Name: Fancy Pants (Appsolute Fancy Pants)

    Type: Appaloosa Horse

    Color: Varnish Roan

    Sex: Mare

    Birthday: 1/1/2012

Fancy Pants, a beautiful half-Appaloosa mare ended up as so many with problems do – starving and dumped at an auction with no information about her past. Fortunately, the couple who purchased her took her to our vet, Dr. Emilie Setlakwe, at Tryon Equine Hospital and after determining that Fancy Pants was in big trouble that the owners couldn’t afford to treat, Dr. Emilie reached out to us. Fancy Pants wasn’t pregnant like the owners thought. Instead, she had an enormous abscess in her stomach that would require weeks of expensive antibiotics. 

We took her in, treated her and she recovered from her abscess…but that wasn’t the end of Fancy Pants’ troubles. 

It turns out that Fancy Pants suffers from the genetic form of Polysaccharide Storage Myopathy, or PSSM 1. PSSM 1 is a degenerative muscle disease caused by a disorder of sugar metabolism that has been found in over 20 different breeds. Affected horses show symptoms such as reluctance to move, muscle tremors and tension and is known as the “tying up” disease. Because Fancy Pants has the genetic form, she is harder to manage than horses with PSSM 2, which is a less severe form of the disease. Fancy Pants lives on a special track that has minimal grass and is on a special diet to help control the disease. Any exercise at all – or no exercise at all – can bring on an attack of sweating, severe muscle pain, and tremors. 

However, these horses need consistent movement so her large shelter gives her space to move around in even in inclement weather. She has an attached dry lot so that she is never locked up. Our staff knows her issues and are constantly observing her and managing her turnout so that she is as comfortable as we can make her. Fancy Pants has come a long way from being sick, thin, and fearful to a lovely, beautifully marked Appaloosa mare used to a kind touch. While we wish Fancy Pants’ physical health wasn’t so compromised, she is safe at Red Bell Run and lives with her best friend Sassy at Villa Roja.