7-31-09

Lucky's Rescue Story

The weekend rescue story is about Lucky. She was an orphaned foal we rescued in 2004.

Lucky was rescued from a livestock auction at the age of 2 months. Lucky's mother was no where to be found, and no one wanted a poor little orphaned filly, especially as she had an umbilical hernia. When she went through the auction ring, Tawnee's hand seemed to go up on its own, she just had to bring this cute filly back to the rescue!After wining the bid we assumed the auction workers would have put her in a pen by herself. We paid for her, and two other horses we saved that day, and headed out to find her. To our horror we found her in a pen with about 6 cows with long horns! Poor Lucky was extremely scared!

An auction worker stepped up and said "Here, I'll get her out for you." He walked into the pen with a paddle and started whacking on Lucky to get her out. The cows were scattering, dashing this way and that, and one of the horns almost gouged into her neck. Thankfully Lucky emerged unscathed.

We did some research and found out that poor little Lucky had been separated from her mom as her owner was doing a herd dispersal and wanted to cut down on her herd size. The poor little filly with a hernia and weird markings on her back was discarded as an unwanted horse. She was loaded into a trailer with about 20 other horses. She managed to stay alive for the 120 mile trip to the auction they made early that morning. It was well over 100 degrees at the auction that day, and Lucky sat in the hot dusty pen all day until the auction was finally over in mid afternoon. All this at only 2 months of age. We gave her some nourishment and then loaded her into our trailer and took her back to the rescue. You can see Lucky's journey that day on the map below.

Lucky did not take to a bottle, nor was interested in drinking milk from a pale, she absolutely refused. She did, however, enjoy nibbling on hay and All-in-One, and drinking water of course. So we ended up feeding her All-in-One with powdered milk and other vitamins all mixed in. She loved it!

Lucky had weird markings all over her back and we just could not figure out what they were until someone emailed a link to equinecolor.com, and it seemed to fit. Click here to see what the weird markings on Lucky's back are!

Lucky was a cute little girl and adjusted well to living at the rescue.

Every day she discovered new adventures and became brighter and happier.

About a month after the auction it was hard to tell it was the same horse. She was now full of life and energy, yet still only 3 months old.

And she still had amazing markings on her back. They are called Lacing and so her named became Lucky Lacing.

In Dec of 2004 she was adopted by a very sweet lady and started her new life. Lucky was now old enough to have her hernia surgery, so her adopter had it done and the surgery was completely successful.

Lucky is doing great today. The last photo's we have of her are in mid 2007, you can tell that she has grown up to be a beautiful mare!

Her adopter says that everyone asks about the markings on her back. She explains that Lucky is a beautiful horse and is certainly one of a kind.