A heartbroken rider whose world fell apart when her two horses died within 10 minutes of each other said that if sharing her experiences saves one other horse, hers will not have died for nothing.
Laura Pache’s beloved thoroughbreds Pops and Nabs succumbed to atypical myopathy, or sycamore poisoning, in early January. She wants to raise awareness among horse owners who may have thought, as she did, that deep winter was a safe time.
“I want to raise as much awareness as I can as the thought of anybody else going through what I did – but more importantly what my boys went through – they were lovely boys,” she said. “They deserved to fall asleep in the field with the sun on their backs. They didn’t deserve this.”
Laura kept former racehorses Nabs, 16, and 17-year-old Pops on an “idyllic” private yard in Lincolnshire, which has some 40 acres of turnout. Both were fine on New Year’s Day, and the next morning when she checked them.
But on the afternoon of 2 January, neither came when she called them to the gate.
“Nabs was down; I actually thought he was dead,” she said. “I bellowed at him and he lifted his head, then got up and came over very slowly. I couldn’t find Pops, then spotted him standing completely still at the bottom of the field. I got to him and he didn’t want to move.”
Eventually, moving very slowly, Laura and a friend got both boys into the yard.
“I thought had they been charging around and got injured, or was it colic,” Laura said. “But they weren’t kicking their bellies or anything, just unsteady, heads down and moving slowly. I thought ‘This isn’t colic; something else is going on’.”
As the vet arrived, Pops urinated, and Laura saw his urine was dark red.
“I thought it was some sort of poisoning; had someone fed them something, or maybe sycamore, but I walk the fields all the time and as far as I knew there were no seeds left,” she said. “But slowly and surely, they started to go down. It became apparent that’s what it was, and over the next 48 hours, they got weaker and weaker.”
Laura praised all the local vets for their help; stocks of fluid were low but they all pulled together to provide what they had so she could nurse her boys at home with her vet’s help.
But despite the best efforts of all involved, she said, over the next 48 hours both horses’ condition deteriorated.
“I checked them at about 2am on the Sunday, went back in and dozed off on the sofa,” she said. “At 4am I sat bolt upright as the phone rang; it was my brother-in-law, who lives nearby, and he said ‘You need to come out, Pops has gone down’.
“He was on his side, shallow breathing. I phoned the vet, and god bless her, she came out and said we’d try to get his lungs working better but within 15 minutes, he had died.
“Nabs was next door and he was still up at that point but within 10 minutes of Pops passing away, the vet was checking him and she shouted ‘He’s going down’, and he collapsed and died too. It was unbelievable how it happened. Heartbreaking.”
Laura said she has always walked her fields, which have been grazed by horses for decades with no cases of myopathy, and raked up and removed sycamore seeds, seedlings and saplings that may have blown in, in spring and autumn, and had thought January was safe.
“We don’t seem to have a real winter any more, just a few days of frost but otherwise perpetual autumn,” she said. “The field they were in is quite a long ‘tunnel’ and I think with the strong winds, it just made a perfect sycamore bomb to dump all the seeds in there. I’ve spoken to so many horsey people, vets, people who work in the industry and no one thought it would be a problem at this time of year.”
Laura said some equestrians she has spoken to had not realised the dangers of sycamores at all, even in the traditional peak danger times.
“I know what the trees, seeds and saplings look like and I never saw this coming,” she said. “You think all the seeds have gone but it just takes them clinging on to one tree in a sheltered place and then a strong wind.”
Laura paid tribute to her boys, whom she took on about 10 months ago from a friend.
“I’m qualified as an instructor but hadn’t ridden for 15 or 20 years, then my friend asked if I wanted them and I thought ‘Yes, let’s do it again’,” she said. “I got on Pops and just sobbed; it was like my soul was back together again and I was back where I’m supposed to be, I was back home, back with horses.
“They say you find your heart horse and Pops was mine; 16.2hh but moved like he was 18hh, kind but fun and a bit of fire in his belly. But both of them were wonderful horses; kind and gentle. They’d been in the same racing yard and had spent their lives together, and they went at the same time.
“I can’t help but think that Pops knocked on Nabs’ door and said ‘We do everything together, come with me’. Because Nabs was still up at that point, then within 10 minutes he’d gone too. They have to still be together.
“I cremated them both and took some hair from their tails. My friend plaited them together so they will eternally be together now.”
Laura said the trauma and loss of her beloved boys has turned her world on its head.
“I find myself just standing in their field,” she said. “It’s bloody awful.
“It’s the trauma of it all too; three nights without sleep, trying to think they’re pricking their ears a bit more or moving better, and heartbreaking to see your adored horse with his head on the door to hold the weight of it. And even when I went out there at 2am there was that little whicker, and you think they give us everything.
“It’s heartbreaking and if I can save one other horse, their loss won’t have been for nothing.”
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You may also be interested in:
Atypical myopathy: what you need to know right now to keep your horses safe
‘Grave danger’ of fatal equine illness from ‘explosion’ of toxic seeds
How to protect horses from atypical myopathy
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