Darth is actually the second worst rescue case we have ever had.
A quote from someone helping: “all of the other rescues are a game in comparison”. Unfortunately, with a heavy heart I have to introduce you all to Darth Vader (name explained later) and tell you about his very intense and less than 24 hours with us.
We were actually out when he arrived, we knew about him but the situation was complicated and we didn’t know he was coming to us. But I returned yesterday evening to find him in our stable. One of our volunteers was at the top of the finca alone, she was surprised to witness the unexpected arrival of a new horse. She saw him literally fall off of the horse box. First thought was that he had a broken leg due to the blood and splaying of his leg. She came running for me, to find I was not on the finca. Fortunately, Edo was. They made him up a stable and were waiting in shock.
He not only had an open infected wound on his leg, his entire hoof was holding on by a thread. He had an infection in his sinus/ tooth which was so bad he could not breathe on one side. This is where the name Darth came from. None of these problems were recent. They had been coming from a long time of neglect. This is the most painful fact. Why was he not given to us, or helped before it was at this point.
In his first 12 hours, we had 2 emergency visits from the vets. On the top of all of this he had twisted gut colic. After a night of no sleep, lots of walking, injections, love and cuddles. We all decided with the vets the best option for him was humane euthanasia. Even if he had survived surgery for colic, he still needed surgery on his face and his hoof was barely attached. He was in constant pain and misery, we could not sit back and watch him suffer.
So although his time with us was incredibly short, he witnessed more love than you can imagine. Especially for our lovely volunteer who spent countless hours with him. He left this world to go over the rainbow bridge with at least some dignity. We tried everything we could for him in a very intense 16 hours. We are sorry we can not update you with such a different story.
We can imagine you might want to know more about our point of view on animal euthanasia. You can find more information about it here.
