By: Christina Borsick(4)

“Jeff! Chris! Get up!”

I heard my father’s voice through the door, and rolled to sit up.
“What is it?” I rubbed my eyes, and grabbed for a pair of jeans, throwing them and my shoes on. My husband was right behind me and opened the door.

“Your colt was born in the night sometime, but I can’t find it,” my dad said.

“I found the placenta, and the mare is out there by the fence.”

We grabbed our coats and hot cups of coffee, and the three of us went out the door.

It was May 26th, but in Colorado, that makes no difference. It had snowed the night before. We thought that might be good, because the baby’s tracks were likely to show up. It was still dusky out, as it was only about six in the morning. We went first to the mare and checked her out. We could tell from her teats that the baby had not nursed. My dad showed us the plastic bag with the placenta, and assured us it was intact. We began scouring the area by the fence until I found a disturbance in the snow.

“Look,” I yelled. “It rolled under the fence when she had it.”

Sure enough, that’s what he’d done. On the outside of that fence was a large field of willows. The snow had made them all bend over, forming thousands of little pockets where a newborn might curl up to sleep. I sighed. It was going to be a long day. I went to the house to call a friend to come help search, and called into work for my husband and I. Dad came in and said he had to go, but to keep in touch.

Jeff and I searched every last one of those willows before our friend Rope arrived. There were no tracks to be found for all the neighborhood dogs had trekked through the snow in the night. To make it tougher, globs of snow kept falling off of the pines, making pit marks in the fresh snow.

Finally around 11:00, the guys sent me in to make sandwiches and coffee. I had no sooner finished and was going to call to them, than Rope came running up hollering for all he was worth.

“I found him! I found him!”

Jeff came running from around back, and I met him by the road. “ Where? Is he alive?”

Rope stopped to catch his breath, but was nodding. “Yeah, he’s down the road there, by that pink house. He’s running around under their tree.”

In the stress of the moment, I took off, not even thinking about grabbing a halter, a rope or anything. I jogged the quarter mile to the house Rope told me about. Sure enough, there was a little chestnut, few-hour-old baby wandering under the trees. I approached him slowly, only then registering that I didn’t really have a way to get him home. Did this stop me? Absolutely not. I picked him up in my arms and carried him to the road. Rope and Jeff were there, and took him from me. We walked back home with him and returned him to his mother. She looked a little perplexed, but within a few minutes he was nursing away. I never cease to be amazed at how lucky he was, and we were, that day.