Maggie

Today I want to tell you the story of Maggie. Not because it is particularly uplifting or even because there is some deeper meaning to the story for you readers to figure out. Mainly it is just because it is a moment in my life that will always live with me and that I still think about. Actually, I hadn’t thought about it for a while, but on Monday I was interviewing for a job and we were talking about horses and rescues and the story just kind of came out because I still think about why it happened and what would have happened if just one thing had gone differently.

It was midmorning in February when I got the call. The winter had been oddly mild that year and that particular morning was only slightly chilly with the sun peaking in and out behind the clouds promisingly. A horse had fallen into a pond not too far from where we were and needed our help. The owner was frantic and didn’t know what to do. The humane society was all volunteer based and everybody was at their day job. The horse owner had called the dog warden because she did not know who else to call and the dog warden forwarded the desperate call for help to us. Quickly packing the car with blankets and rope and our first aid kit for horses, we sped away to a to help the horse. On the way there, I reviewed what I knew about horse rescue in my head. There is horse rescue where horses are taken off property if they are abused or neglected and then there is emergency horse rescue, which is when a horse’s life is in danger because of fire or flooding or some other disaster. Horses are big animals, an average size horse usually weighing in between 1,000 and 1,500 pounds. Rescuing a horse from a sticky situation isn’t as easy as rescuing your kitty from a tree. I had taken a few clinics with Rebecca Giminez of TLAER (Technical Large Animal Emergency Rescue), and she shared a story with us about two horses that had gotten up into the hayloft of their barn and couldn’t get down – talk about a rescue! I had never actually expected to use the knowledge I had gained in those clinics, but I am so glad I had gone.

The home where the horse lived was 40 minutes away - even though we sped down the country roads. By the time we got there, the firefighters were already on the scene. Behind the quaint house was a large field and a tiny man made pond. The scene was bleak, made even more so by the gray sky and the dead grass. One firefighter was in a wetsuit and in the pond with the horse, a chestnut mare. Both horse and firefighter pretty much filled the man made pond. The water was neither deep nor large, but there was no bank, only a steep drop off. They had a rope tied around the horses’ neck and attached to a truck. The mud around the area was churned up. The other two firefighters, both very young, stood around, not really sure what to do – they had been at it for almost an hour.

The second we arrived on scene, it was apparent what the problem was. The bank was too steep and with only the mares’ head above water, the bulk of her body was weighing her down and was too heavy to make it over the incline. When I attended the TLAER course, my classmates were predominately firefighters, and now I understood why the clinician was so adamant that they attend her course. She had been on horse rescues like this before; she understood that firefighters are generally not trained to deal with rescues of large animals. You don’t think that that is such a big deal until you realize that this horse has been in freezing water for over an hour because they did not know how to work with her. In seconds, we had the rope off of her neck and around her chest (behind her front legs) and I had enlisted the help of the homeowners and found a scrap piece of plastic siding that we could slide under the mare. With everything in place, the group of us took a hold of the ropes and had the mare out onto the mud in less than two minutes. Still in action mode, we put blankets down on the freezing mud and tied ropes to her legs in order to flip her over. It is amazing the strength a few people can have at times like these. Once she was on her other side, we covered her with more blankets and the real work began. The firefighters got another emergency call and the dog warden felt all was good, and soon we were left with just the family.

Things did not look good. The owner had noticed the mare had fell in the pond just moment after it happened. Once second Maggie was lying in the grass taking a nap and the next, she was trying desperately to climb out of the freezing water. There was a small hill right next to the pond (probably the dirt that had been dug out to create it years ago), and we speculated that perhaps Maggie went to roll before standing up and instead found herself sliding downhill into the water. Maggie had been with the family for 20 years – they had trained Maggie from a foal to become a winning barrel horse and confident companion on the trails. When she was old enough, her daughter learned to ride on this kindhearted mare. Anxiously, we awaited the arrival of the vet as we watched Maggie lie still under the mound of blankets. In an attempt to warm her, we started to rub her legs and neck. Her long winter hair was curled and soaked through and thick mud matted it down flat against her. She had been in that water for an hour. She was still and made no attempts to try to get up, we started to talk to the owners about euthanasia.

Horses are not designed to be laying down for long. Horses do and should lie down to achieve REM sleep, which they only need about 20 minutes a day of. Some horses like to lounge around for a bit more (we had one Tennessee Walking Horse that liked to come in for the morning and take a 3 hour nap), but in general, most horses prefer to get most of their sleep standing up. Horses are creatures of flight and evolved to run away fast from predators. They have almost 360 vision, long, light legs made entirely of bone and tendon, and large lungs. They also have a locking mechanism in their back legs that allows them to lock a leg into place so they can remain standing while resting. It is a horses’ natural instinct to stand up, especially when they are in danger. The fact that Maggie was content to lie on the ground despite just overcoming a near death experience was not heartening. Not only does the horses’ mind encourage it to stand, but also physically, the body needs the horse to be standing. It becomes uncomfortable for a horse to remain lying down on their side for long periods of time – their lungs literally start to crush under the weight and their digestive system cannot function properly. At the bottom of a horse’s hoof is a cushion of nerve endings and blood vessels called a frog. When a horse walks, the pressure on the frog helps to circulate blood through the legs and back up to the heart. The longer a horse in distress lies down, the worse the distress becomes.

When the vet arrived, he wanted to try to save her. The owners told us that Maggie had always been a fighter, and they were willing to try. And so the fight began. Spreading out some straw around her legs and sides and underneath her, we tried to insulate her against the cold and tried to encourage her body to try to warm itself. Grabbing towels, we scrubbed her all over in an attempt to increase circulation while removing the wet mud that caked her hair down. The vet started an IV with warm water. The day was getting colder. The sun that had thought about coming out this morning had been beaten off by the bleak, gray clouds. I was in long underwear, sweatpants, several long sleeve shirts and my thick purple Carhart overalls and jacket. My hand warmers I sacrificed along with the others to line Maggie’s jugular – our thinking was that it might do nothing, but it might end up helping, so we had to give it a try. My hands were muddy and frozen and despite my hat and thick layers, I could feel the cold starting to creep into me. I don’t remember what time it was, sometime around noon. Maggie’s eyes were open and staring so that little ice films were forming, so I sat by her head and rubbed her eyelids and kept her nostrils clear. She was moving her neck more and her legs were now scrabbling against the mud, and we praised her efforts to try to stand, but she was just too weak.

We waited patiently for her to recover while we did all we could. At some point, the owners came out and offered us all some hot chocolate that eased some of my shivering. I was very touched and grateful that they thought of us. Something about that day just felt unreal, I can only imagine what victims of flood or fire or tornadoes must feel like when some kind stranger reaches out and offers them some small comfort. It instantly bonds you when you realize you are in it together. My situation was not near as bad as that, but the worry and sadness for the horse combined with the bleak weather and cold make everything endlessly long and yet, it passed too quickly. You lose track of time. I remember just sitting by Maggie, her head in my lap, listening to her breathe, just looking out at the pasture in front of me. The dull green grass met the steel gray sky and almost blended. There was no wind, thank God, but tiny soft snowflakes had started to fall. Slowly, slowly, they twirled and dipped their way to meet the dead winter grass before settling into stillness.

I was woken out of my reverie by the vet as he told us we needed to make one last ditch effort to help her, or the hypothermia and shock would surely settle in and take her. Stacking bales of straw on her side, we pushed and we pulled and we encouraged until we had her laying sternal – that is, laying up with her legs underneath her, rather than her being flat out on her side. Taking time to let her rest, the vet told us that she had a 90% chance of recovery and she should be fine now. He had to go on another call.

Heartened, it was decided that I would take the car back to the ranch and get some more blankets and some of our heat lamps we could set up in their barn when she was walking. When I got into the car it was 4pm. I sped the whole way there and back. Pulling back into the driveway and grabbing the stuff form the car, I walked through the back gate to the yard, confident to see Maggie on her feet and ready to help her walk into the barn and get her fully warmed up. Instead all I saw was Maggie, lying back down on her side where we had first pulled her out. My coworker and the owner were the only ones by her side. Everyone else had left. She was still alive when I walked up and dropped the extra blankets and towels. It was then I knew that Maggie was not going to make it. The snow was still softly falling and all was quiet, it was almost peaceful.

Perhaps we were just so used to trying to save her that what we did next was natural. We all grabbed the new towels and started to rub her all over. Her skin was cold under all of the blankets. The owner had a look of numb despair in her face. We met eyes briefly, before looking away. It was at that moment that I was rubbing her hindquarters that Maggie lifted her head and looked back over her shoulder to look directly at me. I don’t know what she was trying to tell me; perhaps that it was all right, that it was her time. Horse’s eyes are always so deep and intelligent and full of expression, but I have never locked eyes with a horse like this before. Never felt like, just for that brief instant, we were connected somehow, that more passed between us then than words or whinnies ever could. Shocked, I stopped my rubbing and Maggie laid her head back down in the straw and breathed out her last breath.

It took a while for it to set in that she really was gone. She had fought it for so long, but she had decided when it was time for her to move on. She fought it for the love of her humans, for the love of the greener pastures to come, and for her love of life. Maggie’s story could have unfolded so many different ways. What if the firefighters had been trained in animal rescue, what if we had gotten their sooner, what if the vet thought she didn’t have a chance and she was euthanized, what if she had just been a year or two younger, a little bit healthier, what if the sun had won out and shined through the clouds. A lot of “what ifs”, but that is not how it happened, and I would like to think there is a reason for that. Life does not always make sense, but we have to learn from it and take meaning from it to make our lives better and make the lives of others – human and animal better. Maggie’s soul may no longer be with her body, but part of it is certainly carried within me.