During the winter of 96/97 we had extensive snow and rain, and then massive flooding in the Reno/Carson area. We had been warned by Washoe County Health Officials to be on the lookout for problems with our pregnant livestock and consequently the babies. We had flooding from Washoe Lake, the creek at the end of our road, and of course all the water from the Sierras washing down our side of the valley through our neighbors to the west, through our subdivision on it's way to the lake. The county was worried about possible contamination to our well from everybody else's septic. Our septic never had a problem. We filter our water to drink, both for us and all our livestock, so I really wasn't too concerned.

Until our Appaloosa mare, Happy, waxed up at only 314 days into her pregnancy.

Happy managed to hold the foal in utero until 320 days. Then she gave birth. I was relieved to see a live whinnying baby horse with two eyes and four legs and a tail. What I didn't see right at first in the dark was the fact that her neck muscles on her right side of her neck were shorter than the left. Worse, her hind legs were so bowed to the right that her feet pointed to the left not down. She could not stand up for the obvious reason that her legs were not pointed in the right direction. A frantic call was put into our vet who could not come because she had to take her husband into surgery. She gave me the number of the vet taking her calls and I called him.

Dr. Rich Sanford came out and looked at our situation. He confirmed that our problem was NOT related to the high water just a wrong, wadded up position inside the mare. He also got us started on the road to helping out our filly. He helped us strip the mare and get a meal in the foal. He then explained that although she was premature, mother nature straightened lots of crooked legs with time but the biggest strike against her was being so premature. This boiled down to "she might make it with intensive care nursing........but she might not."   He explained that foals that are down a lot are prone to contracting pneumonia and we should watch her carefully. He also explained that if she was going to make it, she needed to be up on her own really soon.

At this point my family and I decided to make the commitment to save her. For the next twenty-four hours we took turns keeping her warm, milking (stripping) the mare, feeding the filly, changing the sides she laid on. We also took turns in shifts to hold her upright as horses are not built to lay down all the time.

Our vet, Dr. Susan McCartney, came out the next day and assessed the filly. She gave the filly vitamin shots and explained how there might be a neurological problem as the filly still couldn't stand and definitely had a balance problem. We both agreed that we had seen some really crooked legs and the foals could stand up in a day or so. I, at this point, decided that we should still try to save her.

I'm not sure how the family would have felt about it if we had put it up for a vote, but they all went along with me. Not because I'm Mom or anything like that-------the filly was so cute!

On day four I decided that we needed to start trying to get her interested in nursing so that by shifting sides we could get her to stretch those neck muscles. So we started working in shifts holding her up (totally supported by us) to get to the milk bag. She had a terrible time holding on to the mare's nipple (as Dr. McCartney said she might) and it was really hard for her to twist her head to nurse. I might add that as time went on it got easier for the filly but harder on us to hold her up as she was getting heavier and our backs were getting sorer. As predicted her legs straightened to the point that her hooves pointed down but she still had a horrible bow in her legs that basically prevented her from supporting her weight or walking. She still took four or five tries to latch on to mom's bag when nursing and still was totally supported by us.

On or about day ten, the filly was taking a nap in front of the gate in the paddock and her mom stepped on her. Of course good ole Happy had stepped on the most crooked hind leg. At the time this happened we had the filly supporting about 30% of her weight on her legs while we held her up. The leg was not fractured but was traumatized severely enough that the filly became a "downer" again---only up to nurse.

This scared me because of what Dr. Sanford had said. After two days of not wanting to support herself or try to stand or walk, only nursing would get her to want to get up, she quit wanting to nurse and her temperature had risen above normal. Dr. Sanford was on call and he came out and examined her. She definitely had pneumonia and he wasn't sure she was going to make it.

UPDATE - Read more about the  FILLY
April 1998 PHOTO

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