Miracle
Rescued: October 31, 2011

The day of Miracle’s rescue was an emotional one. We’d just said goodbye to Luna, another rescued horse who had sadly passed away, when we received a call about a “miniature horse” that had unexplainably turned up outside a woman’s house, despite no horses living nearby.

We assumed it was a small horse and within half an hour Rod and our horse trailer were at the scene of the rescue. We couldn’t believe our eyes when Rod returned home, with the horse not in the trailer, but in the back of the car, gazing at us through the back window.

Rod opened the door and carried out in his arms this teeny-tiny foal, barely the size of a dog. We had no idea where Miracle came from or where his mother was, and we will probably never know.

It was dusk, and we were all still emotional with the events of Luna’s body being removed, so we simply allowed this nervous little horse to settle for the evening and eat.

It was only in the full daylight of the next morning when we performed a thorough examination that we discovered our Miracle was actually a boy, not a girl as we’d been told!

Our equine veterinarian Dorothea believed he could have been aged anywhere between eight weeks and eight months, as he only had two top and two bottom teeth – quite simply because he was so malnourished that he hadn’t developed properly.

Our rough guess is that Miracle was three months old. He was riddled with lice and practically skeletal, and also had a slight cough and an eye infection.

We soon realised that Miracle was so full of worms that they were pressing on his lungs, leaving him struggling to breathe. We rushed him to the Alicante horse hospital, where veterinarians slowly and carefully removed the worms.

After Miracle returned home to our rescue centre, we brought him up on mare’s formula milk.

Now he’s grown up (standing just 7hh, or 71cm!) into a vivacious miniature horse who enjoys dashing up and down his field, racing Muffin The Mule. The two can play together all day like this and it’s absolutely lovely to watch them and see the pleasure and freedom they now enjoy.

It truly is a miracle that Miracle survived.