Loss
Got up quite early. Slightly earlier than usual. The lawyers on the other side took until 1.05am to provide what I needed for an 8am start. 2 hours of prep work in between. A little bit of thinking. Usually the morning begins with a run. I just do it. In the cold. Usually fog. Sometimes thick. Wet. I take 1 dog. The big one. Follow me online if you want to see more about that. I am a runfluencer lately.
Not this morning. I am in the office at 6.45am - refreshed. Happy to be indoors. Fire on. Fresh bread no kidding. The meeting is at 8am sharp. It's a Board meeting and they will sear me sharply on both sides. I prepare somewhat nervously in the kitchen. A big part of me really does not give a fuck and I mark up a variation agreement for the Chief Executive. I chat with my Man. Put a load of washing on. The house is kinda messy.
The board meeting happens. One guy is in a car the whole time. Travels a distance many deem appropriate in southern Canterbury. When he talks during the meeting - and he likes a broad sentence - he stares right into the camera of the phone mounted to the dash of his car. No interruption. He is driving. Traffic in the peripheral vision.
Once 9 am hits I am busy. Stuff starts calling me. I spend a surprising amount of time listening to automated AI messages. Calling up the vet, god forbid a doctor's practice or a HOSPITAL. God forbid a government department, god forbid local government. What about the bank. Try a bloody insurance company. Not so much that morning. The callers were people in Friday morning distress. Unnecessary conversations that require my entire attention. Many of them I take notes about. I get the bots on the case to help with the notes. I drink black tea the entire time.
Come about 10.30am I make a call to enquire whether the horses rugs were taken off in the morning. They were not. It started to get hot. By about 11.40am I manage to ice myself out of the office and onto the motorbike. Dogs in tow. Idefix on the back. He likes to sit up there and gets really quite pushy about wanting to go faster.
We go down the road. Half a km down the road. Then into the paddock. Once we are through the gate, I Iet Idefix jump off the bike. Make sure they are not taking off after a goat to the left, I turn around a corner over a culvert and see the horses. They are way out the back. They do not usually hang out there during the day.
I immediately get the sense something is wrong. But I am predominantly in a rush. I have a 1pm. The paddock is in the full sun. I get to the gate and good old Poro makes his way to the gate in a brisk trot. He is clearly very relieved to see me. I take his rug of in absolute astonishment that Two Stroke, my big, beautiful bay mare of perfect proportions and a good sire on both sides - because that’s what it takes - the mums are always good - she with the two white socks and the most attentive and courageous manner you could demand of a horse, she is not coming to the gate. She is staying behind at the back of the paddock. In an awkward spot. She is usually always the first to the gate.
I rush to get the rug off him. He is sweaty underneath. Has been running. And worrying. I drop the carrots I brought him into the damp grass. They are big and long and purple and droopy from sitting at the kitchen table in the full sun during a sunny week. Several days. They were not the freshest to begin with. Most of the stores in my town are discount supermarkets. The ones that buy and then sell the end of the runs. Quite a few of them. So I got them from one of them. Poro does not manage to wrap his senior jaws around the carrots quickly enough following his initial suspicion. They were unfamiliar in appearance and scent to his usual fair. Poro is visibly lacking appetite.
I stare to the back of the paddock. I cant quite see what is going on. I rush past poro on the narrow path and pull the rug off as I push forward. Rug on the grass. Now I gasp a few times and see the patches of blood on the ground. Stamped into the grass and mud. She does not move forward. I get close enough to see that she is holding her right front leg up. She is facing me. I get close enough to see the gash. It is massive. Right down her front leg. And gory. There is a lot of blood. I can see she is in horrific pain. She looks at me for help. I tear her rug off. As fast as I humanly can. I am on the phone to the vet. In the fucking helpline. Dial 1 if you want to speak to the next door towns small animal wet. My brain cannot process a single one of them and I dial zero for the operator. I put her halter on and I did not need to.
I explain as succinctly as I can that I need an urgent vet. Large animal. The operator takes it very seriously and sends the nearest vet. Near my remote town with one way in and way out. The nearest large animal vet is 40 minutes drive away. I have met her. I was really hoping someone else might be in the area. And I was hoping someone would be a lot closer. There is no arterial bleeding so I do not go anywhere near the gash. I try and keep her calm. Tell her that help is on the way.
I call my man. He is building a billiard room for wonderful people up the valley. The lady is in her 70s and rides like a 14 year old. With guts and speed. I go riding with her and her granddaughter sometimes. She is a terrific horse woman. Old school. No bullshit. Capable. Very experienced. Calm but determined demeanour. He picks up fast and I explain in two sentences and they arrive 15 minutes later. During this time I talk to the horse. I can only look at the gash in 1 second stints. I cannot continuously look at it, even examine it.
I call my farrier. Who has become a close friend. She is a tough bitch. Tougher than you. Definitely. I recently rode to an offshore island with her and her missus. It took 3 days of riding. You cross at low tide. I video call her and show her the gash. She tells me it is not good and to be prepared for the worst but wait what the vet says. She gets off the phone because the vet calls her. Wants her to come to the scene but she is a 2 hour drive south away.
Man and Old Girl arrive on a motorbike. They have the dogs with them. I am intensely relieved to see them. They come into the paddock via the back gate, have to first make their way into the swampy paddock to the back gate. They move as fast and as calmly as they can. When they arrive everyone is in shock together. We do not talk much. I confirm that I have called the vet and that the operator said the vet was 30 minutes away. We check my phone log to reveal it took them 15 minutes to arrive. We believe the vet to be reasonably close.
Old Girl says useful things. About staying calm and about how she usually likes to save them. How maybe it is not that bad. My Man recently saw her nursing a baby deer during his morning smoko. She’s got pet possums. And with a bit of bandaging and a hoof cast it may be alright. How she has saved many with a bad wire accident. So have I. 3 of them. And one of them with bad hoof damage. I absorb information about the gash in milli portions. She tells me about past accidents. I find that a little unhelpful. They inspect the paddock surrounds and announce that they believe the accident happened by the back gate, there is a lot of blood by the back gate. A lot of blood. I also saw a lot of blood on my way out and I was nowhere near the back gate.
I call a friend who lives a 15 minutes drive away and knows the horse well. She is in the saddle and away on multi day ride. She is shocked. Tells me she cannot help and to call the farrier. She texts me during the ordeal that she would assist with medicating, bandaging, feeding and a dryer paddock than mine should it be possible to fix it.
My Man has gone back to the road to wait for the vet. He has since spoken to Old Man, who is also a big horse nerd. Very capable. Has bred racehorses his whole life. Very gentle when breaking them. I hear his advice, not to prolong suffering wherever possible, second hand. Man comes back over the muddy paddock on the motorbike because I am crying openly and violently on the phone. Old Girl completely understands. I hand her the leadrope connecting me to the agonising horse and she takes over holding her head to comfort her. While I inspect the blood puddles in the back paddock the mare decides to lie down.
She is breathing heavily and sweating. She has clearly visible pain markers. All the information I have managed to visually collect about the gash is fundamentally alarming. We see the vet speed past the distant valley road in the bright sun. She is going way too fast. She also does not see us. She had the address. What is wrong with her GIS tech. My Man speeds behind her on the motorbike. Old Gal and me complain about the vet. We both do not like her. American. During this time we should have prepared several buckets of clean water and clean towels.
It takes ages for them to reappear on the horizon. Motorbike in front the vet ute makes its way though the paddock. Slowly. She could easily go faster but she does not know the paddock or any other boggy paddocks. She tries her best. She stops on the other side of the fence, across a ditch and climbs across the fence with no equipment to assess the situation.
The vet is nervous. She quickly explains that because Two Stroke has lost a lot of blood, we will struggle to get her through the night. I lose my footing slightly and the tears turn out. The vet gets together equipment from the back of her ute. Man helps her get all of it across the ditch. She is worried about sedating her because together with her low pulse that could end her right there. She gives her a little sedation because I urge her and we proceed to place the catheter into her neck. She shaves off a square of her shiny beautiful coat on her neck and repeats several times that she apologises for the unsanitary conditions and urges me not to touch the area. Which is difficult because I am applying my entire body weight onto the mare's neck via my knees, while Old Girl holds her head down by pressing a specific spot near her cheek that makes her submit to our pressure. At one point me and Old Girl get thrown off and the mare catapults the small vet across the paddock with a vigorous swing of the head.
We give her fluids and her body functions return enough to administer pain killers. The vet numbs her sore leg and applies a pressure bandage. I demand more sedatives for the horse. As her leg pain subsides, she wants to get me and Old Girl off her neck and actively starts trying to get up. We try to hold her head still for the drip. Once the sedative is in, we get a second to think. Man starts sawing off the giant fleshy flap. We decide that we can make a call on life or death once we see the full extent of the injury underneath.
Once the flap is off, discussions are quick. I video call the farrier again. A daily bandaging, feeding, medicating and stabling routine flashes before my eyes. I am crying like a tap. I know the right thing to do. The mare is suffering. So we get on with it. 3 big syringes go into the catheter. Slowly. One by one. We are holding her head. There is talk about prayer and mentions of god by Old Girl. The mare knows that I am there. We are close friends. Her breathing becomes deeper. She starts drawing very deep breaths. I tell her I am sorry. I feel completely responsible. I feel like I should have taken better care of her. That I cost her a life. She leaves us as I cry over her dead body. I feel numb and dizzy.
The vet locks eyes with me and I can hardly see her. She firmly explains that she supports my decision, that it was the right call. She had already lost too much blood. There would have definitely been an infection. I do not say goodbye to her, but I thank her for her help. I appreciate her. She praises my Man and the remainder of the surgical team, the Old Girl helps her tidy up and she disappears across the fence. Old Girl suggests that we keep the sawn off chunk of hoof. I call the Mayor’s landline to request his help in a tractor. The Mayoress picks up the phone in the usual polite manner. I burst into even more tears and try to explain what happened. The Mayor is at the back of the farm out of reception.
We say our goodbyes and take the halter off her head. I do not want to believe what I am seeing. She is a beautiful creature and the crashed out hoof looks like a scratch in proportion to her large body. I have a hard time leaving her for the last time. It is like she is still there. Until we leave. Poro needs to be taken care of. I sob while I halter him. Man loads the horse rugs and the Old Girl onto the motorbike and we take off towards the road. We stand in the sun outside the neighbour's house and collect our thoughts. The Mayor arrives, dog in tow. Our dogs are in the builder van.
The Mayor is 76, short, slightly bow legged with a comparatively large but firm belly, shoulderlong, wiry, ivory hair and a light blue worn out Anzco hat on his head. He wears stubbies over his wiry legs and a few holes in his second top layer. He tears up slightly when he sees me and gives me a hug. The only other time he has ever hugged me was when his mob of cattle got into the paddocks behind our house one night when we were all up the road at a hangi. We did not notice until the next morning when they had turned resown pasture into mud. He resets his composure, makes a livestock deadstock statement and hops onto the Man’s motorbike to assess the scene. He will be the undertaker.
Old Girl says something about getting back to her lunch and my Man confirms that he turned her oven off when they left. I get on with it and take old boy Poro and the dogs back home. I stumble the 500m trip down the road following the dogs and the shell shocked Poro horse who occasionally stops and neighs out for his friend. I put him into a paddock near the house and go and drink some water. The Mayor and Man will tie the horse up by its legs to a tractor and transport her up the road to the back of the Mayors farm. Where his digger is.
Not wanting to watch that I take two big glasses of water into my office and take a hack at my inbox. I message a few people about what happened. Those who were advisors over the phone. I get changed. Wash my face. I get called up the road. I cry the whole way in the ute. The Mayor’s digger is playing music. I climb down into the hole. He has laid her out respectfully. Her beauty breaks me. She is cold to the touch now. Lifeless.
