The Nurse and Other Aid

 Part 1

This nurse had only been here a time or two before that day even though I saw both a nurse and a wound specialist at least once a week. The wound nurse was always the same man. The nurses I didn't see often enough to learn any of their names.

I think God must have been looking out for me for this woman to be the one assigned to my case that week. She was supposed to have come on an earlier day but had been forced to reschedule and that's how she ended up at my farm on the day I definitely needed her most.

I didn't remember why she had expressed an interest in my horses on her previous visits. Only that she did so I decided to share my dilemma with her.

I told her I had just learned my horses were starving because of my illness and that I needed to give them all away as soon as possible before any more harm came to them. I explained to her how hard the economy had hit the horse market leading me to believe finding homes for this many horses would not be easy but I had to get it done to do right by my herd.

Not being a horse person, all she could do was nod her head like she could imagine the difficulty of the job before me. She didn't know anything about horses except she thought they were magnificent creatures, so she wouldn't know what was good for them or what wasn't.

 This nurse was, however, very active in her county grange and thought maybe some of her grange friends might have ideas. If she had my permission to share my story, she would see if she could come up with any resources that could be helpful to me.

Of course, I jumped at the chance. I would have done anything to find good homes for my horses. Just having that .ittle glimmer of hope was enough to soothe the terror gnashing at my heart. I could live with giving all my horses away but I could not live with causing them harm.

After the nurse left I began to think about what I needed to do to figure out what was causing my horses to starve. They were, afterall, being fed regularly so there must be some explanation for what was happening to them.

My friend had said the hay was poor quality but Dave claimed the bales on the end that she had seen were not the norm. Going through bales from each barn to pull samples, I found Dave's observation to be true.

 I put those samples in the mail and sent them off to the forage lab. Being contracted to buy these fields, I needed to know exactly what the status of this hay was so I could fix whatever needed fixing.

Then I called a local trainer who I thought I could trust. I asked her what things I could do in the short term to fix a problem with feed and she was going to come to my farm to see the horses for herself so she would have a better idea what we were up against.

Between deciding to test the hay, getting a plan to adjust the feed and having another set of eyes to judge the horses' condition, I felt another step closer towards getting things under control. Little did I know that while the nurse would turn out to be my angel, the trainer would be another devil in disguise.

To be continued.......

Background on the Trainer........