Buyers for our foals had been coming every year throughout Washington and Oregon and the horses and owners were coming back for me to do the training. I really felt good about what I was doing. Foaling seasons had all gone well. Morgans babies were great. Bellagio grew up and we were getting ready for his first babies to show. I had been checking Paris every few hours. She had a few babies before, with no problem, so I wasn't too concerned.
I got up for my 7 am check. She was down in the stall. I really did not like to foal the mares out in stalls. With the increased number of horses on the property and the rain, everything was a mud hole. I was reminded of Vashon. I was afraid the overcrowding and the mud would bring us another bacteria problem. So I was keeping her in the paddock near the house. She could come back and forth into the foaling stall. She had chosen the stall to have her baby rather than the pouring rain.
She wasn't straining? Something was terribly wrong. The babys nose was out, it was cold. I had just checked her, it seemed, less than an hour ago. How long ago was it? I worked and worked to get the baby out. The one front leg had locked itself back at the elbow and the force of her pushing had jammed the leg against her pelvis. I called the Vet. Two hours later we had the baby out. It was dead. What could I have done different? How could I have missed it? I should have been there earlier. It was time to get Paris up. She needed to move. She had been down for probably at least four hours.
People started coming to the barn for their morning rides. Everyone was trying to get her up. We rolled her, turned her, tried to feed her, pounded on her, attempted to make a sling. 12 hours later we knew she wasn't going to get up. By then we had neighbors and boarders and Ryder and Cooper, Art and Peppers kids. Should we take her to the Vet Hospital? How would we load her? We couldn't get her in the two horse trailer? One of the neighbors, a couple of ladies who had bought one of Cuddles foals from us recently, Marci and Jennie, had a stock trailer. We setup a sheet of plywood to slide her up into the trailer, rolled her onto a blanket and slid her in. What a team.
Liz Lake one of the boarders wrote a description of the day. These people were great. What a joy it was for us to know them. Paris was in the hospital for a couple days. It was soon evident that irreversible damage had been done to her spinal cord and she would never walk again. I was crushed. Art and Pepper made the difficult decision to have her put to sleep. She was such a wonderful horse. She was the horse that all the kids rode. She was sweet and kind. She was a gorgeous palomino. She was so stocky she was often mistaken for a quarter horse. It was indeed a sad day.
I realized that day that there was something inside of your mom and I that God had been doing, that others were seeing on the outside. Liz expressed this in her letter to Art and Pepper about that day. "We wanted to let you know how sad we felt about Paris. As you may have heard Connie and I spent the better part of Sunday attempting to help her. As I write this, I understand she is still not doing well. During the course of Sundays ordeal, both of us were struck by several things. Probably the most important was the dedication and love that both your managers had for this horse, to be sure, for all the horses. From the moment we got there and were swept up into the urgency of the situation, we never doubted that they would move heaven and earth to make her better.
John (Ciscos owner) arrived at the same time as we did and the five of us spent many hours trying to do anything to help Paris get up. Managers would suggest something that might work and we would all jump to see if we could implement it, all this while he was in extreme pain from his own injury a few days before. But, he was in there ahead of us pushing, bracing, and moving hay bales for her to rest on. As the hours wore on and we realized that something more had to be done, he called in reinforcements from the neighbors. You are blessed with extraordinary neighbors. Curt came with his sons and we tried a sling. (Curt was one of the families from church in the ATI home schooling program).
When that failed, the ladies who purchased Star (Cuddles baby) came with their stock trailer and support. It took six adults, your two great kids, and the neighbors son to finally get Paris into the trailer so she could go somewhere to get the help she needed. I don't know if I have ever witnessed such collective strength, determination, dedication and heart in one effort as we were part of that Sunday evening. We wanted you to know how lucky we think you are especially in having this couple as your managers. We are constantly impressed by these two and are always learning things from them. They are wonderful, warm, caring people and their feelings for the horses is so genuine. We saw what they did that day and know they would do the same for all our animals. There was no suggestion unexplored, no idea untried. We tried to give Paris a fighting chance because she deserves it. They understood that, and did everything they could. You may have heard all of this before, but we just wanted you to know how important we felt it was. Please know that Paris is in our prayers."
This had been a difficult spring. We had to put Espresso down, Peppers first gaited horse, one that her and her kids had ridden bareback together. He was diagnosed with Cushings Disease. He wouldn't take the medication in any shape or form no matter how I tried to get it into him. I think he wanted to die. It was hard to take him into the Vet and have him put to sleep. I had earlier lost another foal, one of the mares that someone had put a deposit down to own her baby when it was born. It seemed I was minutes too late in getting out checking the mother. I think the baby had suffocated before it came out. Something they call Red Bag. I was feeling emotionally drained.
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