Every barn has its favorites. From veterinarians to technicians to trainers, no one is immune from falling in love with a special horse.
That is how EPA Elegance (Wido—Miss Courcel, Dow Jones Courcel) and her owner Shannon Daily ended up with a cheering section, complete with handmade signs, when they crossed the finish line as winners in the training/novice division at the Calais Horse Trials, held Nov. 23 in Powhatan, Virginia.
The event marked the end of a year-long nightmare that “Hazel” almost didn’t survive.
Daily is the first to admit that Hazel, now 8, was very much a “COVID impulse purchase” from the 2021 Goresbridge “Go For Gold” Select Event Horse Sale. Daily grew up riding hunters and jumpers at Level Green Riding School in Powhatan and has since transitioned to eventing. She rode an off-track Thoroughbred for several years and had come to the reluctant conclusion they weren’t well-suited. Because of the pandemic, when she decided to buy Hazel, she had to rely on a network of experts on the ground to vet the mare and crossed her fingers the chemistry would be there.

Hazel went to Leslie Lamb for evaluation and early training, and Lamb suggested they point toward the Dutta Corp. USEA Young Event Horse East Coast Championships (Maryland) in the fall of 2022 where they were 33rd out of 53 in the 5-year-old championship.
“She wasn’t that broke on the flat at first, which I think is kind of typical, so she took a little work there, but as far as the jumps go, she’s always been super game,” Lamb said. “She really came around. She went to the Young Event Horse [Championships], and it was kind of a push to get her there, but we were really proud of her.”
Daily began competing her in 2023, starting at novice and quickly progressing to training as the pair got to know each other.
“She was so great, just a pleasure to ride,” Daily said. “We went kind of all over, and it was one of those things where every event we kept getting better, but we were always one mistake away from winning.
“Our last show of the season was in November 2023 at the Virginia Horse Center Trials. She was just amazing, so fun, and we had a great cross-country run,” she continued.
About a week after the show, Daily noticed a small puncture wound on Hazel’s leg. It didn’t seem deep, but its proximity to Hazel’s knee made Daily nervous, so she consulted her veterinarians at Woodside Equine Clinic in Ashland, Virginia. The surgery team there agreed it would be safest to give Hazel a few days’ worth of antibiotics to stave off infection. Before giving the medication, Daily’s veterinarian warned her about the possibility of rare complications, including colitis. The treatment started on a Thursday.
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“On Saturday night, she was totally fine,” Daily recalled. “On Sunday morning, she was so sick. I don’t know if this is a blessing or a curse, but my former horse Oliver had colitis before too, though it was unrelated to antibiotics. I knew what it was. I didn’t even call the vet first; I threw her on the trailer, started driving, and called from the road.
“If you read the scientific research on [antibiotic-induced] colitis, it’s not that promising,” she continued. “They talk about horses dropping dead within a few hours.”

Hazel spiked a high temperature, lost her appetite, and had diarrhea when she was first admitted to the isolation unit at Woodside. Fevers and weight loss would become part of a four-month process of intermittent hospitalizations at Woodside and later the Marion duPont Scott Equine Medical Center in Leesburg, Virginia.
Colitis is usually treated with antibiotics, but Hazel’s veterinary team proceeded cautiously each time they switched to a new one out of concern she might have another negative reaction. Her fevers remained stubborn. Her illness resulted in her developing endotoxemia and septicemia, and then she got thrombophlebitis, swelling and clotting in the veins secondary to the intravenous catheters necessary for her antibiotics. Because Hazel had had a number of catheters in her jugular, veterinarians were concerned that in addition to the danger of clots, they could shelter bacteria in a horse already struggling with a bacterial infection.
One particularly nasty clot on the right side of Hazel’s neck had to be surgically removed and part of the vein tied off. Blood flow is able to continue as normal on the left side, explained Charlene Noll, MSME, DVM, DACVS of Woodside Equine, but it was one more complication.
Additional circulatory issues and continued fevers necessitated a trip to the Marion duPont Scott Equine Medical Center, where veterinarians weren’t optimistic. She was diagnosed with disseminated intravascular coagulation, a rare clotting condition in which blood clots develop throughout the bloodstream.
“They call it ‘death is coming’ because most anybody who gets that, and it happens in humans too, does not survive,” Daily said.

A case of pneumonia and necrotic rhinitis (a fungal disease that ate away at part of her nasal bone) required a tracheostomy, all as the internal medicine specialists called colleagues around the country, brainstorming.
Daily continually asked herself and the professionals around her: Is this fair to the horse?
“Everybody said, ‘We’ll let you know when we don’t think it’s fair, but she’s bright; she clearly enjoys interactions with humans,’ ” Daily said. “Even when she wasn’t eating, even when she had a horrible fever [her temperature hit 107 degrees at one point] she always brightened when people came into the stall. I felt like, in good conscience, I had to give her a chance. If she was going to fight, I needed to fight as well. So we did.”
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It was emotionally exhausting. Every day, Daily worried, could be Hazel’s last. But she also knew Hazel was the horse whose stall the technicians would linger in, with her head on their laps while she snoozed. Her name on the feed board had pink hearts drawn around it at Woodside. As awful as the winter was, Daily felt she and Hazel weren’t going through it alone.

As the internal medicine team tried different antibiotics, Hazel’s pneumonia cleared. Her feet, which had been iced throughout much of her hospitalizations, remained cool and sound. Ultrasounds of her heart remained normal. Her bloodwork improved slowly. Finally, it was a penicillin drip that kicked the last of the infection.
In February, Hazel was discharged to a rehabilitation facility, mostly fever-free but weighing 300 to 400 pounds less than she had before her illness. No one knew quite what to expect—whether she could regain the weight, whether she’d tolerate exertion or heat. When she started galloping in her field, playing with a fellow patient across the pasture fence, Daily felt glimmers of hope.
The pair resumed light work with Lamb this spring, and other than what Daily describes as a “Darth Vader sound” when she canters due to her nasal bone changes, Hazel is healthy, sound and apparently no worse for wear.

The Irish Sport Horse can be on the lazy side—the type of horse who jumps better when the fences get bigger because of how capable she is. Despite their preparation at home and at a cross-country school, Daily admitted to being a little nervous going into the grass arena at Calais to do the training-size stadium round. It was immediately clear as they progressed that Hazel was back and, if anything, “a bit saucy.”
“When we landed from the last jump and I could hear everybody cheer us on, saying ‘Go Hazel!’ and seeing my family there, that really moved me,” Daily said.
They crossed the finish flags in the cross-country almost exactly a year from the day Hazel first fell ill. Some of her fans made the trip from Woodside to cheer her on, and Noll said Hazel updates are part of the clinic’s Slack channel.
“She’s always a friendly and positive horse, easy to work with, and just a really pleasant individual,” Noll said. “She seems to be able to do her job and do it well. It’s on to regularly scheduled events.”
Daily is hopeful that may include a move up to modified and perhaps a run at preliminary one day. Whatever comes, she has no regrets about the fight for Hazel’s life.

Do you know a horse or rider who returned to the competition ring after what should have been a life-threatening or career-ending injury or illness? Email Kimberly at kloushin@coth.com with their story.