’t own here, and gives us access to state-of-the-art advancements.”
Joint therapy and treatment figure as another important area of medical breakthroughs, according to Seale.
“When I got out of school, joint injections were not commonly performed, and it wasn’t understood how that could help us to the degree it is [understood] now,” he said. “We’re also seeing stem cell injections for various joint, ligament and tendon injuries. The stem cells are fat-derived now, where they used to come from the horse’s bone marrow, making it easier on the horse to harvest the cells.”
Not all of the treatment options Seale relies on involve technology, however. Seale often refers horses with lameness issues to Parker County Equine Aqua Therapy, where Chuck Drake credits Seale with being one of the first vets to use their aqua treadmill to maintain horses’ stamina during treatment.
“Sonny sends us horses with coffin joint or suspensory injuries,” Drake said, “so they can stay legged up while they’re undergoing treatment and rest. When he sends a horse here, it has a prescription for me to follow; I know exactly what he wants for that horse, how long he wants it, etc.”
Aqua therapy, stem cell injections, and nuclear medicine were once human-oriented only. But in the 13 years that Seale has been in practice, he’s seen big changes, and not just in equine medicine, but in people’s attitudes about treatment.
“The transition of the horse from strictly a work animal to a companion animal has led to a larger influx of research money, and people care about the horse a lot more than they did in years past,” Seale said. “That attitude is going to continue to lead to medical advancements and a higher quality of life for the horse. When I first entered practice, if you had a serious problem with your equine patient, people were less likely to explore all of their treatment options. Today, that’s our starting point. Everybody wants to do all they can now, and we, as vets, can do so much more.”
Seale believes two groups of horse owners are the most likely to seek advanced diagnostics and treatment for their horses: the high-dollar-performance-horse owners who have large prize purses and breeding potential at stake, certainly. But also the people who have elevated the typical equine/human bond from a working relationship to a friendship.
“That’s more of an emotional bond where we see people who are willing to do whatever it takes for a horse they care about, regardless of the economics of the situation,” Seale said.
As an equine vet, Seale feels a strong sense of duty, as much to the owner as to the beloved animal. His practice’s focus is simple: “If it has to do with the horse, we’re going to do it.”
Unfortunately, however, things don’t always turn out as he would like. The Benton, Arkansas native grew up on a subsistence ranch, taking care of a few horses on the ranch and roping non-professionally. This life-long love affair with the horse makes putting a horse down the hardest part of his job.
“It’s very difficult to tell a person that their horse has to be put down,” Seale said. “You see the emotional bond between that person and the horse. The worst thing is that the harder you try in veterinary medicine, and the more successful you seem to be, the harder it becomes to face the fact that you can’t do something positive for every horse. The further I get in my career, the harder I work on what I would have previously considered impossible cases and now see positive outcomes. But you’ve got to temper that with the fact that you’re spending somebody’s money and you don’t want to throw it away.”
Keeping that in mind, Seale says it is his duty when people come to him with a serious problem to present an accurate prognosis.
“No matter what that prognosis is, we’ve got to also present a positive attitude,” he said. “Our attitude and presentation of the odds can often sway an owner’s decision. We do the very best we can to have a positive outcome for those people whether it’s for economic or emotional reasons. We never try to talk someone into doing something financially stupid, but the more confidence you have in your abilities at medicine and the advancement of equine medicine, the easier it is to recommend things that previously we really didn’t think would work for people.”
As is the case for most horse owners and vets, colic presents a serious problem at Garner Equine, but Seale uses a recent case to demonstrate how giving an owner an honest, well-presented prognosis gave a second chance to an otherwise potentially doomed horse.
“Several months ago, a man from Glen Rose brought a horse to me that had I performed a colic surgery on eight years ago,” he said. “This particular stallion was under my treatment this time because another horse had kicked him in the jaw and broken it. I pinned and wired his jaw, and on the day he was set to get the pins removed he was collicking pretty bad. We had to perform another colic surgery, thankfully toward the end of the breeding season. This man was in a partnership with an owner in Sweden and the horse was their breeding stallion. They thought they were going to lose the breeding potential of a horse they had planned to let live out his remaining days on their ranch. But with surgery and proper care, that horse is doing fine, 100 percent recovered, and will be breeding next season. That case that was a toss-up, but our positive presentation and treatment helped the client make a decision that saved the horse’s life and protected their future breeding income.”
Happy owners like the one in Glen Rose have kept Garner Equine at the top of a growing industry in a county teeming with equine vets. The practice, which has seven hands-on employees and three buildings-the clinic/office complex, a hospital barn, and are productive center/mare motel, also includes another vet, Antonio Leonardi, a recent Louisiana State School of Veterinary Medicine graduate who, in spite of his interesting Italian name speaks with a decided Houstonian drawl.
“There’s probably three-to-four times more equine vets here now than when I came,” Seale said, “but the industry here is strong. We see lots of performance horses, where we’re dealing mostly with soundness, maintenance, joint surgery, colic and diagnostics. We also do stallion management, embryo transfer and semen processing and shipping. I’ve got a very good relationship with my clients. At some point the market will be saturated with vets, but I don’t provide service for the most people. I provide the best service for the people I work for. I’m not here to provide more, more, but better, better.”
