A little backround, part 1.

Ginger, when we arrived at the vets farm.

My filly Ginger was born 4-25-07 around 2am. At 11:30 am I received a call from my vet (where she was foaling out) that she was not doing well and I needed to take her to an emergency hospital (UC Davis.) I was told she was unable to stand and had become very weak and after struggling to stand she tore up her right hind leg.

The next morning at UC Davis, you can see her

lax tendons in front, the reason she couldn't stand.

So I arrived (1 hour later, mind you, quite a feat for someone in the middle of a work day and without a trailer) After some frantic phone calls my friends came through and we were on the road by 1pm. We arrived at UC Davis shortly after 3pm, carried my sad little filly into the ICU and they started working on her. Everyone there was astonished at her leg injuries (she looked like she had been hit by a car). They wanted to know where that happened and how. THAT is a another blog all together.




Standing next to her very worried mom.

The cutest face ever. The vets said if she didn't have such a determined personality she would never had made it.

Finally, after 11 days in the ICU we finally brought Miss Ginger home to the relief of her mother Zoey and my husband who had just paid for a wing at the hospital! She was having some difficulties keeping milk down, it would flow out her nose. So we were having to bucket feed her with her head up to help. Boy, that was fun, every three hours driving to the barn the feed a very ticked off hungry filly. Not to mention Zoey had had it with people and was determined to rips chunks out of me at every oportunity.
Home finally. Nice wrap on the leg, huh. Poor thing.

After a week of hand feeding we finally decided she was still better off doing it herself. And I am gald we did, milk came out her nose until the day we weaned her! And yes, Davis did scope her, she had nothing wrong, the best they could offer was a weak esophugus. So aside from that oditiy, she had a huge wrap on her hind leg. The day after we got her home my NEW vet came by the help me change the wrap. His first words were "holy cow, they said this wasn't affecting the join?" Yep, it was that bad and they had tapped the joint and so far it was not in the hock. So that started a rigorous schedule of rewrapping every three days for the next two months. After a lot of drugs, wrapping materials, bruises and near misses (by both mom and baby) the wound finally healed enough to be left unwrapped.

At that point I had moved her to a very nice arab breeding farm so she could socialize with other babies and go out in pasture. Well, that lasted a week. After a few scary run-ins with a fence I had her worked on by my massage lady and she said I really should get it ultrasounded. Now keep in mind this is almost five months later. So we once again seperated them in a smaller pen and took Ginger to get ultrasounded by a specialist. (you know the ones that charge you a fortune) To our disbelief she had a torn suspensory ligament and some mild tendon damage as well. So she not only tore the skin struggeling but tore right trough her ligament, nice.