Courageous Gumby, the story of a horse rescued by Save a Horse Australia.
My name is Jennifer Malloch and I am a foster carer with Amanda Vella’s Save A Horse Australia. We are a horse rescue located in south-east Queensland and save horses from neglect, slaughter and abuse. We take in the sick or the unwanted and turn their lives around. Rehabilitation is very important, and a horse stays in the care of the charity until it is healthy, before being adopted into a forever home. We have very strict contracts on our adoption horses and should that horse ever need to leave its adoptive home, it must be returned to the charity. I’d like to share with you the story of one of our rescue horses named Gumby. Gumby was left on Crown land with two other horses after his owner died. Nobody knew these three horses were left to fend for themselves. As Gumby had no top front teeth, he could not eat any grass and by the time he was discovered, he was so emaciated that he was near death. Amanda Vella was notified of his existence and Gumby was immediately rescued and brought to my property.
I cried when I saw him. He was the most pitiful horse I had ever seen. He was a huge thoroughbred standing more than 16 hands high, but with not a single bit of meat on his body. He had complete muscle wastage. He was very weak and could not walk well. Our vets worked hard to hydrate him and we made a feeding plan. Without teeth, Gumby could not eat hay. We started him on very small feeds of chaff and a tiny amount of gumnut pellets and because he was starving, he gulped at any feed we gave him. It was very sad to see him so incredibly hungry, knowing that we could only give him tiny amounts for fear of giving him colic. I put rugs on his skeletal frame to try to keep his body temperature normal, as he had no fat on him to keep him warm.
During these first stages of just trying to keep him alive, one thing I noticed about Gumby was his great will to live. I have never seen a horse so grateful for every morsel of food he was given, and how committed he was to surviving. My heart broke watching Gumby go through what he had to go through to get well. The episodes of diarrhea, the worming process (he was filled with worms) and the scrubbing with medicated washes to remove his infected rain scald. He took all of this in his stride and was brave and strong through the whole experience. He went through a stage where he was so hungry, he ate his own manure and stones off the ground, which, in turn, caused him problems in the gut.
One lady in particular donated to him weekly. She would come up from New South Wales just to visit Gumby and she fell in love. Her name was Carmel. We knew that Gumby would be near impossible to find a perfect adoption home for because of the need to give him mushy, hard feeds four times per day to make up for the fact that he couldn’t eat any hay or grass. We thought nobody would put their hand up to adopt such a high-maintenance horse, but Carmel did. She has great paddocks, cosy stables and a whole lot of love in her heart for less-fortunate horses. I had done everything possible to get him well under the guidance of Amanda and now he was ready to take that first step into his new life. The horse transport truck arrived at about five in the morning to pick him up and it was a bittersweet moment saying goodbye to a horse that I had taken from near death to healthy and well.
There are many highs and lows in rescue, but Gumby is the epitome of a rescue gone well. He is now a strong, healthy, majestic equine with the rest of his life ahead of him. I will never forget the wonderful memories of rehabilitating a horse like Gumby.
For more information on Save A Horse Australia, visit saveahorse.org.au.
Leave a Reply