Seabiscuit

 

Seabiscuit is a 20 year old gelding T.B. He came to us in July 2005, he was very, very, vary bad. He smelled like he was already dead, he had so much dirt, dead hair and skin on him it took giving him a bath every week for a month in order to get all of it off. He was very touchy on his spine and withers not to mention his back end. When the vet came out to give the initial exam, he made the comment that he did not think he had ever saw a horse in this shape before, still alive. He said that he had only seen horses in Seabiscuit’s shape in his textbooks.

His feet were in need also but he was so weak it took almost a month before he could stand long enough without fallen for the farrier to trim his feet. He had ringbone in both front feet so therefore it was very painful for him to walk on uneven surfaces; he had to stay in the grass. He had to have special shoes on his feet in order to help him balance while walking on different surfaces and now has graduated to wearing regular shoes. He really likes to run now; it is as if he is trying to catch up from when he was in to much pain to run.

When he arrived and we tried to get a weight on him he had so much muscle mass missing we could only wrap the weigh tape around his skeleton body and had no way of truly knowing his correct weight and could only record the skull weight of 890 with his height being 15.3 hands.

Seabiscuit has came a long way and has grown on everyone heart that has meet him. He is still with the rescue and very attentive to every new horse that comes in. We have been able to place him with several new horses and he does not mind letting them hang out with him. As of May 2006, his weight now is 1080 lbs and really looks good.

 

UPDATE

When you dont really know what type of life an equine has had up until the time the rescue receives him or her so it's hard to know what to expect.

 Seabiscuit recovered on the outside and looked really good and was showing us that he felt really good up until Christmas of 2007. Seabiscuit started having spells of just not wanting to eat no matter what we tried. He would show the signs of Colic but no matter what we did, we found that what ever was going on just had to run its course. It would normally last just during the morning feedings and then he would start eatting by the evening.

March has be a little harder on him, he has been several days in a row that he shows us that he just isn't feeling well. We started giving him something for pain each day and he is started feeling a little better but he just isn't the same Seabiscuit. He has dropped in his weight and his hindquarters is also causing his movement to be limited. He is not as steady as he once was. The Rescue is not sure what will happen in the next few weeks but whatever does we know that he has had a really good life since he came to the rescue in 2005.