This is Cotton’s story.
No names have been changed to protect the innocent,
all characters are intended to be accurately represented, and occasional
embellishment is a given.
Read at your own risk. And, please, do not try this at
home. . . .
This guy. Who on Earth
wouldn’t fall for this guy? Look at that mug!
|
"Not bad, not bad. I could live here" |
This was his first day on the
farm, and the first day of what would become a very long journey for me, for
him, and for everyone around us.
Cotton came off the track on
November 22, 2013 after 33 career starts. I had fallen hard when I saw his listing on
a rehoming web page after someone had posted a link on the Chronicle
Forums. Even his name was catchy: COTTONPICKINWABBIT. How much trouble could a
horse possibly be with a name like Cottonpickinwabbit? It’s a cartoon for
crying out loud.
Anyway, a very resourceful
and well connected friend (Pat Dale of Three Plain Bays) was able to track down
his trainer after almost 2 weeks of trying and after sending me some photos of
his feet to be sure I still wanted him, she loaded the colt on to her trailer
and took him to her farm.
She generously agreed to have
her vet perform the gelding procedure and let him recover prior to transport. Certainly a gelding would be easier to manage than an intact, fresh off the track colt? Everything went swimmingly, and on December 30th, 2013 the newly
de-stallioned redhead arrived on my farm.
He spent a couple weeks just
kicking back and taking in his new digs. I, of course, just thought he was the
cutest, punkiest, most entertaining horse I’d ever met. His first few rides
went like butter and I thought, wow, easiest horse ever.
Uh. No.
|
"Hmmmm, what shall I think of next?" |
Feb 25th, 2014, not even 2 months after his arrival, I
rushed Cotton to NC State Vet Hospital with what had seemed like a simple choke
but quickly turned out to be something much more serious. Cotton was suffering
from a case of Botulism which had paralyzed his esophagus. For over three days
he was unable to swallow anything.
Twice a day the vets would
update me and tell me that all we could do was keep him hydrated with IV fluids
and wait it out. He would likely colic, they said, and his condition was
probably not survivable. Even though sad
and stressed and alone in his medical stall, his eyes would follow me when I
visited; confusion and sadness behind his lashes, and it absolutely broke my
heart.
Then miraculously, almost
comically really, he awoke on day 4, looked at his water bucket and said “Hey
water! Nice!” and drained the bucket. After 24 more hours of observation, small
test sized portions of food, and to the surprise of the entire team, the once
skinny, now emaciated, horse got back on my trailer and came home.
|
"Do these ribs make me look fat?" |
We’ll never know where the
toxin came from. He shared the same space, food, water, and fence line as all
the other horses. But if there was one teensy tinsy bit of trouble in one of
those bags, he was sure to be the one to find it.
He was clearly worn out from
his week and cautiously ambled around the paddock. Really, when you add up what
he had undergone in the last 90 days it wasn’t surprising he was tired: a move
from the track, a very de-masculinizing surgery, a trip to his new farm, the start
of a second career, Botulism, a paralyzed esophagus, IV’s, needles, tests,
tests and more tests . . . good grief!
No wonder the guy was a bit pokey.
Crisis averted and horse
safely home. Or was he?
|
"And now for my next trick . . ." |
Two days later while at work,
I get a panicked call from my husband and a simultaneous call from a very
composed but very tense vet. Cotton had been placed in a stall during a heavy
rainstorm and immediately hit the panic button. Flashbacks of NC State must
have rolled around in his head. He threw himself against the walls and tried
climbing over the stall front. Knowing he’d be safer outside, he was returned to his paddock. As my husband walked back to the house after observing for a bit, Cotton took off
after him and, unsuccessfully, tried jumping the paddock fence. In his weakened condition he just couldn’t
clear the upright and split the top rail sending a large piece of board into
his leg.
Hearing the sound of
not-quite-thundering hooves, Mike turned around to see a lame, blood soaked
horse standing next to him. He had a
torn gaskin, a punctured stifle, a probable torn ACL, and a litany of scrapes and cuts. My vet
believed it was certainly career ending and with the risk of infection so high, he was unsure if Cotton would even be pasture sound.
That was the first of 3 times I asked my vet to please
euthanize my horse.
“Now, now” he said. “Let’s
just wait and see if the joint gets infected. It’s a long shot but maybe he’ll
surprise us. We’ll keep him comfortable and as long as he doesn’t go on 3 legs
in the next 48 hours or spike a temp he might be okay as a pasture horse”
So we waited. We scrubbed. We
gave antibiotics. We built a temporary safety stall in his paddock that he
promptly body slammed apart. We watched his bony little body make its way to his feed
dish. We tended our breaking hearts and prepared for the worst.
|
Clearly, being enclosed was not an option |
And then the oddest thing
happened.
He got better.
He trotted around his paddock
nickering at the mares. He greeted me at the gate. He bobbed his head around
looking at all the sights on our hand walks.
And I thought, holy crap, he’s actually going to be okay. In fact, he
felt so okay that he got into daily face fights with everyone. He was
constantly coming in with a new bump or scrape, but always with a big cookie
stealing grin on his face.
All I had to do now was wait
for him to be healed enough to start riding. As he started showing signs of boredom I’d
take him out and tack him up just for our hand walk. I even sat on him in the
roundpen. He didn’t know it wasn’t REAL work, he just knew that for that 10
minutes he had a job, and that was enough to keep his mind occupied.
That was March 24th,
2014.
Four fairly uneventful weeks later (by Cotton’s standard anyways) I made
my annual trek to Kentucky to spectate at Rolex.
On April 25, 2014 at 6:30 in
the morning I left on a plane for the Bluegrass State. On April 25, 2014,
sometime between 9:00pm and 6:00 am the next morning, Cotton once again made an
unsuccessful attempt to exit the pasture. This time was different, though. He
actually ran straight into one of the uprights and knocked it over almost to
the ground. It was like he was running and didn’t even see it. My guess is a
deer sprang through his field and he took off looking backward at it.
The results? Pretty
catastrophic.
Surprisingly, my vet said he
thought he would recover as long as he didn’t get an infection and if I could
keep him confined to heal the wound.
Confined? Yeah . . .um . . .
that’s a big fat sack of not gonna happen.
He would at least be pasture
sound he said. A companion horse he said.
I told him pasture sound horses that make good companions are the ones
that actually stay, oh I don’t know, IN the pasture.
Once again we started with
the weeks long treatments: daily irrigations of the wound, antibiotics of every
sort and method, injections of medicated solutions through a long straw down
into the cavity. It was a herculean effort to keep up with it all and, to be
honest, just a little gross.
On day 3 I realized that he
had not produced a manure pile yet. The concern, of course, was that his bowel
had been injured in his assault on the fence and he would have to go to surgery
to repair it. In his weakened state the odds were stacked against him.
That was the 2nd time I asked my vet to
please euthanize my horse.
This time he agreed and
arrived at my farm a few hours later with the large syringe of blue juice.
Having shed my tears and come to terms with the outcome I was ready. The burial
site was picked and we had said our goodbyes. We walked to the run-in; him with
the syringe and me with the halter, neither of us really wanting to talk at the
moment.
As we approached the shed,
Cotton looked at us with those puppy dog eyes, turned his head away, and then
proceeded to lift his tail and drop a big steaming pile of manure right in
front of our eyes.
“Son of a bitch” I said.
My vet turned to me with a
huge grin, put the syringe right back in his pocket and said “We won’t be
needing this today” and he got in his car and beat feet off the farm as fast as
his Chevy would take him.
“Cotton”, I said, “I really
don’t know whether to love you or hate you right now. But let’s start with
hate and go from there”. The emotional roller coaster was dizzying.
So we carried on for 2 more
weeks of this around the clock skilled nursing facility care. I would tell him
he needed to be one of three things and he could pick: 1) A good companion horse, 2) A good riding horse, or 3) Fertilizer. I always gave him a pat on the neck when I
said it, so I’m pretty sure he thinks I was joking.
But not really.
May 9th I walked
out for the morning routine to find my horse looking like a Macy’s Day Balloon.
Seriously, he was plumped-up from cheeks to tail like a blowfish and wobbling
around the field like a tipsy Weeble. I
dropped his food in the dish and stared at him making his way towards me like a
drunken sailor trying to pass a sobriety test.
His entire body was encased
in subcutaneous emphysema, a condition in which a layer of air is trapped under
the skin during respiration; probably from a small pleural tear. If I placed my
hand against his neck it would leave a perfect indentation.
That was the 3rd time I asked my vet to
please euthanize my horse.
“Is he eating?” was the
response. Yeah, I said, he’s eating happily. He said he’d wait until Tuesday and
if Cotton had stopped eating he would administer the medicine to end it.
Fine, I said. We’ll see if he
keeps eating.
Well, Cotton ate. Oh, he ate
plenty. He ate and ate and ate. He ate everything I put in front of him and
asked for more. After a few days he started playing twister with his blanket.
Day after day the wound got
slowly better and Cotton’s body returned to normal. He was still never going to be sound to ride,
but maybe he’d learn to relax in the field.
June 6th, 2014 I
watched that son of a gun canter around his field and thought “Heck, let’s see
what we’ve got ”. I pulled him out, threw some tack on a horse that had had
more time on antibiotics than he had under saddle and I got on. And for the
eleventeenth time, he surprised me.
I’d be lying if I said the
tears weren’t plopping down my face when he carried me around the property with
a pep in his step that destiny said he’d never have. He didn’t have much, but he had enough to show
me that he had plainly picked option #2.
He never gave up. Ever. I
threw in the white towel 3 times. Each time he caught it before it hit the
ground and threw it right back at me.
On October 12th,
2014, Cotton went to his first event, showing in the Beginner Novice division.
He wooed the ladies in dressage with a 28.4; showed off his jumping prowess with great big awkward
baby leaps in the stadium; and pinged and porpoised his way around XC like a
kid seeing Disneyworld for the first time.
To him, it was as easy as 1-2-3. Which, as fate would have,
also happened to be our number.
He promptly proceeded to be
the Beginner Novice Series Champion his first season out.
Today is the 3rd anniversary of the 3rd injury that, by all rights, he should not have survived. Three years ago a horse
taught me to dig a little deeper, fight a little harder, and hold on to hope
just a little bit longer.
He’s quite a bit more mature
now. Instead of late night frat parties I think he’s having late night Netflix
parties. The rugby games have turned into Bocci Ball championships (although
I’m sure he takes cheap shots at the other team’s knees when no one is
watching).
We still have the random WHAT
ON EARTH HAVE YOU DONE NOW? Days:
And the occasional miscue,
like the Holy Mackerel long-spot to a fence:
The horse that should be
dead? He’s pretty spectacular.
And probably the best before & after picture
of all time.
I still thank my vet for not
putting Cotton down. I don’t know why he didn’t, but I sure am glad. He does fondly call him Crash instead of
Cotton. Rather fitting, I suppose.
Cotton is just Cotton. He’s
the same horse as he was before, just a lot less self-destructive. He still enjoys
being the ever naughty punk, and proved it when he snapped the cross tie while getting
braided for a show this past weekend, and proceeded to run along the fence
taunting another horse with a half braided mane and a cross tie flapping behind
him.
All I can do is smile. The
story of Cotton is only on chapter 8 . . .