THE HORSE WHISPERER

       During her high school years, Siraya Chunekamrai - the county's first female horse veterinarian - pursued the typical teenage hobby of taking care of horses. Yet it was rather atypical too.
       "Let's say that I have known how to give a horse an injection since I was at Triam Udom Suksa [the country's famous high school]," said the 51-year-old veterinarian, who opened the country's first hospital for horses and is the founder of the Lampang Pony Welfare Foundation, the country's first non-profit organisation to advocate the welfare of horses.
       Siraya fell in love with horses when she was a young girl.
       Growing up on Witthayu Road, Bangkok, near the state's cavalry horse stable and the famous horse riding school of German Lee Rhodes - Thailand's first horse riding teacher - located on Soi Sanam Klee (known as Soi Polo), she witnessed police bringing horses back to the barn every evening. In the past, Bangkok police used horses to patrol the city, especially Lumphini Park at night.
       Finding the broncos ultra-cute, young Siraya prodded her mother to take up horse riding classes. It turned out she found vetting horses more fun than riding them.
       "I have always loved taking care of horses more than riding. I was not that good at it and often fell from the horses' back," she said.
       Rhodes, the horse-riding teacher, noticed the girl's passion for vetting and fetched her for practise whenever professional veterinarians visited.
       So, young Siraya grew up playing animal doctor. She also loved playing "Superman", the only difference being that her superhero derivative protected animals instead of humans.
       "I knew right from the start. I announced that I wanted to become a veterinarian when I was three years old," said Siraya, who grew up in a home full of dogs, mostly strays.
       Siraya received a bachelor's degree from the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Kasetsart University, and a doctoral degree from Cornell University in the US, where she wrote her thesis on horse disease in Thailand.
       For Siraya, while riding horses is dream-like, working in horse competitions - a shady world where doping is rampant - is an entirely different issue. As the first female horse veterinarian in the country, Siraya has met many obstacles in her work.
       "It was like knocking on a door and having it slammed right in your face. When I walked into the veterinarian room, other male veterinarians gradually walked out," she said, recounting her first day at the Royal Bangkok Sports Club as their veterinarian.
       Working in the racing field, Siraya has witnessed animal abuse - mostly unintentional - in the name of sport and competition.
       She recounted sad tales of beautiful mustangs - drug-stimulated race horses - falling and rising again to sprint albeit on three legs, of old decommissioned horses being run at desolate race tracks in Chiang Mai province if they were lucky enough to survive. Time and time again, she ordered other veterinarians to ''terminate'' (mercy euthanasia) seriously injured horses. She was once sued by a horse owner _ an esteemed politician _ after she had ordered his highly doped horse to be terminated.
       Siraya also introduced change in the racing field by using neutral and independent laboratories to conduct dope testing.
       Siraya lobbied other veterinarians and opened Suan Sard Hospital, a veterinarian clinic in Onnuj, Bangkok. In 1997, she opened ''Horsepital'' in Nakhon Ratchasima province, the first hospital for horses in Thailand. Five years ago, she opened the Lampang Pony Welfare Foundation, which offers medical services at a very low rate and sometimes free of charge, gives professional knowledge workshops and recently launched a campaign to preserve local pony species.
       Watching the foundation's veterinarian team is like watching Vets on Animal Planet, a famous cable television programme. The foundation's team often visits horses on remote farms in Lampang province. Siraya travels there, when time permits, to assist and train the team.
       Last week she demonstrated neutering a male horse.
       Unlike the sterile operating room at the Horsepital, this time Siraya had to operate on a plastic sheet in a tent.
       She started the operation, as she does every time, by gently patting the patient on its nose and neck, whispering in its pointy ears. The horse looked surprisingly calm and relaxed, as if it was under a spell.
       ''The most important aspect of the operation is neither the surgical knife, the blood nor the stitches. It is the whispering in the ears,''said Siraya, after the operation.
       What does she tell these horses?
       Mostly soothing murmurs, she answered placidly. What she is whispering about does not matter, as horses cannot understand human languages.
       ''Horses can read us like a book. They observe our body language, our voice and movements.''
       ''Yes ... I am a horse whisperer,'' said Siriya, flashing a smile as she talked about the movie The Horse Whisperer (1998), in which Robert Redford plays a cowboy who can read horses' minds and treat them if they have suffered a mental breakdown by whispering in their ears.
       Despite the human love affair with horses beginning in the ancient period, people are yet to fully comprehend these creatures.
       ''Horses are perhaps the most misunderstood creature of all, which leads to mistreatment,'' she said.
       Horses maintain an alluring myth _ wild and adventurous. But in reality, horses are insecure, sensitive, panicky and submissive, she said.
       Siraya's love affair with horses was and always will be atypical _ she's a new kind of horse whisperer or guardian. But wild horses couldn't drag her away from her mission.