February2003adopter

This Month's Feature Adopter is:
Becky

I stumbled on foal rescue sites while surfing the Internet for horse rescues in my area. My buckskin gelding Frisky, who was my constant companion since I was 11, was in his mid-20s now. I wanted a companion for him when I moved to my new home on an acreage. I was originally looking for a local group with adult horses, but out of curiosity, I clicked the links for foal rescues. The photos were irresistibly cute. I became hooked on checking back at sites with photos and foal cams, just for the fun of it.
Shortly after I moved, the company I worked for began failing in a serious way. It had been shaky for over a year, but the inevitable was about to happen and everyone knew it. I dreaded waking up in the morning and lost my motivation. Reading the foal rescue sites was a nice respite at the end of the day. My barn and my fencing were finally serviceable, and I became more serious about adopting another horse.
I had been lurking on a couple of PMU lists and on the Casey Creek foal rescue list for over a year. While I loved the PMU foals, the political head-butting among the groups at that time depressed me. I was watching my company fail largely due to political dysfunction, so I was wary of pursuing that avenue. I decided I wanted a nurse mare foal, but I still had a full time job. How would I care for such a young one?
Then I noticed a new link on the Casey Creek home page. Some volunteers were donating their time to raising adopted foals long enough so that working owners could take over the job when the foals were old enough to live on hay. Another round of layoffs came, and my boss took me aside privately and asked if I wanted to stay or to leave and collect a layoff package. The company had only one more business quarter before it would fail. Earlier in the week I saw a photo of a Kentucky Mountain/Arab filly with a sweet face and a soft eye. Her name was Candy and she was 6 months old-- old enough to eat on her own. I copied the photo to my hard drive. After cursing my job for months, I decided to stay for another quarter. The money I earned above and beyond the layoff package would pay for Candy and her transportation to Colorado. That filly became my reason for waking up in the morning after months of dreading each day.
Candy arrived at my barn a few hours after I brought Frisky over from the boarding pasture. Her foster mom warned me the filly was shy and was afraid of loading. She had been a hard case and had taken some work to get fit enough to travel. But when Ray from M&M Transport unloaded her, she came out like a dream. He said she was a pleasure to haul. After several rest stops, she became used to loading and unloading. She was perfect with the halter. She was shy and very thin, but she wasn�t flighty or frantic-- just unsure of herself and the visitors who came to see her.
The sweet face in the photo was even prettier in person. The work and the fun of building a relationship with a new horse had begun. After a few weeks, the little filly who wouldn�t make eye contact was enjoying her grooming sessions. She gained a lot of confidence from Frisky, and looked to him as a guide.
�Should I be afraid of a plastic bag blowing? No.�
�Should I move away when I�m being haltered? No.�
After some initial hesitation, she began relishing her food. She would stick her head through her stall door and whinny in a demanding way when it was dinner time-- another thing she learned from Frisky. The daily wormer was really helping her conformation. The vet came for a check up and gave me a feeding plan and 3-month intensive worming plan. He told me she was 450 pounds but would be over 700 pounds in 3 months. I couldn�t believe it, but he was right!
About that time, Candy shedded her woolly brown foal coat. Underneath was a silky, gorgeous, blood-bay coat that glistened in the sun. She was a young lady now. I decided to re-name her Scarlet. The way she pranced around with her tail high, it seemed fit her.
Sadly, it was just a few months after she and Frisky were introduced that I lost Frisky to a broken hind leg. To me, it was like losing a brother. Neither me nor my vet could figure out how he did it. I had little time to grieve. My vet warned me that without Frisky for company, my filly would start trying the fences and escaping. Again he was right. Losing Frisky was very hard and I hadn�t planned on getting another horse any time soon. After the third escape and a half-hour midnight walk in my freezing back pasture to find the wayward Scarlet, I decided I better start searching.
My plan was that by the time I lost Frisky to old age, Scarlet would be my trail horse. Fate planned otherwise. So I began looking for a riding horse in the newspaper. I prefer to work with rescue groups whenever possible, so when I saw an ad for an independent horse rescue, I gave them a call. The ladies were very nice and seemed organized. I gave them an idea of the type of horse I was looking for. They said a gray mare just arrived but she hadn�t been evaluated by a trainer. I made an appointment to see her because I always liked grays. It was another case of love at first sight. The 12-year-old mare was an Andalusian who was rescued from a slaughter truck. She was young and well-broke, but was being thrown away because of mild cataracts. She came home with me and I named her Nimbus.
Nimbus turned out to be a boss mare. She was sweet and had good ground manners, but she wanted to run the show in the pasture with Scarlet. She herded Scarlet to and fro, never harming her, but displaying dominance whenever she could. I knew this was natural, but it became a problem when Nimbus decided to take Scarlet from ME! My sweet, pliable baby would now run away to her new �mommy� when I came to catch her. Nimbus would shadow Scarlet and trot just beyond me until she knew I was fed-up. Then she would come to me like nothing happened. Scarlet, however, thought this new type of independence and self expression was just the thing she had been missing. I could only catch her in the stall. So, I decided she would stay in over night so I could work with her in the mornings with no Nimbus to bother us.
Over the next couple of months, I noticed that Scarlet�s pasterns had some swelling. She was having growth spurts that my other horsie-friends call the �uglies.� She would look like she was filling out one week, and the next week she would shoot upwards and look like a gangly giraffe! The leg swelling never lasted more than a day or two, and wasn�t due to her feed ration. It disappeared as mysteriously as it came. Scarlet was the first young horse I ever owned, so I read countless articles on growth problems and feeding. I worried myself reading all of the conflicting information. In the end I re-learned a lesson I should have known from the beginning-- educate yourself but trust your vet.
When I first decided to get a foal from Casey Creek, I was a little unsure of myself. It had been years since I lived on a farm and trained animals. I had become soft and wimpy working in front of a computer, how could I handle a young horse? But as soon as my filly arrived, all of the lessons of trust, respect, and love that are possible between humans and animals came back to me. We are still learning from each other, and if my relationship with Scarlet is like my relationship with Frisky was, we will continue to learn and grow together for many years. I�m glad I spent a few extra months in a bad job to bring her here, and I�m already thinking about the next foaling season...