This is what he looked like when he came to me on June 2nd.



Here he is today. I think he's put on a little weight.



The pictures don't really show just how bad he really looked. You could see his spinal column, especially across his croup. His croup protruded really bad. He's no longer "depressed" either. He's come alive a little.

He's starting to act more like a young horse. He notices and looks at things more than he did, of course I have to introduce him to them and then he's ok. He's just a lot more alert in general. He still likes to have his head held in my arms. He shuts his eyes, it's so sweet. The swelling around his sheath is almost completely gone. The wound from the incision is in the "white" stage so it's healing pretty well. I'm very pleased so far. I'm looking forward to doing all of the ground work with him. I'm planning on sending him to a trainer for 90 days beginning in February. He'll turn three in April. That way, when the weather is really nice I'll have him back in time to ride. Between now and then I'm taking this boy to some shows so that he can get his head right about sights and sounds. I regret not doing more of that with my big gelding when he was a baby.

For the life of me, I'll never understand the mentality a person must have that would allow them to tie a horse to a tree in the summer and not provide them with water All ...... Day ........... Long. That is not cool, macho, cowboyish ... it's simply cruel. A true horseman would never do that. All I can say is you reap what you sew and if you sew bad things like that, it will come back to you. This horse would have been better off being hauled up to the pony express and auctioned off. It just makes me feel sad and dismayed. It's over now, he's with me now but I know there isn't a shortage of people like that in the world and it's just sad. This one was just too close to home since the guy was an aquaintance of my husband's. What he did to this little horse was just wrong.