More than just a number...

 A week ago Sunday, five new horses joined us from The Truck...  The Coggins form with the number 11-08-28 in the NAME box belonged to a thin bay filly with a heart bigger the state of Texas. 

This is the story of Answered Prayers...

September 6, 2011

The first phone call came a week ago Sunday around 2:00 pm to let me know that The Truck had just crossed into Georgia and would be here by 4:30.  The second came around 4:30 to let me know that a blown tire had slowed progress and a blown engine had halted it.  Behind The Truck was a trailer filled with eight horses bound for a dead end sale somewhere farther north.  Several older broodmares, a couple thin fillies, a ranch horse gelding, a two year old fresh out of a training center, and an old schoolmaster made up the roster of occupants.

With the second phone call came the request for me to come see the horses in the trailer down at Exit 228 while a pair of trucks, a regular pickup and a flatbed, hurried south to rescue the broken rig.  The plan was for me to decide which horses I wanted to keep so that the convoy could wrap up its journey some time before the wee hours of the morning without having to delay any longer than necessary at our farm on the way.  I got in the car and headed south. 

From my vantage point on the fender of the big stock trailer, with three lanes of traffic whizzing by only inches from my back, I looked down over the backs of the horses inside, and made my picks:  the pair of skinny fillies, a WIDE bay broodmare, the two year old, and the schoolmaster.  The horses would be dropped off on the way past Woodstock.

They arrived around midnight, tired and thirsty from their long ride.  What should have been a six hour trip turned into one well past twelve hours long.  Everyone looked to be in reasonably good shape in spite of things, and all tucked into their stalls to enjoy full hay nets and lots of fresh water.

Monday morning brought with it a new day and the first real opportunity to check out the horses that had arrived not so many hours before.  Parker--who sports every little (and lots of not-so-little) girl's dream "paint job"--sparkling chestnut with four matching white socks and a big white blaze--is the schoolmaster, eighteen years young, wise beyond most of them; Moon Blind (Stripes), only two, a beautiful body, soft liquid eyes, and all the promise in the world, he looks to Parker for guidance and is becoming more worldly by the moment because of it; Ishka, also eighteen and all-knowing, a wide load all the way around, with the most amazing and unique red-brown eyes I've ever seen on a horse--no doubt mother to several foals, and on Tuesday, we'd find out, the bearer of the Dutch Warmblood "fighting lion" brand, a total surprise; and the two fillies: the chestnut, far skinnier than the bay, with a long, intelligent face, eyes that have seen too much, and a body that offers promise of nice proportions and fluid lines when all of the bony parts are filled in under the skin of a much healthier horse; and the bay, blood bay with not a stitch of white, kind eyes and a body too thin, no tattoo to identify her or match her to a past, a soul, like her chestnut "sister," far wiser than her years would belie. 

It needs to be said that none of the new arrivals' Coggins forms came with a name (they rarely do), only a number to identify what number horse the bearer had been to come through my contact's farm that month and year...  Naming the horses is a task unto itself, and many times there are several of us who bat around potential names until the right one sticks.  The older horses were named the night they arrived; I researched Stripes' tattoo to find his (he's nicknamed after his mother), and was still struggling to match the chestnut filly's (I finally did, and found her to be called Jahgandi).  The bay filly would need some more time to name herself...

Breakfast was served and with that, a new day on the farm had begun.  It was a busy day with vet and farrier visits scheduled on top of the usual day to day chores.  As I started turning out, I noticed that the bay filly was lying down.  Not surprising considering her journey the day before, but worrisome with such a close proximity to breakfast--she'd gobbled up the tiny 1/4 scoop of feed that I'd given her and had banged her gate impatiently for more.  Poor kid, starving and only getting tiny rations--unfortunately many, many small meals would be the order of the day for both this gal and her chestnut friend until they picked up enough condition to tolerate larger amounts at one feeding.  
 
I got up our little nameless friend and decided that if she was feeling puny, it was better to do so out in the field than in the stall where she could more easily hurt herself because of the tighter quarters.  I gave her a dose of Banamine and sent her out with her chestnut buddy and the big mare Ishka.  They meandered around, and all seemed well.  I checked in on them a few more times through out the morning, and they were moving around the field, eating a little and exploring a lot.  The bay looked okay, not spritely, but then again, considering her circumstances not surprising.

Around 11:00, after Bob, the vet, had left and we'd made our way through the stalls in the lower barns, I took another trip out to check on the girls.  The little bay girl was down again, and now looking pitiful.  I called the vet's office, spoke with his wife Peter, and hung up expecting him to pull back into the drive sometime around noon.  I left the filly in the field with her friends since there she at least had the comfort of her companions and the safety of the more open space.

Bob arrived back at the farm around noon, as expected, and together we trudged through the field to rouse our little friend.  She was down again, and definitely not doing well.  We gathered her up and took her back to the barn for a better look.  Gums were reasonable, some gut sounds but not what we wanted to hear, dehydrated as expected, and looking gassy.  Her rectal exam confirmed the gas and identified the cause of her discomfort: a 110 degree torsion of her large colon.  By most standards, a surgical issue, but with an emaciated filly and a limited budget, medical management was the only option we had to turn her around.

Over the next several hours, our little unnamed filly had ten liters of fluids and a whole battery of drugs to manage pain, dissipate gas, and keep her relaxed while her body had a chance to right itself.  By early evening, she was not really any better, but not any worse.  She was incredibly stoic, only lying down and looking back at her flank to show her discomfort, never thrashing or flailing like so many horses would have in her condition.

We took several walks outside and she passed some small piles of manure here and there in our travels.  She showed an interest in eating the few munches of grass that we allowed her to steal, and spoke constantly to the horses in the barns around her.  I gave her a half dose of Banamine again around 9:00pm, wrapped her front legs in polos (I couldn't protect her face, hips, or hocks from pressure sores, but I could at least cover her fetlocks and cannon bones up front), and put her in a small paddock behind the barn for the night so she'd have room to move and could be easily gotten to with equipment if our worst fears happened in the night.  Bob's final directive was, "Don't nuke her..."  No worries there, she wasn't doing great, but she was doing a great job of fighting.

My alarm clock went of on Tuesday morning at 6:05 like it always does, but I'd been awake for an hour or so already, pondering what I would find when I got to the farm.  My brain ran circles on my drive in, and my heart caught in my throat as I looked through the barn door the first time.  I needn't have been that worried--our little friend was standing, a bit more battered than the day before, but interested in me and most definitely not pushing up daisies yet.

We had another vet visit scheduled for this morning, and when Jennifer arrived at 9:30, my first statement to her was, "How about we start the day with a colic."  Just what she wanted to hear, no doubt.  I'd spoken with Bob, who was across the state that day, and had decided with him that the filly needed to be looked at again.  She'd made it through the night, had passed two and three fecal ball piles of manure all over her paddock, but looked like she'd been through a war, and was still looking at her left hip, parking out, and lying down with far too much regularity to be normal.

Jennifer sedated her, passed a tube, and was immediately rewarded for her efforts with about a gallon and a half of reflux from the filly's stomach.  Not a good sign when coupled with a rectal that revealed bowels full of gas.  She was so bloated that she looked like a normal, fat, healthy horse from the shoulder back in spite of the fact that she was really a walking skeleton with skin.

We talked about her chances and decided to run twenty more liters of fluids in the hopes of hydrating her back to normal.  We left her with Faye as her babysitter while we went around the farm seeing the regularly scheduled horses, leaving our task every twenty minutes or so to change out the bags as they emptied.

At the end of the fourth bag, we untied her and let her go in her stall.  She immediately went down and gave a half hearted roll.  Not a good sign.  She was painful and crampy, and so full of gas that she looked like a tick.  Surgery or euthanasia seemed to be the only options, and neither worked for me.  Surgery was out of the question and euthanizing a horse that was so stoic through what must have been incredible pain just didn't feel right--she wasn't saying that she wanted to die, only that she was really, really uncomfortable.  I took her out into the yard and let her take me where she wanted to go...  as far from her barn as she could get, down towards the pastures where she could see horses...  and there she put her head down and started to graze.  This was not her day to die, at least not yet.

Jennifer went on her way to her next calls, leaving behind a syringe of sedation to use in case she got painful and needed some peace until another vet could make it out--she too was going out to the nether regions of the Perimeter.  Faye stood in the yard with the filly for quite some time, and I sat on a picnic bench with some of the barn girls and discussed what we should do.  I'd always heard of the cowboys saving their sick horses with whiskey, and had a friend do so the year before with a horse of hers that colicked. I asked the girls what they knew about this antiquated method of treatment, and Kimberly, one of our in-house trainers at the farm, told me that one of her young horses had been a chronic colicker when he was a baby, and that he'd become quite a fan of whiskey--because of the taste, and more importantly, because it's how they treated his colics.  Another "hillbilly junction" treatment method that we employed in Florida by proxy, was the good old fashioned trailer ride--horse owners in South Florida used to have to trailer their colics for hours to get to the closest surgical facility...  Lots of colics were remidied bouncing down the highway...  Could these two bizarre methods help?  

I decided to wing it.  Traditional medicine had helped her make it this far, but seemed to offering not much more than a wait-and-see approach at this point.  Our filly was running out of options.  So...  I hooked up the trailer, loaded her in, and along with Faye and Laura, set off to find the bumpiest, windiest roads we could on the way to my house for the whiskey.  We bounced and turned and curved through the pretty roads between the farm and my house for about fifteen minutes, and along the way, Bob called to check in on our girl.  I told him what we were doing (and I'm pretty sure he thought us nuts!), and told him about Jennifer's findings and what we'd done for treatment that morning.  He told me again what he'd said the night before, "Every minute that goes by that she's not getting worse puts her another minute closer to fixing herself.  If you can stand to stick with her, she should be okay."  That is the best advise I've ever been given.

We loaded her up with about four shots of Woodford Reserve, wound our way over to Zaxby's to grab lunch, multi-tasked yet again at Tractor Supply to pick up Alfalfa Pellets, and wound around some more on the way back to the farm.  When we got there, I gave her another dose of Banamine, dug out a grazing muzzle, and sent her out to the field.  She had to tough it out for herself.  There was not much else that we could do other than put her down if that's the direction she chose to go.

Afternoon chores commenced and there were other things that required our attention for the next hour or so--horses coming in, feed being dropped and remade for morning, door latches and gates given a final check before heading back up to check on the filly.  Around 4:30 that afternoon my phone rang. 

I answered as always, "A Pinch of Luck, this is Heather.  May I help you?"

The man on the other end opened, "My wife just called me and is very concerned...  She just drove past your farm and saw a skinny brown horse lying in the field with a bridle on.  My wife is very upset."

My reply, "Well sir, you see, the horse your wife saw in the field is a very thin three year old filly who just shipped in last night.  She came off of a truck that broke down on the way to an auction, and is in very poor shape.  She's colicking, and we've done everything we can for her medically--surgery is her only other option, but it's just not an option for us.  She's in the field working on living, and is wearing a muzzle to stop her from adding any more food to her belly until her guts are healthy again.  I really appreciate you calling--please say a prayer for this little girl, we're doing all we can...  The rest is up to her."

To which he said, "I'll be sure to tell my wife, and we'll keep her in our prayers.  She's lucky to have you.  We'll cross our fingers for you."

And I closed with, "Thank you, thank you so much.  I hope that when your wife drives by tomorrow, that our filly is up and alive.  Please stop in sometime for a visit if you'd like.  Thank you so much for caring enough to call."

I had walked across the field to check on her while I was talking on the phone.  She was indeed down, and when she saw me, she got to her feet and shook off.  To those of you not familiar with the intricacies of horse behavior, sick horses generally don't shake off when they get up, they simply stand and continue to be pitiful.  I had waited two days to see her care enough to shake off when she stood up.  I petted her head, told her about the man on the phone and how she now had strangers pulling for her, too, and was amazed to have her push past me on a very purposeful treck to the water trough.  She drank and drank and drank, and then walked away to work on getting the grass in the field to cooperate with her attempts to get it through the tiny hole at the bottom of the muzzle.  Our girl had turned the corner.

She spent Tuesday evening alternating between drinking water, attempting to graze, and sleeping in deep, deep REM sleep for long stretches.   No doubt she was exhausted and hungry.  What great things to be when the alternative was being dead.  I left her outside again Tuesday night, and Wednesday morning was not fearful when I pulled into the farm.  I knew as I drove in that I would be looking at my own Answered Prayers, and I was not disappointed.  Through the collective efforts of her doctors, my staff and friends at A Pinch of Luck, and the prayers of many, including total strangers, this big hearted filly had beat odds that were stacked against her and would have a second chance at living in spite of what should have been.

Answered Prayers is now officially named in the medical records of both of her doctors, and is continuing to do well.  Her wounds are already healing, and though she's still working up to full rations of feed and hay, is already starting to get a little rounder around her edges.  Our little miracle girl, who now goes by Annie for short, is thriving.  Oh thank Heaven for Answered Prayers!