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As researchers reveal the source of a potentially deadly genetic trait now
it will deal with the legal, ethical and financial repercussions of what
ore than two decades have
passed since
Jerry
Wells first set
eyes on a
Quarter
Horse colt
named Impressive. Even as a
yearling being shown at the In-
diana State Fair, it was clear that Impressive was
something special, Wells recalls: Already the hal-
ter horse boasted the well-developed hindquar-
ters and muscular forearms that would become
the trademark of his lineage. "You could tell what
an outstanding individual he was," says Wells, a
prominent
Quarter
Horse breeder based in Sul-
phur, Oklahoma. Wells and a partner paid
$20,000 that day for Impressive. When they sold
him three months later for $40,000, they felt
they had turned a tidy profit.
But it soon became clear that Impressive's val-
ue would be much greater than Wells imagined.
Because he was so different from the classic "bull-
dog"
Quarter
Horse prevalent at the time, Impres-
sive was a sensation in the halter ring, winning
his age group 31 times in 31 attempts. In the
breeding barn he was just as successful, turning
out champion after champion. Many of Impres-
sive's progeny bore the same dramatic body-
builder physique, and they too became outstand-
ing and prolific sires and broodmares: Of the top
15 halter horse sires of 1992, 13 were Impressive's
descendants; even at the age of 23, Impressive
himself was fourth on that list. "I've or.rmed 95
percent of all the top
[halter
horse] studs in the
Quarter
Horse industry over the past 25 years,
and he was the best there ever was," says Wells.
"It's very rare to have such a great individual, and
to be able to pass that greatness on."
Greatness, unfortunately, is not the only thing
Impressive has passed on. He also is linked to a
genetic mutation that only recently has been im:
plicated in the rare but burgeoning-and some-
times fatal-muscular disorder known as hyper-
kalemic periodic paralysis. This particular defect
is a dominant condition, which means that at
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carried by tens of thousands of horses, the
Quarter
Horse industry grapples with how
been knor,rm as "Impressive S;mdrome."
least half of an affected horse's
offspring will be affected as well.
To have such a mutation in a line
as popular and as prolific as Im-
pressive's is, in the words of one
prominent
Quarter
Horse trainer,
"one of the most devastating
things that has ever hit the horse
industry."
Within a few years of Impres-
sive's ascendancy to the top of
the sire's list, halter horse owners
began to notice a strange muscu-
lar twitching that often left their
animals temporarily unable to
move. Usually misdiagnosed as tying up or colic,
these episodes varied widely in degree and dura-
tion, but all had one factor in common: the ani-
rrals' pedigrees. As a result, the disorder became
ltnorvn informally among insiders as "Impressive
Sr ndrome."
Research funded by the Ameri
can
Quarter
Horse Association
(AQHA) and the University of Cali-
fornia-Davis Equine Research Lab-
oratory subsequently linked the
problem to elevated levels of potas-
sium in the blood serum. The dis-
ease became known officially as
hyperkalemic periodic paralysis, or
HYPP. But even as researchers at
the leading veterinary schools in
the United States and Canada be-
gan publishing articles on the dis-
order in professional
iournals
and
the lay press beginning in the mid-
1980s, the vast majority of
Quarter
Horse owners
remained unaware of the condition.
All the while, Impressive and his kin contin-
ued to breed, to show, to win ribbons and to
make their owners fantastic amounts of money.
Most affected horses can be controlled quite well
i,
r,ln
i"1,,,,,
Despite his
advanced age,
lmpressive
(opposite page)
remains one of
the top halter
horse sires. At
least 55,OOO
Quarter Horses,
Paint Horses and
Appaloosas bear
his pedigree. His
amazing physique
is believed to be
linked to his
genetic muscular
defect.
EQUUS 18s
with medication and a proper low-potassium
dieq therefore, many owners of affected horses
considered HYPP a
minor inconvenience in light
of the line's tremendous value. Given the fact
that there was no proof that the disorder was ex-
clusive to his family-not to mention the fact
that owners of stock descended from Impressive
included some of the most prominent and
wealthy individuals in the industry-no one
wanted to be the first to
publicly implicate the
line. And even later when a breakthrough
genetic
test removed all doubt, lessening the moral and
ethical burdens associated with naming the
horse, neither the research community nor the
AQHA was eager to lift the lid of this Pandora's
box: Each feared
possible legal and financial rami-
fications from a sector of the horse industry that
would be shaken to its foundations.
In the past year,
however,
pressures both with-
in and outside the
Quarter
Horse industry final1y
shattered the secrery surrounding HYPP. The ge-
netic test, m4de available last summer, can identi-
fy affeaed horses with virtual certainty. As a re-
sult, many owners of horses descended from Im-
pressive have rushed to have their animals tested,
hoping that a negative result will protect
their
considerable investment against the anticipated
backlash. Breeders have purchased advertise-
ments in The
Quarter
Harse
loumal
touting their
HYPP-negative test results, and privately have
urged their peers to either test their Impressive-
bred horses or remove them from breeding.
From his vantage point, Wells predicts that all
breeders soon will be forced to have all of their
Impressive horses tested, whether they like it or
not. He adds that his own Impressives have been
tested, with at least one positive.
"I don't know
what I'm
going
to do" with the HYPP-affected
stock, he says.
"It's
a very serious
problem. It's
tearing our industry up."
A Decade Of Research
The code of silence was formally broken
November 30, 1992, at the annual meeting of the
American Association of Equine Practitioners
(MEP) in Orlando, Florida. SharonJ. Spier, DVM,
PhD, of the University of California-Davis, had
completed her presentation on HYPP before a
large audience of fellow veterinarians. Spier con-
densed seven years of her own research into a
half-hour talk, inciuding the most recent devel-
opment: a genetic test developed with Eric P.
Hoffman, PhD, of the University of Pittsburgh,
nth.
ilI1-
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-
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ir
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tr
or
3err
il'
t
the
taf.
d
)n-
+
t,
tlat pinpoints the exact
point on the specific chro-
mosome at which the mu-
tation causing HYPP oc-
curs. But while she alluded
to the fact that all of her
affected breeding stock
were descendants of a sin-
gle sire, Spier stopped
short of dfi,"ulging his
name.
Immediately following
the presentation, however,
Glenn F. " Andy" Ander-
son, DVM, of the Equine
Veterinary Associates in
Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, stepped up to the mi-
crophone and asked her specifically to name the
sire. Drawing a deep breath, Spier replied: "I am
allowed to say now that the research horses that I
used were descendants of Impressive." Her re-
sponse marked the first time that Impressive had
been linked publicly with HYPP, though specula-
tion and rumor abounded and had become par-
ticularly intense following the annual staging of
the
Quarter
Horse Congress in October. It also
marked a watershed in the decade-long investiga-
tion into the disease that forever may change the
lray in which particularly muscular
Quarter
Horse halter horses are re-
garded.
Research into equine
HYPP dates back to 1983,
n-henJudy H. Cox, DVM,
VS, of Kansas State Uni-
venity, began to evalu-
ate horses brought to
the school's veterinary
hospital that displayed
signs of muscular weak-
ness, combined with high
serum potassium levels.
Cox did some reading on hy-
perkalemia in people, and
found that a "challenge test" can
confirm the condition: Bv administer-
ing a low dose of potassium chloride via stomach
tube, an affected individual can be induced into a
hsperkalemic episode. This soon became the
standard means of diagnosing HYPP in horses.
The potassium challenge had two drawbacks,
hort'ever: It was both time-consuming and poten-
tially life-threatening to severely affected horses.
So electromyography
(EMG) became a useful
tool in detecting HYPP. An
EMG involves inserting a
needle electrode into the
horse's muscle to miasure
the electrical activity of
the muscle fibers. The pro-
cess takes less than a half-
hour and does not require
the sedation of the horse.
HYPP-affected horses tend
to show spontaneous, un-
provoked electrical dis-
charges. Although these
;JffiUffi,-rcffi electrical irregularities also
i
occur in other muscular disorders, and thus do
not indicate HYPP definitively, an irregular EMG
is considered an effective screening mechanism
for horses who have shown signs of hyper-
kalemia.
While Cox pursued the link between elevated
potassium levels in the bloodstream and episodes
of HYPP,
Jonathan
M. Naylor, BVSc, PhD of the
University of Saskatchewan's Western College of
Veterinary Medicine, began studying the mode of
inheritance of the disease. Like Cox, Naylor
found illuminating similarities with the human
form of HYPP-known originally as
adymamica episodica hereditaria-
about which academic litera-
ture dates at least to the early
1960s. Naylor established a
familial component to
equine HYPP consistent
with that already found
in people. He analyzed
the pedigrees of 1 7 hors-
es diagnosed with the
condition and found that
all were second- or third-
generation descendants of
"a common
Quarter Horse
sire."
Naylor's findings raised the
frightening possibility, since confirmed,
that the disease is a dominant trait, and that the
problem could be far more prevalent than previ
ously thought. According to his study, the "com-
mon sire'/ had more than 55,000 registered
Quar-
ter Horse descendants spread over five genera-
tions. Naylor says the number of horses affected
by HYPP is at least 14,00O, and could be twice
Sharon J. Spier
of the University
of California-
Davis, pictured
here with her
own Quarter
Horse, Joey,
disclosed last
November that
all of the HYPP-
affected horses
in her research
herd were des-
cendants of
lmpressive,
marking the first
time that the
famous sire had
been linked pub-
licly with the
disease.
Recent research
has linked HYPP
to a mutation in
the sodium chan-
nel gene. The se-
quence of nuc-
leotide bases in a
normal horse (top
"chain"), con-
sists of two
thymines (in
blue) and one
cytosine
(orange). !n
horses with
HYPP (bottom
chain), cytosine
is replaced by
guanine (yellow).
The resulting
amino acid,
leucine, produces
the cellular "leak"
that allows sod-
ium into the mus-
cle fibers, caus-
ing them to fire
indiscriminately.
EQUUS 185
that number. "The
one thing that concerns us is
that there has been selection for this condition
[as
breeders sought to produce horses with Im-
pressive's conformation],
so the actual number
may be much higher.... In terms of a genetic de-
fect, it's been very successful," Naylor says'
In 1986, during her residency at UC-Davis,
Spier began what would be an ongoing series of
bieeding trials that would ultimately confirm
Naylor's suspicion that HYPP is a familial disease'
Beginnlng with two Quarter
Horses, both affected
wiitr ttre disease, Spier produced two colts and
one filly-all affected. Subsequently,
she mated
cific mutations of the sodium channel
gene caus-
ing HYPP in people. Although he considered it a
"long shot" that the same genetic mutation caus-
ing human HYPP also was responsible for the dis-
ease in horses, Hoffman accepted the challenge'
In surprisingly short order, Hoffman identified
a change in the DNA of affected horses descend-
ed from Impressive. One specific sodium channel
gene was found to be altered identically in every
;ffected animal. Hoffman then discovered the
causative change in the DNA sequence: A single
"letter"
out of 30,000 in the gene was different,
causing an amino acid change in the sodium
an affected stallion with 11
normal mares (Quarter
Horses, Thoroughbreds,
Standardbreds
and Arabi-
ans) and three affected
mares-two of which were
supplied bY Cox. Of the 17
offspring resulting over two
seasons, 10 carried the HYPP
gene; the disease was dis-
tributed evenlY bY gender
and breed. From these re-
sults, Spier concluded
that
HYPP was an autosomal
dominant condition: If one
i parent is affected, roughlY
i nalf tne offspring will carry
i the trait; if both
Parents
are
i affected, at least three-quar-
i ters of their offsPring will be
i affected.
: Using this exPanded
i
population of horses, SPier
i continued the research bY
i testing the muscle functions
i of normal and affected hors-
i es. It became clear that the
i muscle membrane of affect-
Despate medication and a controlled
diet, Tribute, a son of lmPressive'
suffered lrequent HYPP attacks and
eventually succumbed
to the disorder'
channel. The resulting
amino acid leucine-rather
than the usual
PhenYlala-
nine-appeared
in every af-
fected horse out of roughlY
200 horses tested' And as it
happened, the homozY-
gotes, horses with tr'vo
copies of the defective
gene-one from each
Par-
ent-were more seriouslY
affected than the heterozY-
gotes, who had inherited
only one coPY.
The importance of this
genetic investiSation
was
tremendous.
Not onlY did
it show conclusivelY that
HYPP was a heritable disor-
der, it isolated the
Precise
location of the genetic de-
fect that causes it. Thus, it
could be used to detect the
presence of the defective
sodium channel gene, with
near 100
Percent
accuracy,
in Impressive-bred
horses.
It follows, then, that if ev-
ed horses was more permeable than usual' It was
prone to leak sodium into the cell-thus provok-
ing ttre visible muscular tremors-and to leak
potassium out of the cell and into the blood-
itr"u*. The source of the leak was determined
to
be a protein known as the sodium channel
(see
, sidebar, "What Is HYPP?").
i Having established that the defective sodium
'
channel causes HYPP, and that this defect is
, hereditary, the next step was to determine what
, precise gene is responsible for the defect' Spier
: iontu.t"d Hoffman, who already had studied spe-
ery horse descended ftom Impressive were tested'
and if atl horses with positive HYPP tests were re-
moved ftom the breeding population, then the
gene could be eliminated entirely in a single gen-
eration.
The Specter Of Legal Action
As word slowly filtered through the Quarter
Horse establishment
that something was indeed
amiss with the Impressive line, pressure began to
mount against the AQHA. Although it granted
Spier nearly $47,000
toward her research in
Coufresy, Leslie Salomon
HYPP, the organization was reluctant to make
any formal statements or to require-as many
have urged-that Impressive-bred horses be test-
ed for the genetic defect before being registered or
bred.
AQHA Executive Vice President Bill Brewer de-
fends his organization's cautious approach, insist-
ing that until Spier or another scientist came for-
ward with Impressive's name, the AQHA would
have no basis for making a statement or taking
action regarding the stallion or his offspring. Now
that Impressive has been named, he adds, the or-
ganization can decide what action, if any, to take-
A three-paragraph men-
tion of Spier's
Presenta-
tion, including her nam-
ing of Impressive, aP-
peared in Btewer's "AQHA
Update" column in the
January
edition of the as-
sociation's official
Publica-
tion, The
Qnrter
Horse
Ioumal.
And the issue is
sure to top the agenda of
the AQHA's annual meet-
ing this month. "lt's obvi-
ous that the AQHA has
done a lot for
[under-
standingl the condition,"
Brewer says. "What haP-
pens next is uP to our
board of directors.'4
Some horse owners feel
the association has been
too slow to inform mem-
/K\
HNNNHN\l'l
ffiMffiM
HYPP can be passed on by either parent. A
heterozygote
(H/N) mated with a normal (N/N)
horse should produce 5O percent affected
offspring (shaded) and 5O percent normal.
When both parents are heterozygotes, roughly
25 percent of their get will be homozygotes
(H/H), 50 percent will be heterozygotes and 25
percent will be normal.
al people close to the HYPP issue say the chief ob-
stacle facing both the breed registries and the re-
searchers has been the threat of legal action
should they single out Impressive and his descen-
dants. "The AQHA's position is, we don't feel like
being sued," according to one knowledgeable
source. Likewise, the University of California,
wary of lawsuits, took a cautious approach to-
ward HYPP, particularly as it applied to the Im-
pressive line.
In fact, the decision to name Impressive was
made only the day before Spier's appearance at
the AAEP convention. But pressure from the vet-
lf either parent is homozygous, then all
offspring will be affected, even if the other
parent is normal.
EQUUS 185
Continued on
P.
80
erinary communityr horse owners and
the press grew so great that the re-
searchers, the institutions that employ
them and the AQHA knew that the
horse's name would have to be re-
leased, if not at the veterinary conven-
tion then in the immediate future. The
deciding factor, according to Spier, was
the development of the
Senetic
test,
which is specific to the mutation found
in her research horses. "It was getting
very difficult for me to even talk to vet-
erinarians over the phone and not be
allowed to use the stallion's name," she
says. It was especially so from the
standpoint of the accuracy of the ge-
netic test.
, Thomas Bertrand, legal counsel to
i the University of California, says uni-
versity officials concluded that
"some-
one had to take the initiative" in dis-
closing all relevant facts regarding
HYPP and the DNA test. "[The HYPP]
research, which took five years and a
substantial amount of money, is very
valuable, but its practical application
requires identification of the blood-
: line," he says. The university knew that
i Spier would probably be asked about
: the foundation sire at the AAEP con-
r-rientiory Bertran*adds, and didn3
: want the answer to be disingenuous.
r "We knew she was going to Florida,"
i he says. "We weren't going to have a
i scientist stand up there and
PlaY
i Richard Nixon."
and, in some cases, relief. Some are not
convlnced that the uproar surrounding
HYPP is
iustified,
pointing out that
fewer than two percent of the
Quarter
Horse breed carries the trait. Of this
two percent, however, the vast maiori-
ty are halter horses. And Impressive's
popularity has crossed over into the
Paint Horse and Appaloosa breeds as
well. As a result, many wonder whether
the halter industry, which invested so
heavily in Impressive stock, can suryive
if buyers suddenly refrain from breed-
ing to any horse bearing Impressive
blood.
"In
the last 10 years, everybody has
swarmed toward this bloodiine," notes
Terry Sartain, trainer at Meucci Ranch
in Senatobia, Mississippi, where several
Impressive-bred Appaloosas are stand-
ing. "But I think we're fixing to see an
abrupt turnaround. You're going to see
these horses go by the wayside eventu-
ally." Sartain says two Impressive-bred
horses at the ranch have died recently
from episodes of HYPP: One mare suf-
fered an attack that started as a muscle
spasm in the flank area and quickly
spread over the shoulder and into her
hindquarters. "By that time, the shock
set in and she died shortly after that,"
Sartain recalls. The entire episode, from
onset to death, lasted
just an hour.
Sartain points out that while HYPP
theoretically can be managed with a
low-potassium diet-usually through
eliminating alfalfa hay-such a ration
is not practical for the high-profile hal-
ter horse. "The problem we have is that
there is no solution to fitting horses for
halter without the use of alfalfa hay,"
he says. "Their muscle structure is very
important in the show ring. You get
them taut and get the muscle right on
the edge."
Others in the breeding industry
doubt that an anti-Impressive backlash
will occur, simply because too many
people would be put out of business.
"There would be a lot of people who
would suffer, and suffer gteatly," pre-
dicts Bill Dickerson, owner of Bill Dick-
erson
Quarter
Horses in Moscow, Penn-
sylvania. "Other than his grandsire,
Three Bars, Impressive probably has
had more influence on this breed than
any other horse in the world- If you're
i
going to eliminate all the
laffected]
sec- ;
ond- and third-generatron
Impressives,
i
you're setting the industry back 20
:
years."
:
Jim
Bob Long, owner of the Long
:
Equine Center in Keamey, Missouri, in- :
sists that Impressive's
positive at"
i
tributes outweiSh whatever undesirable
'
baggage comes with them. "This
i
bloodline is so good, people are going
:
to breed to these horses whether they
:
have that defect or not," he says. Long
:
contends that no other line of Quarter
I
Horse is capable of filling the void that
:
would be left should Impressive and
i
his progeny fall out of favor.
i
One breeder who aPPlauds SPier's
:
public unmasking of Impressive is
i
Sandy Arledge, owner of Sandy Arledge ;
Quarter
Horses in Rancho Santa Fe,
i
California. Arledge was the first breeder i
to advertise a negative HYPP test inThe
'
Qrurter
Horse loumal,
and says the re- i
sponse to the ad was mixed' "Most
i
people didn't know what it
IHYPP]
:
meant," she says. "There were a couple
i
who knew. And one who didn't care'
i
Not knowing is bad, but not caring is
:
much worse.D I
Owners: Grief And Anger
For those who own a horse affected
with HYPP, the flow of information is
far too slow. Many veterinarians still
don't know a hYPerkalemic ePisode
when they see one, they say, and aren't
sure what to do even if they recognize
the signs. Misdiagnoses, such as tying
up or colic, are still commonplace,
ac-
cording to several owners and trainers,
and horses are suffering as a result'
Lyn Sikorski, of Rochester Hills,
Michigan, had no idea what was wrong
with her Quarter
Horse stallion,
Knights Impression, when he collapsed
one day. The previous owner claimed
to have experienced no such problems,
she says, but a check of the horse's vet-
erinary records showed that he had in-
deed collapsed before' "TommY,"
a
grandson of Impressive, has been kept
on medication for more than two
years, Sikorski reports, with no further
episodes. Still, she feels she should
have known of her horse's condition
.t
3r.
t,
{..:
*.
I
1:
In late December, about a month af-
ter her announcement, Spier and
Bertrand met with CecilJohnson, Im-
pressive's curent owner, to draft a
statement that summarizes the re-
search that has been done in HYPP, in-
cluding the DNA test and the naming
of Impressive. The resulting document,
releasedJanuary 5, calls for the testing
of all Impressive-bred horses, and ap-
peals to the breeding establishment "to
selectively breed HYPP out of existence
before it becomes so widespread that
this is impossible."
Bteederc: Resignation And Relief
Among breeders of ImPressive stoc\
the response to Spier's announcement
at the AAEP meeting has ranged ftom
denial and indignation to resignation
earlier.
"Somebody,s got to bring it out
of the closet,,, she says.
Less fortunate
was Leslie Salomon
of
Encinitas,
California,
who was fully
aware that her horse, Tribute, suffered
from HYpp.
,,I
was told when I bought
him that he had Impressive
Syndrome,
but that it was controlled
by
[the
di_
uretic medication]
acetazolamide,,,
Sa_
lomon says. ',And he was particularly
beautiful...a
great horse.,, When she
purchased
the five-year_old
gelding_a
son of Impressive-in
April 1992, he
was on eight 2s0_milligram
tablets a
day, but within a month or so he began
exhibiting
the classic signs:
,,like
water
rippling
all over his skin_it was very
strange," she recalls. Tribute,s
dosage
was steadily increased until he was at
6,000 milligrams
a day.
i
In late October, Salomon took Trib_
this mutation produced very good
meat-better than a normal pig's-and
therefore were selected for. But in ho-
mozygotes (with both copies of the mu-
tant gene), the animal's muscles would
seize up in response to even slight
stress, generating enough heat within a
few minutes to make the pig "cook it-
self to death." After much debate, the
pork producers decided to screen out
the mutation, says Hoffman, who pre-
dicts the
Quarter Horse industry will be
forced into the same decision.
Arledge agrees that aggressive mea-
sures must'be taken against HYPP, even
if some breeders are hurt finarciatly in
the process.
"I'm lucky in that I don't
have too many
[mpressive
horses],"
she says. "It would be a devastating
blow to a breeder who has a pastureful
of mares and a barnful of stallions. But
the ultimate issue has to be the integri-
ty of the breed."
Another step toward eliminating
HYPP could take place at the halter
ring, argues Anderson. If judges stopped
awarding ribbons based purely on mus-
cle bulk, he says, then breeders would
stop producing bulky horses. "Why is it
that the biggest, fattest, most muscle-
bound thing is the best?" he asks. Vet-
eran halter
iudge
Mike Perkins, of
Owasso, Oklahoma, says the trend may
move back toward a more well-rounded
horse that is functional as well as stat-
uesque. "That's the beauty of the
Quar-
ter Horse-he can do it all," says
Perkins.
Yet another possibility is for insur-
ance companies to require a DNA test
on all Impressive descendants before
writing a policy on the horse. This is
not as simple as it sounds, warns E.W.
"Butch" Human of Horse Insurance
Specialists, Inc. in Pilot Point, Texas. To
have any effect on the breed, any test-
ing requirement would need the ap-
proval of every insurance company,
Human says. Moreover, the opportuni
ties for fraud will be greater than ever if
a horse's financiai viability hinges on
the gene test. More sinister still, owners
of HYPP-positive horses may seek to
collect immediately on their policies by
having them die "mysteriously," adds
Human. "There are all kinds of ugly
shades of this thing lurking in the
background."
And What Of Impressive
Himself?
At Ensign Farms in Edmond, Okla-
homa, the Z4-yeatold Impressive re-
mains an active stud. He bred more
than 100 mares last year, and his book
for this breeding season is about the
same. Cecil
Johnson, a Las Vegas busi-
nessman looking to enter the horse
business, purchased Impressive for
$1.7 million inJune 1990. LikeJerry
Wells two decades earlier,
Johnson
was
smitten by the horse and resolved to
buy him. "When I saw him I
iust
fell
in love with him,"
Johnson recalls.
,,It
was about a month or six weeks later
that I found out that he was for sale.
Since I wanted to get into the breeding
program, I wanted the best.,'
When he bought Impressive,
John-
son says, he was unaware that the
horse was linked to HYPP. He now in-
cludes a notification of the disease in
the breeding contract, and plans to
:
provide copies of the fact sheet pre-
i
pared by UC-Davis.
Johnson says that,
i
to his knowledge, Impressive has never i
suffered a hyperkalemic episode. Not
i
until late October, at the annual
Quar- i
ter Horse Congress, did
Johnson
realize i
the furor surrounding the syndrome.
i
"[t's tol"ally out of hand," saysJohn-
:
son. "There are people making mis-
i
statements of fact to demean l"he
I
horse.... I've talked to hundreds of
:
people from all over the world about
:
this, and only a few people have even
:
a remote idea what it's all abouL. It's
i
crazy."
:
Johnson
says he has cooperated
with Spier's research in an attempt to
"put HYPP in perspective," and hopes
to see further scientific inquiry into
the disease-specifically, the mortality
rate of horses affected with HYPP com-
pared with other equine diseases."The
veterinarians that I've talked to say it's
minimal-less than one percent of all
horses," he says. "It would be well to
eliminate it, but I think hyperkalemia
is something we can live with. Educat-
ing the people, informing them, is the
thing that must be done."l
/
/
1
ute on a week-long
trail ride in the
mountains.
,,The
riding was much
more strenuous than he was used to,,,
she says, "but he rode fine, he trailered
fine completely
without symptoms.,,
But on the moming of December
15,
Salomon got a call at work telling her
that Tribute had gone down suddenly
in the field and died.
,,It
was the phone
call I never wanted to get,,, she says.
,,I
was told he went down, and within 10
minutes he was dead.,, The experience
has left Salomon
,,brimming
with grief
and anger," both at the unpredictabili_
ty of the disease itself and the fact that
it has lingered for so long.
Seeking A Solution
-
How much longer will Hypp linger?
If, as Sartain and others predict, Impres_
sive-bred horses fall out of favor with
the horse-owning
public, the undesir_
able trait could be bred out of the
euar_
ter Horse about as quickly as it was bred
into it. And if, as some concerned
horsepeople
advocate, the AeHA sets
strict testing standards for breeding Inr_
pressive
horses, Hypp could be elimi_
nated in a single generation.
Hoffrnan notes that there is ample
precedent
in other species for the
euar_
ter Horse industry.
Several years ago, a
mutation arose in the pig population
that caused the muscle disorder malig_
nant hyperthermia.
Heterozygotes
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