“He was just a newborn, but he weighed an awful lot. I was fourteen at the time and kind of spindly, but I carried that foal all the way home. It just about killed my arms, and I was panting, but I had to save that foal. It wasn’t a choice. It was like a need so great I’d have sooner let my arms fall off than give up before I got him home.
“But I made it there. I set him down in my only blanket. Then I wiped him dry. I guess that warmed him up because he started trying to get up. I knew he wanted milk. I’d bought some the day before from Mrs. Swenson. She owns a dairy cow, and Molly’s milk is delicious.
“I knew I needed to get the little fellow to drink. I figured his mother was warm or would have been if she were alive. So, I got out a pan and heated some of Molly’s milk. I didn’t want to burn the foal’s tongue, so I didn’t get it really hot, though. But when that was done, I didn’t know what to do next. Foals need their mother’s udders to drink. It was a dilemma, but the foal was looking like standing up was almost about to happen, and the purpose for that was to drink milk.
“I took one of my tee shirts and crinkled up the edge of it into a V. Then I dipped that into the warm milk. It took a while to convince him to try it, but I didn’t have any choice. I couldn’t let that foal die. It might have been a whole twenty minutes before that stubborn little boy finally figured out that the rag I was sticking into his mouth tasted good. And then he got greedy. I kept dipping and letting him suck, dip, suck, dip . . . on and on until finally, he got so drowsy, he just lay down again and fell asleep.
“Frey. That’s the name I gave him. Frey was using my only blanket, so I had to cuddle in with him. That was okay because I think the smell of horse is a wondrous smell. It’s like everything good in the world, you know?”
I sighed, then smiled at the memory. “I guess you think that the hard part was done, but it wasn’t. The foal wanted to eat again in about ten minutes. And then again and again. I found out later, when I looked back at the torture of that night without any sleep, that a newborn foal nurses at least ten times every hour!
“I turned into a zombie during that time. I hardly got any sleep. I was lucky if I could steal a bite of bread or cheese, then it was back to nursing. Night and day. It was constant. By the end of that week I was no longer a zombie, I was barely lucid. I was sleeping on my feet tired.