A lone longhorn, Dante, traveled from Austin all the way to Aggieland to have his horns saved by Texas A&M veterinarians. Luckily, they didn’t have to “saw em’ off,” as the saying goes in the known rivalry between Texas A&M Aggies and the University of Texas Longhorns.
Dante was donated to the Austin Zoo, a non-profit rescue zoo, in January 2020 and was only 5 months old at the time. It wasn’t too long before his horns grew and spanned 93 inches from tip to tip.
According to Patti Clark, executive director for the Austin Zoo, he was not particularly mindful of his horns. At three and a half years old, Clark said he was more boisterous and liked to romp and frolic around with his two longhorn buddies he shares space with, Chance and Mack.
Unfortunately in November last year, Clark said she noticed a change in Dante as he seemed to be in pain and had no appetite, as one of his horns was drooping lower than the other.
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“We noticed that he had come up with nasal discharge and we couldn’t tell if it was maybe allergies or something else going on,” Clark recalled. “Then we noticed simultaneously that his right horn was starting to look lower than the left horn. It seemed to get a little worse and we knew that shouldn’t be happening. … We were told he needed to go to the Texas A&M Large Animal Hospital and get diagnostics run to figure out why he has the respiratory symptoms and what is going on with his horn.”
On Nov. 29 of last year he was transported to the Texas A&M Large Animal Teaching Hospital, where he would end up staying for almost four months in recovery.
“We heard that his horn was drooping and that is kind of an unusual complaint,” said Dante’s doctor, Shannon Reed, a clinical associate professor at the Texas A&M School of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. “Longhorns can break their horns, but usually they break where you can clearly see a fractured horn, so we were just a little unsure what the cause was going to be. But once he got here we could feel that the entire horn would shift up and down if he moved it.”
Reed said given that the horns are attached to the skull, it is painful to damage them as they also are prone to infection due to a sinus lining inside; which also triggered the nasal congestion in Dante when he arrived.
“It takes quite a bit of force to do that, but Dante is not the most careful with his horns,” Reed said. “There are longhorns that know exactly how to navigate things and know how to navigate well, and Dante is a bit exuberant and sometimes not the best at paying attention. So I am going to bet he ran into something and caught his horn while he was running, but I don’t know for sure what happened with him.”
Once Reed and her team found the fracture in his skull at the base of his horn, they believed the best solution would be to amputate both horns. However, after some research into previous techniques, Reed and her team invented a new and groundbreaking procedure that might save his horns.
“Several days before the horn amputation [Reed] called me and said, ‘We have tried to save longhorns horns in the past, but we have never been successful casting them. But we have come up with a plan,’” Clark said. “Dr. Reed explained they were going to put a plate on his skull and cast it, and then create this rebar that connects the horns to stabilize everything. She said he would need to wear it on his head for at least three or possibly four months, and that if this works, this will be a game changer for the people in the longhorn industry, for all other animals and veterinarians.”
The two-hour long procedure did work. The 1,600-pound longhorn was propped under an airbed system as a team of veterinarians created the bracing system. The creation of an external implant would help realign Dante’s horns with a splint to hold them in place while they healed, and it would take the weight of his horn off of his skull, Reed said.
Once he survived the surgery and was back up and moving around, Reed said he scared her a few times because he wasn’t being careful with his horns.
“He ran down the hallway and I thought he was going to bang that horn again,” she chuckled. “We put him in one of our outside pens and he had to have a companion cow next to him the whole time; and he taught the large blood donor cows to lick his head and clean his incision site.”
Because of his recovery process and his never ending horns, Dante would have to stay at the hospital wearing his external fixator helmet until his horns grew strong again. He stayed under Reed’s care the entire time as she worked every day, even weekends, to check on him. On Christmas Day, Reed said she tried to give Dante a peppermint, which she found he wasn’t too fond of.
Well over 50 people played a part in Dante’s success, Reed said, as this longhorn became the mascot for a hospital full of Aggies.
“I am not a Texas native and people were telling me, ‘You didn’t saw it off.’ And I was thinking, ‘Well no. Why would I do that?’” Reed said. “And it took me awhile to catch on why everyone was making ‘Saw em’ off’ jokes. So I was thinking, ‘Everyone must think I am a really bad surgeon.’ I am now very familiar with the phrase ‘Saw em’ off,’ and I think it’s very funny now.”
Once Dante finally arrived home at the Austin Zoo on March 23, Clark said he was so happy to see Chance and Mack.
“They were so excited to see him, too,” she said. “And of course when we got Dante out of the trailer we were all standing there going, ‘Don’t hit your horn on anything!’”
Both Clark and Reed said it was special to be a part of something innovative that will help not just longhorns, but any animal with similar difficulties.
“It is not just about Dante. It is about how we take that and the teamwork and principles and apply it going forward. This is an innovation and that is why Texas A&M is here,” Reed said. “I think that is really important for Texans [to know] that we are innovating things that can be applied in lots of different places.”
