Denise Seymour’s eyes are crystalline blue flecked with gray. The one on the left is the eye she was born with. The one on the right is a painstakingly hand-painted prosthesis, a replacement for the eye she lost when she was 14 years old.
Growing up near the Mounted Patrol grounds in Woodside, Ms. Seymour, 52, was an avid horseback rider from the age of 6, when her parents bought her a pony named Poppy.
“I used to terrorize Woodside,” she says. “I rode all over town. Whenever I spent the night at my friend’s house, I’d ride my pony over, and my pony would stay over with her pony.”
Even after severe inflammation — uveitis — claimed her right eye, Ms. Seymour continued riding, showing horses with Willow Tree Farms in her teens, and riding seriously in her 20s.
Fast-forward to early 2005. Alexis Flippen, a friend from Charter Oak Farms in Woodside, told Ms. Seymour that her thoroughbred gelding had developed a terrible infection in his right eye and might have to have it removed. Ms. Seymour empathized with the horse immediately.
Devoncourt, a prize-winning show horse, had a scratched cornea that became swollen and infected. Medication to reduce the swelling left the horse susceptible to a devastating fungal infection that left him blind on one side.
Ms. Seymour immediately offered to work with Devoncourt, since she knows intimately what it takes to compensate for being blind in the right eye.
“Court,” at 17.3 hands, was too big to be a racehorse, but was a good-looking and talented show hunter, a competition in which horses are judged on their movement and manners as much as their form when jumping over obstacles. Previous owner John French, a world champion hunter rider, sold him to Woodside resident Nancy Robinson, Ms. Flippen says. After she bought Court, she rode him in sidesaddle competitions, winning twice at the Grand Nationals in her division, she says.
But after losing half his vision, nobody knew if Court would jump again.
When Ms. Seymour rides him, she makes sure to watch out for anything on his blind side that could startle Court. Because horses are prey animals, their eyes are located closer to the sides of their heads, she explains. To lose sight on one side must be a very unsettling feeling for a large animal programmed to watch for predators in order to avoid becoming dinner.
“If I see something to the right that may spook him, I turn his head so he can look at it,” Ms. Seymour explains.
Watching the duo go through their paces at a jump-filled ring at the Pescadero farm where Court is stabled, it’s hard to believe that both horse and rider are visually impaired. They move fluidly around the ring and sail smoothly over the “fences and gates.” The only cue is that Ms. Seymour counts off the strides on the approach to the jumps.
“I don’t have the best depth perception,” she says. “I have to rely on the rhythm. I count off, one-two, one-two.”
Trainer Ron Keller of the Pescadero-area Full Cry Farm says the biggest challenge for a rider like Ms. Seymour is being able to judge the proper takeoff spot for a jump.
“Even if I don’t get Courtie to the perfect spot, he will take the jump,” Ms. Seymour says. “He’s never stopped with me, he’s never refused to jump. He takes care of me.”
Mr. Keller says he consulted with another trainer who had experience working with a horse blind in one eye for advice on reintroducing Devoncourt to jumping.
“I was amazed, as far as how he performs, there’s not much difference,” he says.
While the horse seems at ease in the ring, he is restive in his stall. Devoncourt wears a protective eye mask that makes him look like the result of some sort of horse/housefly hybridization scheme, and a metal grate covers the open top of his stall door to prevent him from nipping passersby. Even so, it’s a vast improvement over his disposition before he lost sight in his eye and started working with Ms. Seymour.
“He was a rogue. He would bite and kick,” Ms. Flippen says. “I had to put him with my other two horses to settle him down.”
Although Devoncourt was ornery back in the barn, “he’s very mannered in a show ring,” she says.
Ms. Seymour says she never tries to force Court to do anything, instead relying on positive reinforcement and liberal use of sugar cube rewards. Court may not have the sweetest disposition, but he’s got a serious sweet tooth. Ms. Seymour just taps a spot on his neck and the horse instantly bends his head around to lap up a treat.
“We complement each other,” Ms. Seymour says. “I’m not the most confident rider, but he gives me confidence. We just work well together.”
Ms. Seymour, an oncology nurse, trains with Court at least four days a week, she says, despite traveling all over as an oncology drug representative with Schering-Plough HealthCare Products.
“I do it for fun, but I also want to do it right,” she says.
She says being visually impaired has never slowed her down.
“As far as my eye, I’ve never, ever had a limitation with it,” Ms. Seymour says. “The only thing I can’t do is play tennis. I think because the ball and I are both moving, when I go to hit it, I’m way off.”
She has competed with Devoncourt, earning top ribbons at shows in Woodside and Pebble Beach. They are on the waiting list to enter the Menlo Charity Horse Show at the Menlo Circus Club in Atherton in August. The horse show benefits the Peninsula Center for the Blind and Visually Impaired, a fitting event for a team that’s suffered painful eye ailments.
Ms. Seymour says no one ever discovered the cause of the uveitis that permanently damaged her optic nerve. After enduring searing pain and five surgeries, her eye finally had to be removed, she says.
Devoncourt’s corneal abrasion could have been caused by something as innocuous as a fly or a speck of dust, Ms. Flippen says, and it was only after months of treatment and a long stay at U.C. Davis Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital that the horse, though permanently blinded, was able to avoid having his right eye removed.
“We have such a great bond. I think he knows that I can’t see out of my right eye as well,” says Ms. Seymour.
INFORMATION
The Menlo Charity Horse Show will be held August 8-13 at the Menlo Circus Club, 190 Park Lane in Atherton. The horse show benefits the Peninsula Center for the Blind and Visually Impaired, also known as Vista Center for the Blind and Visually Impaired. Information about the show is online at MenloHorseShow.com. Tickets are $10 daily or $35 for the week; children 12 and under are free.
