Thunder, Lightning, Very Very Frightening.........

It’s now just over five weeks since Fenix arrived. Strangely, I have been feeling frustrated with what I perceived to be a lack of progress, but the reality check of dating his actual time of being here is more encouraging.

Until a week ago, I had no internet access after the farm was hit by lightning on the 29th of August, so this is a biggish catch up.
With the various lightning storms etc, I have been trying lots of ways to catch him. None of them hugely successful. I hate horses being out in thunder and lightning, as I am so scared of one of them being hit. At three am on the 29th, the thunder woke me up, and the lightning was starting to kick off. Out I went to try and fetch the gees in. They were careering round their individual paddocks, being periodically lit up by the flashes in the sky. I finally managed to get a hold of Os and Madge, and put them in the stable. Poor Fenix was by now even more distraught, as the adrenaline from running around was magnified by fear of being left. I opened the fence between the fields to try and see if he would run into the big barn, but no such luck. Finally, he came for the food, and after about fifteen minutes I had him caught. He danced across to the yard, but very politely!
The storm had disappeared by the morning, so I spent some time with him in the stable and then put them out. You could see again that he was amazed at still being in the same place. Of course, as soon as I had mucked out and come in for a shower, the thunder and lightning started again. This time it was much worse, and I had to do the same procedure again, but now he seemed to understand that it was a good thing to be caught when the weather is crap, and let me put the headcollar on.
Feeling happy that all my animals were safely in from the horrendous weather, I heard two huge bangs outside, a couple of minutes apart. I ventured out to see what had happened, and I saw a bunch of broken tiles and mortar on the yard..........my big barn had been hit by lightning! Yikes!

At least it wasn’t my horses............. .

A bit later, my neighbour arrived, and needed help catching her three horses that had broken out of their field in the storm, and were across the road whizzing about in a huge open field.
I still really hate lightning, but I’m less brave when it’s other people’s horses!
After a bit of ado, we got a hold of them and put them in my barn until the lightning had stopped, and then walked them home.
I realised when I returned I had no electricity and no telephone! After fuse juggling with a torch, I fixed the house, but the fuse boxes in the barns kept tripping with a really big flash every time I tried to sort them, so I gave up. Just as well really, as the damage was a cable split by the lightning...........

So, back to Fenix.

It was also becoming difficult feeding them in different fields as the more he became attached, the more panicked he got when Os and Madge were (unavoidably) fed around the corner, so I decided it was about time to try them in together.
I opened the fence up at the top, with the plan being to let him meander through. No such luck. And a bad call on my part. He took off like a scalded cat, winging towards them, and they turned on him and all three were spinning round the field flat out. I could only watch with my heart in my mouth. He was kicked by Ossie, and bitten by Madge, but they settled down after a while, and he learned to keep his distance.
They have come to some form of acceptance, but he’s not allowed in the shelter, or the barn. It was worse to begin with when I went into the field, as O&M did not seem prepared to share me, but that is settling down now.
We’ve had a couple more storms since then, and I can now put a headcollar on him if I have done the same to O&M as he stands beside them. There’s still a problem in catching him normally, but at least I can now be sure if I need to, I can.

He has had a tapeworm wormer, and a five-day wormer, so I was bringing him in to make sure he ate it all, which gave me an opportunity to play with him a little in the stable. Now, I can touch all four legs down to the hoof, but I can only pick up a front foot for a second, and then he panics. He lets me run my hands over his body, but he is a bit wary when I get to his quarters.The other day he was scratching his tail against the wall, so when he moved forward, I worked my way backwards on him and started to scratch his tail where the hair was disturbed. He relaxed after a minute or two, and then turned and looked at me in astonishment. Barring dishing out food, which I am not convinced is interaction at all, this is probably the first time in his life that a human has done something he likes. He held my eye contact as well, which was also a first.

He is a very polite little person, but he has a massive OFF switch and that is where the difficulty lies with him. He wouldn’t be the bravest, he’s so far removed from the bolshy, in your face horses that I normally have it’s incredible. but partly due to that, I think, I have seen little or no aggression in him.
With some things, he holds his breath as I do them, he’s tense and taut, but he lets me carry on and then accepts them. He has no problem with me scraping bot eggs off his legs, or touching his legs now, but any attempt to pick them up, and he’s back on another planet.

My one concern is still this hind leg. He is very sound in walk, but slightly lame in trot and canter behind. He is not remotely distressed, as he just wanders around happily.

I cannot pick his feet up to see what’s happening, and will have no chance of getting a vet near him without regressing all the work I have done, and possibly not succeeding anyway. So, rightly or wrongly, I have decided to wait and see what happens when I can look at the foot easily. Hopefully within the next week or so. He may have bruised a sole galloping about, he may have a tiny abscess, he may be bruised from a kick, although there is no wound.
If it is the swelling on the front of the pasterns that concerned me before that is causing the lameness, then that will probably involve some X rays. It is hard to say if it is bigger than when he arrived, as I was unable to get close enough before. All this is conjecture, however, until I can examine him properly. It is also difficult as the broken hair colour distorts the eye somewhat.

I'm probably over-reacting, I'm still judging on competition sound, not field sound.

On the plus side, he has put on a load of weight, and is far more relaxed. Hopefully by the next instalment I’ll be a bit clearer about the leg.

Learning Curve

Sunday
I can't get near him this morning, so he has no fly spray on his face, and no mask. He has no mane or forelock, so nothing to help stop the flies clustering around his eyes. I hate to see it, but at the moment I can do nothing about it. The versatrine at least has stopped the mouche plats. He looks much less tight, tho', so hopefully he is relaxing a bit.
He came to speak to me tonight when I was talking to Os and Madge. Unfortunately she has obviously exhausted her supply of goodwill to skinny waifs, 'cos she tried to take a chunk out of him over the fence. I knew the snake-witch would return!! He has figured out that standing in the shed is cooler and the flies don't pester him as much, but he's so hungry he prefers his head down in the grass with flies. There's hay in the shelter for him, but I think that's all he's had for a while, so the grass is winning at the moment.
Feeding him was farcical. All the 4-leggeds came with me to help, greyhound, doberman, two kittens and a fat cat. The felines had a game of trapeze artists on the shelter posts, and the dogs were running round in circles barking at them.
He decided that the shelter was unsafe, and I decided to give up trying to speak to him.

Monday
The closest I can get to him in the field is to hand him a carrot with my hand behind my back so that I don't look at him. He won’t eat his food in the shelter tonight, despite the menagerie being locked in the house, so I have just had to leave him to it.
I have had it mentioned that he looks worse in the second set of pictures compared to the first set.
I think the differences are to do with photography and dehydration. The person who photographed him the first time said that he looked fatter in the photos than in reality. I also have some where he looks fatter than life. Grey, white and black do not reflect light as well as other colours, so the shape of a horse of those colours can be deceptive. To show what he was really like, I had to shoot him without the light directly on him, the sun was slightly behind him. Because he is so poor, he will also have visibly changed with dehydration and he drank, in the 15 hours after he arrived, a whole large black dustbin of water. I have no idea what size it is, but my other gees would take 4/5 days to drink that much. He also was visibly softer looking by the time I turned him out after those 15 hours, so I suspect it has to be water. He wanted to speak to me this morning, but bottled out at the last minute, so still progress of sorts!There was a suggestion that keeping him in would have helped with him accepting me more quickly, but in Fenix' case, I knew he needed grass, and I felt that any progress I made in the stable would be lost as soon as he went out anyway, because he was having to compromise and had to deal with me in his space, IMO a major issue for him. That is relevant only to him, tho', if I had read him differently, and thought it would have helped him, I would have kept him in. He's funny, he watches me with O & M and is astonished that they speak to me and come to me. You can see him thinking it might be a good idea, but there are too many scars at the moment.

What a nightmare tonight, we were hit with a massive rainstorm and I had to bring O & M in. I cleared the feed room (it is a stable!) and put a bed down to put him in. I then spent two and a half hours in the sluicing rain trying to get close enough to put a headcollar or rope on him.
No joy, so I had to leave him out.
I hardly slept a wink and was delighted to see him still happily grazing at daybreak. And I managed to get him to eat a carrot from my hand, facing me! M & O are a bit miffed at the carrot supply not going over their throats!



Wednesday
He’s getting braver with me every day. And when the rainstorm started again on Wednesday evening, I had to go and try and catch him again.
He was letting me stroke his neck as he ate, so very slowly I was trying to slide the rope over the base of his neck as I scratched him. Irritatingly, the food ran out just as I was nearly there. I stopped and he went forward to the other side of the feed bowl, sniffed the headcollar lying there and took off.
Back with more food in the bucket, and he came back towards me, and amazingly let me put the rope over his shoulders, and then the headcollar on. I wanted to jump up and down with joy, but of course I couldn’t. Still not an entirely a trusting wee person, he snorted all the way to the stables and seemed totally perplexed by what was happening to him.
In the morning, he was covered in stains so he had obviously lain down all night, which is brilliant as it means he felt safe enough to do so. And I have the excuse of not grooming at the moment too! I had a bit of a struggle putting the headcollar on again, as he wanted to run through the door, and I couldn’t reach the bolt to shut it from the inside, so I was holding the door shut with my foot trying to tempt him to put his head into the headcollar. I thought it unlikely to succeed and so it proved!
Eventually I had to stand outside the door, and he let me put it on that way. Confusing, but it worked.

I nearly cried when he went out to his field. He stood and looked about as if he couldn’t believe he knew where he was, then he put his head down and started munching. Happy pony, happy me!

Friday
I chucked the dogs out the door first thing this morning, and in a minute all I could hear was Zak (doberman) barking furiously. I went sprinting out to see Fenix lying down, with Zak careering round him in circles. I immediately thought colic, as I have never seen him lie down in the field before, but I think he was just having a rudely interrupted snooze. He got to his feet as I approached, and was fine.



He now comes to me in the field to see if I have any carrots. It is a week since he arrived and I cannot believe he has progressed so far mentally in such a short time. The cats don’t worry him any more, and neither obviously does Zak.
I think he has just been running wild all his life, I don’t think he has had any human interaction other than herding him about at sales and on lorries. I think he has put on some weight, but there’s still a distance to go.

All in all, he’s further on than I would have thought possible.

Late Arrival

After many changed plans, Fenix finally arrived last night at about 1.30 am. When the driver opened the partition to let him out, I couldn't believe how shrunken and wasted he looked. He was so scared, and was really afraid to even come down the ramp. It made me wonder what would go through the minds of the horses arriving in Italy when they were at the top of a ramp for the last time in their lives, seeing what was ahead.

He wobbled down the ramp, and as it was so dark, I put him in a stable rather than turn him out when he couldn't see his boundaries. I took off the transporters' headcollar and let him settle for a minute or two whilst I saw the lorry out on towards the next stop off. The headlights lit up my two horses, Ossie and Madge standing in the field gateway, and they looked so healthy and well in comparison with the little waif in my stable, it was hard to believe they were the same species.

I went back in to give him a feed and he was tearing into the hay with a vengeance, but as soon as I opened the door, he shot to the back of the box in a panic. He didn't understand the corner feed manger, so I had to fetch a rubber floor basin and put the food in that instead. He still wouldn't touch it until I had left the stable and shut the door.

I left him to it, so that both of us could get some sleep. It took me a while to drop off, I was worried by how small he looked, and scared he was. And what on earth had I done to take him on ....? In the midst of scrambled dreams and thoughts, I was awoken at 3.40am when the transporters called to tell me they were about to deliver me a horse! It took a minute to engage my brain and have them understand that they had dialled the wrong number and that I already had my horse, thanks!


It was with a fair dollop of trepidation that I went out this morning to give him a handful of grub and carrots and then turn him out. I was worried about the reactions of my two next door, how respectful he would be of the electric fence, how sound he would be and whether he would panic and run around blindly.
No worries......there was no chance of getting anywhere near him, let alone close enough to put a headcollar on him to lead him to the field. I had visions of him stuck in the stable for days, unable to touch him and build his trust!

I was relieved to see that he was not too small, just incredibly poor, but even so, there's still a long road ahead to restore him to health. I had a brief look in his mouth, and his teeth indicate to me he is a bit older than I thought, maybe six. But then, I don't really have a clue beyond a four year old mouth, so I'll wait for the EDT to pass judgement.

I left him again with his food, then came back and topped up his hay and water, and sat in the corner to try and have him accept me a bit. I don't know when he last ate or drank, but he consumed nearly half a bale of hay over night, and was wolfing into the next lot as if he'd never seen it before, and drank nearly half a black dustbin of water.

So, to cut a long story short, with loads of body language and carrots, and going in and out of the stable throughout the day, I managed to gain his confidence enough for him to let me put a headcollar on early this evening. He had become so confident with me and the carrots, it was heartbreaking to see him revert to a wreck as soon as I had a means of controlling him. I took it off and put it back on again several times, to try and break any association of using it as a control for him, and he accepted it better each time. I even managed to put the fly repellant on his neck and back, albeit with him shrinking and shaking.

Rightly or wrongly, I made the decision to put him out as grass is what his poor little body needs. I have sectioned off a paddock with a big shelter, he is adjacent to the other horses for company but not in any danger of being bullied. All my worries of the morning were still there, of course, but it had to be done.





Madge was first out of the barn with Ossie in hot pursuit. I was wary, as any new horse that Madge meets she tries to kill over whatever barrier is put in her way, including the electric tape, and both she and Ossie in the past have spent hours running up and down fences protecting each other from the invaders.






Unbelievably, the evil, rolling-eyed, flattened-eared witch-snake that lurks close to the surface of Madge's smiling demeanour failed to materialise, and as she politely introduced herself, so did Ossie. Stunned, I watched as they all meandered down the fence, had another chat, and started to graze happily. I can only assume that Fenix is so cowed by his experiences that he offers no threat whatsoever to them. He had a trot around, and appears to be sound and active, and then had a roll, which pleased me no end as he obviously feels a degree of safety to do that.
But he looks so emaciated standing beside them, the photos make him much fatter than he is.



I have now just been out to feed them tonight, and he is wary of letting me touch him again, but nothing like this morning. There seems to be a gobstopper sized lump on the outside his near hind pastern. Hopefully it is a knock and nothing more serious, but time will tell. I cannot get close enough to have a proper look as yet.

Fenix seems a very sweet person, I think he is quite intelligent, he appears to learn quickly, so hopefully we are off on the right track. He's at least got a chance now.

Touchpaper

A thread on a forum, a conversation with a friend, some photographs and a deal struck; all these lit the touchpaper to orchestrate giving a little pink horse I will call Fenix a new life here with me.










The horse currently known as Oscar is a 4 year old Portuguese gelding. He has a brand on his quarters that I hope will help me to be able to trace back his origins. From the photographs I have had sent, he is a rose grey, with a black mane and tail. He is in poor condition, apparently a bit battle scarred, full of worms, and very wary of humans.


And who can blame him, as in his short life already he has been brought from Spain to a fattening yard in the Loire-et-Indre, to gain weight before being transported to Italy for slaughter for meat. At least he has been saved that, by the sterling efforts of people who brought his plight, and that of many other horses, to the attention of those in a position to help.


















It is hearbreaking to know that within the fattening yard there are still pregnant mares with foals at foot waiting to travel the long distance to Italy, in terrible conditions, to be slaughtered.

At the moment, I am awaiting news of the day when he is to be delivered here, and then at last he can look forward to respite and care and a safe future.