Progress

Chance let me hang a small rope around his neck earlier this week. Yesterday and today, he let me scratch his belly. That's the one place a horse can't get to. 

I can rub his back, his sides. He lets me pick up his front feet. That's essential for the farrier to trim/shoe them.

My goal is to have him accepting a halter and lead rope by the time Mallory foals. She's due around June 8. When the vet comes to check the foal, he can examine Chance and give him his shots. 

I showed Chance's photo to a fellow horsewoman. She has raised sevens foals from birth. She believes his straight spine indicates that he's young. If so, perhaps his skittishness is because he was never really handled. In person, however, his spine doesn't always look so straight. The vet can tell more by looking at his teeth.

He still won't let me approach him outright. He walks away, stops, turns, snorts, looks back at me. Or looks sideways. Then, if I have his food, he approaches cautiously to within a few feet. With outstretched hand, I walk up to him. I pet him. I talk softly to him. I try not to make any sudden moves that might scare him.

I wonder how someone got him into a trailer to haul him to my neighbor's farm. That scenario makes me shudder.

He's fattening up. His hip bones are less prominent. You can still see his ribs, but not so much as when I got him. He's quite handsome, too. 

Will he make a good trail horse?

Time, and a good trainer, will tell.

A Second Chance

Chance. That's the name I gave my new gelding. With me, he has another chance. A chance for trusting and bonding with humans again, a chance to eat enough to stop his ribs from showing.

We've made great progress over the past two weeks.

 He follows me to wherever I take his food. I started holding it at arm's length, forcing him to eat with the smell of my fingers so near. Now I can hold the bowl against my body. Sometimes, he'll even take food from my hand.

It took a couple of days for him to allow me to stroke his head and cheeks while he eats. Now he lets me rub his neck, too.

He still won't let me approach him. I have to wait for him to come to me. He won't let me touch him until the food is profered. Even then, he usually snorts and turns his head a time or two before accepting my touch.

It's not much, but when you're trying to gain the trust of a skittish horse that has been abused by humans, it's a great start.

R.I.P. Betsy

My barnyard menagerie is smaller now by one. Betsy, my goat, died yesterday. My handyman, Floyd, and I spent two and a half hours burying her. Floyd dug. I shoveled some. Mostly, I just watched, in shock at the turn of events. 

I had taken her to the vet for a mastectomy. Dr. Jason Coe at Animal Hospital P.C. in Oneonta said she had balloon teats (common name). Wacky hormones caused them to fill with milk. They were dragging the ground when I got her in late 2013. Dr. Coe drained them, and said a mastectomy might be in her future.

Gradually, one of them filled again. Dr. Coe drained it February 14, the day he preg-checked my mare. He said if it filled up within a few weeks, surgery would be on the docket. 

This time, it filled more rapidly.

It hurt me to watch her walk. The enlarged teat obviously got in her way. She had to spread her back legs to run. She had dragged the bag over something, because she developed a wound on it. 

Floyd had come up Thursday morning to help me load her. I had a wire dog crate on the back of my dually. She was so scared inside that she was shaking. (Despite appearances in photo above, she wasn't tied to the crate.)

We arrived at the clinic 45 minutes early. I sat in the bed of the truck next to her. Rubbing her. Making soothing small talk. I assured her she would be okay, that she would feel so much better when this was over.

She came through the surgery fine. Dr. Coe heard her gasp. Cardiac arrest. They got her heart started again, placed an oxygen mask on her face. She would not take a breath. Respiratory failure. Coe and staff did all they could. It wasn’t their fault. These things happen in animals and humans. We do not always know why.

I’m already missing this goat who thought she was a dog. When I would bend over to clean my mare’s hooves, she would lick my face and nibble my hair. If I were standing up, she might put her hooves on my chest and look me in the eyes to get my attention. Her hooves were like rough concrete. Dr. Coe was going to trim them after the operation.

I had to lock her or the llamas up during feeding times. She gobbled her ration faster than they did. If I didn’t separate them, she’d shove them out of the way and finish their food. It never dawned on the llamas or bothered Betsy that she was a third their size.

As Johnny Cash once sang about a lost love,  “I don’t like it, but I guess things happen that way.”

Yeah, they do.