Stable Vices (Show Jumping Dreams ~ Book 21) Read online

  “That’s not good, is it?” Missy said.

  “No.” Mary shook her head. “It’s not.”

  Mares were supposed to nuzzle their newborn foals. To lick them and sniff them and show them where their teats were so that they could get their first drink. It was instinctual. Natural. What was supposed to happen. But what was supposed to happen, wasn’t happening.

  “Let’s just give them a little time,” Mary said. “The foal seems healthy enough. He should be able to bully his way into her heart.”

  “So it is a boy then?” I said as we all came out of the stall and slid the door shut.

  “Told you I was good,” Mary said with a wink.

  “Then do you think you could take a look at my pony and tell me what is wrong with him?” I said, thinking about Bluebird for the first time since I’d put him in the isolation stall.

  “Of course,” Mary replied. “Let me get my bag.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Bluebird was standing in the back of his stall, looking like he felt really sorry for himself.

  “So what is the problem?” Mary asked.

  I told her everything. How we went to the show. How I just knew that something was wrong with him. I left out the part about no one believing me. I just carried on with how he spiked a fever after the class and had been lying down but that other than that he seemed fine. Just a little under the weather.

  “Any cough or nasal discharge?” Mary asked as she listened to his lungs with her stethoscope.

  “No,” I said. “It’s not strangles, is it?”

  “I don’t think so,” she said as she felt under his chin. “Why? He’s been vaccinated hasn’t he?”

  “Yes,” I said, not wanting to tell her my worst fears, that my pony would not only get sick and die but that he would infect all the other horses in the barn too. “But they can still get it, can’t they?”

  “I’m pretty sure it’s not strangles,” she said. “It’s probably just a virus. You go to a lot of shows with him?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Well he probably just picked something up from one of the other horses there. I’ll leave you a course of antibiotics just in case it’s an infection but I really think he’ll be fine.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked her.

  “Of course.” She smiled back.

  But I had a bad feeling. She couldn’t know for sure and as she handed me the bottle of pills, I just knew in my gut that they weren’t going to work.

  “How long before he should start to feel better?” I asked.

  “A few days,” she said. “Maybe a week. But if he starts to get worse, let me know, okay?”

  “Alright,” I said.

  I had a feeling that we were going to be seeing a lot more of Mary.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  We all stood around and watched Jupiter and her new foal. She didn’t like him at all.

  “How can she not like her own baby?” Faith said as the foal went up to Jupiter and she pinned her ears and tried to kick him.

  He skittered away on long gangly legs that were still wobbly and new and fell down in the bedding. Jupiter ignored him.

  “It happens sometimes,” Mary said, rubbing her face with her hand. “We might have to show her how to let him nurse. He really needs to get that colostrum.”

  We all went back into the stall, hoping that we could encourage Jupiter to let the foal suckle. The first milk had antibodies in it and the foal needed them if he was going to survive. Missy put the halter on Jupiter and held her as Mary and I shuffled the foal towards her. We made Faith stay outside even though she’d protested because Jupiter was not happy and no one needed to be kicked tonight.

  “It’s okay girl,” Missy said, rubbing the mare’s head.

  But she pinned her ears and glared at the foal, turning her butt to him and striking out with a hind leg.

  “She’s going to kick him,” I yelled.

  We tried everything. Pinning Jupiter against the wall. Trying to stay between her and the foal so that she couldn’t see him.

  “If only we can get him to nurse one time then maybe she’ll see it’s not so bad,” Missy said, wiping the sweat off her forehead.

  “And how are we supposed to do that?” I said as Jupiter barrel kicked out with both hind legs, narrowly missing the foal’s head. “She’s going to kill him before she lets him anywhere near her.”

  By now the foal just seemed confused and scared. His coat had dried and was all cute and fluffy, a sort of dark chestnut color and you could see his white socks and the blaze he had on his face just like his mother, the mother who didn’t even like him. He stumbled away from her and lay down with a sigh.

  “We’ve got some colostrum at the clinic,” Mary said. “I’ll go and get it and we’ll have to give it to him. But we really need to try and get him to nurse. You don’t want to have to be stuck bottle feeding a foal around the clock, trust me on that one.”

  Missy and I looked at each other desperately. We already had enough on our plates trying to keep the farm running smoothly with my father out of action. The last thing we needed was another truck load of responsibility dumped on us.

  “Where is Sandy?” Missy said through gritted teeth.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Faith’s parents finally showed up and dragged her away.

  “I want to stay with the foal,” she protested as they shuffled her out of the barn.

  “He’ll still be here tomorrow,” Missy said as she left.

  “Are you sure?” I asked her, watching their car lights flash orange into the dark night. “If Jupiter doesn’t accept him, what are we going to do?”

  “I don’t know,” Missy said, sitting on the barn floor with a sigh. “This is why I didn’t want a pregnant mare here.”

  “This is why I told you that we should have found someone else to teach instead of Sandy.” I sat down next to her.

  “Do you want me to say that you were right and I was wrong because that doesn’t really help our situation any right now, does it?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Is Bluebird okay?” she asked as we both leaned back against the wall.

  I had a dull throb behind my eyes, a headache that had been lingering there all day and was getting worse by the minute. It probably didn’t help that I’d cried a lot at the show too, I kind of felt like a baby about that.

  “She says he probably picked up a virus,” I said.

  “Well that’s good, isn’t it?” Missy said. “He’ll be back to normal in a week.”

  “Maybe,” I said.

  “What is the matter? You don’t want him to get better?” Missy looked at me like I was crazy.

  “No, it’s just I don’t think it’s a virus.”

  “So you want it to be something worse?” Missy asked.

  “No,” I said, starting to feel frustrated. “I hope that she is right. I just have a feeling that she’s not.”

  “Feelings can be wrong sometimes,” Missy said.

  I didn’t like to tell her that lately my feelings had been spot on.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Mary came back with the colostrum and put a tube down the foal’s nose that went into his stomach. He lay there not seeming to mind while Jupiter stood in the corner, still mad at the world and the foal she had brought into it.

  “What are you going to call him?” the vet asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “He doesn’t belong to us.”

  “I guess his owner isn’t too worried about him,” she said, rubbing the foal’s head. “Otherwise she’d be here.”

  “You’ve got that right,” I said. “So what are we going to do with him?”

  “It’s up to you guys,” she said. “Keep trying to get him to nurse but you can’t leave them alone together. I don’t think that she would kill him but I have heard of it happening. You’re going to have to keep a close eye on them or else separate them.”

  “But if we separate them, she’ll nev
er accept him,” Missy said with a sigh.

  “Look, do the best you can,” Mary said. “I’ll leave you some formula and a bottle and maybe in a few days you can teach him to drink it out of a bucket but he’s going to need a lot of attention.”

  “Great,” Missy said.

  “I’ll ask around, see if anyone has a nurse mare. This time of year there are lots of foals being born and always a few that don’t make it. You may get lucky.”

  “Thanks,” Missy said.

  But I was pretty sure that the chance of finding a nurse mare would be slim to none. Mary was just throwing us that crumb to keep us hopeful. I looked at the foal. He was the cutest thing I’d ever seen. So new and fresh and not ruined by humans and yet his own mother didn’t love him. Didn’t feel that connection that she was supposed to at all and suddenly I felt a connection with him. My own mother had done the same thing, through necessity or something else I didn’t know but she’d left me without a second glance and moved away with her new family leaving me to fend for myself just like the foal.

  “It’s okay little guy,” I said, sitting down in the bedding next to him. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”

  He laid his head in my lap and closed his eyes. He was so sweet and trusting. I didn’t know how Jupiter could be so heartless. I rubbed him all over. His face and down his neck, on his belly and all the way down his legs to his tiny hooves. I touched him all over so that he would know that there was nothing to be afraid of. That humans wouldn’t hurt him. That it was okay to let us stroke him and pet him and take care of him. Then I closed my eyes.

  “I’ll take the first watch,” I said but as soon as the words had left my mouth, I was already asleep.

  CHAPTER TEN

  I wasn’t sure how long I slept in the stall but when I woke, a blanket had been laid over me and the foal was sleeping next to me. His head was on my leg and even though he was small, it was still heavy enough that my leg had fallen asleep. Jupiter was over in the corner eating some hay. I got up, lifting the foal’s head off me and he woke up, struggling to get his legs underneath him and stand. He wobbled over to Jupiter, who pinned her ears and kicked out, narrowly missing his head. He came back to me looking confused and hungry. I just wished that Jupiter would start to accept him.

  I found Missy in the office, sleeping on the couch, a bottle of foal formula next to a tiny bottle of baby formula. Owen was in his basinet in the corner. There was still no sign of my father.

  “He’s hungry,” I whispered to Missy as she stirred. “I’ll feed him.”

  “She still won’t let him nurse?” Missy asked.

  “No.” I shook my head. “What are we going to do?”

  “I’ve called Sandy a million times and left a bunch of messages.”

  She sat up, rubbing her eyes. Her hair was sticking straight up and mine had pieces of shavings in it. I now had a throbbing headache that was bordering on a migraine and Missy looked pale.

  “I don’t think she is coming back,” I said, picking up the bottle of foal formula that the vet had left.

  “I don’t know that your father is coming back either,” Missy said. “Faith was right. He’s not up at the house. He’s gone.”

  “You don’t think he’s gone off with Sandy, do you?” I said. “He doesn’t even know her.”

  “I don’t know where he’s gone,” Missy said. “But he’s literally picked the worst time to turn into a teenage boy.”

  “We’ll get through this,” I said. “We have to.”

  Missy stood up. “I’ll feed the foal,” she said. “You check on Bluebird.”

  “Why, is he okay?” I asked, my head throbbing in time to my heart.

  “Just check on him,” she said.

  I ran to the isolation stall, expecting to see my pony’s chestnut nose pressed to the bars, nickering for me. Instead he was laying down in the shavings and barely lifted his head.

  “Bluebird.” I rushed into the stall.

  I’d been so wrapped up in caring for the foal, believing that the antibiotics would help and that my pony would be back to his old self in a few days just like the vet had said that I’d stayed with the foal instead of my own pony. I’d wanted to believe her, even though deep down I hadn’t and now it turned out that I was right and she was wrong. He was getting worse. I brought some of his hay over to where he lay so that he could eat but he wouldn’t. He just turned his head away instead. I ran back to find Missy.

  “He still has a fever,” I told her breathlessly. “And he won’t eat.”

  “This guy isn’t too keen on his bottle either,” Missy said.

  It looked like she had more milk on her than in the bottle and the foal was making funny faces, sticking out his tongue instead of suckling on the bottle.

  “I’m not very good at being a nurse mare,” Missy said.

  “Do you really think the vet will find one?” I asked her.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  But I knew that she didn’t think there was much chance of anyone loaning us a nurse mare and neither did I.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The sun was coming up over the horizon when the vet came back. Missy and I had taken turns feeding the foal all night and I literally felt like I’d been run over by a truck. My head hurt and I felt nauseous. Maybe I’d picked up the same thing that Bluebird had.

  “Can you catch diseases from horses?” I asked Mary as she walked into the barn looking a lot better than we did.

  “Some,” she said. “But not many, why?”

  “Bluebird is worse and I feel horrible,” I said, running my fingers through my messy hair.

  “He has a virus and you are exhausted,” Mary said with a frown. “Don’t read anymore into it than that.”

  “But he is worse,” I told her. “Come and look. Please.”

  “It’s probably because it’s a virus,” Mary said again, this time sounding a little patronizing. “That means that the antibiotics aren’t going to make him feel any better. Only time can do that.”

  “But he won’t eat or get up,” I said desperately. “He’s getting dehydrated.”

  Mary went into Bluebird’s stall and he looked at us and then sighed. He didn’t get up. She took his temperature and I was right, he still had a fever.

  “I’m going to give him some fluids,” she said. “And pull some blood just to make sure that he doesn’t have anything else going on.”

  “Anything else like what?” I said.

  “Just to be sure that everything is okay,” she said vaguely.

  She fetched a giant bag of saline solution from her truck and after she taken three tubes of Bluebird’s blood she attached the plastic tube to the needle in his vein and secured it with sticky vet wrap that went all the way around his neck. Then she hung the bag up.

  “Make sure he doesn’t rip it out,” she told me.

  “But I was going to come and check on the foal with you,” I said.

  “Has she accepted him yet?” Mary asked

  “No.” I shook my head.

  “Then there is nothing much to check. I’ll just give him a quick physical and stock you guys up on formula but until she lets him nurse, that is just the way it is going to be.”

  “Won’t it stunt him?” I said. “Scar him for life?”

  “Foals are resilient,” Mary said. “He’ll get over it.”

  I sat in the bedding next to Bluebird while he got his fluids, listening to the mumbled voices of Missy and the vet. Jupiter and the foal weren’t our responsibility. They had been dumped on us. Abandoned. We weren’t responsible for them. Not really. There were agencies who could probably take them in. Shelters or animal control. But I knew that they wouldn’t take as good care of them as we would. They wouldn’t love the little foal or worry about him. He would just be another faceless, nameless abandoned animal looking for a new home or being shuffled off to slaughter when they couldn’t find him one. I wasn’t going to let that happen. Not ever. I was going t
o take care of him. And I was going to take care of Bluebird too. I just wasn’t sure how I was going to do all that and take care of myself at the same time.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Bluebird got all his fluids without ripping his IV out and afterwards he seemed better. His eyes were a little brighter and he’d perked up. He got to his feet and went to his feed tub when the grooms came through with the grain and he started to eat a little. But he didn’t finish it. My pony thought food was the best thing in the whole world. It came above everything else. If he could only do one thing it would be to eat all the time but it was like a switch had been flipped and his eyes went dull again. He walked away from his tub with a sigh, uneaten grain falling out of his mouth.

  “Oh Bluebird,” I said with a strangled sob. “What is wrong?”

  There wasn’t much else I could do except wait for the results of the blood tests and hope that maybe the antibiotics would do something. He was on bute for his fever and it had brought it down some but not got rid of it. I stood there staring into his stall, wishing him better. Too bad life didn’t work like that.

  Missy came over and stood beside me.

  “Henry is here,” she said. “Did you know that he is a whiz at bottle feeding foals? The little guy already drank the whole thing.”

  “Figures,” I said. “He used to work at the track. He’s probably been on breeding farms too.”

  “Well you know what this means, don’t you?” Missy said, putting her arm around me.

  “No, what?”

  “The grooms can watch the foal and we can go and get some sleep in real beds after taking proper showers and everything.”

  “Awesome,” I said.

  But I didn’t really think it was. I didn’t care about things like showers or soft beds or warm food. I only cared about staying with Bluebird. As though my willpower could make him better and if I left then that bond would be broken and maybe he would get worse.