Fathom aka Helen

On March 23rd, 2012 Lily had a beautiful baby girl by Raven. We were thrilled this filly looked exquisite, her face was dished just a bit like an Arabian horse, she was big and very black. Amy Koch came to admire this new filly and as she was looking closely at her told me, "there is something different with her eyes." When Dr. Hoerr came out to give her the foal shot his first words were, "that's a nice filly." We asked him to look at her eyes and only then did he give us the bad news. This filly was totally blind. One eye had a cataract and the other eye had not developed right and according to Dr. Hoerr had no lens. The filly did not act blind, she found her mom's teats quicker than most of our other foals. She looked and acted normal. We made an appointment with the University of Illinois Equine Ophthalmologist. The soonest we could get her in was 3 weeks away but meanwhile we treated her like every other foal. We put them outside for the first time when she was a few days old then turned out with the herd when she was a week old. The pictures below are all of Helen.

 In the picture above and below she is 3 days old. She was friendly enjoyed attention from people and never ran into everything.

In the  next 3 pictures below she is 3 weeks old right after the U of I trip. That was so discouraging. The experts at U of I took their time checking both eyes and at the end told us she was not a candidate for cataract surgery, this filly was totally blind and they recommended putting her down.

 They told us once she was weaned she would not be able to live on her own, would always need special care and would have a miserable life more than likely falling a lot and running into things.  I just couldn't do that. How can we take a life just because she had a handicap. We named her Helen as in Helen Keller and decided to treat her just like any other filly. Lily and Helen were taken to Middle Grove to be with the herd. The Middle Grove farm has wonderful grazing, lots of trees for shade, lakes and streams for cooling off but is also pretty rough land with steep hills and downed timber. In the next 2 pictures she is maybe 6 months old still with her mom and living on the roughest area and yet fine. What was interesting is the rest of the herd watched out for her.

Each time we would go out to drop off a mare or bring one in we were amazed at how good she was doing. Once we noticed she was busy grazing and Lily had wandered back up the hill away from her. Helen called and her older sister Ayanna left the herd went right over to her and led her back to her mother. This wasn't the first time another horse helped her. We loved how the rest of the herd watched out for Helen. We brought her in for weaning late fall, below Steven is introducing her to the tarp.

Not long after that we met Cortney, her husband and their children. They drove all the way from Colorado to come see Helen and took her home with them. Cortney renamed her Fathom and has given us updates all along but the one that came in yesterday really touched my heart. Check out the picture below of Cortney and Fathom. Fathom is now 3 years old and Cortney writes: We were out exploring.

Imagine if we had followed the U of I equine Ophthalmologist recommendation and put this beautiful filly down.