Commentary: My Professors, My Horse Trainers 

“Good morning, Dr. Macon!”  

Eyes squinted, I peered over my dual monitors and black Harry Potter glasses, like a turtle too timid to come out of its shell. The gaggle of students that just came into my office are high on Starbucks and frazzled by assignment deadlines and exams. I am, however, high on the narrative of a manuscript that currently reflects off my glasses. The gaggle rant about their personal lives, club drama, and the stress of applying to vet school. My mind takes a sharp turn (I hear tires squealing in my head) and remembers a scene from Gilmore Girls where Richard Gilmore is trying to read a book, and his wife, Emily Gilmore, wants to have a conversation instead. While I have watched the Gilmore Girls countless times (because rewatching shows helps with my anxiety), I cannot remember the author of that book. Emily is basically pestering Richard at this point. He finally closed his book and said, “Goodnight, Author.” After remembering that scene (minus the author’s name) I say, “Good day, Manuscript,” hit save, close out, take a sip of my coffee (the mug has a horse and a unicorn on a pole … I’ll let you decide which one I am), and give my undivided attention to my students.  

The students in front of me have been referred to as “studs,” “rockstars,” “go-getters,” and “high achievers.” After a one-hour discussion, I sent one into a downward spiral about where to apply to vet school; another I gave suggestions for internships with a solid path forward; and I convinced the last to focus on the future benefits of not dropping a class and their minor rather than the acute stress of a project deadline. They all jump up, one more enthusiastic than the other two, and head to my colleague’s undergraduate equine nutrition lecture.  

“Have a good day, Dr. Macon!” 

“Thank you, ladies. Make good choices!” 

In hopes to refocus on my manuscript, I put on my Skullcandy over-the-ear headphones, click on my “writing mode” playlist that is full of trance and EDM music (… on repeat, I know, shocking right!), and let the music refocus my squirrel-like thoughts. Outside my dual monitors, just like a Zoom background, my visual is blurred. I reacquaint myself with the narrative of my manuscript, but before I begin to form the next sentence, my mind takes another sharp turn … (tires squealing).  

“Erica, you will never have a career working with horses.” 

My mother’s and father’s voices echo in my ears. The equine anatomy posters hanging on my office wall become blurred. I now see my childhood hunter green barn that my father built in its entirety. It had four 12-by-12 stalls, a wash rack, two pig stalls, and a bay to park the steel livestock trailer in. I hear the buzz from cars going down the Florida Turnpike, cows mooing in the distance, and silence.  

Every equestrian knows the silence. When you walk into a barn and immerse yourself in the sounds and smells of horses grinding forage with their hypsodont teeth, tails swishing flies away, sweet feed hitting an empty bucket, and hay bales being tossed down from a loft. Your brain hears that, but your soul hears silence. The stress of life fades when you step into that alfalfa- and shaving-scented sanctuary. Nothing matters now except what you want to accomplish on your ride or at the end of the lunge line with your horse(s).  

“Erica, you will never be accepted into vet school.” 

I am sitting in my animal nutrition professor’s office in the Animal Science Department at the University of Florida. I smell musty, old books and see the skulls of various animals atop a dusty bookshelf. I sit across from my professor in a wooden chair with what looks to be fabric from the ’80s across the seat. I feel as though I have been called to the principal’s office, but really, I was there for an advising appointment.  

That professor took out my “used, but in new condition” heart and fed it through the department’s meat grinder that I used to make sausage links in Meats class. I was never the smartest kid. I have dyslexia and am on the spectrum, so I learn differently. Back then, people just thought I was stupid, but if you taught me a certain way, I could get it without issue! I had not mastered how to study or, perhaps more appropriate, how I needed to present my brain with information to get the information to stick. In addition, I had depression and crippling anxiety. Feeling lost and overwhelmed, just like the gaggle in my office, I turned to another professor who was teaching my equine nutrition class for advice on what to do next. Because, as far as I was concerned, I did not have a future working with animals.  

In my darkest hour, the professor I turned to advised me to join an equine research project and, like the saying goes, “the rest is history.” That professor was my first “horse trainer.” My second and third were the owners of that research project. The project collections were long and arduous, but I loved every second of them—even when I had to tow Horseradish’s 100-pound bag of fresh manure down the length of the barn to take a 10% representative sample. Before taking that sample, however, I needed to mix it. That’s right! Both hands and arms were elbow deep in it, and I still loved it.  

“What are your strengths and weaknesses?” 

I am now sitting in a small conference room that has ornamental frames with Tennessee Walking Horses all sprawled out with thick brow bands on their bridles. I hear whispers outside the door and horses’ neighs echoing through the building. In walk the equine faculty of Middle Tennessee State University and my future and most loved horse trainer, Dr. Rhonda Hoffman. I only knew her from papers I had read and that she wrote one of my favorite book chapters from Equine Applied and Clinical Nutrition: Health, Welfare and Performance. She was introverted like me but still scared the you-know-what out of me when I first started my master’s degree. Then, I took her equine nutrition class. Her teaching style, her passion for the content, her deep-rooted motivation to want her students to succeed—that was my new sanctuary. See, when I left home, I couldn’t afford to take a horse with me. Thus, I needed a new sanctuary to call home, to seek shelter, and to calm my mind that had a never-ending dialogue with pauses for commercial breaks to sing a ’90s throwback. Dr. Hoffman laid the foundation of my new sanctuary, and it was now my job to finish building it.  

“Where do you think you should go?” 

I was sitting across from Dr. Hoffman. I stared at her collection of Breyer horses on her … not dusty … bookshelf. I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to be her. I wanted to share my knowledge and love for a species that had given me so much happiness and joy. I wanted to research problems equids developed to help those that suffer from them live longer, happier, and healthier lives. I wanted to help other people, just like my “horse trainers” were helping and teaching me. There I was, stuck between an institution that was familiar and one that scared me. With a deep, confident sigh Dr. Hoffman said, “Take the more challenging path, because it will prepare you for what lies ahead.” To this day, I advise my students similarly by saying, “Take the path that scares you.”  

“Erica! Erica! Chip’s catheter is out! What do you want to do?!”  

It’s July in the bluegrass. The rolling fields are lush, and the corn that was planted back in April has emerged and seems to have doubled in size overnight. It is brutally hot in the middle of a paddock with a black four-board fence. I am in the third week of my first PhD project. I keep dipping a rag in the horse’s water bucket and placing it around my neck to stay cool. I walk from pen to pen, collecting blood, with blood tubes clanging together in my pocket with every step. I am now attempting to pull blood from Sweet Pea’s (more like Sweet Satan’s) catheter. A fellow graduate student yells out that good ol’ roly-poly Chip has pulled his catheter out with 2.5 hours of sampling to go.  

Internal dialogue: “Think, Erica, think! Well, B10 refused to eat her diet last week, so we will have to repeat that day. I can just throw Chip on that day as well. Eureka!”  

“Clean him and turn him loose!” 

Did you know that only 2% of the population hold PhDs? This is the only time in my life where I will rank in the top percentage of anything, including but not limited to finances, awards, standardized tests, class rankings, IQ, sports, etc. I had many “trainers” in my PhD—some of the best were informal and supported me through the darkest times when I felt I was not smart enough to proceed. Those who have gone through the developmental process of a PhD can empathize. Most people think a PhD makes you an expert in one thing. While that is very true—no one knows your topic more than you—that is not what a PhD teaches you. A PhD literally changes the way your mind works. After a PhD, you see the world and its problems differently. You see them and design an experiment to fix them. Neither my second, third, nor fourth “horse trainer” told me what I would learn from my PhD or gave me a heads up on what was going to happen to me. I had to live it, make a mistake, learn from it, adapt, strategize, and move forward to answer the next question science posed for me. Which, unbeknownst to me at that time, was what I would devote my life and career to.  

“Congratulations, Dr. Macon, you passed your defense.”  

At the end of my dissertation defense, I thanked my PI (fifth horse trainer), my committee (sixth, seventh, eighth horse trainers), my collaborators (ninth and tenth), the farm crew (twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth), my fellow comrades (fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth …), and the horses I used for my research. I also thanked the undergraduate and vet students who helped with my projects. To them, I hope I was a good “horse trainer.” I also thanked my family for their love and support. I, of course, did not forget to mention that they once told me, “Erica you will never have a career working with horses.” I stared at my parents in the top row of the M.H. Gluck auditorium when I said, “Look who made a career out of working with horses?!” 

TAP. TAP. TAP. “Erica, I need you!” 

I look up from my cubicle surrounded by windows and glass. My undergraduate student tapped on the glass wall with their foot to get my attention. She has panic in her eyes and hemostats in her hand. I get up from my desk and briskly walk into my postdoc lab.  

“The glucose line slipped off the needle! The rat has only been getting insulin, and he’s VERY hypoglycemic! I can’t get it reattached! What do I do?!”  

I grab the hemostats from her hand and say, “It’s OK, this happens all the time. I will fix it.” 

Untrained hands try to force the small cannula onto the needle by clamping down with the hemostats. No, no. You need a delicate, soft touch to reattach the cannula to the 25g needle. Almost like the pressure you apply to the reins when you are trying to “stay out of the horse’s mouth.” When you engage with your seat, leg, and hands, you are trying to produce a supple, smooth movement. Lightly press down on the hemostats, don’t touch the rat (and he will stop moving), and let the cannula slide back onto the needle.  

“And, done. Crank up his glucose infusion rate to recover him and restart the clamp. I will be at my desk if you need me.” 

My postdoc was in a similar scientific field, but in a totally different species … humans. You probably just said “Ew” in your head, I know I did. I found my (I lost count) next “horse trainer” there. On top of broadening my field of vision for research in horses, my latest trainer also taught me to play the long game. Just like a trainer will tell you to not look at your hands while riding but, instead, look where you want to go. In actuality, you will produce the cues needed to move your mount where your eyes are pointed. He was that trainer who told me to stop looking at my hands and look where I wanted to go. So, in reality, I stopped stressing about my present and focused on the actions I needed to take to get me to my next position. Before I left, I gave him a hoof pick so he wouldn’t forget the weird horse girl. He put it alongside other cherished tokens that had been given to him—right beneath his dual monitors.   

DING! 

An outlook notification zooms across my dual monitors.  

My senses hear buses beeping as they arrive at their stops, the shuffling of college students trotting to their next lecture, and keys sliding into sticky door locks of my colleagues next door. I had reopened the manuscript. The blinking cursor hangs at the end of a paragraph, taunting me to finish it. I pick up my coffee cup (which horsie am I?) and take a deep gulp. I feel like I am almost back into writing mode.  

“Erica, I am calling to offer you the assistant professor of equine science position here at Texas A&M University in College Station.”  

The interim department chair’s voice sang in my ears when he called and offered me the position at Texas A&M University. I smile and I gently remind myself of the journey I took to sit in my very own office nestled in the equine suite of the Kleberg Animal and Food Science Center (I made a career working with horses). In addition to saying I would never have a career working with horses, my parents said, “Love what you do, and you will never work a day in your life.” Blame it on the ’tism, but I take everything seriously and rarely get jokes—so I took that to heart. I can say with the utmost confidence that I don’t go to work every day. Instead, I devote my life to solving problems for horses and igniting the younger generation’s love for equine science. My professors—my horse trainers—didn’t teach me how to ride a horse; they taught me how to be an equine scientist. They taught me equine form to function, equine nutrition, equine nutritional endocrinology (my specialty), the scientific method, how to be a good mentor, how to design a research project, how to navigate a mistake, how to isolate white blood cells from whole blood, and, most importantly, they helped me build my eternal sanctuary … outside the barn. My building, campus, and town may be shrouded with maroon and white with flickers of gold Aggie rings reflecting in the hot Texas sun, but to me … it looks an awful lot like that hunter green barn.  

“Dr. Macon … We are baccckk! Tell us more about a DVM/PhD program?! It sounds like a lot of school, but we are interested in it.”  

“Come on in, girls, let’s talk about it. What did you learn in equine nutrition today?”  

About Dr. Erica Macon

Erica L. Macon, MS, PAS, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Equine Science in the Texas A&M University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences’ Department of Animal Science, where she teaches graduate equine nutrition and equine health and disease for undergraduate students.