Story submitted by Spring Creek Horse Rescue
Ayden came to us as an emergency when her Mom stepped in a gopher hole and broke her leg. Four weeks old and loading her in the trailer to bring her to us they overshot and ran her into the trailer door and exploded her shoulder. The vet that sewed her up did not stretch the skin tight, so it wasn’t touching flesh and had nothing to heal to. She also did not give this baby any anti-biotics, so when she got to us later that evening the skin on her shoulder looked wrinkled and dead, and was already oozing pus. Not already knowing how to eat on her own this was going to be a challenge- she needed anti-biotics, she needed nutrition, she needed to be handled to clean her shoulder.
At 4 weeks old even though she was scared, she was also hungry. It had probably been 2 days since she had been able to nurse, so instead of a bottle we made her a bucket of milk and let her suck on our fingers, then started adding some junior feed into the mix and put a “grain hog” ( Tiela) Momma horse next to her to learn from. Within hours she was nibbling at her hay, and eating her mush. Slow but sure we cleaned her wound 3 times a day and started her on anti-biotics. When you are the one doing the care you can get pretty attached to these guys and them to you, for awhile we didn’t think she would make it, but after about 10 days she would “allow” herself to be caught and cleaned mostly because her shoulder was soooooo itchy, once we got the Infection under control Ayden was a different horse with a mind of her own and quite the little fire ball. ( Ayden mean “Little Fire)
After about 2 weeks we received a call from the sale barn that someone had brought in 2 trailer loads of Registered Paint Mares and babies- Ayden needed someone her own age to learn and play with so we had them save the youngest filly to be a companion to Ayden. Both babies were adopted by a family that had already adopted one of our young horses 2 years before.
There is a video of them on our web site at www.springcreekhorserescue.or\g
