Post by honeydofarm on Mar 4, 2010 10:45:10 GMT -5
Thirty years ago today, I met the horse that would change my life. He could no longer stand on his own, from starvation. He had been starved once before and recovered, only to be stolen and starved again, all before the age of three.
Rescue wasn't a word most people had heard of back then. Inexperienced as new horse owners, taking him in was beyond our capabilities, but a passerby buying hay at Pickering's farm, where the Costco in Issaquah now sits, had dealt with a starved horse of their own and offered to help.
In the dead of winter, left in a pasture with 30 other horses, he collapsed soon after finding him. We fashioned a sling out of a rubber tire and a winch and hung him up from a beam in a cow shed. The vet didn't even want to treat him, he was in such bad shape. Yet, survive the night he did and we spent the next two months living with him round the clock. We had ups and downs and every little bit of progress was cause for celebration. I will never forget the feeling of watching him get up for the first time. He got up backwards, like a cow, because that is how we had to winch him up.
We named him Macaroon, for the icky, pink Macaroon cookies and the Big Mac hamburger he tried to eat that first night. His will to live was beyond anything I have ever seen. I was told to put him down, that he would have brain damage by other boarders, but he was the smartest horse have ever known. It was all I could do to keep him locked in a stall. Over the next year, the gaping wounds where his hip bones broke through his skin healed and he began to emerge as a beautiful young Arabian. His outside began to match his inside and others saw in him what we had seen all along.
We spent almost 25 years together, through thick and thin. He was my rock when I needed him and I would have done anything for him. Five years ago I lost my precious boy to DSLD. It was so hard watching his body fail when his mind was strong. He went as he lived, fighting all the way. He left a legacy, pioneering leg bracing for suspensory failure and bowed tendons.
I will always be grateful to the little bay horse that showed me just how strong the will to live can be and that when others say you can't, it's time to prove them wrong. I miss Mac, more that words can say and know that the 4 horses that now sit in my back yard, have him to thank for the life of luxury they lead. His legacy lives on.
Benali's Macaroon June 13, 1977 - August 16, 2004.
My angel with hooves
Rescue wasn't a word most people had heard of back then. Inexperienced as new horse owners, taking him in was beyond our capabilities, but a passerby buying hay at Pickering's farm, where the Costco in Issaquah now sits, had dealt with a starved horse of their own and offered to help.
In the dead of winter, left in a pasture with 30 other horses, he collapsed soon after finding him. We fashioned a sling out of a rubber tire and a winch and hung him up from a beam in a cow shed. The vet didn't even want to treat him, he was in such bad shape. Yet, survive the night he did and we spent the next two months living with him round the clock. We had ups and downs and every little bit of progress was cause for celebration. I will never forget the feeling of watching him get up for the first time. He got up backwards, like a cow, because that is how we had to winch him up.
We named him Macaroon, for the icky, pink Macaroon cookies and the Big Mac hamburger he tried to eat that first night. His will to live was beyond anything I have ever seen. I was told to put him down, that he would have brain damage by other boarders, but he was the smartest horse have ever known. It was all I could do to keep him locked in a stall. Over the next year, the gaping wounds where his hip bones broke through his skin healed and he began to emerge as a beautiful young Arabian. His outside began to match his inside and others saw in him what we had seen all along.
We spent almost 25 years together, through thick and thin. He was my rock when I needed him and I would have done anything for him. Five years ago I lost my precious boy to DSLD. It was so hard watching his body fail when his mind was strong. He went as he lived, fighting all the way. He left a legacy, pioneering leg bracing for suspensory failure and bowed tendons.
I will always be grateful to the little bay horse that showed me just how strong the will to live can be and that when others say you can't, it's time to prove them wrong. I miss Mac, more that words can say and know that the 4 horses that now sit in my back yard, have him to thank for the life of luxury they lead. His legacy lives on.
Benali's Macaroon June 13, 1977 - August 16, 2004.
My angel with hooves
But such wonderful before and after pictures!!!!