Quarter Horse Named Rooster Thriving After Multiple Maladies

Story by Logan Hansen, VMBS Marketing & Communications

September 18, 2025

Despite his puppy-dog demeanor and feather-adjacent name, Rooster is a 9-year-old quarter horse who enjoys the spoils of waking up each day ready for any and every adventure with his owner Rachel Denton.

While his day to day is typically carefree, that hasn’t always been the case. Following the development of an uncommon condition, Rooster’s owner sought out a Hail Mary at Texas A&M to save his life.

Through a rarely performed surgery, Dr. Dustin Major, a clinical assistant professor at the Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences, and the rest of the veterinary care team beat the fatal odds that were stacked against Rooster.

Stumbling Upon A Home

Growing up within the horse industry, Denton began riding at just 4 years old and discovered a “fever” that simply never went away.

“I’ve been into horses for as long as I can remember,” Denton said. “I ended up getting property and slowly getting more horses, and now I have my own boarding facility in New Braunfels.”

Rooster initially belonged to one of Denton’s clients, but when his former owner was unable to provide the care he needed following a tendon injury, Denton offered to complete his rehabilitation and then rehome him. During that time, however, she ended up falling in love with the gelding and decided to keep him as part of her family.

“Honestly, Rooster and I were not love at first sight,” Denton said. “He respected me but didn’t fully trust me. He was a little worried about new people and spooked pretty easily. He didn’t enjoy being loved on.

“But I was determined to earn his trust. I spent many days with him during his stall rest for his tendon injury, just hanging out, playing music, brushing him, and showing him love,” she said. “His trust was not easily earned but he finally started coming around and would get excited to see me. I knew at that moment I had to continue helping Rooster.”

Continuing to help Rooster came sooner than Denton may have anticipated; following his recovery, Rooster developed a knot in his throat that Denton was advised to keep an eye on. 

“About six months later, he choked really, really badly,” Denton said. “It was the worst choke I’ve ever seen in my life. It was absolutely horrifying. And, of course, it happened at 11 o’clock at night.”

Despite an emergency veterinary team’s expert care in clearing what was causing the choking, further inspection revealed that the true problem was a balloon-like pouch within his throat, known as an esophageal diverticulum.

Because this pouch could easily fill with food and cause choking by blocking his esophagus, Rooster’s care quickly turned high-maintenance, with a soup diet and vegetation-free environment becoming his new normal.

“Then, he choked again, even on the soup,” Denton said. “The little bulge started coming back, and every time we had it cleared, it kept coming back a little bit bigger.

“I called around trying to find surgeons over the last year of this happening, and nobody wanted to operate on it. They were like. ‘It’s inoperable. We can’t do it. It’s too close to all these important things,’ and Dr. Major was like, ‘Well, I’m not going to lie to you, it is going to be an experiment, but it’s either that or you’re going to put him down this morning, because there’s no other option.’”

A Baseball-Sized Problem

By the time Rooster arrived at the Texas A&M Large Animal Teaching Hospital (LATH), he had a baseball-sized lump bulging under the skin on the left side of his neck.

“His esophagus, which is like a hose, got a little opening that then led to a big pocket over time; that outpouching was full of food on the side of his neck,” Major said.

Despite the desire for a quick fix, Major knew that flushing out the trapped food would simply result in recurrence, because the diverticulum would simply fill back up with food. Rooster’s only true shot at recovery was surgery to remove the diverticulum and reconstruct the esophagus, a procedure known as an esophageal diverticulectomy.

But surgery also carried great risks.

“The esophagus is full of bacteria because it’s part of the gastrointestinal tract, so any surgery carries a high risk of infection and chronic problems,” Major said. “Typically, if we have to enter the esophagus, we leave the incision open and place a tube. We rarely do this in horses because it’s such a monumental task to try to feed them through a tube, and, long-term, that hole has to heal from the outside in, essentially. When that happens, often it results in the creation of yet another diverticulum.”

With only a handful of reported cases involving this surgery buried in literature as old as the 1940s, Rooster’s case was uncharted territory for his veterinary team, but Denton was willing to take the risk if it could save her horse’s life.

“We made T-shirts and a TikTok about Rooster’s condition, and all these random strangers became super invested in his story,” Denton said. “It was just really cool to experience everyone’s support.”

By fighting for another chance at life and making it through the long and complex surgery — which involved taking the esophagus apart, removing the extra tissue that created the diverticulum, and putting it back together — Rooster prevailed.

But this was just the beginning of Rooster’s road to recovery.

Baby Steps

The success accomplished in Rooster’s operation was anything but a small feat for Major and his determined team, but making it through the experience was a testament to Rooster’s strength and will to live.

“During the immediate post-operative time period, we fed him through a tube that we passed through his nose down to his stomach,” Major said. “This allowed the incision to heal without food and bacteria causing it to come apart, which would have resulted in complete failure of the repair.

“Because anything he swallowed went through that hole in the esophagus and out into the soft tissues, you have to keep all that very clean; once the food gets anywhere it’s not supposed to be, it can start a really bad infection.”

Patience became a key theme throughout Rooster’s recovery, as his eating habits continued to be heavily restricted as he regained strength; during his nearly month-long stay in the LATH’s intensive care unit, he was steadily switched from a diet of soup pumped through a tube into his stomach, to mash, then to solid grain, and, eventually, to hay.

According to his caretakers, it was as if Rooster couldn’t even believe his own progress when he gained the clearance to consume grass once again.

“He thought he was in trouble,” Denton said. “They had to pick it up and hand it to him to feed him, and he would snag a little bit and then drop it as if he was thinking, ‘Oh, I’m in trouble for eating this.’

“The hardest part for Rooster was really just the confinement,” Denton said. “He had to stay in a stall and he simply did not understand having to stay in one place. Everything else he handled with grace.”

Despite the grand scale of his surgery, Rooster walked away with few lasting effects.

“Due to the amount of inflammation from the surgical approach and post-op healing process, the nerve that controls the voice box’s ability to open and close was damaged,” Major said. “So he does have paralysis of one side of his larynx that causes him to make a noise when he breathes. Other than that, he has had no issues.”

A New Shot At Life

Rooster’s miraculous recovery took a village — familial support, surgical talent, and post-operative care all played an important part in his success story.

“It was a team effort, for sure,” Major said. “Tayler Montelaro McMillan and Morgan Haverstock are two students who had a big impact on Rooster’s comfort. When we have cases like this, the students are such a huge part of the successful outcome because they do all of the nitty-gritty work that really matters.”

As he regains his ability to live like a normal horse, Rooster continues to find himself surrounded by a support system of people astonished by his progress.

“I don’t know how he survived it,” Denton said. “Dr. Major is just amazing, but the recovery was the hardest part. He had all the odds against him this entire journey, yet here he is. His healing journey has been so personal for me and brought the two of us closer in caring for him.

“He’s thriving and gets to live as a normal horse now, which blows my mind,” she said. “I’m so grateful to everybody at Texas A&M who was part of his healing journey. Honestly, it’s a miracle. That’s the only word I have for it; it’s just a miracle.”

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Note: This story originally appeared in the Summer 2025 issue of VMBS Today.

For more information about the Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences, please visit our website at vetmed.tamu.edu or join us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Contact Information: Jennifer Gauntt, Director of VMBS Communications, Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences, jgauntt@cvm.tamu.edu, 979-862-4216

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