Friday, October 16, 2015

Fence Lines and Dreamer's Faith

OK.   I'm a little bit more composed, and a tad calmer, than I was yesterday when I posted the bare-bones story about Dreamer's Faith being found.  I am not a person who enjoys being angry and upset, and I do not like feeling those emotions strongly.  I will continue to give updates about the weanling's life and untimely death as I receive reliable information.
    Faith's body was found yesterday morning, by a maintenance worker, in the corral at the Carnival Grounds on Main Street on Chincoteague Island.  She was positively identified by her microchip.  Roe Terry, spokesman for the Chincoteague Volunteer Fire Company, was visibly shaken as he made the announcement yesterday.  Apparently Dreamer's Faith, who was reported stolen from the corral on Main Street, never left the corral at all.
  She was last seen and photographed on Saturday, September 5th, 2015.  She wasn't seen again until yesterday morning, October 15.  The area in which her remains were found is bounded by a chain link fence, and there are quite a few trees and a lot of heavy underbrush in the area.  The CVFC had an emergency meeting last night, and is expected to have a prepared statement early this afternoon.  I don't know if Roe will be available for questions or not.
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  This greatly upset me.  There was a great deal of anger aimed at the Chincoteague Volunteer Fire Company this past Pony Penning, when a yearling buy back colt, Soul Surfer, was discovered to have intestinal cancer, and was euthanized to prevent further suffering.  Soul Surfer was a son of Surfer Dude and Surf Queen, was a full brother to Surfer's Riptide, and was the darling of the buy back foals in 2014.  He looked to be in excellent health up until the 4th of July weekend - I have photos of him then, round, fat, sassy, and starting to muscle up.   Three weeks later, because of the intestinal lymphoma, he had lost 300 pounds in weight, his coat was dull, he had diarrhea, his hind legs moved stiffly.  Dr Charlie Cameron, the on-call DVM, did not like the way Soul Surfer looked, nor his demeanor.  I spoke with him prior to the colt being taken away in the pony ambulance, and he told me he suspected intestinal lymphoma.  The blood tests proved his suspicions to be correct, and when the colt had another seriously debilitating bout of diarrhea, the decision was made to put him down.
   Now we have what I call a true fiasco with the fate of Dreamer's Faith.  The poor girl.  What happened to her? ....  There are so many things that can happen to, and/or kill a young horse.  Up until a year ago, I would have said there were no poisonous snakes on Chincoteague; thanks to all the building and use of fill dirt on the island, I can no longer say that with any certainty.  Cotton mouths and rattlers have been seen, killed, and reported.   Was she bitten by a snake?  Did she colic?  Was she frightened (or playing) and did she put a hoof through the chain link fence?  If she put her hoof through the fence, did she then panic and break her leg?  Did she die from stress trauma?  Did she die from thirst and starvation, hung up in the fence?  Did a heavy limb fall from a tree, and hit just the right spot to crush her skull, or break her neck? What about the reports of the two men in the white Chevy dually with horse trailer attached?  Did they try to grab her, see her go into the fence, break her leg in fright, and just leave her there to die?  There are just so many possible scenarios....
    I remember with great loss the death of one of our colts in Florida - a pure bred Arabian.  He was 9 months old, and he was out in pasture with the other youngsters - weanlings, yearlings, two- and three-year-olds - that we weren't yet riding.  One of the neighbors had called and told us about a hot-air balloon that had landed in their pasture, next to our fence line.  The balloonist was having problems with his burner - and it was making a heck of a noise, huge hissing sounds.  Upon returning to the farm that afternoon, we found that Romeo, our Arab colt, had been so frightened by the gas burner hissing that he had run through a wooden fence.  He impaled himself on a broken board.  And he died without any comforting person nearby.  I hated all hot-air balloons and their owner/operators for a great many years.
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   I have only one question for the CVFC and the Pony Committee:  Why did you not walk the entire fence line when Dreamer's Faith was declared missing - and why isn't it done every day at the corral?

   We walked, drove, or rode the entire fence line of of farm in Florida each day - there were 79 acres, fenced into 6 pastures, plus the barn area.  Why is this NOT done for the small area of the Carnival Grounds corral?  (I know and understand why this cannot be done on Assateague Island.)

  My sincere condolences to the Beer family, who purchased Dreamer's Faith as a buy back pony on July 30, 2015.   Such a terribly swift ending to such sweet dreams....

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