Here’s the latest on the filly …
Story by EL Bramblett

With all the human interaction, most of it negative, the mare concealed the foal by moving between any interested admirers and her baby. The filly was spending much more time on her feet and began to explore the confines of the stall. She would tentatively approach the dutch door, unable to see over it, curious about the humans on the other side.
Occasionally I could touch her nose which usually sent her into a bucking romp behind her mother ending in a skidding turmoil of head over heals. She would lie for a moment and then retry her legs for another round of exploration and milk. As her independence grew, my own worry accelerated at an alarming rate about pasterns and fetlocks; tendons and ligaments.
With a knawing sense of dread, I tried to occupy my time cleaning tack and mucking stalls. I finally picked up a halter and walked out to the south pasture to catch the four year old mare I had started under saddle last fall. The mare had raised her head from the grass and had slowly walked to my side patiently waiting for me to halter her. We walked to the barn where she paused to sniff the new arrival and was quickly met with the barred teeth and laid back ears of the filly’s mother. I tied her across the isle so as not to interfere with the new born. I brushed and picked out her feet before throwing the old Rios Brothers saddle onto her back. The saddle was now pushing thirty years and had been badly neglected by its previous owners. The saddle had been made by an old friend in Phoenix and after examining the saddle said he could repair most of the damage. The tree was still sound. He replaced the fenders and stirrups as well as a missing back cinch even though newer saddles have eliminated them. He kept meticulous records of his work and remembered making this saddle for a wealthy lady in 1978. I was surprised when the saddle was sent back to find he had also replaced some of the missing silver. There are only a few good saddle makers left, he is one of them.
I rode the mare out of the barn and up the lane toward the orange groves bordering the Ocala National Forest. She seemed to know my mind was elsewhere and would stop at trail intersections shifting an ear back to listen or wait for a leg to give her some sense of direction. My thoughts had never drifted off the ominous warning of Doc and my other old friend. “Don’t wait too long.” And yet all my instincts were to let nature take its course. The filly was less than twenty four hours old. Normally she would be outside trying out those legs, the legs that give horses the ability to swallow the ground and fly without wings. I turned the mare toward home and put her into a lope. She responded quickly knowing the trail and seamed pleased for some direction from her rider.
I hosed the mare down and put her back out in the pasture. Without a second thought I put a halter on the new mother and led her from the stall with the filly struggling to keep up. Once free, I could see the filly putting more and more weight in the right direction on the pastern but it still had a tendency to double over as it had been in the womb. I gave them about an hour outside and brought them back into the stall.
From dreams in a half sleep at dawn, I awoke from nightmares about horribly bent legs and test results giving the filly no chance to live. It was a long night and yet sleep did come near the time I am usually up. Linda was already at the barn needing my help to draw blood for the IGG. “This is one of those times you think in blue. Think of this test as if you are looking at a face, two eyes and a nose. What we are looking for is dark blue in the nose which means the filly is getting 800 parts per thousand of the mare’s colostrum. If the right eye is blue we will have to start the filly on plasma immediately…if the left eye is blue we can give her one more day to see if there is improvement. Let’s draw some blood.”