Back in 1986, my future wife Roxy purchased a 2 year old horse she named Toby. He was a chestnut cross-bred (Thoroughbred, Quarter Horse, and Appaloosa mix). Roxy broke and trained him, then competed him mostly in eventing. He was with her for 11 years.
She sold him when he was 13, about 3 years before she and I met, to a friend of hers who wanted a well-trained pleasure horse. Cross-breds are notoriously laid back, and Toby was no exception - he adapted well to the job of trotting quietly around the friend's Leesburg farm.
After about 5 years, the friend was too busy for the horses the family had collected. She sold Toby to a DC Park Policewoman, who wanted a quiet family horse for her teenage daughter to ride. A year later, the owner sold Toby to a riding school in Alexandria. Toby worked at the riding school one year, and was then sold to a couple whose young children wanted to ride.
In less than a year, the children lost interest (a familiar story) and the horse was dumped on the husband's sister-in-law. The sister-in-law was given instructions to get rid of the horse somehow. He lived neglected in a low-lying and very damp 5 acre field with one other horse for 2 years while the sister-in-law made occasional attempts to find someone to take the now aged Toby. Other than keeping his hooves trimmed and making sure a renter on the property (who knew nothing about horses) threw out a few flakes of poor quality ( i.e. cheap) hay every day, the sister-in-law was "too busy" with her own children and job and Northern VA life to make much effort to care for or find a good home for the old guy.
Roxy had been looking for Toby since about 2005, just curious about where he was and how he was doing. While poking around the Web one day 3 weeks ago, she happened to see the name of the riding school in Alexandria that Toby had been sold to several years ago. She called the riding school, the riding school owner remembered Toby and remembered who she had sold him to years ago, and put Roxy in touch with the sister-in-law. As luck would have it, Roxy talked to the sister-in-law the day after the sister-in-law had called the local horse rescue league in desperation to find Toby a home. That weekend we drove to Toby's 5 acre field to see him. He was in pretty bad shape. "Benign neglect" are the words Roxy uses, but I just call it neglect.
Anyway, so Roxy used her womanly powers (to include rib-jabbing, puppy-eyes, and death threats) to convince me to rescue a 22-year old horse. Naturally, I buckled.
After a week of sleepless nights - when first Roxy, and then I, discovered the little sleep we were getting was populated with dreams of feeding carrots to this half-starved horse - we were ready to move Toby to Elmington Farm in Berryville VA, where we'd arranged full board (they provide all the care the horse requires.) I scheduled a horse transporter named Joe, who fell through at the second-to-last minute due to an inability to read dates. Luckily, I managed to get a guy named Bob and his daughter at the last minute. They ended up doing a very good job so it was ultimately fortuitous that Joe couldn't read good.
We had arranged with the sister-in-law to arrive at Toby's field early so we could prep Toby and get him at least semi-groomed, so he wouldn't arrive at his fancy new farm looking quite so much like a hobo. I had written up as contract to make the exchange legal and to make sure it was treated by the law as a "horse sale" I put down a price of $1 and handed the sister-in-law a slighly crumpled President Washington. Originally the sister-in-law didn't want to give Toby up so quickly because he was pastured with a mare and she didn't want the mare to get lonely. It's like "Deal with it lady. We're taking a 1,000-pound problem off of your hands with no inconvenience to you." She ended up borrowing a mule to keep the mare company.
We loaded him on the trailer, then drove in the lead from Toby's field in Alexandria out to Berryville, VA. However, we got separated at one juncture fairly early in the long drive. Ultimately, they took a faster route and actually got there just ahead of us.
You can see from the pictures that he was (and is) not in the best shape. He's about 150 pounds underweight (you shouldn't be able to see a horse's ribs, especially when he's still got his long, thick winter haircoat on.) He's also blind in his left eye, possibly due to a disconnected cornea, but the vet said that it isn't causing him any pain. And he doesn't seem to mind it. He's also got some "rain rot" on his skin and a mild thrush infection in his hooves that we're treating with thrush medication. His hooves are split up a bit, so we bought a moisturizing treatment that should help.
Toby being groomed before transport | |
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Toby at Elmington Farm | |
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In the 1 week he has been at his new farm, the caretakers have been slowly re-introducing grain into Toby's system. And he gets all the fresh, high quality, nutritious hay he can eat. He's also turned out on a well-drained small pasture of his very own, where he can recuperate with horses over the fence but not in the same area to bother him or cause him stress.
I've been out to visit him every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday for 2 weekends now, where I groom him to within an inch of his skinny life. I think I've got all the rain rot scrubbed off and some fresh air, sunshine, and an improved immune system should do the rest of the job to grow his hair back where the bald patches are. (Rain rot is caused partially by constantly wet conditions and partially by a lowered immune system.) The thrush in his feet is halfway resolved already, just because he's living on drier ground. The thrush medication will do the rest of the work in another couple of weeks to kill any remaining bacteria still living in the damp recesses of his hooves. Which leaves only one really important job to accomplish: to put weight back on the poor old guy.
Don's gone with me on all but one of my visits. He's the best husband ever. (And he's also very handsome, strong, intelligent, and kind to children and kittens.) Toby seems to be appreciating the attention we're giving him - it's a little hard to tell with horses sometimes what kind of an impact you are having on them, at least in the short term, especially when they have "turned inward" with their attention. By that I mean, not quite depressed, but a sort of inward-focused attitude that comes with not feeling well for a long period of time, and with not having had people paying attention to him for a long time. They didn't pay attention to him, so he lost any motivation to pay attention to them.
But there stands Don every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, steadily feeding the skinny guy carrot after carrot, while I scrub and brush and comb and brush again. Then Don hauls out the big red apple he's been saving, and holds it for Toby to take his mincing little "human-sized" bites from until the apple is gone. (Yes, he also needs his neglected 22-year old teeth looked at and attended to; but Toby has always eaten apples like that. Most horses wolf the whole thing into their mouths instantly and then roll it around for 5 minutes while they use their molars to shave hunks of it off until it's gone. Toby, who long ago decided humans can be of more use than that, makes a person hold the apple while he takes a human-sized bite, chews it thoughtfully, swallows, then comes back for the next human-size bite; meanwhile you, the human, hold this increasingly dripping, sticky remainder of an apple while, perhaps, softly whistling a tune to entertain yourself, until His Royal Highness is finished. Then you go find his water bucket or water tank and wash the apple off your hands into his drinking water. This rinse in his water bowl begins with a minor satisfaction that you have "gotten him back", until it occurs to you that faintly apple-flavored water is probably a pretty nice surprise for him to discover later. You then discard any pretense to personal dignity, recognize yourself as the servant-for-life that you have become, and trudge back to your horse-related chores.)
01-Apr-2007, 1079 pounds (approx.) | |
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Toby's been given a pasture-mate named Tower. Tower is a thoroughbred but seems pretty well-balanced mentally. They seem to get along ok, although we saw some bite marks on Toby and Tower both which indicates there may have been a brief struggle for dominiance. If that is the case though, Toby definitely won the match based on the state poor Tower's legs. But they seem to be getting along nicely so it may have just been an accident (not uncommon).
Toby is measuring about the same weight, but the weight tape we're using is very inaccurate. He is definitely looking and acting more healthy though.
07-Apr-2007, 1079 pounds (approx.) | |
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For reasons I won't go into here, although Roxy might like to in the future, Toby has been moved to a new farm where he's much happier. It's a much smaller farm and he gets a lot more attention. At this point we haven't bother to weigh him, but I suspect he's back at full girth + one or two butterscotch treats.
07-Jun-2007 Fully Recovered | |
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Toby's doing great. He recently got a new friend named Gabriel in his field. That and female pony just over the fence has googly-eyes for Toby. Understandable as he's always been a bit of a Ladies' Man.
01-Jul-2007 Shiny! | |
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