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.
You made me cry when you threw your arms around Rose and told her you were sorry.... and the way she loved you right back (sniff sniff) ahhh man.....
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