A Different Kind of Journey - The Discovery.........

This Story Begins Here

The last thing I had said to YW before I left the barn that day was "Call me and let me know that you've talked to him." I wanted to know that the situation with Vee's stall was fixed but that call never came. I called her and no one answered so I left a message. Then I called again. I called on her house phone and I called on her cell phone. Still no return call.

First thing the next morning, I did it all again. Still there was no answer nor was there any call. I kept calling and leaving messages. I called for days pleading to know that my mare was ok all to no avail. Finally I called and left the message I would be there to pick Vee up the following day. There was no response to that call either.

I will never forget the sight I saw when I walked into the barn that day. That little trail in the barn aisle was no longer just a barely visible wet line. It was now about a six inch wide running river of sewage . We could see the ripples of current in it as it moved from under the stall wall, down the aisle and out the far barn door. Just the sight of it struck panic in my heart. What about my mare?

I rushed up to the stall where Vee had been. There inside stood my beautiful mare covered in raw sewage. There was not a dry spot in the stall and Vee stood in what must have been a couple inches of sewage. One side was deeper than the other. She was standing in "stuff" over the tops of her coronet bands on all four feet.

Dave and I both rushed in to retrieve Vee, each wading through the crap each only thinking of getting Vee out of there. I remember looking down at that floor as I entered wondering how Vee had been feed in these conditions. There were no feeders. They must have thrown her hay right into the sewage. There were no traces of hay only the brown stinky stuff with an odor that burned both lungs and eyes.

I was the one who had grabbed the halter off the door so I walked up the Vee's face to halter her. I have to admit I gagged as I reached towards her face and this squishy brown muck fell onto my hands and sleeve. There was no way to be even close to the mare without getting that cr*p on our clothes . I can only imagine how Vee must have felt being covered in it as she was.

As I put my wretched looking mare into the horse trailer, I looked more closely at her condition. The mare had dropped some weight. She had also dropped some of her muscle tone. She clearly had not been worked because who could have worked her like this. Instead of the blooming healthy mare I'd delivered, I saw a nightmare of a rescue case only this mare wasn't starving but definitely suffering from neglect that would have gotten the Animal Control people foaming. Returning the mare to a healthy looking condition was going to take some major work.

Vee was covered from head to tail in sewage that was mostly dried. There were some wet spots but it was clear she hadn't been laying in it for the past few hours. From what I could tell there wasn't a portion of her body that was exempt from accumulation. Some places were caked more thickly than others. Her mane and tail were matted with the stuff, even her forelock and even eyelashes were vehicles for hanging clumps of the dried material from her face. It was beyond horrifying and it wasn't just going to rinse off. It was obvious Vee had been living like this for a while.

Never in my life have I seen such a thing. Never in my life had I imagined someone would/could allow a horse to be kept in such conditions. Never in my life would I have believed someone I knew and trusted would let this happen to a horse of mine in their care, let alone a pregnant mare, and not do something, or at least call me so I could do something. Yet here I was looking at Vee covered in disgusting filth.

In our nearly forty years together I have only seen Dave explode in anger twice. This day when we collected Vee from this horror was the first. It was probably a good thing that YW was nowhere around on that day.

We took the mare home with little talking on the trip. Both of us were stunned by what we'd seen. Neither of us even knew where to start to fix this thing. I knew if we talked Dave would only get angrier and I couldn't deal with that and drive too. He was way too angry to be behind the wheel so we suffered in silence with images of Vee flashing in our heads. It was a long ride home.

When we got Vee there it was too late in the day to even think about bathing her. This was October and the weather here was not just rainy, it was cold and windy too. There just wasn't enough daylight left to consider getting the mare wet. She was better off dry than soaked going into the cold night time hours. We decided we'd brush of what we could and then try to leave it alone until morning. At least the mare was out of that stall and had a clean dry one to spend the night in.

When I did being working on cleaning up my horse, there was so much stuff caked on Vee it took me literally days to finally get her clean. I let her finish her breakfast before starting. Then I began working on getting all that s**t and urine out of her coat. I'd soaked her down good with warm water from the house and then sudsed her up as much as I could.

After a while of scrubbing gently on the mare the suds turned to a muddy goop and I'd have to rinse her off and start again. I kept this up until the mare began to shiver, then I covered her in lots of coolers to warm her up so I could then try again. I could only do this a couple of times in one day. Then I'd need to quit so the mare could get dry so she could be warm at night.

Then the next day I started all over again. No place was exempt from the stuff, not even the hair inside her ears or the folds of her nostrils. The tender skin around her anus and vulva were raw and bleeding. Her udder was one solid round ball, it's original shape lost in the disgusting material that now clung to it. The tender folds of skin between her back legs were red from the acidity of the mixture and the friction as it rubbed together. Vee was quite a mess.

Where there were clumps it was particularly difficult trying to break down them so they would release the hair and drop off without hurting Vee. It was like getting matted wads of hair off a uncared for cat or dog, only this was a horse and it was poop and urine stuck to winter hair making up the mats. I wanted to cut them off but they were so close to the skin I couldn't tell where the mat ended and the skin began. The only option was to just keep softening them up and working them down.

I remember cleaning the mare up felt like those days of taking care of Lindsay as she vomited after chemotherapy. It was one of those things I did because it had to be done but my whole body and soul screamed at the situation, wanting to puke instead of minister. I pushed through because Vee needed me but to do so meant I had to flip some internal switch, leaving my body and watching from a distant vantage point. Detached but going through the motions, soothing the mare as needed all the while I screamed off inside my head somewhere at the inhumanity of it.

The first two days were the worst because that's how long it took to get the most sensitive parts of the mare completely cleaned up and the surface stuff off. By the third day it was more of the deeper stuff right next to her skin and the insides of her ears and wadded up balls in between her front legs and in her arm pits. As long as she sudsed up brown and gritty I knew there was still stuff left next to her skin.

By this time the anger set in but even those feelings I had to keep at bay. That kind of rage wanted to translate into being way to physical for such a delicate task. I didn't want to hurt Vee in this process. It was not her fault her caretaker had abandoned her to such a fate.

The whole time I couldn't help but wonder what kind of effect such a thing could have on the foal growing inside this mare. Those fumes and ingesting that material with her food, must have been a risk for a pregnancy. Who knew?

Normally I wouldn't jump ahead in the telling like this but there was something than no one knew about this pregnancy. Vee was carrying twins. Just one more notch in the miracle department for these babies, Trouble and Surprise, no thanks to YW. Looking back I still cannot believe Vee managed to carry twins under such circumstances.

AND there was one more problem. YW still had two horses I had raised in training with her. I couldn't imagine what those horses were going to deal with and there was nothing I could do about it because I didn't own either of them.

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

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