Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Copyright 2009
This blog and associated works is now officially copyrighted. All rights reserved. 2009 Ashleigh Bennett.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
The Disappointing Human Condition
At approximately ten months pregnant, we discovered that Rose was carrying a foal. Admittedly, this is a little later in the game than most people prefer to find out but alas Teri and I didn't have much of a choice in the matter.
Linda, the woman I purchased Rose from, was full of apologies from the moment I first felt that baby kick my hand when I pressed it into Rose's full abdomen. She told me originally that Rose had not been bred while she was present but that it was possible Rose was covered by Bismarck (the black Percheron stallion Linda owned) while Linda and her husband were on vacation in New Mexico. The inattentiveness of a friend watching the horses led to a gate being left open and several horses escaping, Rose included in that number. Once we'd heard that story, there was no question that Bismarck was the baby's daddy.
Bismarck's registered name is Avatar's Bismarck, so naturally we began conceiving names we could bestow upon the baby. Rose's registered name is Welcome Queen, out of She is Welcome by Makula King. We came up with all manners of possible names for baby. For a filly we chose She is a Queen, simply because our roller derby team is the Copper Queens and it was just too perfect to pass up. We didn't decide on a name for a colt but had tossed a few around. The idea of having all 'R' names was a cute one so we discussed Rivet (then we'd have our Rosie and her little Rivet). Unfortunately, Rivet sounded too much like ribbit when you said it aloud so I had to veto that idea, didn't want anyone confusing our horse for a frog.
We researched what would be necessary to register a baby born to a Thoroughbred and a Percheron and it turns out that we could register that horse as an American Warmblood. Apparently they're somewhat sought after, especially in the Midwest and the East coast. Not too shabby for an accident, eh?
As it turns out, we didn't have a foal born from a Percheron.
Our colt came out the wrong color, the wrong size, with the wrong conformation of limb and joint, and with all the wrong markings. I anticipated a black or bay baby with minimal amounts of white; coming from the expected parentage, that is a reasonable guess.
When I saw Remi on the ground with his big white blaze, I knew we were going to have to do some detective work. Percherons aren't chestnut in color. Rose's lineage was full of mares and stallions with minimal white markings on their bodies and while its possible for her to produce more white than she herself has, the odds of that happening in concurrence with a black Percheron sire are slim. Then take into account the tall white stockings on three of the baby's four legs and the unusual way the white on the left side of his muzzle came up past his nostril. This was no Percheron.
Remi was born two days after Teri's birthday - incidentally, on her grandfather's birthday - July 16th. For Teri's birthday, we planned a short camping trip up Mount Lemmon with some of our close friends. This was scheduled to happen when Remi was still very young so it was a quick trip but already paid for and planned out. On our way up the mountain, I got a phone call from Linda. She got my message that the baby was born and that I had some questions for her. She asked how he and Rose were doing and I replied that they were doing very well, and other such niceties.
Then I told her what he looked like. I asked my mom to email Linda some photos so she could see for herself. Linda said she would get back into contact with a ranch that had "tried out" Rose before I bought her. Turns out they weren't interested, so when Linda went back to pick her up and noticed that they had stallions, it intrigued her. She had questioned them about the possibility of one of their stallions siring the foal when I first asked Linda about an unexpected pregnancy and the ranch had vehemently denied any such thing. She told me that she would get back to me the next day when we came back into Tucson.
Sure enough, the next day Linda called and said she'd found photos of the stallions on the ranch's website. She gave me their web address and told me to look for myself. I couldn't wait to get home and look at the pictures.
What I found couldn't have been more perfect or answer my question any better. There were two Paint stallions standing at Ram's Head Ranch. One is almost all white with a few dark patches. The other is almost solid chestnut with three white socks and a big blaze down his face. Guilty! Other photos on the page depicted some of the chestnut stallion's foals, all bearing a resemblance to Remi. The deadbeat dad's name is Sony Dee Bars Delight.
Linda emailed some photos of Remi to the owner of the ranch, who responded that he was a nice looking foal and that she would require DNA testing to prove that he was her stallion's foal before providing a breeder's certificate, which we needed to register the colt. Oh yes, and we would have to pay a sixty dollar late fee because the certificate wasn't applied for until after the foal's birth. As if we would have been able to apply for the certificate beforehand, not knowing our foal was going to be a Paint instead of a Percheron! Linda had mentioned to me that the owner of the ranch was very talented at dodging questions and it was really difficult to get a straight answer out of her. Already, I feared trying to deal with this stallion owner would be similar to arguing politics with a politician.
I was less than pleased with this woman's dishonesty and careless method of operating a breeding ranch. She wanted to test drive a horse for a possible purchase, not knowing the horse or the owner, and had allowed that horse to be bred on her property by one of her breeding stallions! Maybe this would be permissible if she wasn't a breeder by trade, but somebody who earns their living from breeding stallions should know how to restrain and correctly keep a stud. Then, after allowing the breeding to happen (by accident or not, I don't care) she lied to the horse's owner, preventing her and myself, the subsequent buyer, from caring for the mare properly during gestation.
Linda and I conjectured that maybe she was afraid of being forced into purchasing the horse, since it had been bred by her stud. Perhaps she feared lawsuits. At some point, we acknowledged that maybe it was truly an accident, but at some point she had to suspect what happened. She must have found Rose and the stallion somewhere together. The stallion had left bite marks and wounds all over Rose's back - obvious signs that she was covered - and the woman fabricated the story that Rose had jumped out of a washrack after being scared by something. She lied again to Linda. I can't blame Linda for not pressing the issue, this woman obviously wasn't going to answer questions straightforwardly and wasn't interested in buying the mare so she loaded Rose into the trailer and drove her back home.
Well, the good news is that the siring stallion is double-registered: as an American Paint Horse and as an American Quarter Horse. Couple that with a Jockey's Club registered Thoroughbred and potentially you have another American Paint Horse and an American Quarter-Appendix. Problem becomes the $60 late fee on a breeder's certificate, plus $40 for the DNA test, plus another $60 for the DNA test kit, plus $100 for each registry. Additionally, if the foal is not registered before the first of next year, all the registration fees go up.
As Remi is nowhere near the first of next year, we're able to put off paying for the fees for the time being. We're simply attempting to recover from our incredibly eventful summer of an extra horse and a lack of half our normal income.
All these worries usually melt away when I go see Rose and Remi. At first, it's because Remi is so adorable and cuddly that it's hard to worry about registering him. As he gets a little older, all my thoughts tumble out of my head because it's all I can do to keep up with the terror he's becoming, and wonder if just maybe I've bitten off more than I can chew.
Linda, the woman I purchased Rose from, was full of apologies from the moment I first felt that baby kick my hand when I pressed it into Rose's full abdomen. She told me originally that Rose had not been bred while she was present but that it was possible Rose was covered by Bismarck (the black Percheron stallion Linda owned) while Linda and her husband were on vacation in New Mexico. The inattentiveness of a friend watching the horses led to a gate being left open and several horses escaping, Rose included in that number. Once we'd heard that story, there was no question that Bismarck was the baby's daddy.
Bismarck's registered name is Avatar's Bismarck, so naturally we began conceiving names we could bestow upon the baby. Rose's registered name is Welcome Queen, out of She is Welcome by Makula King. We came up with all manners of possible names for baby. For a filly we chose She is a Queen, simply because our roller derby team is the Copper Queens and it was just too perfect to pass up. We didn't decide on a name for a colt but had tossed a few around. The idea of having all 'R' names was a cute one so we discussed Rivet (then we'd have our Rosie and her little Rivet). Unfortunately, Rivet sounded too much like ribbit when you said it aloud so I had to veto that idea, didn't want anyone confusing our horse for a frog.
We researched what would be necessary to register a baby born to a Thoroughbred and a Percheron and it turns out that we could register that horse as an American Warmblood. Apparently they're somewhat sought after, especially in the Midwest and the East coast. Not too shabby for an accident, eh?
As it turns out, we didn't have a foal born from a Percheron.
Our colt came out the wrong color, the wrong size, with the wrong conformation of limb and joint, and with all the wrong markings. I anticipated a black or bay baby with minimal amounts of white; coming from the expected parentage, that is a reasonable guess.
When I saw Remi on the ground with his big white blaze, I knew we were going to have to do some detective work. Percherons aren't chestnut in color. Rose's lineage was full of mares and stallions with minimal white markings on their bodies and while its possible for her to produce more white than she herself has, the odds of that happening in concurrence with a black Percheron sire are slim. Then take into account the tall white stockings on three of the baby's four legs and the unusual way the white on the left side of his muzzle came up past his nostril. This was no Percheron.
Remi was born two days after Teri's birthday - incidentally, on her grandfather's birthday - July 16th. For Teri's birthday, we planned a short camping trip up Mount Lemmon with some of our close friends. This was scheduled to happen when Remi was still very young so it was a quick trip but already paid for and planned out. On our way up the mountain, I got a phone call from Linda. She got my message that the baby was born and that I had some questions for her. She asked how he and Rose were doing and I replied that they were doing very well, and other such niceties.
Then I told her what he looked like. I asked my mom to email Linda some photos so she could see for herself. Linda said she would get back into contact with a ranch that had "tried out" Rose before I bought her. Turns out they weren't interested, so when Linda went back to pick her up and noticed that they had stallions, it intrigued her. She had questioned them about the possibility of one of their stallions siring the foal when I first asked Linda about an unexpected pregnancy and the ranch had vehemently denied any such thing. She told me that she would get back to me the next day when we came back into Tucson.
Sure enough, the next day Linda called and said she'd found photos of the stallions on the ranch's website. She gave me their web address and told me to look for myself. I couldn't wait to get home and look at the pictures.
What I found couldn't have been more perfect or answer my question any better. There were two Paint stallions standing at Ram's Head Ranch. One is almost all white with a few dark patches. The other is almost solid chestnut with three white socks and a big blaze down his face. Guilty! Other photos on the page depicted some of the chestnut stallion's foals, all bearing a resemblance to Remi. The deadbeat dad's name is Sony Dee Bars Delight.
I was less than pleased with this woman's dishonesty and careless method of operating a breeding ranch. She wanted to test drive a horse for a possible purchase, not knowing the horse or the owner, and had allowed that horse to be bred on her property by one of her breeding stallions! Maybe this would be permissible if she wasn't a breeder by trade, but somebody who earns their living from breeding stallions should know how to restrain and correctly keep a stud. Then, after allowing the breeding to happen (by accident or not, I don't care) she lied to the horse's owner, preventing her and myself, the subsequent buyer, from caring for the mare properly during gestation.
Linda and I conjectured that maybe she was afraid of being forced into purchasing the horse, since it had been bred by her stud. Perhaps she feared lawsuits. At some point, we acknowledged that maybe it was truly an accident, but at some point she had to suspect what happened. She must have found Rose and the stallion somewhere together. The stallion had left bite marks and wounds all over Rose's back - obvious signs that she was covered - and the woman fabricated the story that Rose had jumped out of a washrack after being scared by something. She lied again to Linda. I can't blame Linda for not pressing the issue, this woman obviously wasn't going to answer questions straightforwardly and wasn't interested in buying the mare so she loaded Rose into the trailer and drove her back home.
Well, the good news is that the siring stallion is double-registered: as an American Paint Horse and as an American Quarter Horse. Couple that with a Jockey's Club registered Thoroughbred and potentially you have another American Paint Horse and an American Quarter-Appendix. Problem becomes the $60 late fee on a breeder's certificate, plus $40 for the DNA test, plus another $60 for the DNA test kit, plus $100 for each registry. Additionally, if the foal is not registered before the first of next year, all the registration fees go up.
As Remi is nowhere near the first of next year, we're able to put off paying for the fees for the time being. We're simply attempting to recover from our incredibly eventful summer of an extra horse and a lack of half our normal income.
All these worries usually melt away when I go see Rose and Remi. At first, it's because Remi is so adorable and cuddly that it's hard to worry about registering him. As he gets a little older, all my thoughts tumble out of my head because it's all I can do to keep up with the terror he's becoming, and wonder if just maybe I've bitten off more than I can chew.
Saturday, August 8, 2009
New Territory
There is a certain amount of shock to be expected with this enormous of an event and I can tell you for sure that Teri and myself experienced more than our share. In a single month we discovered our mare's pregnancy, prepared for a foal of an unknown father and then actually had the foal born. Most people who breed their horses have eleven months to prepare for baby so I felt like we'd done pretty well for ourselves.
Now suddenly there was a little colt on the ground and everything all hit home. That we now had a new life to be responsible for. Thank goodness Rose did most of the work!
After calling or texting our friends and family to notify them of our new addition, we stuck our phones in our pockets to admire the little baby Rose had just produced. I called Berto to tell him about the foal and he was on his way over. The baby was bright and alert and looking around. He was wiggling around in the straw, trying to straighten out his mile-long legs and figure out how to get them underneath himself for a few minutes when he made his first attempt at standing. He pulled himself forward with his forelegs and attempted to push with his hind legs but his back legs were crossed and didn't function very well yet. He collapsed back down into the straw in a heap. He gave the tiniest little snort I'd ever heard and shook his head as if to say,
"Wow, that was a little harder than I anticipated. Maybe I'll just take a little break."
Berto arrived a few minutes after I called him. He came in and petted the foal and stood back to watch the baby's attempts at standing.
When he looked ready to try again, I walked to him and pulled his forelegs out from underneath his body and straightened them out in front of him. He was in a better position to try this time. Again he thrust himself up into the air but it was more forceful than the first time and he surprised himself with his own strength. He catapulted himself forward and was unable to keep his legs underneath his body to support his weight. He landed nose first back into the straw, legs splayed in every which direction. Rose nickered her support and touched him with her nose. His little sides were heaving with effort, nostrils flaring. After another few minutes he curled his legs back up under himself in preparation for another try.
Right then, Catherine was texting me and asking about the baby. My phone vibrated in my pocket, signaling a new message. I glanced down and wrestled my phone from my pocket and flipped it open to read the message. I started to formulate a reply when suddenly there was a commotion in front of me - the foal had pushed himself to his feet again but didn't have his legs braced in a way to hold himself up. He was about to topple over but was trying to keep standing up. It had quickly escalated into a falling/running sideways exercise that was headed right for me. I had enough foresight to crouch down a few inches and put my arms out to catch his body, which promptly slammed into me. He spread all his legs as far apart as possible to give himself a big base and was standing up! I was gently balancing him by keeping my arms around his chest and under his butt. He switched his tail around triumphantly.
Then I remembered that my phone used to be in my hand. Where had it gone? Oh no. It must be lost somewhere in the straw, under Rose's hooves or my boots or somewhere.
"Teri, do you happen to see my phone?" I sighed.
"Yeah, it's in your hand." she cackled.
"What?! No it's not!" I looked down, "Oh. It is in my hand."
I didn't realize it was in my hand because my hands were holding the foal. So the phone was pressed into the foal's chest and neck and was now covered in the remnants of amniotic fluids left in the colt's coat. Ugh.
"Yuck." I couldn't remove my hands from the foal and so I had to leave the phone just where it was. I just hoped to myself that the moisture wouldn't kill my phone.
After the baby stood for a few moments, he wanted to take a step. He wobbled along with some assistance, and I attempted to guide him over to Rose's side. The problem with this situation is that Rose has been whickering at the baby the whole time he'd been off the ground and following him around. So when we finally did make it closer to Rose's side, she moved away to follow us.
"Berto, can you come in here and hold Rose still so I can try and let the baby nurse?" I asked.
"Sure." he let himself into the stall and clipped a lead onto her halter and held her head so she couldn't continue to follow us around in circles.
I nudged the colt up to her side again and he started poking around with his nose, looking for breakfast. After a few minutes' effort, he still hadn't located the teat. He was heavier in my arms now as I was supporting more of his weight. He gave up trying at that point and just allowed himself to fall back down into the straw. He lay on his side and stretched out and closed his eyes. He kept switching his little tail back and forth, back and forth. Rose stood protectively over her newborn miracle, nosing him all over and licking the areas she didn't get to before.
Rose let him rest for ten minutes but then started acting a little agitated. She started lifting her front hoof and pawing the ground next to the foal. Then she lifted her hoof again and placed it on his hindquarters and pushed on him. She was whinnying at him in earnest, and kept nudging at him with her hoof. He sat up and looked around, surprised. He quickly gathered all his limbs together and leapt into the air. He managed to catch himself on all four legs this time and shakily remained standing. Proud of himself, he tried to stumble forward again towards his mother. Gently, Teri caught him in front of his chest and under his butt and guided him over to Rose's side to try nursing again. I stood on Rose's other side and crouched down. I reached under her belly and tried guiding his muzzle to her teat. He spastically nosed at her belly, the insides of her back legs and around her udders. He still couldn't latch onto her teat to nurse and Rose's udders were swelling with considerable amounts of milk, now that the baby was born. Milk was starting to stream out of Rose's teats and the foal wasn't receiving any of those precious first nutrients.
The baby stood up and moved around within the hour allotted to complete that important first task but he wasn't nursing and we were long past that deadline. It was time to call the vet. I left a message, trying not to sound frantic but worrying all the same.
The vet called me back and asked if the foal seemed to be weakened or wasn't willing to try to nurse. I explained that he was really strong and didn't seem weak at all. Teri suggested milking Rose and feeding the foal from the bottle until he learned to nurse properly, then at least he wouldn't miss out on the colostrum. The vet agreed with this idea and said that if he hadn't started nursing on his own in the next few hours to call back.
Teri rushed off to WalMart, as it was the only place open at 4am that carried baby bottles. She came back about a half hour later. The foal was walking around the stall all by himself, looking quite proud. Rose stood in the center, rotating on her haunches to keep her eyes on him as he circled. The two of them were quite the sight to behold as he was exploring his new surroundings and Rose just couldn't get close enough to him so it was slightly chaotic. He was quite interested in Teri's return and what she brought with her.
Teri pulled a pack of baby bottles, a Big Book of Baby Names, a couple of cold Gatorades and a banana nut muffin out of the shopping bag. I raised my eyebrows at her.
"Well, he still needs a name and we didn't decide on any boy names ahead of time so I figured we could look through the book." she answered my unverbalized question and hit the nail on the head. I nodded in agreement.
"Thanks for the Gatorade and muffin. I'm not sure how I'm going to get through work today, actually." I smiled grimly. I had called the lab manager earlier to see if there was some way I could come in a couple hours late and she had told me that we were slammed at work, so I could be an hour late but no more.
I unwrapped the baby bottles and washed one out. I held it under Rose's udders and began milking her to relieve the pressure caused by the excessive amount of milk she was producing. Soon enough the bottle was full of fresh milk and Rose looked more comfortable already. I screwed the nipple onto the bottle and attempted to get the foal to nurse from the bottle. He didn't understand the strange plastic thing being thrust between his gums and resisted suckling. I waited another few minutes and tried again, to no avail. I put the bottle into Rose's feeder and gave up for the moment.
In the meantime, Teri had been sitting in a camping chair outside the stall thumbing through the Baby Name Book.
"How about Raiden? Means God of Thunder."
I contemplated it, and said it aloud. "Raiden. Raiden! I like it. We'll have to see how it works on the baby."
Teri continued to murmur names, going through all the 'R' names. We had decided that it would be really cute to name the baby something beginning with 'R' since we already had two 'R' horses - Rocky and Rose.
"How about Remi? Just means something like 'from Rheims, France'. But it's a cute name. And I also like Rhys!"
"Oh I like both of those! Let's try them out on the baby and that'll make it easier to decide." I replied. For reasons beyond me, we started out calling the foal Remi and haven't ever looked back.
I sipped my Gatorade and Teri got out of her chair to try her hand at nursing the foal from a bottle. She tucked Remi's head under her arm and pinned him to her side while guiding the nipple into his mouth. Teri was infinitely more successful at getting Remi to swallow milk than I was, so she became the appointed bottle-feeder. Which was extremely fortunate for us, as I had to leave to go to work.
Being away from Rose and Remi and Teri was torturesome. I wanted to spend every waking moment with the horses. Foals are only brand new for about a day and I was wasting it at work. Teri made the hours pass easier by periodically sending me texts about them. She let me know when Remi finally nursed on his own and when the vet had to come out to give Rose an oxytocin injection to help her fully pass the placenta. My eyes were glued to the clock all day until that glorious moment I took off my labcoat and burst out into the heat of the afternoon.
While I worked, Teri had spent all day outside. She had mucked the whole stall out and replaced the straw on the ground, she had been there for the vet to come treat Rose and had moved the fully passed placenta from the wheelbarrow into a bucket. She had bought more grain and administered the probiotic paste to both the mare and the foal.
My parents were on their way to come see the new baby, and he had already had visits from Katie and Teri's parents. My cousin Nathan also came along for the ride, as he was visiting from the midwest. Everyone was amazed by this little colt. He made the rounds and let everyone touch and pet him and scratch him in those oh-so-hard-to-reach places.
Already, Remi was quite the character. He was hamming it up for sure, jaunting around the stall as if he owned the joint and posing for photos. He had learned how to jump up in the air and kick (he already attempted to kick my father - at one day old - sheesh.) and how to run around and be a rodeo bronc. Rose was ever the good momma, keeping an eye on him but never getting upset at the parade of people through her stall.
As the beautiful sunset curtains drew closed over the mountains and across Remi's first day on this earth, everyone stood outside the stall and watched Rose's miracle trot around the stall and nurse from his mother. Rose stood tall and proud as she kept a careful watch over her new little one. Already, this baby had taught us that perserverance pays off, love will always take you further than obligation and most importantly: to believe that all things serve a purpose.
No one ever said that life would be easy - just that it would be worth it.
Happy Birthday Remi - July 16th 2009, 1:30am
Now suddenly there was a little colt on the ground and everything all hit home. That we now had a new life to be responsible for. Thank goodness Rose did most of the work!
After calling or texting our friends and family to notify them of our new addition, we stuck our phones in our pockets to admire the little baby Rose had just produced. I called Berto to tell him about the foal and he was on his way over. The baby was bright and alert and looking around. He was wiggling around in the straw, trying to straighten out his mile-long legs and figure out how to get them underneath himself for a few minutes when he made his first attempt at standing. He pulled himself forward with his forelegs and attempted to push with his hind legs but his back legs were crossed and didn't function very well yet. He collapsed back down into the straw in a heap. He gave the tiniest little snort I'd ever heard and shook his head as if to say,
"Wow, that was a little harder than I anticipated. Maybe I'll just take a little break."
Berto arrived a few minutes after I called him. He came in and petted the foal and stood back to watch the baby's attempts at standing.
When he looked ready to try again, I walked to him and pulled his forelegs out from underneath his body and straightened them out in front of him. He was in a better position to try this time. Again he thrust himself up into the air but it was more forceful than the first time and he surprised himself with his own strength. He catapulted himself forward and was unable to keep his legs underneath his body to support his weight. He landed nose first back into the straw, legs splayed in every which direction. Rose nickered her support and touched him with her nose. His little sides were heaving with effort, nostrils flaring. After another few minutes he curled his legs back up under himself in preparation for another try.
Right then, Catherine was texting me and asking about the baby. My phone vibrated in my pocket, signaling a new message. I glanced down and wrestled my phone from my pocket and flipped it open to read the message. I started to formulate a reply when suddenly there was a commotion in front of me - the foal had pushed himself to his feet again but didn't have his legs braced in a way to hold himself up. He was about to topple over but was trying to keep standing up. It had quickly escalated into a falling/running sideways exercise that was headed right for me. I had enough foresight to crouch down a few inches and put my arms out to catch his body, which promptly slammed into me. He spread all his legs as far apart as possible to give himself a big base and was standing up! I was gently balancing him by keeping my arms around his chest and under his butt. He switched his tail around triumphantly.
Then I remembered that my phone used to be in my hand. Where had it gone? Oh no. It must be lost somewhere in the straw, under Rose's hooves or my boots or somewhere.
"Teri, do you happen to see my phone?" I sighed.
"Yeah, it's in your hand." she cackled.
"What?! No it's not!" I looked down, "Oh. It is in my hand."
I didn't realize it was in my hand because my hands were holding the foal. So the phone was pressed into the foal's chest and neck and was now covered in the remnants of amniotic fluids left in the colt's coat. Ugh.
"Yuck." I couldn't remove my hands from the foal and so I had to leave the phone just where it was. I just hoped to myself that the moisture wouldn't kill my phone.
After the baby stood for a few moments, he wanted to take a step. He wobbled along with some assistance, and I attempted to guide him over to Rose's side. The problem with this situation is that Rose has been whickering at the baby the whole time he'd been off the ground and following him around. So when we finally did make it closer to Rose's side, she moved away to follow us.
"Berto, can you come in here and hold Rose still so I can try and let the baby nurse?" I asked.
"Sure." he let himself into the stall and clipped a lead onto her halter and held her head so she couldn't continue to follow us around in circles.
I nudged the colt up to her side again and he started poking around with his nose, looking for breakfast. After a few minutes' effort, he still hadn't located the teat. He was heavier in my arms now as I was supporting more of his weight. He gave up trying at that point and just allowed himself to fall back down into the straw. He lay on his side and stretched out and closed his eyes. He kept switching his little tail back and forth, back and forth. Rose stood protectively over her newborn miracle, nosing him all over and licking the areas she didn't get to before.
Rose let him rest for ten minutes but then started acting a little agitated. She started lifting her front hoof and pawing the ground next to the foal. Then she lifted her hoof again and placed it on his hindquarters and pushed on him. She was whinnying at him in earnest, and kept nudging at him with her hoof. He sat up and looked around, surprised. He quickly gathered all his limbs together and leapt into the air. He managed to catch himself on all four legs this time and shakily remained standing. Proud of himself, he tried to stumble forward again towards his mother. Gently, Teri caught him in front of his chest and under his butt and guided him over to Rose's side to try nursing again. I stood on Rose's other side and crouched down. I reached under her belly and tried guiding his muzzle to her teat. He spastically nosed at her belly, the insides of her back legs and around her udders. He still couldn't latch onto her teat to nurse and Rose's udders were swelling with considerable amounts of milk, now that the baby was born. Milk was starting to stream out of Rose's teats and the foal wasn't receiving any of those precious first nutrients.
The baby stood up and moved around within the hour allotted to complete that important first task but he wasn't nursing and we were long past that deadline. It was time to call the vet. I left a message, trying not to sound frantic but worrying all the same.
The vet called me back and asked if the foal seemed to be weakened or wasn't willing to try to nurse. I explained that he was really strong and didn't seem weak at all. Teri suggested milking Rose and feeding the foal from the bottle until he learned to nurse properly, then at least he wouldn't miss out on the colostrum. The vet agreed with this idea and said that if he hadn't started nursing on his own in the next few hours to call back.
Teri rushed off to WalMart, as it was the only place open at 4am that carried baby bottles. She came back about a half hour later. The foal was walking around the stall all by himself, looking quite proud. Rose stood in the center, rotating on her haunches to keep her eyes on him as he circled. The two of them were quite the sight to behold as he was exploring his new surroundings and Rose just couldn't get close enough to him so it was slightly chaotic. He was quite interested in Teri's return and what she brought with her.
Teri pulled a pack of baby bottles, a Big Book of Baby Names, a couple of cold Gatorades and a banana nut muffin out of the shopping bag. I raised my eyebrows at her.
"Well, he still needs a name and we didn't decide on any boy names ahead of time so I figured we could look through the book." she answered my unverbalized question and hit the nail on the head. I nodded in agreement.
"Thanks for the Gatorade and muffin. I'm not sure how I'm going to get through work today, actually." I smiled grimly. I had called the lab manager earlier to see if there was some way I could come in a couple hours late and she had told me that we were slammed at work, so I could be an hour late but no more.
I unwrapped the baby bottles and washed one out. I held it under Rose's udders and began milking her to relieve the pressure caused by the excessive amount of milk she was producing. Soon enough the bottle was full of fresh milk and Rose looked more comfortable already. I screwed the nipple onto the bottle and attempted to get the foal to nurse from the bottle. He didn't understand the strange plastic thing being thrust between his gums and resisted suckling. I waited another few minutes and tried again, to no avail. I put the bottle into Rose's feeder and gave up for the moment.
In the meantime, Teri had been sitting in a camping chair outside the stall thumbing through the Baby Name Book.
"How about Raiden? Means God of Thunder."
I contemplated it, and said it aloud. "Raiden. Raiden! I like it. We'll have to see how it works on the baby."
Teri continued to murmur names, going through all the 'R' names. We had decided that it would be really cute to name the baby something beginning with 'R' since we already had two 'R' horses - Rocky and Rose.
"How about Remi? Just means something like 'from Rheims, France'. But it's a cute name. And I also like Rhys!"
"Oh I like both of those! Let's try them out on the baby and that'll make it easier to decide." I replied. For reasons beyond me, we started out calling the foal Remi and haven't ever looked back.
I sipped my Gatorade and Teri got out of her chair to try her hand at nursing the foal from a bottle. She tucked Remi's head under her arm and pinned him to her side while guiding the nipple into his mouth. Teri was infinitely more successful at getting Remi to swallow milk than I was, so she became the appointed bottle-feeder. Which was extremely fortunate for us, as I had to leave to go to work.
Being away from Rose and Remi and Teri was torturesome. I wanted to spend every waking moment with the horses. Foals are only brand new for about a day and I was wasting it at work. Teri made the hours pass easier by periodically sending me texts about them. She let me know when Remi finally nursed on his own and when the vet had to come out to give Rose an oxytocin injection to help her fully pass the placenta. My eyes were glued to the clock all day until that glorious moment I took off my labcoat and burst out into the heat of the afternoon.
While I worked, Teri had spent all day outside. She had mucked the whole stall out and replaced the straw on the ground, she had been there for the vet to come treat Rose and had moved the fully passed placenta from the wheelbarrow into a bucket. She had bought more grain and administered the probiotic paste to both the mare and the foal.
My parents were on their way to come see the new baby, and he had already had visits from Katie and Teri's parents. My cousin Nathan also came along for the ride, as he was visiting from the midwest. Everyone was amazed by this little colt. He made the rounds and let everyone touch and pet him and scratch him in those oh-so-hard-to-reach places.
Already, Remi was quite the character. He was hamming it up for sure, jaunting around the stall as if he owned the joint and posing for photos. He had learned how to jump up in the air and kick (he already attempted to kick my father - at one day old - sheesh.) and how to run around and be a rodeo bronc. Rose was ever the good momma, keeping an eye on him but never getting upset at the parade of people through her stall.
As the beautiful sunset curtains drew closed over the mountains and across Remi's first day on this earth, everyone stood outside the stall and watched Rose's miracle trot around the stall and nurse from his mother. Rose stood tall and proud as she kept a careful watch over her new little one. Already, this baby had taught us that perserverance pays off, love will always take you further than obligation and most importantly: to believe that all things serve a purpose.
No one ever said that life would be easy - just that it would be worth it.
Happy Birthday Remi - July 16th 2009, 1:30am
Thursday, August 6, 2009
26 Tucson Sunsets
Rose's first few days in her new stall passed in a flurry of excitement. Although I was convinced that I was ready, I kept thinking of items I needed or tasks that had to be accomplished before the birth. I continued to go to the feed store on a regular basis to pick up probiotic paste, or some grain to help Rose get the right vitamins and minerals that the baby would need, or a vaccine she needed before having the foal.
When we still had no foal after a couple of days, it became apparent to me that I was going to need to stock up on Rose's new grain and bales of straw. It was also really starting to get warm and Rose was constantly drenched in sweat. I could only imagine what it must be like to be carrying an eighty pound foal around in the middle of the summer in Tucson. Rose just looked miserable.
Every day I took to visiting Rose when it was hottest outside and hosing her whole body down with cool water. We would take leisurely walks around the property, stopping to let Rose graze on the few bright green patches of grass that grew up around trees and hosebibs. I curried and rubbed her down, brushed out her mane and tail and picked out her hooves.
I also noticed that her neck was especially hot and sweaty from the weight of her thick black mane laying on it all day. I braided her mane up to help cool her down. I kept a strict watch over her still-swelling udders, abdomen and vulva to gauge when she was going to foal but as Rose was a maiden mare (never had a baby before) there was really no knowing until the baby was coming out.
Teri rigged up a box fan in the corner of her new stall to circulate the air better and that seemed to make a difference - or at least the air wasn't stagnating any more.
I went into her stall almost every evening to dig out the muck under the straw because as much as horses urinate, pregnant horses urinate about three times as much! Teri's big joke was that not only did Rose have to pee like a racehorse (since she used to be one) but she had to pee like a pregnant racehorse! It was a funny joke to everybody, everybody except me because I got to scrape it all out of her stall.
Me, Teri and Rose quickly settled into a nice routine. We would arrive for the evening and hose her down one more time if it was especially hot, then go for a short walk as the sun started to set over the mountains. Then Rose would get her evening grain and brushing. Most evenings we had company come out to visit. Berto came out to spend time with her almost every day, as did our good friends Becca, Mya, Katie, and Julie. Additional visitors included Teri's parents, girls from both our roller derby and rugby teams, and people that both Teri and I worked with as well as some of Berto's coworkers. Becca and Mya and Berto even spent the night once to keep me company while Teri worked late.
Each night we would settle into the truck bed and say,
"Tonight's going to be the night!"
And most of the time we were wrong.
Each morning we would rise earlier than the sun and pack up the truck. I'd give Rose her breakfast grain and then drive Teri home before heading over to work.
Before too long, the heat was almost unbearable. Most nights we weren't able to fall asleep until the day's heat finally broke between 10:00pm and midnight. There were insects that would gather around the flashlights and lanterns and insects that would bite you even after the lights were all long extinguished. Even the most harmless ones were still annoying.
One day I arrived home from work to a giant pile of white netting sitting on the couch. I found Teri in the office.
"So who killed the bride and stashed her on our couch?"
Teri wasn't in the mood for joking. She had gone looking for a ready-made mosquito net to spread over the truck bed to stop our bodies from being feasted upon each night after dark. What she had found was indeed ready-made for just that purpose but was vastly overpriced. This drove her to find a fabric store from which she could purchase large quantities of mosquito netting. She bought a larger amount of fabric than was available in the expensive ready-made variety and had even managed to gather one side of it together and bind it around a clip so it could be suspended above the truck. I wouldn't know, but she told me it was quite the undertaking and the effort of it all plus the frustration put her spirits somewhat low.
However! That meant good news for us because the bugs were no longer going to be able to annoy us.
By this point, we were a good week into our "Camping Next to Rose's Stall" endeavor and the novelty had long worn off.
Nancy had started saying things like,
"Well since you don't know when she was bred, she might be another month before foaling you know."
This irritated me to no end, as Nancy was the catalyst that started us sleeping next to Rose long before I would have thought to do it on my own. Nancy also took to visiting every night before bed and admonishing us for sitting around in front of her stall.
"You don't think she's just going to pop that baby out with you all sitting right there, do you?"
"Nope, I sure don't expect that. But I also don't expect her to 'pop that baby out' this early in the evening, either. We're just sitting here until we go to bed." I tried to respond politely but I'm sure that wore off after we had this exact conversation for the third time.
Nancy had also begun mentioning that she'd been telling the other boarders about how we were going to be having a baby soon and everyone was so SO excited! She said that everyone thought it would be so cute to have the foal be the barn's mascot and that we should even name it Mascot. I thought this was less than funny.
A number of other people who kept their horses at the barn took to visiting Rose routinely, probably to check and see if there was a foal yet. At this development I decided to take some of these issues into my own hands.
I asked Teri to make a stall placard with Rose's information on it as well as our two phone numbers and Berto's number as emergency contacts. It also contained her breed, registered name, age, vet and farrier information and feeding instructions. Then I asked Teri to make a sign stating that nobody was allowed entry into the stall without owners' consent.
These two signs went up the next day and caused Nancy quite a bit of angst. She tried in vain to get me to remove the caution sign, she told me that nobody thought they could do that and didn't want anybody to be put off by such a defensive sign. I (somewhat) politely refused to take it down. It was extremely important that everybody understand that my poor pregnant mare was not a circus act, she was not a barn mascot and no matter how tolerant, she was not to be bothered at all hours of the day. Rose still received a lot of attention after that but everyone certainly settled down.
This whole time, I spent my spare moments reading foaling books and looking online for photos of mares about to foal so I could guess when she would have the baby. I was no closer to the answer than I had been two weeks before upon discovering the pregnancy.
Rose had taken to laying down at night and moaning and groaning. She would also grunt and roll and make all manner of labor-type noises. This made sleeping even more difficult, since we were convinced every single time she laid down she was going to have the foal.
After Rose made it obvious that she was going to lay down and fake us out every night, sleeping became easier again. We had now been sleeping at the barn every night for three weeks. We were tired of sleeping in the truck and having to pack everything up the next morning. Then the brilliant idea of setting up our little tent a few stalls over struck us. That way, we could keep our overnight bag inside the tent and we wouldn't have to deal with a mosquito netting, as the tent served that purpose already! We set up the tent and prepared to have a little less work each night and morning. Then the immediate problem was that we were now too far away to hear Rose very well, since there was a tack room between us and her stall. Teri's solution was simple: a baby monitor.
In the beginning of the fourth week, I noticed a pearlescent droplet of milk on the tip of each teat.
"Teri! She's got milk! THERE'S MILK!!!" I cried out.
"What does that mean?!" Teri looked at me excitedly.
"Well, I guess it could mean anytime from today til like... five or six days from now." I admitted.
"At least she's got milk now, it can't be that far off!" Teri pointed out the positive side of this discovery.
That night Rose didn't make a sound. This in and of itself was disconcerting, but when we awoke Rose was still the only horse in the stall. Disappointed, we headed out.
That evening, Nancy stopped us on our walk. She noticed that Rose had milk starting to drip.
"Honey she's got milk dripping out! You shouldn't be walking her!"
I laughed. "Yes, she's had her milk since yesterday. I don't see a reason not to take her on a walk, I'd hate to be confined to that little stall all day with no way to stretch my legs."
"Well when my mare got her milk she laid down not an hour afterward and had the baby! She could drop any minute!" Nancy blubbered.
"Since Rose has had her milk since yesterday and there's still no foal, I imagine we're safe to take her on a short walk. I really doubt she's going to lay down right here and now and push that baby out. Not all mares have their foals the same way." I smiled and we walked off.
I was sure that I had secured my position as "Barn Bitch" by this point but I really didn't care. If everyone else was too ignorant to have common sense then I would use sense enough for all of them. Nancy was easily excited and very nice, and it was obvious to me that her heart was in the right place. Unfortunately for her, she just didn't have a ton of medical experience or knowlege and if there's one thing I can't stand its people pretending they know more than they do.
That night Rose laid down again and had us convinced she was going to finally have the foal. Once more, she fooled us.
The next morning the milk was steadily dripping out every few seconds. I started to worry that she would lose too much of that precious first milk and that the baby wouldn't get the right antibodies. But she wasn't dripping SO much milk that I could collect it either so I was forced to do nothing and wait.
Rose was silent that whole night. We awoke to a very alert and still very pregnant horse. Now I was really getting worried. She'd been dripping milk for days and still no foal. What if she was having trouble delivering? What if her water had already broken and she just couldn't push the baby out and now it was stuck in the birth canal, dead? Would I know if something like that happened?!
I breathed in deeply and exhaled slowly. She is fine, everything is still in the normal ranges, you are just getting yourself all worked up over nothing. Rose is young and in shape, she is as healthy as could be expected and she is going to do fine. Horses have been giving birth all by themselves for centuries, this is no different.
Except that it is different. She is my horse and she hasn't had the right care for the whole pregnancy and if something happens to her, I don't know what I'll do.
A small lump formed in my throat. Hot tears sprang to my eyes and I blinked, hard. I swallowed the lump in my throat and ran over to Rose and threw my arms around her neck.
"I'm so sorry, Rose. I'm sorry you're so SO hot and miserable. I'm sorry I didn't notice sooner, I'm sorry you didn't get the right pregnancy vaccines or feed, I'm sorry your ribs are showing and I'm sorry you're stuck in this little stall!" I breathed into the firm braids laying over her clammy neck.
It was as if Rose understood how upset I was. She leaned her head on my back for a moment while I was still wrapped around her neck, then pulled herself out of my grip and whuffed my palms. She gently pushed the flat of her face into my chest and stomach and stood there while I rubbed behind her ears and under her forelock.
I kissed her forehead before exiting her stall. I had to go to work. After work I came back and hosed her down and put her back in her stall. I needed to make it home and take a quick nap before we went to dinner with Teri's parents and grandfather. Teri's birthday had been the day before and his was the day after, so we all met at P.F. Chang's for an early dinner that night. We were supposed to have Copper Queens practice afterward but it was too stormy to skate.
When I went into Rose's stall that night, she didn't come over to see me. She stood in the corner and refused to acknowledge my presence. I glanced at her feeder - her hay was less than half eaten. This was unusual for her because she adored food and was eating for two. I added her grain, which I usually have to wrestle her out of the way so I can clip the bucket up, and she didn't even move from her corner. She shifted her weight from one back leg to the other every few seconds. Every once in awhile she'd kick at her belly.
I wondered if she was okay but understood the clear message she was broadcasting:
"Just leave me the hell alone."
"Goodnight, Rose." I whispered as I pulled her gate shut behind me. I shut the lights out and climbed into our tent. I set my phone alarm and placed the phone close to my head on the floor of the tent. I took off my socks and boots and traded jeans for rugby shorts. It was so warm I took off my shirt to sleep in just a sports bra. I switched on the baby monitor and lay down next to Teri.
It felt like hours before I was able to nod off. I awoke to Teri unzipping the tent and going outside to check on Rose. I sat up on my elbows but Teri returned a moment later, shrugging her shoulders and saying that Rose was standing in the middle of the stall, looking unconcerned. I flopped back down on the damp, sweaty patch of sleeping bag I had just been occupying.
I awoke again with a start. I couldn't understand what had woken me up so thoroughly. The faint buzzing of the baby monitor was a constant and my alarm hadn't gone off yet. Teri was sleeping next to me. I looked around and lay back down.
The monitor crackled. Or was that the straw on the ground?
The monitor emitted a weird buzzing sound. Or was it more of a gurgle? Was Rose drinking? More straw crackling.
Then I heard Rose snort and sigh. She inhaled and groaned in short bursts. More straw rustling around. Rose snorted again and grunted a few times.
I glanced at my phone. It was only 1:30am. I wanted to check on Rose but Teri had just checked on her and I didn't want to go out there just to see Rose laying down in the stall trying to catch some sleep.
I waited. Rose was quiet, with the exception of rustling straw every once in awhile.
I grew tired of waiting and just wanted to make sure she was okay. I quietly unzipped the tent and stepped into Teri's flip flops. I took the MagLite with me, so I could see if anything was going on. I approached her stall and saw her dark shape standing close to the front. Her head was down and she was quietly whickering. There was something down in the straw! All I saw was a bright white blaze on a tiny little head.
I feasted on that little face with my eyes as I leaned to the baby monitor.
"Teri, if you can hear this, we have a baby!" I said it quietly but I felt like shouting! It soon became obvious that I was wearing flip flops, rugby shorts and a sports bra. I needed to change before anything else. I strode quickly back to the tent, where Teri was hurriedly pulling her boots on. I jumped into my jeans, pulled a shirt over my head and stepped into my boots without any socks on. I grabbed the digital camera and my phone.
We walked as fast as we could back to the stall, where I shone the flashlight on the foal in the straw. He was laying with his legs tangled beneath him, but with his head up and looking around. Rose stood over him, gently licking all over his body and smelling him and quietly nickering.
His coat was red, and he had a big white blaze down his face. Three of his legs had white socks. I looked quizzically at Teri and said aloud,
"We're going to have to revisit the whole 'sire' issue, because this baby ain't no Percheron."
She laughed.
I let myself into the stall and rubbed Rose's neck and shoulders.
"Rosie, look what you did! Look what you made!" my voice shook and my body was trembling, and that familiar lump took its place in my throat. I laughed at myself and sniffled, wiped my face on my sleeve and grinned over at Teri.
"Can I turn the lights on yet?" she implored.
"Yes! Let's turn the lights on and see this baby."
She flipped the light switch and bright light flooded the stall. The foal squeezed his little eyes shut and Rose raised her head to investigate what was happening but when she saw it was Teri she put her head back down and continued cleaning her baby.
I crouched down next to the foal and started stroking his neck and back. I was feeling him over to make sure everything was okay.
"Well? What is it, boy or girl?" Teri asked.
"Oh, I haven't even checked." I felt a little foolish for not thinking to check right away. I lifted the little tail and saw only a rectum, no vulva.
"Boy. It's a boy!" I announced.
And thus began the onslaught of announcement text messages and phone calls, attempted photos and the beginning of our little colt's life.
And it only took 26 sunsets.
When we still had no foal after a couple of days, it became apparent to me that I was going to need to stock up on Rose's new grain and bales of straw. It was also really starting to get warm and Rose was constantly drenched in sweat. I could only imagine what it must be like to be carrying an eighty pound foal around in the middle of the summer in Tucson. Rose just looked miserable.
Every day I took to visiting Rose when it was hottest outside and hosing her whole body down with cool water. We would take leisurely walks around the property, stopping to let Rose graze on the few bright green patches of grass that grew up around trees and hosebibs. I curried and rubbed her down, brushed out her mane and tail and picked out her hooves.
I also noticed that her neck was especially hot and sweaty from the weight of her thick black mane laying on it all day. I braided her mane up to help cool her down. I kept a strict watch over her still-swelling udders, abdomen and vulva to gauge when she was going to foal but as Rose was a maiden mare (never had a baby before) there was really no knowing until the baby was coming out.
Teri rigged up a box fan in the corner of her new stall to circulate the air better and that seemed to make a difference - or at least the air wasn't stagnating any more.
I went into her stall almost every evening to dig out the muck under the straw because as much as horses urinate, pregnant horses urinate about three times as much! Teri's big joke was that not only did Rose have to pee like a racehorse (since she used to be one) but she had to pee like a pregnant racehorse! It was a funny joke to everybody, everybody except me because I got to scrape it all out of her stall.
Me, Teri and Rose quickly settled into a nice routine. We would arrive for the evening and hose her down one more time if it was especially hot, then go for a short walk as the sun started to set over the mountains. Then Rose would get her evening grain and brushing. Most evenings we had company come out to visit. Berto came out to spend time with her almost every day, as did our good friends Becca, Mya, Katie, and Julie. Additional visitors included Teri's parents, girls from both our roller derby and rugby teams, and people that both Teri and I worked with as well as some of Berto's coworkers. Becca and Mya and Berto even spent the night once to keep me company while Teri worked late.
Each night we would settle into the truck bed and say,
"Tonight's going to be the night!"
And most of the time we were wrong.
Each morning we would rise earlier than the sun and pack up the truck. I'd give Rose her breakfast grain and then drive Teri home before heading over to work.
Before too long, the heat was almost unbearable. Most nights we weren't able to fall asleep until the day's heat finally broke between 10:00pm and midnight. There were insects that would gather around the flashlights and lanterns and insects that would bite you even after the lights were all long extinguished. Even the most harmless ones were still annoying.
One day I arrived home from work to a giant pile of white netting sitting on the couch. I found Teri in the office.
"So who killed the bride and stashed her on our couch?"
Teri wasn't in the mood for joking. She had gone looking for a ready-made mosquito net to spread over the truck bed to stop our bodies from being feasted upon each night after dark. What she had found was indeed ready-made for just that purpose but was vastly overpriced. This drove her to find a fabric store from which she could purchase large quantities of mosquito netting. She bought a larger amount of fabric than was available in the expensive ready-made variety and had even managed to gather one side of it together and bind it around a clip so it could be suspended above the truck. I wouldn't know, but she told me it was quite the undertaking and the effort of it all plus the frustration put her spirits somewhat low.
However! That meant good news for us because the bugs were no longer going to be able to annoy us.
By this point, we were a good week into our "Camping Next to Rose's Stall" endeavor and the novelty had long worn off.
Nancy had started saying things like,
"Well since you don't know when she was bred, she might be another month before foaling you know."
This irritated me to no end, as Nancy was the catalyst that started us sleeping next to Rose long before I would have thought to do it on my own. Nancy also took to visiting every night before bed and admonishing us for sitting around in front of her stall.
"You don't think she's just going to pop that baby out with you all sitting right there, do you?"
"Nope, I sure don't expect that. But I also don't expect her to 'pop that baby out' this early in the evening, either. We're just sitting here until we go to bed." I tried to respond politely but I'm sure that wore off after we had this exact conversation for the third time.
Nancy had also begun mentioning that she'd been telling the other boarders about how we were going to be having a baby soon and everyone was so SO excited! She said that everyone thought it would be so cute to have the foal be the barn's mascot and that we should even name it Mascot. I thought this was less than funny.
A number of other people who kept their horses at the barn took to visiting Rose routinely, probably to check and see if there was a foal yet. At this development I decided to take some of these issues into my own hands.
I asked Teri to make a stall placard with Rose's information on it as well as our two phone numbers and Berto's number as emergency contacts. It also contained her breed, registered name, age, vet and farrier information and feeding instructions. Then I asked Teri to make a sign stating that nobody was allowed entry into the stall without owners' consent.
These two signs went up the next day and caused Nancy quite a bit of angst. She tried in vain to get me to remove the caution sign, she told me that nobody thought they could do that and didn't want anybody to be put off by such a defensive sign. I (somewhat) politely refused to take it down. It was extremely important that everybody understand that my poor pregnant mare was not a circus act, she was not a barn mascot and no matter how tolerant, she was not to be bothered at all hours of the day. Rose still received a lot of attention after that but everyone certainly settled down.
This whole time, I spent my spare moments reading foaling books and looking online for photos of mares about to foal so I could guess when she would have the baby. I was no closer to the answer than I had been two weeks before upon discovering the pregnancy.
Rose had taken to laying down at night and moaning and groaning. She would also grunt and roll and make all manner of labor-type noises. This made sleeping even more difficult, since we were convinced every single time she laid down she was going to have the foal.
After Rose made it obvious that she was going to lay down and fake us out every night, sleeping became easier again. We had now been sleeping at the barn every night for three weeks. We were tired of sleeping in the truck and having to pack everything up the next morning. Then the brilliant idea of setting up our little tent a few stalls over struck us. That way, we could keep our overnight bag inside the tent and we wouldn't have to deal with a mosquito netting, as the tent served that purpose already! We set up the tent and prepared to have a little less work each night and morning. Then the immediate problem was that we were now too far away to hear Rose very well, since there was a tack room between us and her stall. Teri's solution was simple: a baby monitor.
In the beginning of the fourth week, I noticed a pearlescent droplet of milk on the tip of each teat.
"Teri! She's got milk! THERE'S MILK!!!" I cried out.
"What does that mean?!" Teri looked at me excitedly.
"Well, I guess it could mean anytime from today til like... five or six days from now." I admitted.
"At least she's got milk now, it can't be that far off!" Teri pointed out the positive side of this discovery.
That night Rose didn't make a sound. This in and of itself was disconcerting, but when we awoke Rose was still the only horse in the stall. Disappointed, we headed out.
That evening, Nancy stopped us on our walk. She noticed that Rose had milk starting to drip.
"Honey she's got milk dripping out! You shouldn't be walking her!"
I laughed. "Yes, she's had her milk since yesterday. I don't see a reason not to take her on a walk, I'd hate to be confined to that little stall all day with no way to stretch my legs."
"Well when my mare got her milk she laid down not an hour afterward and had the baby! She could drop any minute!" Nancy blubbered.
"Since Rose has had her milk since yesterday and there's still no foal, I imagine we're safe to take her on a short walk. I really doubt she's going to lay down right here and now and push that baby out. Not all mares have their foals the same way." I smiled and we walked off.
I was sure that I had secured my position as "Barn Bitch" by this point but I really didn't care. If everyone else was too ignorant to have common sense then I would use sense enough for all of them. Nancy was easily excited and very nice, and it was obvious to me that her heart was in the right place. Unfortunately for her, she just didn't have a ton of medical experience or knowlege and if there's one thing I can't stand its people pretending they know more than they do.
That night Rose laid down again and had us convinced she was going to finally have the foal. Once more, she fooled us.
The next morning the milk was steadily dripping out every few seconds. I started to worry that she would lose too much of that precious first milk and that the baby wouldn't get the right antibodies. But she wasn't dripping SO much milk that I could collect it either so I was forced to do nothing and wait.
Rose was silent that whole night. We awoke to a very alert and still very pregnant horse. Now I was really getting worried. She'd been dripping milk for days and still no foal. What if she was having trouble delivering? What if her water had already broken and she just couldn't push the baby out and now it was stuck in the birth canal, dead? Would I know if something like that happened?!
I breathed in deeply and exhaled slowly. She is fine, everything is still in the normal ranges, you are just getting yourself all worked up over nothing. Rose is young and in shape, she is as healthy as could be expected and she is going to do fine. Horses have been giving birth all by themselves for centuries, this is no different.
Except that it is different. She is my horse and she hasn't had the right care for the whole pregnancy and if something happens to her, I don't know what I'll do.
A small lump formed in my throat. Hot tears sprang to my eyes and I blinked, hard. I swallowed the lump in my throat and ran over to Rose and threw my arms around her neck.
"I'm so sorry, Rose. I'm sorry you're so SO hot and miserable. I'm sorry I didn't notice sooner, I'm sorry you didn't get the right pregnancy vaccines or feed, I'm sorry your ribs are showing and I'm sorry you're stuck in this little stall!" I breathed into the firm braids laying over her clammy neck.
It was as if Rose understood how upset I was. She leaned her head on my back for a moment while I was still wrapped around her neck, then pulled herself out of my grip and whuffed my palms. She gently pushed the flat of her face into my chest and stomach and stood there while I rubbed behind her ears and under her forelock.
I kissed her forehead before exiting her stall. I had to go to work. After work I came back and hosed her down and put her back in her stall. I needed to make it home and take a quick nap before we went to dinner with Teri's parents and grandfather. Teri's birthday had been the day before and his was the day after, so we all met at P.F. Chang's for an early dinner that night. We were supposed to have Copper Queens practice afterward but it was too stormy to skate.
When I went into Rose's stall that night, she didn't come over to see me. She stood in the corner and refused to acknowledge my presence. I glanced at her feeder - her hay was less than half eaten. This was unusual for her because she adored food and was eating for two. I added her grain, which I usually have to wrestle her out of the way so I can clip the bucket up, and she didn't even move from her corner. She shifted her weight from one back leg to the other every few seconds. Every once in awhile she'd kick at her belly.
I wondered if she was okay but understood the clear message she was broadcasting:
"Just leave me the hell alone."
"Goodnight, Rose." I whispered as I pulled her gate shut behind me. I shut the lights out and climbed into our tent. I set my phone alarm and placed the phone close to my head on the floor of the tent. I took off my socks and boots and traded jeans for rugby shorts. It was so warm I took off my shirt to sleep in just a sports bra. I switched on the baby monitor and lay down next to Teri.
It felt like hours before I was able to nod off. I awoke to Teri unzipping the tent and going outside to check on Rose. I sat up on my elbows but Teri returned a moment later, shrugging her shoulders and saying that Rose was standing in the middle of the stall, looking unconcerned. I flopped back down on the damp, sweaty patch of sleeping bag I had just been occupying.
I awoke again with a start. I couldn't understand what had woken me up so thoroughly. The faint buzzing of the baby monitor was a constant and my alarm hadn't gone off yet. Teri was sleeping next to me. I looked around and lay back down.
The monitor crackled. Or was that the straw on the ground?
The monitor emitted a weird buzzing sound. Or was it more of a gurgle? Was Rose drinking? More straw crackling.
Then I heard Rose snort and sigh. She inhaled and groaned in short bursts. More straw rustling around. Rose snorted again and grunted a few times.
I glanced at my phone. It was only 1:30am. I wanted to check on Rose but Teri had just checked on her and I didn't want to go out there just to see Rose laying down in the stall trying to catch some sleep.
I waited. Rose was quiet, with the exception of rustling straw every once in awhile.
I grew tired of waiting and just wanted to make sure she was okay. I quietly unzipped the tent and stepped into Teri's flip flops. I took the MagLite with me, so I could see if anything was going on. I approached her stall and saw her dark shape standing close to the front. Her head was down and she was quietly whickering. There was something down in the straw! All I saw was a bright white blaze on a tiny little head.
I feasted on that little face with my eyes as I leaned to the baby monitor.
"Teri, if you can hear this, we have a baby!" I said it quietly but I felt like shouting! It soon became obvious that I was wearing flip flops, rugby shorts and a sports bra. I needed to change before anything else. I strode quickly back to the tent, where Teri was hurriedly pulling her boots on. I jumped into my jeans, pulled a shirt over my head and stepped into my boots without any socks on. I grabbed the digital camera and my phone.
We walked as fast as we could back to the stall, where I shone the flashlight on the foal in the straw. He was laying with his legs tangled beneath him, but with his head up and looking around. Rose stood over him, gently licking all over his body and smelling him and quietly nickering.
His coat was red, and he had a big white blaze down his face. Three of his legs had white socks. I looked quizzically at Teri and said aloud,
"We're going to have to revisit the whole 'sire' issue, because this baby ain't no Percheron."
She laughed.
I let myself into the stall and rubbed Rose's neck and shoulders.
"Rosie, look what you did! Look what you made!" my voice shook and my body was trembling, and that familiar lump took its place in my throat. I laughed at myself and sniffled, wiped my face on my sleeve and grinned over at Teri.
"Can I turn the lights on yet?" she implored.
"Yes! Let's turn the lights on and see this baby."
She flipped the light switch and bright light flooded the stall. The foal squeezed his little eyes shut and Rose raised her head to investigate what was happening but when she saw it was Teri she put her head back down and continued cleaning her baby.
I crouched down next to the foal and started stroking his neck and back. I was feeling him over to make sure everything was okay.
"Well? What is it, boy or girl?" Teri asked.
"Oh, I haven't even checked." I felt a little foolish for not thinking to check right away. I lifted the little tail and saw only a rectum, no vulva.
"Boy. It's a boy!" I announced.
And thus began the onslaught of announcement text messages and phone calls, attempted photos and the beginning of our little colt's life.
And it only took 26 sunsets.
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
"Unexpected Discoveries" or "Patience is a Virtue"
Early the next morning I awoke as a bolt of adrenaline raced through my veins. My eyes snapped open and I stared contemplatively at the ceiling for a few minutes. In my sleep, my brain had been mulling over the previous evening's visit with Rose.
"She didn't really look fat... she just had a belly. Her ribs were showing and her muscles all rippled under her coat as she moved around yesterday." I narrowed my eyes at the thought that a pregnancy might be possible.
"No, she just hasn't been exercised in awhile. My mind must be playing tricks on me and I'm making this into a bigger deal than it is. She's always been built a little strangely. Plus the timeline doesn't work out anyway because I got her between Halloween and Thanksgiving... right? Crap, I don't remember. How long ago was that?" I mused silently.
I couldn't go back to sleep.
"Okay so we're in the middle of June, let's say I got her in early November. November, December, January, February, March, April, May, June. See that's only eight months! But, well, what if she is pregnant and I won't admit it and she doesn't get the right care? Crap! I better email Linda and ask if she even has a stallion. She probably doesn't even have a stud on the property and I'm just being paranoid." I got out of bed quietly so as to not disturb Teri and padded into the office to shoot off an email.
I tried to word it tactfully so it came off as breezy and unconcerned, but it was early and I'm not sure how successful I really was.
"Hey there!
Just thinking about you and wondering how you're doing.
Also, I was wondering, do you happen to have any stallions on your property?
Hope you guys are great!
Yours, Ashleigh"
Then I told myself that there wasn't anything else I could do except wait for Linda to write back. I had a lot to get done that day, as it was the day of our long-awaited housewarming party.
I obsessively checked my email that morning and thankfully Linda responded quickly.
"Hi
How are you and Rose. We are doing fine.
Not much news. Things are pretty much the same as always. We would like to sell the place and move to NM but that has not happened yet.
I have a black Percheron Stallion.
Do you know of someone wanting to have babies?
I hope you guys are great!
Linda"
My heart jumped into my throat. Noooo, this couldn't be possible. Just because she has a stallion doesn't necessarily mean that Rose was pregnant... but if she was, the sire was a PERCHERON?! Seriously? Yikes. Okay. This warrants more sleuthing.
"New Mexico definitely has some gorgeous land, that would be really nice to have some property out there.
Rose and I are doing well, I haven't been able to ride much lately because I had surgery but I'm hoping I can start again next week.
The reason I asked about a stallion is, and well this is embarrassing so try to bear with me, because since I haven't been riding, Rose has gained some weight but it's all in her belly so I wanted to ask if she was exposed to the stallion and I haven't had her long enough to rule out a pregnancy. I figured that I should at least ask, just in case it's a possibility that she's pregnant so I can take the right care of her.
I know it's a little off the wall but I thought I'd be safe. Other than the fat belly she's just wonderful. My parents finally got to meet her and I think it's a good thing my mother doesn't have horse property or else she'd probably horse-nap her.
Any new horses or anything out there?
Thanks!
Ash"
More waiting. I should probably mention that at this point, I still haven't said anything to Teri about the possibility of a foal in our future. I purchased Rose in a very underhanded way and only managed to mention her to Teri the day before she was delivered to the stables, after the damage had been done. Teri was less than thrilled with me. In fact she's probably still less than thrilled with me. I'm shocked she's still married to me, most days. The last thing I wanted to do was bring it up and cause problems if there wasn't an actual problem to be had.
"WOW! I hope she is not with child, but I can not guarantee she is not. You know how things go. We had a lady take care of the place and she did have some of the horses get loose Rose was one of them and she could have been exposed to the stallion. I would say not if you had asked me from the start , but since I was not there when the horses got out I can not tell you she did not get covered.
I also had a paint /perch cross baby that could have been old enough to breed her, unlikely but maybe.
Maybe you should think about having her checked.
I am glad your mom liked Rose.
Sorry
Linda"
Well. There's the answer. My heart squirmed a little ways further up my throat. I tried to gulp it down but I was choking on the lumpy fact that I was going to have to try and explain to poor Teri that we might be having a baby. Which would bring our number of horses to 3, two of which were not approved. Teri had been out all morning running errands while I attempted to finish painting the bathroom doorframe. She had text messaged me not too long before I received that last email saying that she was bringing Chipotle home for lunch. My mouth was running dry with a slight panic over how she was going to take it and that we might have yet another mouth to feed on a single income.
Before I had too much time to completely destroy my courage, Teri walked through the door. I smiled at her and we sat down on the couch to eat. I downed some of the soda and opened my burrito wrapper but just couldn't bring myself to eat.
"Hey, so... I kinda have something I want to tell you but I want you to know that I did not know about this, I didn't try to have it happen and I'm already really sorry..." I trailed off.
Teri spiked an eyebrow at me. "What, you didn't have somebody give you another horse or something, did you?" She laughed at what she thought was a joke. My eyes betrayed me, they flashed surprise and then guilt as her jaw dropped.
"You must be kidding me. Ashleigh-" her tone was warning and a little angry.
"Well not exactly but kind of yes-in-the-way-that-a-young-horse-grows-in-a-mother-horse's-belly-it-turns-out-that-Linda-accidentally-sold-me-two-horses! Maybe." I finished in a rush.
I honestly have no idea what was running through Teri's mind as I said what I had to say. Slowly her face changed from anger to surprise to reluctant acceptance and finally her sense of irony kicked in. She threw her hands up in the air and laughed hopelessly.
This was not what I expected but I took it.
"What... how... WHAT?" Teri had reached the point that I hit in bed, early that morning. I explained everything to her and recounted my correspondence with Linda as well as my opinions and observations and what questions I still had.
"Okay, yeah, it sounds like we might be having a baby I guess. Shit." Teri looked down at her lunch, half uneaten. We had come so far in the previous five minutes that it was hard to believe that we were still sitting on that damn couch, trying to finish our food.
We sat in silence as we choked down what was left on our plates and finished off the soda.
"So how do we tell if she actually is pregnant?" Teri asked.
"I'm not really sure, I'm going to call Catherine." I pulled out my phone and started dialing my good friend Catherine, who was a horse vet that I used to work for and now lives in Casa Grande.
"Hey Catherine, so I have a weird question. How do you tell if a mare is pregnant late into her gestation?"
"Uh, you could always just try poking her belly - sometimes it'll poke you back! That'd be an easy way to tell." she laughed. I explained our predicament again and once more recounted what Linda had told me and what I had noticed the night before. Catherine agreed that I needed to go back out to the barn and do a little more detective work around Rose, check for signs of pregnancy that I wasn't looking for the night before.
Naturally, that night was our housewarming party so I wasn't going anywhere til Saturday. We told our friends about our potentially pregnant horse and pointed out the irony of the two of us having an unexpected pregnancy.
Saturday morning I got up and we had a lot of cleaning to do around the house. By afternoon it was just too hot to convince myself to go outside and I was still less than a week out of my surgery and I was pretty beat.
Saturday evening we drove out to the barn to visit Rose. I walked up to her stall and greeted her. Teri walked up behind me.
"Holy crap she's big!"
"Yeah... now you see what I mean." I replied grimly.
I opened the gate to her stall and closed it behind Teri. I walked to Rose's side and crouched down to look at her udders. Sure enough, they were swollen up. I groaned and sighed.
"Udders are swollen up."
I glanced under her tail and her vulva was slightly swollen and looked larger than normal. I stood close at Rose's side and placed the palms of my hands flat on the underside of her large belly.
It only took a few seconds to feel that very first, earthshattering movement across the floor of her abdomen. Teri stood on her other side and mimicked my hand placement.
"Oh my god I feel it moving!" she exclaimed to me over Rose's back. I grinned back at her.
"I know, I feel it too!"
For a few minutes we simply stood with Rose in silence, letting the waves of truth crash over our unsuspecting heads. What did this mean for us? Could we even hope to afford taking care of yet another horse? We would need to move her into a different stall and get it all ready. How far along was she? Was she going to pop that night or would it be another month or two? Was the baby going to be okay since we hadn't been doing any prenatal care? My head was filled with questions to which I had no answers.
I found the barn manager (Nancy, for future reference) and explained our situation to her. She was very sympathetic and helped us decide on a stall to turn into a foaling stall for Rose. She looked at her udders and her vulva and exclaimed that she thought Rose was going to give birth very, very soon. Immediately, that put me into a panic. She can't give birth yet, there's not a safe place for the baby to be born! We put Rose into the stall that would become the foaling stall and immediately sped off to Lowe's to purchase plywood planks to line the stall with. We had to buy plywood, zip ties, get the tools we'd need to prepare the stall, figure out something for bedding, buy supplies for a foaling emergency kit and countless other things I felt I didn't have time for.
The awesome people at Lowe's let us race in there 1 minute before closing and buy sheets of plywood and then even cut them for us. Then we went home and explained the whole thing to Berto and he agreed to come out and help Teri with the stall while I ran to Walgreen's to build my foaling kit.
A couple of hours later, we had plywood planks installed (to prevent baby legs from getting stuck in railings and breaking, and to stop baby from laying on its side and scooting outside of the stall), a bale of grass hay spread on the ground since we couldn't find straw at 9 pm on a Saturday night and a Tupperware container full of iodine, bandages, gloves, vetwrap and athletic tape, ready for the foal to come.
This photo was the first photo taken of Rose in her new foaling stall. Obviously it's a poor quality picture but you can see her big pregnant belly.
Petrified that the foal was going to be born that night, Teri and I had brought our camping mats and sleeping bags and supplies to stay the night at the barn in the bed of my truck. Finally by 11 pm we were ready to go to sleep. We shut the lights off and settled into our makeshift bed in the truck.
Every movement from Rose was amplified not only by our heightened senses unable to sleep, but also by the dry and scratchy hay covering the ground. I'm almost positive that neither of us slept more than two hours that night.
Dawn arrived early the next morning and brought with it flies, birds, and the sounds of the horses around us awakening and calling for their breakfasts. I sat bolt upright in the bed of the truck and looked toward the stall, expecting to see eight legs instead of Rose's four.
No such luck. Rose walked over to her water barrel and gulped down a few mouthfuls of cool water and then looked straight over at us and whinnied.
"Good morning to you too, Rose." Teri mumbled from under a sleeping bag.
Night number 1 had passed us by.
"She didn't really look fat... she just had a belly. Her ribs were showing and her muscles all rippled under her coat as she moved around yesterday." I narrowed my eyes at the thought that a pregnancy might be possible.
"No, she just hasn't been exercised in awhile. My mind must be playing tricks on me and I'm making this into a bigger deal than it is. She's always been built a little strangely. Plus the timeline doesn't work out anyway because I got her between Halloween and Thanksgiving... right? Crap, I don't remember. How long ago was that?" I mused silently.
I couldn't go back to sleep.
"Okay so we're in the middle of June, let's say I got her in early November. November, December, January, February, March, April, May, June. See that's only eight months! But, well, what if she is pregnant and I won't admit it and she doesn't get the right care? Crap! I better email Linda and ask if she even has a stallion. She probably doesn't even have a stud on the property and I'm just being paranoid." I got out of bed quietly so as to not disturb Teri and padded into the office to shoot off an email.
I tried to word it tactfully so it came off as breezy and unconcerned, but it was early and I'm not sure how successful I really was.
"Hey there!
Just thinking about you and wondering how you're doing.
Also, I was wondering, do you happen to have any stallions on your property?
Hope you guys are great!
Yours, Ashleigh"
Then I told myself that there wasn't anything else I could do except wait for Linda to write back. I had a lot to get done that day, as it was the day of our long-awaited housewarming party.
I obsessively checked my email that morning and thankfully Linda responded quickly.
"Hi
How are you and Rose. We are doing fine.
Not much news. Things are pretty much the same as always. We would like to sell the place and move to NM but that has not happened yet.
I have a black Percheron Stallion.
Do you know of someone wanting to have babies?
I hope you guys are great!
Linda"
My heart jumped into my throat. Noooo, this couldn't be possible. Just because she has a stallion doesn't necessarily mean that Rose was pregnant... but if she was, the sire was a PERCHERON?! Seriously? Yikes. Okay. This warrants more sleuthing.
"New Mexico definitely has some gorgeous land, that would be really nice to have some property out there.
Rose and I are doing well, I haven't been able to ride much lately because I had surgery but I'm hoping I can start again next week.
The reason I asked about a stallion is, and well this is embarrassing so try to bear with me, because since I haven't been riding, Rose has gained some weight but it's all in her belly so I wanted to ask if she was exposed to the stallion and I haven't had her long enough to rule out a pregnancy. I figured that I should at least ask, just in case it's a possibility that she's pregnant so I can take the right care of her.
I know it's a little off the wall but I thought I'd be safe. Other than the fat belly she's just wonderful. My parents finally got to meet her and I think it's a good thing my mother doesn't have horse property or else she'd probably horse-nap her.
Any new horses or anything out there?
Thanks!
Ash"
More waiting. I should probably mention that at this point, I still haven't said anything to Teri about the possibility of a foal in our future. I purchased Rose in a very underhanded way and only managed to mention her to Teri the day before she was delivered to the stables, after the damage had been done. Teri was less than thrilled with me. In fact she's probably still less than thrilled with me. I'm shocked she's still married to me, most days. The last thing I wanted to do was bring it up and cause problems if there wasn't an actual problem to be had.
"WOW! I hope she is not with child, but I can not guarantee she is not. You know how things go. We had a lady take care of the place and she did have some of the horses get loose Rose was one of them and she could have been exposed to the stallion. I would say not if you had asked me from the start , but since I was not there when the horses got out I can not tell you she did not get covered.
I also had a paint /perch cross baby that could have been old enough to breed her, unlikely but maybe.
Maybe you should think about having her checked.
I am glad your mom liked Rose.
Sorry
Linda"
Well. There's the answer. My heart squirmed a little ways further up my throat. I tried to gulp it down but I was choking on the lumpy fact that I was going to have to try and explain to poor Teri that we might be having a baby. Which would bring our number of horses to 3, two of which were not approved. Teri had been out all morning running errands while I attempted to finish painting the bathroom doorframe. She had text messaged me not too long before I received that last email saying that she was bringing Chipotle home for lunch. My mouth was running dry with a slight panic over how she was going to take it and that we might have yet another mouth to feed on a single income.
Before I had too much time to completely destroy my courage, Teri walked through the door. I smiled at her and we sat down on the couch to eat. I downed some of the soda and opened my burrito wrapper but just couldn't bring myself to eat.
"Hey, so... I kinda have something I want to tell you but I want you to know that I did not know about this, I didn't try to have it happen and I'm already really sorry..." I trailed off.
Teri spiked an eyebrow at me. "What, you didn't have somebody give you another horse or something, did you?" She laughed at what she thought was a joke. My eyes betrayed me, they flashed surprise and then guilt as her jaw dropped.
"You must be kidding me. Ashleigh-" her tone was warning and a little angry.
"Well not exactly but kind of yes-in-the-way-that-a-young-horse-grows-in-a-mother-horse's-belly-it-turns-out-that-Linda-accidentally-sold-me-two-horses! Maybe." I finished in a rush.
I honestly have no idea what was running through Teri's mind as I said what I had to say. Slowly her face changed from anger to surprise to reluctant acceptance and finally her sense of irony kicked in. She threw her hands up in the air and laughed hopelessly.
This was not what I expected but I took it.
"What... how... WHAT?" Teri had reached the point that I hit in bed, early that morning. I explained everything to her and recounted my correspondence with Linda as well as my opinions and observations and what questions I still had.
"Okay, yeah, it sounds like we might be having a baby I guess. Shit." Teri looked down at her lunch, half uneaten. We had come so far in the previous five minutes that it was hard to believe that we were still sitting on that damn couch, trying to finish our food.
We sat in silence as we choked down what was left on our plates and finished off the soda.
"So how do we tell if she actually is pregnant?" Teri asked.
"I'm not really sure, I'm going to call Catherine." I pulled out my phone and started dialing my good friend Catherine, who was a horse vet that I used to work for and now lives in Casa Grande.
"Hey Catherine, so I have a weird question. How do you tell if a mare is pregnant late into her gestation?"
"Uh, you could always just try poking her belly - sometimes it'll poke you back! That'd be an easy way to tell." she laughed. I explained our predicament again and once more recounted what Linda had told me and what I had noticed the night before. Catherine agreed that I needed to go back out to the barn and do a little more detective work around Rose, check for signs of pregnancy that I wasn't looking for the night before.
Naturally, that night was our housewarming party so I wasn't going anywhere til Saturday. We told our friends about our potentially pregnant horse and pointed out the irony of the two of us having an unexpected pregnancy.
Saturday morning I got up and we had a lot of cleaning to do around the house. By afternoon it was just too hot to convince myself to go outside and I was still less than a week out of my surgery and I was pretty beat.
Saturday evening we drove out to the barn to visit Rose. I walked up to her stall and greeted her. Teri walked up behind me.
"Holy crap she's big!"
"Yeah... now you see what I mean." I replied grimly.
I opened the gate to her stall and closed it behind Teri. I walked to Rose's side and crouched down to look at her udders. Sure enough, they were swollen up. I groaned and sighed.
"Udders are swollen up."
I glanced under her tail and her vulva was slightly swollen and looked larger than normal. I stood close at Rose's side and placed the palms of my hands flat on the underside of her large belly.
It only took a few seconds to feel that very first, earthshattering movement across the floor of her abdomen. Teri stood on her other side and mimicked my hand placement.
"Oh my god I feel it moving!" she exclaimed to me over Rose's back. I grinned back at her.
"I know, I feel it too!"
For a few minutes we simply stood with Rose in silence, letting the waves of truth crash over our unsuspecting heads. What did this mean for us? Could we even hope to afford taking care of yet another horse? We would need to move her into a different stall and get it all ready. How far along was she? Was she going to pop that night or would it be another month or two? Was the baby going to be okay since we hadn't been doing any prenatal care? My head was filled with questions to which I had no answers.
I found the barn manager (Nancy, for future reference) and explained our situation to her. She was very sympathetic and helped us decide on a stall to turn into a foaling stall for Rose. She looked at her udders and her vulva and exclaimed that she thought Rose was going to give birth very, very soon. Immediately, that put me into a panic. She can't give birth yet, there's not a safe place for the baby to be born! We put Rose into the stall that would become the foaling stall and immediately sped off to Lowe's to purchase plywood planks to line the stall with. We had to buy plywood, zip ties, get the tools we'd need to prepare the stall, figure out something for bedding, buy supplies for a foaling emergency kit and countless other things I felt I didn't have time for.
The awesome people at Lowe's let us race in there 1 minute before closing and buy sheets of plywood and then even cut them for us. Then we went home and explained the whole thing to Berto and he agreed to come out and help Teri with the stall while I ran to Walgreen's to build my foaling kit.
A couple of hours later, we had plywood planks installed (to prevent baby legs from getting stuck in railings and breaking, and to stop baby from laying on its side and scooting outside of the stall), a bale of grass hay spread on the ground since we couldn't find straw at 9 pm on a Saturday night and a Tupperware container full of iodine, bandages, gloves, vetwrap and athletic tape, ready for the foal to come.
This photo was the first photo taken of Rose in her new foaling stall. Obviously it's a poor quality picture but you can see her big pregnant belly.
Petrified that the foal was going to be born that night, Teri and I had brought our camping mats and sleeping bags and supplies to stay the night at the barn in the bed of my truck. Finally by 11 pm we were ready to go to sleep. We shut the lights off and settled into our makeshift bed in the truck.
Every movement from Rose was amplified not only by our heightened senses unable to sleep, but also by the dry and scratchy hay covering the ground. I'm almost positive that neither of us slept more than two hours that night.
Dawn arrived early the next morning and brought with it flies, birds, and the sounds of the horses around us awakening and calling for their breakfasts. I sat bolt upright in the bed of the truck and looked toward the stall, expecting to see eight legs instead of Rose's four.
No such luck. Rose walked over to her water barrel and gulped down a few mouthfuls of cool water and then looked straight over at us and whinnied.
"Good morning to you too, Rose." Teri mumbled from under a sleeping bag.
Night number 1 had passed us by.
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
October 2008
In late October of 2008, I was wandering aimlessly through Tucson's craigslist - particularly the farm and garden section, as it is my favorite. I'd been clicking on ads about horses for sale ever since I first discovered that people sell horses in the farm and garden section, it's just one of those natural curiosities and jealousies I secretly harbored.
My attention was drawn to an advertisement for a rescued 6 year old Thoroughbred mare. Against my better judgement, I was compelled to call the woman selling her and ask about her, as the ad specifically stated that she would have to have an experienced rider. Why does she need an experienced rider? Is she Satan incarnate or is she just a lot of horse? Does she try to kill you or is she just overexcitable? The woman selling her (Linda, for future reference) was very straightforward and told me the mare's story and explained that she was definitely no killer, just inexperienced and powerfully fast.
Well. Powerfully fast, eh? This intrigued me. I enjoy powerfully fast horses. Perhaps I should go visit the mare, just to see. Sure, it can't hurt.
Linda and her husband own a parcel of land southeast of Tucson, in Mescal. It took me about 50 minutes to get out there. Linda met me in the driveway, apologizing that she hadn't had a chance to get the mare and clean her up for me. No problem, I'd rather not see a horse for the first time when it's already caught and prepared for a buyer to view. The bay Thoroughbred mare was turned out with two little Paint cross fillies and a couple of geldings, but she turned to face me and Linda as we approached and allowed herself to be haltered and lead away without a fuss at all.
Linda explained to me that she had been a racehorse and that she was registered with the Jockey's Club, and that she had even been moderately successful on the track. She was purchased by a guy wanting to breed her and sell the babies but once he had her, he realized that the horse market had crashed and that it would not be financially beneficial to breed her so he just left her on the property in a turnout fenced with barbed wire. As horses are prone to doing, she got herself in trouble. Her legs were badly tangled in a loose piece of barbed wire and were cut and injured and required medical attention. The man wasn't interested in paying for a vet to stitch her up and pay for her medications to recover so he planned on sending her to slaughter, where he would earn at least a couple hundred dollars for her.
Linda heard about her situation and intercepted her before anything too horrible happened. She gave the man more money than the slaughterhouse would have and brought the mare home to rehab. The vet was called immediately to dress and suture her wounds, and she lived on Linda's property with other rescue horses for almost a year, recovering from her injuries and learning how to be a horse again.
Linda also admitted to me that she had only ridden her a handful of times and that she was large and strong and intimidatingly fast. She then proceeded to ask if I wanted to ride the mare. With an introduction like that, how could I resist?! Linda rides only English, but offered me the one Western saddle she owned to test drive the horse. I saddled her and accustomed her to the saddle, which she had never worked in before.
I found the mare to be high energy, excitable, and hot-blooded. But she also was kind and willing and tried very hard to do what I was asking of her. I smelled raw potential. Add that to her sweet and affectionate nature, her speed, and her very low rescue price and I was sold.
I wrote Linda a check that very same afternoon, with plans made to have Linda deliver her to me that following weekend. Linda gave me her papers, with her name at the top: Welcome Queen. It was only then that I remembered to ask what her barn name was.
"Well, the guy before us had been calling her Queenie but she's just too sweet for that. We've been calling her Rose." Linda replies.
And sure enough, the only white marking on her whole body is a rose-shaped star and stripe on her pretty face.
Rose arrived at the stables the following Saturday and was nervous. Understandably so, she hadn't had the best experiences with being traded around. She came out of the trailer and I put her into her new stall to figure things out. She paced a bit and looked around and debated on whether or not to make friends with her new neighbors. Overall, she settled in very nicely. Linda was sad to leave, as Rose had won over a lot of hearts in the year she stayed with them but I told her she could visit anytime and that we would stay in touch.
Little did I know how "in touch" we were destined to become.
Over the next ten months, Rose and I learned about each other. I rode frequently, and Rose learned how to have a job again. I got to know the ins and outs of her personality, and she about mine.
Unfortunately, May brought with it a tempest of happenings. Teri and I were in the middle of attempting to buy a house as well as pack and get ready to move. The roller derby championships were quickly approaching, as was my breast reduction surgery. Our house closed and we moved just before the big game. We scheduled a housewarming party for the Friday to follow my surgery. We had to take into account that some of our good friends were celebrating their wedding on Mount Lemmon a week or two after our housewarming and that we had made additional camping plans for July. Not to mention of course that Teri's birthday as well as three of our other friends all were in June or July.
Needless to say, Rose and Rocky did not see much attention during those four weeks. I thought of them every day and kept telling myself that I just didn't have the time, or the energy, or I had other things to do or that I couldn't go yet because I hadn't healed enough. Excuses, essentially. I felt terribly about neglecting them.
My parents had spent a lot of time with me the week following my surgery. Finally on Thursday I asked if they wanted to go visit the horses, as my dad hadn't met Rose yet. We drove out there late afternoon and walked up to Rose's stall.
"Hi big girl!" I greeted her... and mused to myself that I should ask the caretaker to cut down her hay rations, as she had developed quite the hay belly over the last month.
"She looks kinda fat, Ash." my mom remarked.
"I know, she's not a very typical Thoroughbred when it comes to food. She loves to eat! Most Thoroughbreds are hard to keep weight on because their metabolisms are so high." I attempted to explain it away.
I haltered her and lead her to the hitching post, where I groomed her and picked out her feet. I took her into the small round pen to let her run around. She was nosing the ground and meandering slowly. I had been bragging to my parents about how awesome she was and how fast and how much potential she had and blah blah blah, and here she was all fat and slow! Embarrassing. I clucked at her and asked her to trot out, which she did.
"They really should have given Rose the pregnancy test at the hospital instead of you!" laughed my mom. I bust out laughing and agreed, but didn't think anything of it.
Rose was reluctant to pick up a lope and she kept dropping out of her trot to walk. I was a little frustrated and definitely embarrassed and most highly of all, ashamed of myself.
I stopped Rose and clipped her lead back on and we took her back to her stall. We got back into my parents' Volvo SUV and drove back home without another mention of her large and unsightly abdomen.
Monday, August 3, 2009
First!
I wanted to create this blog as a place to record the day to day trials and tribulations of raising my first foal.
I have unfortunately been remiss in not starting to write about him until now, as he's two and a half weeks old, so hopefully I didn't forget too much about his first couple weeks on this earth.
Today is a day set aside for getting layouts and settings finished and later I will hopefully get the chance to tell his tale from before he was born. It is quite the thrilling tale, with twists and turns and lots of bumps along the way and it deserves a righteous telling.
I have unfortunately been remiss in not starting to write about him until now, as he's two and a half weeks old, so hopefully I didn't forget too much about his first couple weeks on this earth.
Today is a day set aside for getting layouts and settings finished and later I will hopefully get the chance to tell his tale from before he was born. It is quite the thrilling tale, with twists and turns and lots of bumps along the way and it deserves a righteous telling.
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