Firstly, a freak early snowstorm blew in last night. With the leaves still on the trees, weathermen were warning of power outages due to limbs breaking under the weight of the snow and coming down on power lines. Travel was treacherous....
We board our horses on a private farm WAAAY up in the mountains. It's beautiful up there in the summer, cool and breezy....but winter weather creates some dangerous driving conditions.
Since we don't have a vehicle with four wheel drive, the property owner where we keep our horses offered to come pick us up. The drive up the mountain was tense, with some major slipping, tree branches weighted down with snow so badly they scraped the roof of the car, and limbs all along the side of the road.
We get to the farm in near whiteout conditions.....and proceed to do what we do everyday, clean the stalls, let the horses out to walk around the barn, groom....
My son was the first to spot the signs of trouble. Beau was acting strangely. His pulse was extremely rapid and very strong...shaking his entire body. We checked for gut sounds. NONE Colic...so, I get on the phone trying to contact our vet. I get an answering machine and leave a message. I check for gut sounds again. None. But then I notice that he isn't quite acting like a colic victim. He's calm, lethargic almost....we try to feed him, he can't swallow. He's got foam around his mouth. He moves his neck to the side alot. And his tongue keeps hanging out of his mouth.
Maybe it's not colic after all. Oh no, he's got choke. Again. He's done this twice before....and while these episodes caused him distress, they resolved themselves fairly quickly without a vet.. this wasn't resolving....despite neck massages and using a turkey baster to try to get water into him (vet recommended). Vet calls. She can't make it to the farm, she's got another emergency call two hours away and the roads are horrible....I told her we don't mind waiting, he's not in danger of dying right away, and even if it took hours, we would wait. I can't make it there period, she says. Wow, did we feel betrayed. Our vet refuses to come...yea, the roads are bad, and while choke wasn't immediately life threatening, IT IS A MAJOR emergency.
So we call other vets in the area. We aren't clients of theirs, so they won't come. OMG, these people are just going to let our horse die??? Finally, I called the last vet clinic in our area....the vet says, try this try that....we did, I tell her. She says, call your vet back and ask her again to come. She already said no, I tell her... at this point I break down into a sobbing mass of hysteria. Vet has a heart and agrees to drive through these horrible conditions up the mountain strewn with tree limbs along the side of the road, and more coming down every minute.
It was a long wait. The drive which should have taken 30 minutes took over an hour.
In that time, the power goes out. No water, no lights, no heat....
We stand by the paddock door waiting and worrying...watching the road that leads down the mountain for the vet's truck... it's windy, it's snowing...suddenly there is a loud sound...OMG, a tree has just fallen across the only road leading to and from the farm. The vet can't get through when she does finally get there. We tell the farm owner. She and her husband and my adult son and daughter ride down to where the fallen tree is, and he starts cutting it with a chainsaw to clear the road so the vet can make it up to the barn. The electric company men arrive and start yelling at the farm owner and her husband. There are live wires down....he can't be cutting that tree with a chainsaw....they haven't located the wires, they are in the woods alonside the road somewhere he says. We have a sick horse, we need the road cleared for the vet farm owner's wife says. Electric man says " why are you people doing this...it's just a horse. I would see doing this for a person. A person's life is more important than a horse..." "A horse isn't important". It is to us, she says.
My son sees a truck pull up behind the electric company truck ....electric men are on one side of the fallen tree, farm owners and my kids on the other. My son says....it's the vet. He can't get over the tree, which is lying on the road, so he runs off into the woods along the road to get to the vet's truck. My daughter yells for him "stop, there are live wires in the woods somewhere" My son isn't listening. His horse is dying and all he can think of is getting to the vet. My daughter yells to him " at least wait for me, I am coming with you" As they are runningthrough the woods, she sees one of the live wires hanging down from a tree branch. A moment of fear shakes her composure. WHERE is the other one? But she and my son, who is beyond any fear except that of his horse dying, continue through the woods. They get to the vet. The only way to get to the farm is to walk BACK through the woods...so they lead her through. In a blinding snow, with branches coming down all around them....and a live wire hanging from a tree, the other one still not found.
They make it to the farm and Beau is tubed. She disloges whatever caused the choke and pumped some water into his stomach to keep him hydrated since he could have been like this since sometime last night after we left or early this morning.
The farm owners drive her back down the road to her truck as the electric company have cleared the road by then.
Beau is not allowed any hay till tomorrow....grass only, she said. But the grass is buried under a foot of snow. So, me and my daughter go out into the blinding snow and bitter cold. .... we shovel off an area of pasture and proceed to get down on our hands and knees and cut grass with scissors. I've never been so cold in my life. We cut 3 buckets worth of grass for him for the night.
But here the story gets even better. We give him the first bucket in his stall....spreading it out so it doesn't clump together and since he was soooo hungry we didn't want him to gulp it. The two other buckets were to be spread out in his stall in seperate feedings ....the farm owner had to drive us back down the mountain, and we all wanted to leave before dark, due to the limbs falling and the treacherous roads....which meant we had to leave at 6 pm...
So in the fading light we blanket him, put the grass around his stall and leave.
We ask the barn owner to feed him one bucket at eight and the other at ten.
Since it is bitterly cold and they have no power, meaning no heat, running water or lights, they were planning on going to a hotel. But then she wouldn't be able to feed Beau his 10 pm bucket. So she decided to not go to a hotel....her husband, her 19 yr. Old daughter and herself are now spending the night in a cold, dark house.....with no heat, on a bitterly cold night up there in the mountains. They could be in a nice warm motel right now....instead they are bundled up in their frigid house.....all because of Beau.
My son and daughter ran through a snowy woods with two live electric lines somewhere in there to reach the vet....and the farm owners are braving a night without heat and in darkness....all for one silly gray horse.
I hope he realizes how much he is loved.
