BEHS 204 – Snickers

In September of 2007, Tina Shalmy responded to a call from an Arkansas Sheriff's department. They had discovered a group of horses running on the road and they wanted her help. She arrived and helped corral the horses in their pasture, but she was disgusted at the condition of many of the horses. She gave the owner a list of things to improve, but the next day the sheriff's department called again. The horses were once again running lose on the road and the deputies feared someone might hit a horse - killing the horse or passengers in the car. To further complicate things, the owner of the horses was being evicted from her property and had no place to take the horses. After talking it over, she agreed she could not provide for them and surrendered the horses to BEHS. One of the horses in that group was a beautiful and sweet seven year old mare Tina named Snickers. She had a distended belly and the vet who originally saw her diagnosed her with a ruptured pubic tendon. The vet said that due to her condition, she could not carry a foal to term. Unfortunately Snickers had been running with stallions when Tina picked the little herd up and we discovered she was pregnant. Snickers was transferred to Texas where she saw three different vets. Thanks to an abdominal ultrasound, we learned Sneakers actually had a very large, very untreatable hernia and was likely in pain (actually, the surgeon was surprised she was still alive). All three confirmed that she could not foal and the foal was too large to abort. They told us that Snickers could not carry the foal to term and if we tried, she would like rupture and die an agonizing death. We were ready to do what it took to save Snickers and her foal - but it seemed there was nothing we could do. We made the difficult decision to let her go - before she died an agonizing death alone and afraid.