Not my best Christmas

When Christmas doesn’t go to plan…

At 7.30 on Christmas morning, I take one look at my horse and realise that Christmas is cancelled. She is on the floor of her stable, rolling around in agony.

‘Blaze, what’s wrong?’ I say, opening the door and stepping inside.

She stops rolling and looks up at me, fear flashing in her eyes. She’s panting and sweating—the fur on her neck completely soaked—and she doesn’t even try to get up.

‘It’s okay.’ I try to keep my voice calm when inside, my panic is rising.

Blaze looks from me to her stomach and back to me, her way of showing me she’s hurting.

‘It’s okay,’ I say again.

She kicks at her stomach and snorts.

Seeing her in so much pain breaks my heart into tiny pieces, and I am overwhelmed with a feeling of dread that I’m going to lose her. The fear has me rooted to the spot. I know I need to act quickly, but I’m struggling to think straight. All I can do is stand and stare.

As soon as I’d arrived at the stables, I knew something was wrong. In the 16 years that Blaze has been in my life, there has never been a day when she wasn’t up and ready for breakfast. Every morning, she stands with her head over the door, whinnying at me to get a move on. If horses could talk, she’d be saying, ‘what time do you call this? Come on. I’m hungry!’ This morning, when she wasn’t there, my heart did a strange flutter, and I’d raced to her stable, afraid of what I would find.

Every second I stand here is a second wasted. I need to get help. I close the stable door and turn to see my husband, Chris, strolling onto the yard like he’s got all the time in the world.

‘She’s got colic,’ I tell him. ‘I’ll call the vet. Can you make sure she doesn’t roll?’

‘How do I do that?’ he asks, but I’m already running towards my parent’s house, feeling guilty that I’m about to ruin their Christmas.

Mum is sitting at the kitchen table, drinking a coffee and reading a book.

‘Blaze isn’t well,’ I say.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘She’s down. And needs a vet.’

Mum looks like she might burst into tears, which is exactly what I feel like doing. Except it won’t help Blaze.

I grab my phone from my bag, and with shaking hands, call the equine unit. The on-call vet, who was probably hoping for a quiet Christmas, tells me he’ll be 45-minutes.

I race back to the stables, where Chris gives me an update. ‘She’s stopped rolling, but her breathing is bad.’

Blaze is lying on her side, taking fast, heavy breaths. I tiptoe into the stable and sit with her, stroking her and talking to her. I do my best to ignore the voice in my head, reminding me how serious it is.

‘She’ll be fine,’ I keep telling myself. ‘She’ll get through it.’

‘Get up, Blaze! It’s Christmas!’ Startled, Blaze and I look up to see my dad at the door. ‘Come on, old girl.’

I’m not sure if he’s talking to her or me, but within a second, both of us are back on our feet.

Dad looks pleased with himself. ‘She just needed someone to tell her to get up.’ He nods, clearly thinking he’s made it as a horse whisperer. 

‘She was probably thinking, who’s this strange man coming into my stable?’

On her feet, she can get away from danger, which is what she does when the vet arrives. With one too many men in her stable, she refuses to be caught, turning her back to, and threatening to kick, anyone who goes near her.

‘She threatens,’ I tell Chris as he ventures inside. ‘But never follows through, usually.’

When she swings her bum at him, he runs for the door. ‘I don’t want to hang about to find out.’

The best thing is for all the men to hide. Alone with me, Blaze calms, and I get a head-collar on her.

‘Right,’ the vet says, coming into the stable. ‘Tell me about Blaze.’

I feel like the paramedics in Casualty when they’re handing over a patient to the emergency team.

‘She’s 25,’ I say. ‘Showing colic symptoms. She’s been sweating, panting, rolling and kicking at her stomach. She’s got allergies—to apples, peas, lentils and dust mites. She’s having immunotherapy for that. And she’s wormed up to date.’ 

‘Teeth?’

I pause. ‘They’ve not been done for a while…’ I feel like a bad mother. With the allergy problem she’s had all year, and her immunotherapy treatment, her teeth have been the last thing on my mind.

‘But no obvious problems with them?’ he asks.

‘No.’ I shake my head. If there had been, I would have bumped teeth to the top of the list of priorities, above her fortnightly injections for allergies.

‘What about her routine yesterday?’

I get another pang of being a horse mum failure. In my attempt to get organised for Christmas, I’d handed the reins to Chris. I’d not even seen her yesterday and spent the day wrapping presents.

‘Everything was fine,’ Chris says. ‘Everything. She went out, she came in. All fine.’ He looks pale and panicked and would be devastated if anything happened to her on his watch.

‘People might have been out walking for Christmas Eve and fed her something,’ I suggest.

Despite several signs in the field asking passers-by not to feed the ponies, they still bring apples and carrots and various treats. I once caught a chap feeding them scones and when I asked him not to, he got really upset and said they loved them and who was I to deny them their scones?

‘If you want to bring them,’ I said. ‘I’ll have them, preferably with jam and cream.’

I dread to think what they might have brought this time—chopped carrots, grass cuttings, mince pies, veg peelings—things which seem simple but can be fatal to horses.

‘It’s a possibility.’ The vet nods his head, and starts his examination, looking into Blaze’s mouth, checking her heart rate and breathing. ‘Her oxygen levels are fine.’ He points to her mouth. ‘Pink gums—lots of oxygen getting around her body. But her heart rate is slightly high, and her respiratory rate significantly higher than normal.’

He quotes some numbers at me to emphasise just how high, but because they’re numbers, they go into my brain and exit immediately. I glance at Chris and hope he’s taking it in.

‘She’ll need a rectal examination, so I can find out what’s going on.’

In no time, he’s gloved and ready, and sedates Blaze. ‘I’m sorry,’ I tell her as he spends what feels like forever with his hand up her backside. She stands blinking and sleepy, not the stroppy mare I know and love.

When he’s done the internal, he removes his arm, pulling out a dropping of poo. ‘Does this look normal for her?’ He gives it a squeeze. 

I move closer, wondering how else I could be spending my Christmas morning. ‘Yes,’ I say, trying to be positive but thinking it looks dry.

‘It’s a bit dry,’ he says. ‘She’s dehydrated. We need to get fluid into her. There are two options. Feeding lots of mashes or putting a tube into her stomach and giving her the fluid and electrolytes. But it’s up to you. The costs quickly add up.’

‘I spend my life paying vet’s bills.’ I feel slightly sick at the thought of having to pay another. ‘Whatever’s best for her.’

We’ll just live on beans on toast for a few months, possibly the next year.

While the vet gets his equipment ready, Chris goes into the house to get a bucket of lukewarm water, and I stand with Blaze. I don’t know what I’d do without my beautiful horse. She’s everything to me.

Before I get too emotional, the vet is giving me orders to stand in front of her, in case she moves suddenly during the procedure and knocks me out.

I do as I’m told, keen not to make Christmas any worse than it already is.

‘And just to warn you, there may be blood. Some people are bothered by the blood,’ he says.

‘I’m fine.’ In another life, one where I’d listened in GCSE science, I would have been a vet. And anyway, it’s not the blood that makes my head spin, it’s the cost of it all.

Happy that I’m not going to faint or get knocked unconscious, the vet begins the treatment.

I expect some resistance from Blaze, but she’s intubated and has 10 litres of water pumped into her stomach without even lifting her head. The aim is to get her digestive system moving, so that whatever was causing the blockage travels through her system and normal bowel service can resume.

‘Watch her like a hawk,’ the vet says as he’s leaving. ‘And Merry Christmas.’ He closes the gate behind him.

With the treatment over, Blaze recovers in her stable and I turn my attention to sorting the mess that is now our family Christmas. We were all supposed to be going to my sister and brother-in-law for dinner.

‘You still go,’ I tell Mum and Dad, ‘but we’ll have to stay here.’

Chris takes out his phone. ‘I’ll call my dad, tell him that Christmas is cancelled.’

‘No!’ There is no way my father-in-law will be alone on Christmas Day. ‘Tell him to come here and we’ll sort something to eat.’

In between feeding Blaze bran mashes every two hours, and walking her every hour for 15 minutes, and despite the limited resources at the stables, we rustle up ham and cheese sandwiches, kettle crisps, pork pies, oven chips, and a basic salad of lettuce and tomato, followed by a chocolate log.

It is not the dinner I’d had in mind, but it will do. I think of my family sitting around the table with three empty places where we should be. I know Mum will be worrying. She phones every few hours to see if Blaze’s bowels are functioning yet.

At half-past six, there is movement and the whole family can relax.

We put Blaze to bed, and, feeling completely drained, drive home. It’s not until I am showered and having a cuppa that my tears start.

After all the stress of getting ready for Christmas, all the panic and mad dashes to Meadowhall for last-minute presents, we’ve missed the fun part where we eat too much and spend the afternoon playing games. I think of all the effort my sister and brother-in-law have made, but the worst thing is missing my niece opening her presents. That hurts more than anything.

I pull myself together enough to Facetime her, but as soon as I hear her voice, my tears fall. ‘I’m so sorry to miss Christmas,’ I tell her.

‘Don’t cry, Auntie Liz. We’ll do Christmas tomorrow.’

Her kindness makes me cry more, so I pass the phone to Chris and take a few deep breaths. Then, I’m back online while she shows us her presents, which is almost (but not quite) as good as being with her.

We say our goodbyes and Chris and I sit together, drinking more tea, relieved that Blaze is better, and that the ordeal is over.

At half-past eight, just as we’re wondering what to eat, the doorbell goes. Mum and Dad stand on the doorstep with a box of food. ‘Christmas dinner,’ Mum says. ‘It just needs warming up.’

‘And we have profiteroles.’ Dad holds up an M&S tub that serves ten.

Christmas is saved.

Exhausted and emotional, but very grateful for a Christmas dinner.