A Baby Boomer Dreams of Arabian Horses - The Legacy Continues - Part 3

Part 1 of the Legacy Continues


It was immediately love at first sight, both for Heiress, the Arabian mare, and for me. The mare nickered softly immediately recognizing this wet infant as her own. She struggled to reach the filly not wanting to get up but still wanting to touch her foal. The horse somehow managed to scoot enough to actually reach her filly. The expression on the mare's face was priceless. Heiress was clearly enamored with her new baby.

As I gazed down at the two of then,I just couldn't believe this beautiful little filly was actually mine. Here she was the first foal of my second generation of breeding and she appeared to be absolutely perfect. Legs had done pretty well for himself. This was definitely a quality filly.

Even though this filly was absolutely darling, she was a bit slow. The problems with the birth had evidently caused a lack of oxygen, she was clearly a dummy foal. Her reaction time was a bit slow. She just laid there at first. When she did move to get up she struggled just to get to an upright position. Once she was there, she just stayed there not wanting to get up.

She did an odd amount of blinking which struck me like she was confused. I could see her little wheels turning but just not making any sense of what was happening. There were clearly cobwebs in her head.

I still needed to get her up to nurse, When prompted to rise by running my fingers down each side of her spine, she just couldn't figure out how to use her legs. The long spidery things seemed to go every which way but underneath her. They went so many directions at once, there was no way she had any chance of getting them underneath her. Heck, she couldn't even get any weight onto them. It was funny but frustrating.

Even though the filly appeared to be slow she sure didn't want any help either. It was early to be deciding what about her parents she resembled but I was pretty sure in disposition she was taking after mom. As the vet and I worked together trying to help her to her feet, I know I saw that Heiress look. The one that says "back off or I'm gonna kick you or bite you or something........" It was a a good thing this filly couldn't figure out how to use the equipment she had.

In those days, Dave and Lindsay weren't all that excited about new babies. They liked them but not enough to get out of bed for them. Taking care of newborns was totally up to me. I was glad that the vet was here for this one.

While I had had dummy foals before, this one was more confused that I was used to assisting. Then there's that thing with me an patience. Getting a foal to nurse is not my long suit. I hear the clock ticking like it's a time bomb ready to explode at any moment. I'm get so focused on antibodies that my patience gets pretty thin.

Thankfully, the vet had enough patience for both of us. With his help, we finally did get the filly up and nursing. Her suckle response was good and once she had it figured out, we were good to go. The vet left to get some sleep and I settled in with the new mom and her foal.

Once the vet was gone, I cleaned the wet stall and then gazed at the foal for hours. I don't know that I even noticed the cold, I was so mesmerized by my first filly. It was dawn before I went back into the house. By then the filly was acting like a normal foal. She was getting up on her own and nursing easily.

Things were looking like they were going to be all right but we did blood work at the appropriate time to confirm the IgG scores were good. Because Heiress was a maiden mare there was more chance that she might not produce enough antibodies for the foal. We wanted to be safe.

It's a good thing we did, the test came back with the score under 400. That is not considered to be a safe level. So right of the bat we had to deal with the filly having a transfusion to insure that her antibodies came up to acceptable levels.

This new filly was not the least bit inclined to stay still to be poked and prodded. She was unhappy about being stuck for the blood test and even more cantankerous about holding still for a transfusion.

It took the two of us to get her even into a position were I could hold her down so the vet could get the shunt in place.The darn filly was a spitfire. I have to admit that over the years, I've become pretty accomplished at wrestling with non-compliant foals. This filly was the beginning of my education. Up until then my foals had been easy to handle, but fillies, well fillies are a different animal than colts.

To be continued...........

The Legacy Continues Part 4

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