Dr. V. A. Rakov

DALTON, Ga. — There’s a white spot on one of Hershel’s glassy, golf-ball-sized eyes. Drool strings out of his damaged lip. Scrapes pockmark his side.

But the fact Hershel is standing at all is enough of a miracle that his rider says he can look past the drool.

Hershel, a 12-year-old quarter horse, is making what experts call a rare recovery after being struck by lightning 11 days ago.

“That son-of-gun has got the will to live,” said Dr. Bucky Bancroft, a veterinarian with the Bradley Veterinary Clinic overseeing the horse’s recovery.

“This is the first one I’ve actually seen that was truly struck and lived,” he said.

On June 11, Josh Land was at a cattle sale in Gordon County when he got a call from his grandfather saying one of his rodeo horses was down on the ground. Mr. Land hurried home where he, Dr. Bancroft and other family members tried to help Hershel to his feet.

“Everytime he tried to get up it was pitiful,” Mr. Land said.

It was a far cry from the horse Mr. Land knew from the rodeo ring. Hershel, who was ironically stamped with a “Lightning P” brand years ago, has competed in calf-roping contests as far away as New Mexico, going to the U.S. Roping Finals in 2006. Mr. Land called his horse “part of the family.”

“We didn’t know if he was going to make it,” Mr. Land said. “It was tough.”

After about six hours of seeing the horse struggle to stand, Dr. Bancroft decided he had seen enough and started to leave. As the vet passed the field on his way home, Hershel defiantly climbed to his feet, according to Dr. Bancroft.

“I gave him no hope and he showed me he had hope,” the doctor said. “He’s got a big heart that’s for sure.”

A week later the only obvious sign of the strike in the field next to the Lands’ home is the green twine hanging in the tree where the vet tied four bags of fluid for Hershel’s IV’s. The pine tree that was hit is not blown apart or burned, but has a thin line running down it for several feet down the bark to about the height of a standing horse.

Dr. V.A. Rakov, a scientist with the University of Florida’s Lightning Research Group, said the lightning’s path through an animal usually determines whether the bolt is fatal. In Hershel’s case, the electricity must have somehow missed the horse’s heart and other vital organs, he theorized.

Blood tests show all of Hershel’s organs are working as expected, Dr. Bancroft said.

Dr. Rakov said from a description of the incident, “that poor horse” must have been touching or close to the tree when the lightning hit. Direct strikes are virtually unsurvivable, he said, so Hershel probably only caught a part of the voltage from an arcing spark or direct contact. Though that is the most probable explanation, Dr. Rakov has never heard of it happening with a horse.

“That probably saved it — that it was only a fraction of the voltage,” Dr. Rakov said.

Mr. Land says Hershel has a habit of scratching his head on trees and may have been satisfying an itch when the bolt hit.

The terrible timing has left the horse with right-side facial nerve paralysis, corneal ulcers on both eyes and a brain-stem lesion, all of which may or may not heal, according to Dr. Bancroft. He said it will be at least a year before Hershel is able to keep up with other horses.

Mr. Land, who’s already seen his horse beat the odds once, said he thinks Hershel may ride in the ring again.

“I think so,” he said. “But it will be a while.”