Horses in Love, continued
...
Once home, I left the filly in the trailer
for about an hour. Valerie petted and talked to her. I brought
out feed and water, and gave the filly an immunization injection.
With Valerie's help we slipped on a halter and lead rope.
After less than one day
with us, she was about as gentle as any yearling.
At dark we led the filly, lured by more
alfalfa, into a 12'x18' stall where we would quarantine her.
I left the halter and lead rope on for the night.
The next morning I got up at dawn to discover
the new filly out with the rest of the horses. She had jumped
the four-foot-high door of her stall.
I walked out to the pasture. The other
horses nickered and began walking toward me. The new filly raised
her head and stared, but did not bolt. I approached her slowly,
angling one way and then another, never looking directly at her.
"Hey, hey, hey, it's OK..." I casually picked up the
lead rope she was trailing.
She didn't know what she was supposed to
do with a lead rope. I turned away from her and pulled her head
to one side genltly, just enough to slightly unbalance her. She
moved one foot to regain balance. I released tension on the rope.
"Good girl, Tiger Girl." She had a name now.
I pulled her head around a little more,
and she moved a foot again. I released the rope. "Good girl,
Tiger Girl." In a few minutes she had the idea. Move a foot,
the rope lets loose and she gets praise. Soon I was able to lead
her back to the stall.
After less than one day with us, she was
about as gentle as any yearling.
She didn't jump the stall door any more,
and soon began to nicker hello when I came to feed and groom
her and lead her around. After a week I let her run with the
others.
However, her eyes continued to weep. The
vet counseled patience. I decided, given her health, not to try
to sell her yet.
A month after buying her I got up like
I usually do at dawn. I looked out my bedroom window. There,
between the two Navajo globe willows shading the west end of
our home, I saw Tiger Girl lying on her side, belly toward me.
Her udder was swollen, two dusty black teats protruding.
She would be lucky to reach the age of
two before bearing her first foal. This might not be an ordinary
delivery.
I worried that Tiger Girl was headed for
a cesarean section. Often mares fail to survive this operation.
Or perhaps it would be one of those deliveries with my arms up
to the elbows in amniotic fluid and blood, working a foal out
of an agonized dam.
And Tiger Girl was still sick. Every day
I wiped puss from her eyes. The vet said her sinuses and tear
ducts were infected. One morning I discovered huge gouts of clotted,
bloody pus in the water trough. Her sinuses had ruptured. I had
to quarantine her again. For days afterwards, every time she
drank, the motion of swallowing forced out great gobs of pus,
a quarter cup at a time, from her nose into her drinking water.
I kept changing the water. She was not going to make money. That
spring money was tight.
July 2, 1994, her udder had been swollen
for about two months. I had a vet examine her seemingly endless
pregnancy.
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