starrynightxxi
Fish Herder
View attachment 36586
After all the hardships this colt went through, his name was more than a little ironic...
After all the hardships this colt went through, his name was more than a little ironic...
Clancy's mother, magic, was a PMU mare before she came to the farm. While she was pregnant with him she sliced open her jugular on the neighbors barb wire fence and almost bled out. She was able to be saved, but while healing the other mares harrassed her and wouldn't let her graze so she began to lose weight and had to be moved. Not long after this she got an infection in her blood and went septic, causing laminitis, but was eventually cured of the infection. When she was supposed to go into labor, she didn't and held onto Clancy for another month. When she finally did go into labor the umbilical cord broke before he came out and as he was too big, the vets had to pull him out with chains. He came out shocky and still and even the vets thought he was dead.
Because Magic had very severe laminitis, she was on permanent stall rest and could not go out, causing Clancy's front legs to go crooked (though they straightened by his first birthday). By the time I showed up at the barn, Magic was doing very poorly. She could barely walk and spent much of the day in her stall laying down. Clancy learned to nurse while his mother was lying down, not that this did much good as she was hardly producing any milk and he was severely underweight. To get him exercise he was allowed to run through the barn while I was working in it (which was most of the day). He liked to stick his head in the wheelbarrow as I cleaned stalls as well as attack the piles of woodshavings I left for him in the 11 other stalls (which were empty during the day). Other games he enjoyed were fending off dangerous boxes and brown paper shavings bags, all of which were mercilessly shredded, as well as playing "harrass the handler", an exciting game which entails bunting or goosing the closest person (much less fun when his teeth came in)
When Clancy was a month old, it was finally decided that Magic was just in no condition to continue on. She couldn't stand and was obviously doing Clancy no good (his welfare being the only reason she was kept as long as she was). At first, Clancy didn't realize that his mother was gone, but before long he was looking for everywhere. He refused to take to the bottle and disliked the foal-lac so much that we had to force feed him with a syringe for a few days. Eventually he began to accept the substitution from a feed bucket and became a regular snot about feeding time but he still kept an eye out for his mother to the point where he would become attached to large objects (he would trot after the tractor and once chased the UPS truck down the driveway and almost to the road (about a 1/4 mile).
Clancy began picking up weight during this time and was soon put out in the baby field with his half-sister and niece where he suddenly discovered he was a horse and not a four legged human
Come November it was obvious he was not well. The horses had all been wormed but clancy still had a very round stomach even though he was still underweight for his age otherwise. It turned out to be an enormous colony of worms that had gathered in his gut because he had never gotten the natural antibodies from Magic. Luckily this was relatively easy to deal with. Around this time he was also confirmed to be a crypt orchid, which is less easy to repair.
Despite becoming a total snot in the presence of the girl who was supposed to be handling after I left for school, life was beginning to look up for Clancy. He acted like a fairly typical stud colt approaching his first birthday and his legs were finally straightening with the constant exercise he got running with the other weanlings. In may he went under the knife to deal with his crypt orchidism and was gelded. The procedure went well and after fully healing he was put back in the field with the other babies. While playing with one of the other colts he fell and became neurologic. He could barely walk forward and tripped over his own legs when they made him back up. There was nothing to be done but euthanize him. He's buried on the farm next to his mother now.
I don't know... It just seems so abrupt...
View attachment 36587
Clancy as of January 2006
Clancy as of January 2006
