Lucy's Home and Nothing Will Ever Be the Same

Lucy, the horse, came home from the clinic last week. Pregnant. Barely. The zygot is literally the size of half a dime. But it’s there. Getting slightly bigger every day.

It took some doing. Because Lucy was 15 when we bred her there was concern about whether she’d actually get knocked up. Obviously, the younger the horse, the great the chance for the pregnancy to take. 

But since Lucy was competing until she was 14, breeding when she was younger wasn’t an option. I wasn’t about to harvest her eggs and get a surrogate.  I’m crazy but not that nuts.

After her initial stay at the clinic I was told to bring her back for a recheck in 14 days. Apparently she had double ovulated, which meant there was a possibility of twins. In horses that is not good. Rarely do both survive and if they do, they generally have issues.

So if there are twins, they do something that is oh-so-clinically called a ‘twin reduction.’ That is, they abort the least viable embryo.

Wednesday was Lucy’s re-check. She was not pleased to be back at the clinic. After she got off the trailer she looked around and chomped me. Hard. She was pissed. The last time she’d been there had involved a week of daily ovulation checks, which were invasive and annoying. She’s not dumb and she has a very good memory.

The check-up was clinical. With barely a howdoyoudo, the vet pulled on a pair of plastic gloves and whipped out an ultrasound wand to check her out.

“Yup,’ he said, “Look there are two.”  I looked at the ultrasound and initially couldn’t see anything, but found myself agreeing anyway.

 “Oh, yeah, it’s right there.” Of course I was looking at two spots on the screen that had nothing to do with why we were there.

The doctor kindly pointed out the correct tiny specks. “She needs to stay here for a day for us to take care one of them.” At this point that I wanted to ask him to make sure he left the one that was a great jumper; the colt with the white feet, but he didn’t seem like he had much of a sense of humor, so I just nodded.

A day later I got a text that the ‘twin reduction’ had been completed, and to pick up my girl. Lucy’s life—and mine—was about to change. I wasn’t bringing her back to the boarding stable where she’s been for 11 years. Instead, she was coming home to my back yard to live with the boys until her due date approaches.

I wasn’t worried that Murphy or Dezi would hurt her—they are 28 and 22 respectively—but I was concerned she might kill them. She was none too fond of Dezi when he was still competing and they lived next to each other.

To that end I had her back shoes pulled off. That way if she kicked them, she wouldn’t hurt them too badly.

I was a wreck when I brought her into the back yard. She took one look at the boys and started eating grass. They, on the other hand, looked like their eyes might pop out of their heads. Fresh blood! For the past two years they’d lived in the yard alone with nothing more exciting than a sprinkler main breaking. Now there was another horse! Whee!

I popped her out with them and they were all off trotting around the paddock. The boys couldn’t get close enough to her. Every time they came within smelling distance she cocked a back leg and kicked them. So they stayed a respectful hoof length away.  After 15 minutes they all settled down—sort of.

My two ancient geldings had erections and were still staring at Lucy like a cat eyes mice.  But they didn’t get close. She pretty much ignored them and started eating the hay. Murphy, in particular, wanted to get near her and hovered just out of reach. She let him.

I went into the house for a glass of wine. By the time I had finished my first glass of Malbec, the boys had chilled out and all three horses were lined up, eating and minding their business.

I had decided for safety’s sake that for the first week Lucy would stay in a stall at night. She hasn’t been out since she was a foal, and I didn’t want her to get panicked or hurt in the dark. So I led her to a stall and carefully double snapped the chain, leaving her inside with her dinner.

The next morning at 6:30 I went out to feed the horses as usual.  And as usual they came galloping up to me to get fed. Except there were three of them. One of the boys (probably Murphy, he’s good at opening double end snaps) had unlocked the door and she’d pushed it open.

The inmates were running the asylum.