The Saved Foals

A wandering mind isn't always a good thing.  Random thoughts can lead down into the dark at times.  Guess I haven't been busy enough today because my mind has been wandering.

Twelve years ago I had jury duty in a murder trial.  The defendant changed his plea to guilty so we got out of the courtroom room early.  Not long after I got home that afternoon, a pregnant mare belonging to a friend went into labor.  She presented with a red-bag delivery, meaning the placenta was coming out ahead of the foal.  A RED ALERT situation.  I managed to get the placenta torn open with my hands (it's amazing how tough a horse's placenta is), & the colt delivered.  The colt wasn't breathing so I thumped his ribcage trying to jolt him into breathing.  When that didn't work I held his mouth shut, closed off a nostril, & breathed air into his other nostril.  I don't even know how many times I breathed into that little nostril, but finally he coughed & breathed.  Lack of oxygen caused a few days of a "dummy" foal & he had to be bottle fed for a while, but Little John thrived & was a cute colt.  My friend was quite pleased with his new colt & had plans for his future as a nice trail horse.

Eleven years ago in March, we had a severe thunder & lightening storm.  I went out into the night to make sure the horses were safe & not panicking.  The nine yearlings were huddled together & none seemed too alarmed by the storm.  The adults were all fine as well, so back I went back to bed.  I left for work before daylight the next morning but did take a quick headcount, as I do every day.  When I got home from work, my friend was already at the ranch.  He was in a panic & I just knew something was really wrong.  All he could say was "Little John".  I could see Little John standing 3/4 of the way up the pasture so was a bit puzzled.  As I walked up the hill I could see that he was standing odd & not moving.  I sent my friend to call the vet because I knew Little John had a broken leg.

Sometime during the night, after I'd checked on the horses, the yearlings had panicked & run through a fence.  I could see that two of the yearlings had scratches on their chests so surmised they'd been the first through the fence, knocking it down as the others followed.  Somewhere in the herd of frightened yearlings was Little John.  When he went over the fence a hind leg had to have gone through the wire.  The force of his forward movement stripped that top wire loose from the rest of the wire by 20-30'.  The "yank" of the wire had to have caused the break at the top of Little John's femur.  There was no saving the well loved gelding.

In the aftermath of that tragic day, my friend & I wondered if Little John should have been lost on the day of his birth.  It felt like maybe I wasn't supposed to have been home to save him, if that makes any since.  I was supposed to have been on jury duty for a couple of weeks.  I shouldn't have been home early the day he was born.  Maybe I wasn't supposed to have saved him & that's why he, of all the yearlings, was the only one injured so tragically.  Was his loss as a yearling the balancing of his being saved at birth?  When we go to such lengths to save a foal that would have been lost had no one been home, are we upsetting a natural balance?  Have we changed the course of a fate that needs to be rectified by their untimely, young loss?

As I reflect on Little John today, I'm wondering if going to extreme lengths to save a foal who wouldn't have survived without intervention, is only delaying the inevitable.  Are the saved foals destined to break our hearts when we lose them all too young?  More of our hearts go into the saved foals so more of our hearts are broken when we lose them.  Maybe there's a tragedy in the euphoria felt when a foal survives against the odds.  While I don't regret my saved foals (I would do it again without hesitation), & I love them more than I can say, my heart breaks at the thought of losing them all too young because maybe, just maybe, the balance needs to be righted.          

My heart is breaking.