We were hoping the new filly might jump, but we were not expecting her to get started straight away. Ideally, we would have preferred her not to tackle the five foot post and rail fence of her paddock.
It had all been going so smoothly. Famous last words with horses. We brought the foal home and settled her into a stable next to the boyfriend’s huge grey thoroughbred. The two of them greeted each other over the wall, big old Longman reaching over with ease to offer her a paternal snuffle and Darcy straining upwards on tiptoe to touch noses.
The next day we put Darcy in the outdoor school so the other horses could get used to her. The day after that we released her into a small field next to the main paddock, where she grazed happily. But the next day, she decided to jump the fence. The boyfriend heard the squeal. He ran out to the field to find a scene of sheer chaos. Darcy was straddled across the fence, the post lodged beneath her. It looked as if she had impaled herself. Mercifully, the fence then broke so she fell to the other side.
As she whinnied in panic, the horse being ridden in the adjacent ménage reared up and its owner was left clinging as it danced backwards on its hind legs like a Lipizzaner.
The boyfriend said he didn’t know what to do first, but figured that he could do nothing to help the poor rider and so set about trying to catch Darcy. She came to him straight away and at first appeared to be uninjured. But after the adrenalin wore off she began to limp. The area between her front legs was a strange shape, with a weird gap where the muscle should be. By the time I arrived on the scene, breathless and pulling a confused looking spaniel, an ominous pocket of fluid was collecting.
We’ve been through this so many times before. All horse owners have. As soon as the vet gave his verdict — ‘probably just a tear in the muscle but it could be something worse’ — I said, ‘I want her at Liphook now.’
Liphook equine hospital in Hampshire is where Gracie recovered quite miraculously from an old animal bone piercing her foot. Its incredible surgeon Tim Phillips has come between many horse owners and disaster.
We just had to get her into the lorry.
Horses do not load on to lorries easily at the best of times. Young horses are even more capricious. Young, injured horses are near impossible. I know an owner who once stuffed a wounded colt into the back of her estate car in a desperate bid to get it to hospital. She saved its life, although the back seat of her Audi never recovered.
I led Darcy to the lorry. She limped as far as the lowered ramp and stopped. I felt the impossible pull on the end of the rope of a horse that is not going to load that day.
I looked at the vet. The vet looked at the boyfriend. The boyfriend looked at the vet’s assistant who looked at my friend Amanda, who was lending us her lorry. We all looked at Darcy. And Darcy pulled her head back defiantly and said, ‘No way, no how.’
The vet went to his car and brought back a syringe of sedation. As soon as Darcy started to droop, the boyfriend pulled while the four of us pushed. Darcy roused herself from her stupor and reared up. ‘The thing is,’ said the vet, ‘if the tear is bad, and she wrenches herself…’
He filled another syringe. Her head drooped back down again. The boyfriend pulled. The four of us pushed. Darcy woke up, thrashed and reared again. The vet filled another syringe. ‘If this doesn’t work, we can’t give her any more.’
No pressure, god, I said silently. Darcy was virtually on the floor she was so sleepy. Her legs were buckling. Now we had the added risk of her passing out midway up and falling off the ramp.
‘Quick,’ said the vet, ‘we’re going to have to carry her.’
‘Hang on,’ I said, ‘you can’t carry a horse.’ But then I thought, we have no option. We’re carrying a horse.
The boyfriend stood on the lorry using all his weight to pull while each of us grabbed a leg. I ended up with the back right, and half a bottom. I don’t know how, but somehow we managed to carry a 13-hand yearling.
And so Darcy got to Liphook, where Tim Phillips pronounced that the torn muscle was not catastrophic and kept her in for observation.
She is now walking quite well and looking a lot brighter. I, on the other hand, may never walk straight again.
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