The Horse Chronicles
Page 6
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Red was lying on his left side and he was semi-conscious. His head and neck were covered with mud from struggling. We could not immediately see why he was unable to get to his feet until he tried to rise.
There is an old septic field behind the house. The tank cover, round concrete cap about 18 inches in diameter, had been dislodged by frost heaving. The wet ground freezes and expands, forcing the solid concrete well-cap up from the rim of the opening. Red had apparently set foot on the edge of the well cap which had flipped up like a coin. One of his rear legs had slipped down vertically into the septic tank and the well cap had flipped back down, trapping the leg. He did not have the physical strength or flexibility to get up and out. I am not sure that any horse would have been able to get out of this leg trap without injury.
Our efforts to rescue Red spanned many long, panic filled hours. We called the police and fire departments. They had no solution for us; no winches; no way to help. John Lenzner, our neighbor, stopped by briefly on his way to catch a flight out of town. He informed me tersely that Red was his horse and he was ordering the animal euthanized immediately. Then, I called Shawn.
True heroes are shaped by adversity. They are people who respond to impossible challenges with their whole being. My farrier and friend, Shawn T. Keith, is a heroic person. I was unable to locate a veterinarian who would come out and help us. Sometimes this happens. Joe stayed with Red while I dialed and dialed and dialed without any success. Finally, after 15 or 20 minutes, I called Shawn's mom and told her to find him at any cost. Almost immediately, Shawn called me back on his mobile phone. He was right around the corner, on his way home from work, and he would come immediately. He also called his friend Dave to meet him at our house.
Shawn and Joe and Dave manned shovels and hoes. They managed to move the heavy concrete well cap out from under Red's body. They set about enlarging the opening around Red's leg. Somehow, they made enough room to free Red's trapped leg from the septic tank hole, and to roll his body over away from it. When they got Red's leg out, the horse was in shock and too exhausted to move. So the three men grabbed his tail and his head and legs and just rolled him over.
We covered Red with all of the sleeping bags and blankets we could find. The men stayed with the horse. I went back inside to find a goddammed veterinarian. It was extremely cold that night, below freezing, real snow falling, and with enough wind to push the ambient temperature below zero. I knew that it was too cold for these men to be outside, and I had no idea how we would keep an injured horse alive.
In between trips inside to the phone, and outside to the wreckage, Dave asked me to bring a bucket of warm water mixed with a little salt and sugar. The men helped Red to sit up somewhat - to at least get his front legs folded under his chest. So, Red was able to drink, and he was very thirsty. We also fed him hay and a little grain.
Finally, sometime in the dark of the night, a veterinarian arrived. Rob Kissick, a newly minted DVM from Colorado State University who had contracted with Tom Walrond out of Butler. He simply looked too young to help us, and I thought, well if this isn't the blind leading the blind through a mine field.
The young man drove his truck around the back of my house right up to the horse. He hopped out and unloaded several large plastic boxes of medical equipment and supplies. He stopped to assess Red's condition for about 15 seconds, and immediately rigged an intravenous catheter into his neck. My instructions to the vet were to (1) stablize the horse to prevent him from slipping into terminal shock, (2) assess for broken bones and find out why the horse could not rise, and (3) render a prognosis. I told him that we would stop any therapy on my say-so only.
Rob's hope was that Red was suffering from exhaustion, since neither of his rear legs appeared to be broken, nor were his forelegs broken. While Rob was resuscitating the horse with fluids and injections of pain medication, he instructed us to go to the barn and haul out as many bales of hay as it would take to build a barrier against the wooden split rail fence. Red was lying on a slope - upslope is the house; downslope is the pasture fence. When the horse is stronger, it will try to get up by itself, and if it falls again, you want it to fall or roll against a soft barrier.
Red did try. Perhaps 10 times, each one a failed struggle against gravity and the slippery, snow-covered ground. Finally, Red lay on his side, unable to rise. Rob donned elbow-length exam gloves and palpated the horse's pelvis internally. Red groaned deeply in pain several times during the exam, but he did not try to kick or struggle. Rob said that there appeared to be swelling and a large hematoma at the apex of the horses pelvis which was probably broken. Also, the trapped rear leg had sustained enough nerve damage from the horse's own weight on it for hours, nerve damage that was probably permanent.
He can't get up. He might freeze to death overnight, or he might linger on for several days, and when he dies he will die in this spot. He is thirty-seven years old.
Rob drew two large syringes of sodium pentothal. It is pink and viscous as corn syrup. I asked Rob to give Red an injection of a sedative to make him sleepy, which he did. Red was still struggling to get up, and since I had no hope of saving him, and all of my helpers were exhausted and freezing to death themselves, I just wanted them all to go home. They were, to a man, sitting on various parts of Red's body to keep him down on the ground, and to keep the blankets and the hay packed around him. Not one of the six men and women who came to help Red and I, nearly all of whom had far greater experience with horses and horse-related disasters, ever had it in their hearts to call it quits. No one said, look let's just get this over with. They waited for me to make the call, and I had to wait for Red to tell me when to end it.
I sat in the snow and I held Red's long, slender head in my lap. I told him that I loved him, and I apologized to the horse for killing him. I told him that he, of all of the horses, deserved an easier and more dignified death. I told him that I knew that he was too old to live much longer, and we knew that we were watching him daily draw closer to death from old age. But I wanted him to have the gift of just one more warm, soft spring following such a brutal, awful winter, and, because I thought that this spring might be his last.
It took four full syringes to sodium pentothal to stop Red's heart. I was suprised each time the vet had to draw off a new vial of the mercy drug. He said that sometimes their systems are so strong, you just have to keep pumping it into them. What we left there in the snow that night was not Big Red.
And this is where the journal ends. Where it began.
Black Mack
April: 1998
John Lenzner has bought another horse. He purchased a registered Quarter Horse named Mack. Mack is 11 years old, and for all his life he has served as a hunter-jumper school horse and amateur competition horse. Mack is coal-black with a tiny white star on his forehead. He is an excellent fellow. Well, we'll see what unfolds.
Mack was sold away from his luxury stable because he no longer desires to haul the local rich kids over the jumps. Mack has become stubborn and willful, a sure sign that he is tired of his job. He's refusing his rails if a kid is on his back, although I know that he can and will jump over anything in his way if it suits his purpose. He also has a reputation for dumping his rider on the trail, and turning his heels for the barn, which means Mack ain't trail broke, and he's barn-sour. For all this, he is a sociable, amiable fellow. However, John Lenzner is not much of a rider, and it will take a strong rider to stay on Mack's back if the horse's heart is not in it.
Mack lives on John's side of the fence. Wonder how long that will last. Any bets?
--sww.
