I’m a sucker for a chestnut with a blaze. I’ve had two with leg chrome. I guess I have a type! 
She had a foal that had to be euthanized in the past? At this point, she needs to evaluate her breeding program. Get some testing done. Retire the broodmare or pick a different stallion. Spend money on that and let this poor foal go.
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Looks good!
Umm…what on earth does a previous foal loss have to do with this situation?
By your logic, no one should breed ever, because if you do it long enough, you WILL have losses. Heck, I lost a foal at birth this year in a freak positional dystocia. Does that mean I should sell all my mares and get out of the breeding business?
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In her defense they do breed a lot of foals each year. It’s a numbers game on something going wrong. And, she has retired the mares that had issues previously. (Not just the foals had issues, but mares not rebounding well and other problems)
I think she is, usually, a very level headed and ethical breeder. But she’s gotten sucked into the idea she can save this one.
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How incredibly selfish of the owner. My only guess is that she’s doing it for whatever she gets out of the social media attention. That foal should have been put down a long time ago. It’s like that horse with the prosthetic limb… suffering for the human ego.
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Yes this was what I was getting at. She is capable of making decisions, but yeah I think she has the blinders on with him.
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I keep coming back to this thread (I’ve only seen the updates posted here and haven’t followed the links) in the hope that they will have put the poor creature down but no, it just keeps getting worse.
@Fuego1 Fuego looks better. His hinds will always be an issue won’t they? I think you were right to give him a chance, but I think what they are doing to the foal that has spent his life in the hospital is horrific.
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He does have some wedging of the joint in his right hock mostly, which the vets have advised us means he will have early arthritis. But- being aware of this means we’ll start him early on Legend, any injections as needed, etc. and keep an eye on things. They still seem to think we will be able to ride him, but it changes our plans for him as he was supposed to be a racehorse. I’m fine with whatever he’s able to do as long as he’s comfortable. He will always have a home with us.
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We own 5 blaze-faced red horses 
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I didn’t know she had a large breeding program. Yes, it is a numbers game for sure. I breed cattle and my focus is always on what went wrong. Perhaps the owner has addressed the whys and hows of this premie foal. If one of my cows had a premie baby I would talk to the vet and take a close look at what went wrong. Was it a medication or did the mare have trouble foaling in the past? Has this happened to other mares bred to this stallion? Did the mare have an infection or physical problem that could have caused this?
She did say they examined the mare to see if there had been an infection or anything and didn’t find anything. The foal was a result of embryo transfer.
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In the absence of any evidence that she’s the kind of person who would torture an animal knowingly for internet fame, I am more inclined to believe she has done so much as this point that her threshold of what constitutes time to make the call has just slowly increased, and deciding to do it now when he’s not WORSE than he has been for the last few months but just isn’t better probably is hard to reconcile. Saying he has no quality of life now means also admitting to yourself he has had no quality of life the whole time and you’ve let it continue. I don’t think anyone faults someone for making the best decisions they have at the time, but I do think the mind justifies keeping up with something for the sunk cost because stopping turns into an admission that all that effort was futile. If you euthanize the foal now, it means you put him through a painful surgery and months of living alone in a stall at the vet clinic for nothing and that is really a hard thing to face for someone who loves horses.
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I actually would say she is not doing it for social media. She rarely posts about him (she makes multiple posts a day and she has made a handful about him in the past months) and, while she definitely makes a lot of money off of the farm content, her bread and butter is hunting based content (Deer, turkey, etc). She travels all over the USA to various hunting expos for her business. Since it’s summer, most of her content is farm related right now, but in fall/winter her instagram and such will be much more hunting based. Not TikTok though; they have user guidelines against it.
In my opinion, she’s not a bad person or a selfish person. She’s a person who has made a bad call on a foal, while likely being enabled into that decision by the vets around her.
Edited because for some reason I used the word ‘actually’ about 100000 times in those two paragraphs 
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Excellent insights here - I completely agree.
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You are very kind in your overview of Seven & the owner. For myself, the owners feelings/regrets can’t be in play- it’s all about the foal and quality of life. A true horseman makes the tough but humane decisions on their horses behalf.
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I don’t think that @Railbird is making excuses for this owner. I think she is explaining how some people end up at this stage.
Some of us know that we would make (what we consider) better decisions for this foal, but sometimes, for some people, it takes hindsight to realize that they have made the wrong choices.
I think that Railbird made that point quite eloquently.
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Speaking as a long-time ICU nurse, I really, really wish we could change the general mindset to see suffering as the failure, and not death…
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Yesssss!
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Absolutely agree. And thank you for the care you provide to such vulnerable patients.
One of the most important questions we must ask ourselves at some point: “Am I extending life or prolonging suffering?”
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