My Baby

She is My baby too. Because Rose, her 'natural mother' is about as natural a mother to her as a piece of fucking coal! Left to, or even with Rosie, that little mite would've been dead the day she was born. Or, as I'm fast learning, any other day since. If Small Horse is to survive and grow, it'll have been purely down to the constant and indefatigable efforts and inginuity of myself and my friends and neighbours. One of those neighbours just today commented that Small Horse must have nine lives.

It all started, for the purposes of this story, on Thursday, 14th of May 2009. I know that's the day because I have a calender on my kitchen wall. I cross out each day as it passes. But I haven't crossed Thursday, or any day since. I just haven't had the time to think about it. Small Horse is all I've been able to think of or spend time on since just after noon that day.

Of course, this is really a sort of 'Prequel'. I'll be telling ye about Small Horse without ever even having introduced Rosie. Suffice it to say here though that Rosie, my show stoppingly beautiful ~ and equally beautifully natured ~ piebald Cob was In Foal when I bought her. I never thought to ask when she was due. But, that wouldn't have made a lot of difference anyway. Horses can drop a month or so either side of their exact day. I was just watching for the usual signs.

So it was that, Wednesday evening, as I fed Rosie and Donks their evening meal in the pen, I made the usual point of ducking down to examine her tits. I then ran my eye over her bum. Kissed it, and left the pair of them in peace. (Rosie has a bum to die for! Dean O' rolls his eyes at this term. He insists I should say " Hind Quarters ". Well, the vet who Chipped Rosie, a young lady, actually commented most enthusiastically on Rosie's " Gorgeous bum. " If the Vet says 'Bum', so shall I continue to! And I kiss it too. Had teeth, I'd Bite it! It's the Most gorgeous bum!)

Anyway, all that aside; Wednesday was a wash out, as had most days preceeding it been. A perfectly unremarkable day then. Quite normal. As was my crawling out of the pit, just before noon. As usual, I got dressed. Logged on. Made a cup of tea. Rolled a fag. Then let the Dogs out. As perfectly routine as clock work.

Oddly though, this day I did one thing differently. Instead of following the Dogs a few feet out the door, in order to look up onto the porch roof and check my magpies, I stood there and gazed down to the Pen. The Pen was formerly an ouside range of cattle stalls. The stalls roofed over and an open yard between them and the Bier proper.

Partly due to the vile weather. Partly due to a concious state of indecision about where Rosie might eventually decide to foal, given the choice, I'd been vacillating wildly about what to do with 'The Horses' of a night. See; I'd been told two things by several people. 1. " Never let them foal indoors! They'll get into a corner and kill the foal and themselves. " 2. " Never let them foal outside! They'll drop into a ditch and kill the foal and themselves.

As it was, the constant rain has made the Home Acre a fucking swamp. Thus letting them walk it day and night, in search of a blade of grass, would render it a mud wallow. So I'd been keeping them in the pen and feeding them hay in my Round Feeder.

Only, a round bale can last a Cob and a donkey quite a while ~ if it doesn't get rain soaked and rotten first. Thus I'd come up with the idea of stretching a plastic tarpaulin across the open area, suspended on bungee ropes. Quite resourceful, I thought. Protected both the hay and the pair stood there munching it all day and night. To hell with the rain. And it was that tarp' which drew my baleful gaze on thursday. Just after noon.

Ye see, it had filled with rain water and was bellied low. So low it was probably brushing Rosies head as she moved beneath it. My almost obsessive care for my creatures comforts wasn't going to allow Rosie to put up with this seeming indignity. Without hesitation, I marched straight down the compound and through the gate. I'd soon sort this out.

Barging through the cow bier door, I swept up a broom in passing. Out the bottom door and directly into the pen. My eyes, with my full attention, already on the low hanging belly of the rain filled tarp. " 'Fucking sort this out, horses! " I said, as I looked up from beneath the tarp and pushed the broom head towards the lower end of the pen.

With an almighty rush, gallons and gallons of rain water cascaded earthward. Like a minor damb burst, I heard it gush down onto the small drainage ditch beneath the old gate into the paddock. Another, well manoeuvred shove. A load more poured off. That was That sorted. And all before my cuppa and smoke. Good.

A quick glimpse at the 'horses'. Yep. Both here. Both fine. I ran my eyes round the concrete floor of the pen. Bit of night shit. That could wait till I came back to muck out, as usual. Hay was good. Being eaten. Cool. All's well. Time for that tea and smoke. Check a forum or two and then sort the creatures out. How's that drainage ditch holding up with all this rain? Ah. Blocked, as ever. Must rod it some time and .....

And, all I really remember is the large, brown lump. It was the same colour as the shit saturated, flooded drain it lay in. It was half submerged and very still. And I was screaming something. On my knees. My arms thrust into a sea of shit and water. And I was trying to lift this dead weight out of the slurry.

Absurdly, I remember thinking it should've been black and white. I'd expected a piebald. I'd expected to look out one day and see an idyllic scene of a little, black and white thing suckling feverishly beneath Rosie. Out there on the field. On a sunny day. Probably in June. I wasn't prepared for This.

It's back leg was somehow, grotesquely, caught up through the bars of the gate. Such long legs. So many of them! I desperately tried to keep calm as I unravelled the mess of limbs. Was anything broken? Did it fucking matter?!? With a super human strength, born of the fear of pure nightmare, I'd somehow lifted this entire dead, cold, limp mass of wet, gritty filth out of the slurry ditch and was holding ot to my chest.

Somehow, I snaked a hand into the breat pocket of my bod warmer and managed to get my mobile out. Without concious thought, I rang Pat; My closest neighbour with a brain cell and whose number I have. I seem to remember screaming something about, " The foals here ~ it's in the ditch ~ saturated. " I'm bloody sure I remember poor Pat saying something about he knows nothing about horses ~ calves ....."

I also remember the brown, filthy water running all over my expensive, 'flash' new mobile. It's too slim and poncy for them even to have made a case for. And here was ditch water flooding across its face and key pad? It'd blow up any second!

Then I was screaming to Steve. I honestly haven't got a clue what I said, or his answers. All I remember is; " You Do Not Have Enough Credit To Continue This Call. Please Top Up. "

Then I was staggering back, up the step, into the cow bier. This sodden. brown lump of cold, gritty meat in my arms. I layed it down on the floor and tried to think clearly. It was like looking at something I'd dragged, with a stick, out of curiosity, from a pond. Something dead. Drowned. Thrown in there some time since. The only thing missing was that smell of putrification and the white patches where the hair had slipped out.

Towels. I'd somehow rushed back up the cottage and was now rubbing it with a towel. Then another. And I was getting no where. The towels seemed as soaked and dirty as it was. One or two of its gangly legs may have been broken. Its lower lip appeared torn. I was aware of something fleshy hanging down around there. This was an absolute fucking nightmare! It wasn't meant to Be like this!

The next thing I remember is Pat and Steve were both there. Pat, I distincly remember, raked inside the mouth and pulled out a clod of shit. He said something about Lungs and No Good. Mental blank .....

A bed of deep straw has materialised? I have no straw! A red, Heat Lamp. I must have rushed to fetch the extension lead from in here? These guys were fucking Heroes! As I tried to comprehend the situation and, as best I could, mimic their activities; The lamp was hung, just so. We rucked the straw into a bolstered bed. I was getting sound bites like " Breathing ". " Guts settling ". " The Mares Milk. " That's all that was getting through to me. Snatches. I was in a combat situation; And about ready to lose the fight.

Then I was kneeling beneath Rosie. I had a 20 ML syringe and was milking her into it. Oddly, this bit I remember perfectly well, even though I've lost what happened imidieately before and after. It's worth relating here ~ a moment of amusement, even in the midst of this nightmare.

So, I'm milking Rosie into this syringe when Pat ~ a Born To It, life long, absolutely obsessive Beef Cattle Farmer ~ says to me; " Ye Milking that mare?! How the ....?! ". To which, glancing over my shoulder, I says; " Ye've never milked a Horse before, Pat?! Good lord! We City Boys do it all the time, mate! Fucking born to it! "

Maybe he misheard me? Thought I'd said 'Gypsy Boys'? Only he seemed quite placated by my answer, how ever he heard it. He just said; " Oh. Really? " To which, as the milk squirted into the open, top end of the syringe, I smilingly shook my head and said just; " No, mate. " I'm quite sure I remember hearing Steve snigger!


And, anyway, That's how it all began. It's been ~ and looks like continuing to be ~ an absolute fucking nightmare. What ye've just read if only the start. I've much, much more to tell ye yet. Only I've got this instinct to go check on Small Horse again now. It's been a couple of hours since I left her, fed, warm and perfectly healthy. But Rosie's right there. And that mare seems set on, quite neutrally, without any sign of actual malice, wiping out the, by now, decidedly less than nine lives of Small Horse.

More later. Time, and simple ability to log in, allowing. Right now ~ 02:44 ~ I just Have To go look in on Small Horse. She'll want a feeding anyway. All being well .....


Consider this " Small Horse; Part One ". I hope to wear this subject out, over the coming weeks and months. Know what I'm saying?