OklahomaHorses Magazine March 2021

8 OklahomaHorses • March/April 2021 P eople save stray animals all the time. A lost cat. A dog found with a hurt paw. But an injured stray horse along the roadside? Oh, yes. It happens. The call came into Tulsa Animal Welfare (TAW) in October of 2018. A horse with a seriously injured hind leg had been found on the side of a road near 4800 North Lewis. The extent of his injury would have prevented the horse from walking any distance on his own, so it was clear he had been abandoned there. Be- cause he was loose within the city limits, animal control officers from the Tulsa shelter respond- ed, and the horse was transported back to the shelter to see if owners could be identified. As you can imagine, a shelter facility designed for the care of dogs, cats and other small animals is not necessarily equipped to handle livestock. But the horse needed to complete a stray hold just like any other domestic animal would, so he was initially secured in a fenced area behind the shelter building. TAW was only authorized by the city of Tulsa to spend a minimal amount of money to have an equine veterinarian assess the horse’s injured leg. When confronted by the magnitude of the injury, the veterinarian who responded to the call cleaned the wound as thoroughly as possible and administered an initial dose of antibiotics. The normal protocol with stray livestock recovered within the city limits is for TAW to transfer the animal to the Tulsa Stockyard for a 72-hour holding period. Unclaimed animals are then sold at auction. This horse, however, desperately needed immediate emergency care. Without timely intervention and hospitaliza- tion, the leg would be beyond salvage, and the only recourse would be euthanasia. The shelter manager put out a plea on Facebook to see if the owner of the horse might surface to take responsibility for the animal. De- spite hundreds of shares and comments, no one came forward to claim the handsome sorrel-col- ored paint horse. But one important person did take notice of the horse’s plight. Lindsay Henry has had horses most of her life. She has trained them, shown them and even bred a colt that became a world champion halter stallion. But first and foremost, she loves them. Her own horses live exceptionally good lives with attentive care, top nutrition and a doting owner. They want for nothing. To see a horse in such a dire situation spurred Lindsay into immediate action. Lindsay contacted one of her trusted personal veterinarians, Dr. Erica Wallace, to discuss the horse. As luck would have it, the veterinarian who had initially called on the horse at the shelter worked for Wallace at her clinic. Wallace was already fully briefed on the horse’s condition and the gravity of his injury. Knowing they were racing the clock to save the horse’s leg, Lindsay contacted the shelter manager to see if she and her husband, Jeff Henry, could arrange to foster the horse so they could begin life-saving treatment. The shelter quickly arranged for the horse to have a medical release into the Henrys’ care for the remainder of his hold period. Wallace made another visit to the shelter to bandage the leg and make the horse as com- fortable as possible. Without a second thought, Lindsay hitched her trailer and raced to meet her new foster horse, whom she named Bubby. Even Lindsay, who is no stranger to helping care for sick or injured horses, was taken aback when she realized the extent of the damage to Stray. One horse’s journey to the good life Written By: Nancy Gallimore Bubby and Skylar the Nubian goat Lindsay and Bubby