A foal is born, a life in our hands

Colt, Carmine and QH foster mom, Jesse


The colt is learning how to drink from a bucket - much better than trying to bottle feed him. This development makes it easier to believe that the colt will survive, but there is still worry: Worry that he won't thrive, that he'll be stunted, that there's something else wrong to deal with - that he won't make it at all.

The Law of Attraction says that what we focus on is what we create in our lives. Dwelling on what can go wrong can never create what we want to happen, it can only attract what we don't want. On the other hand, it can seem so Pollyannaish to assume that all will be well - by only focusing on a problem-free future for this colt, we could end up missing a vital clue that could make the difference between survival and death.

What to do?

The Law of Attraction also tells us about acceptance. Last post I mentioned accepting that this colt’s soul has made choices for his life in this body, and honoring that what I am seeing reflects higher purposes that I cannot know. I can accept the choices or fight them – but I cannot alter them.

How, then, does this acceptance work with respect to the responsibilities we each have to the critters in our care (and to children, for that matter)? Do we just strive to ignore the possible problems, only think happy, positive thoughts, and hope for the best?

One of the gifts – or perhaps burdens - we as humans have is that of free will. Unlike the colt, with his limited range of choice or responses to the events in his life, humans have countless choices that can be made in any situation. We can imagine anything, and what we imagine, we can potentially do. We can imagine all sorts of futures in our minds and, ideally, then examine those futures and use them to make best possible choices. When we work with our horses, we do this imagining of the future all the time: We dream of winning endurance rides or halter classes or polo matches or cutting competitions - any or all of it with the colt in front of us that is just learning how to keep his legs in the proper order.

As humans we imagine a future for this colt in front of us, but of course, the choices can only be for ourselves. We may want to make choices for this colt, but it is his soul that’s driving his existence in this life, not ourselves as we stand looking at him.

The Law of Attraction teaches acceptance, but acceptance does not mean inaction. We are here to actively live lives, not to merely sit back like voyeurs and watch the world go by. We are here to choose to do in order to maximize what we see, feel, hear, smell, taste and experience in all possible ways. It is the journey, not the goal, that is the point of living. What goals we strive to achieve are, in the big picture, not so important to our souls as how we get there. If this were not so, what would the point be of living once a goal was achieved?

We can set the goal of doing whatever we can to keep this colt alive, but our journey, how we go about doing this, is key. The act of doing for the colt - the bottle and bucket feeding and all the special care - is ultimately for ourselves, for our own life experience and for the higher purposes our souls have for us. We can grow from this, no matter the outcome, or we can struggle and suffer, torturing ourselves with focusing on negative outcomes. The choice is always ours, no matter where we find ourselves in life.

A foal is born, a life ends

SE Despree, a Desperado V daughter, had a hard time with her first foaling two years ago – the long-legged filly had one foreleg pointed backwards and needed veterinary assistance to be born. We think there’s a chance that Spree suffered some internal damage during that procedure because when she foaled last Wednesday night, even though she produced a healthy colt, there were complications - the result of which was an orphan foal.

The neighbors had recently weaned a yearling colt and that mare, Jesse, still had milk. Spree’s bay colt got a ride up to Jesse in the back seat of a pickup truck even as Spree was taking her last breaths. The foster mother mare, fortunately, accepted the foal right away. Unfortunately, while Jesse had milk, she didn't have much of it, so the foal, now a week old, still looks like a 2-day-old, all ribs & hip bones.

We brought the mare and colt down to my ranch this morning and both have settled in nicely, Jesse (much to the neighbor’s surprise) not phased at all by the llama that was in the next pen. The colt is on Foal-Lac as a supplement to Jesse’s milk, and the mare herself seems to be producing more as the foal nurses. Hopefully the colt, still nameless, will survive and thrive, but we are worried for him in the immediate future.

Over the past week I’ve had lots of time to meditate on life and death, trying to come to grips with the drama here. The only solace I can feel is when I remember to honor the souls of the horses involved. Spree’s soul chose the circumstances of the life she lived and the death she died. It is not for me to question her choices, but to honor that she had a higher purpose in making them. The soul of the colt, too, has made choices that I can honor - or that I can ignore and torture myself with. The choice to honor and accept, or reject and suffer, is my own.