Fire and Ice, continued...

I followed him out through the stinging sandstorm back into the barn. She was as we had left her, propped up on her chest, resting with her chin deep in the straw. Two tan hooves were sticking out of her vulva, amniotic fluid dribbling around them. The soles pointed down. I figured that this meant they probably were the front feet, not the rear. I couldn’t see the foal’s nose, but I figured it was inside the mare’s vagina, on top of the legs, where it belonged. Lord willing, it would be a normal delivery.

We went back into the house. I dug out towels and sterile gloves, cut my fingernails to the quick so they wouldn’t risk rearing the gloves, and scrubbed down extra hard. At my instructions, Mike mixed a drink for the mare, warm water with electrolytes and molasses. As we returned to the barn, I hoped to see her licking off her foal. Normally it only takes a few minutes once the feet are showing.

We discovered that nothing had changed. However, the skin at the foal’s coronary bands still hadn’t turned blue. So I figured we had plenty of time. Mike lifted her head and placed her muzzle in the electrolyte drink but she refused to drink.

Some fifteen minutes went by without any sign of a contraction. The sandstorm thundered and hissed against the barn, worse than ever. I turned to Mike. “Please call Mikki.” She was our next door neighbor.

By the time Mikki appeared, still nothing had changed. The skin above the foal’s hooves still hadn’t gone blue, as best as I could tell, so I figured we had a chance.

I suddenly remembered. Once I had to pull two kids out of a doe. The hooves of the first one looked fine, and the skin around the coronary bands wasn’t blue. There I was expecting victory, but this kid, and also the one after him, turned out to both be dead. They had been dead so long that their hair slipped off on my hands. The doe was so exhausted from the prolonged labor that it took over a day before she recovered enough to stand.

I said, “Mikki, call the vet.”

I slid a gloved hand up the mare’s vagina. The nose was where it belonged, between the legs. I grabbed the fetlocks and pulled downward just a little bit. To my surprise, the foal slid right out, dark and wet, with white mane and tail. A filly.

The mare nodded off, her head dropping deeper into the straw.

Mike and I began toweling off the newborn. I squeezed her chest and amniotic fluid dribbled out of her nostrils. She looke alive, even though she wasn't breathing. I expected her to sneeze any moment, start breathing, but she didn’t. She wasn’t moving at all, just lying there like a wet rag..

I stretched her on her side and stared at her chest. Still no motion. I looked at the hairs in her nostrils. Not a quiver. Was she already dead? The towel wasn’t covered with the hair that would slip off a long-dead foal so I figured maybe she was still alive..

Just then, Mikki returned. “I left a message with the vet's answering service.”

“She’s dying," I said. "Everyone rub her.”

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