I board my horses with a horse rescue and I frequently help them out with their rescue horses and things like that.
They found a home for a horse that would have otherwise gone to slaughter, but horses in kill pens have to be kept in quarantine because there are my illnesses that get spread around in the kill pen that you don’t want spread to your other horses. This particular horse was pregnant. We went out to check on her and found that she had gone into labor a month early, but her baby was stuck and dead, with the legs and head sticking out of her. We called the vet immediately and he came out there. He told the baby was too large because this small horse had been bred to a draft horse (which are very large horses). They had to get the baby out of her or it would decay and kill her so they had to cut its head off while it was sticking out of her and it was so horrible.
They couldn’t get her baby out with the tools they had in their truck so we had to load her in a trailer and take her to the vet. I held onto her while she hid her face in my armpit. I petted her and told her it would be all right and kept her calm. They took a machine behind her and starting pulling the baby out of her and it got stuck at the hips and the horse laid down and they were able to get the baby out. At first we were very worried because we couldn’t get her to stand back up so we kept pushing on her, but couldn’t get her up so the vet had to shock her in order to get her up. It was so horrible seeing her headless baby on the ground and she turned and looked at it then leaned against me and hid her face against me while they flushed out her uterus. The horse will be okay so that’s good, but overall it was a heart breaking experience for me.
7 comments
Omg this is so sad… 🙁
Humans – in their infinite “wisdom”, say animals don’t “feel”, they don’t have emotions. I think animals have a better grasp of raw pure emotions than humans ever will. Humans are so destructive.
Sorry yo had to witness that – but I’m glad you were there to give that horse a shoulder to lean on in it’s time of grief. Thankfully, animals have the capacity to “let go” of pain and grief in a relatively short time span – whereas humans will lament, sometimes indefinitely, over a mournful incident.
We can learn so much from animals … if we’d but listen and observe
dog’s dawg
Yes, that’s what I love about animals, they don’t hold grudges and they don’t do things to be malicious like people do. I’ve seen so many abused and scared animals and they still love unconditionally. I’m glad we were able to save the mama horse at least.
I’ve learn so much about how to handle life from my dogs – especially as it pertains to “worry” and “grudges” and “anger” … as humans, we have a tendency to cling to these emotions and concepts like life preservers … when in actuality, they are like concrete blocks that will frag ups to the depths of the ocean.
Give mama horse a hug, kiss and pet for me.
life boat dawg
I heard from someone I knew a little while back of a dairy cow who gave birth to twins. This someone grew up on a farm and was known to eat steak on a regular basis with it being basically raw (prepared “blue”). With dairy operations often the calf is sent to slaughter shortly after being born and the cow, now producing milk, is milked and her milk sold. Anyhow, the cow had given birth before and I guess ” knew” the routine of losing her calf. This time however the cow gave birth overnight and “hid” one of the calves, sacrificing the other as per usual. The other hidden calf was found after her milk production was called into question and was placed under “survellence” in case she was ill or lacking in nutrition. Suffice to say the other calf was taken from her and so I’m told the sense of heartbreak was seen and heard from the cow (mooing, stressed behaviour).
The person who was a wholehearted meat eater/once farmer went 100% vegan. I don’t know if the story is true but based on the overnight shift to being vegan speaks volumes to the series of events.
On a side note: I grew up on a farm and attest that animals have emotions. Perhaps not as “sophisticated” as humans but emotions none-the-less.
Heartbreaking….
🙁
It is very kind of you to help with a Horse rescue. There is a special place in heaven for people who rescue animals. It has to be so heartbreaking at times. We need many more people in the world like you.