Hi Freedom Reins Family! We have a big undertaking with sweet Munchie. As many of you know, Munchie was bailed by a rescue & then abandoned with his foster. The foster tried to reach out to the rescue again & again only to be ignored. Munchie had extreme lameness in all legs & as a big Belgian colt - he needed to be castrated ASAP. The foster should have never been put in this situation. Thankfully a follower who fell in love with Munchie during his initial rescue - reached out & put me in contact with his foster. After succesfully contacting the original rescue - he was released to our rescue & we had him transported from Tennessee back to Texas (he was bailed from Bowie). Both our follower, his foster & the facility owner where he stayed kept him safe & kept him from ending back up in the slaughter pipeline. Munchie's story is sadly a common thing in rescue - horses bailed for the initial donation dump only to be left with little or no follow up care. Forgotten only to be replaced by the next slaughter pull that can bring in new fundraising.
Munchie has so many orthopedic issues. He is only 2 & rapidly growing so these issues have to be addressed ASAP to give him the best chance at correcting them & minimizing lifelong osteoarthritis. He also was still a stallion which made things even harder as his testosterone began to surge. He is conformationally very over the knee with inflammation in both carpal joints. He also has OCD's (osteochondrosis) in both his right stifle & left hock - leaving him with no good legs.
With so much going on this is a step by step process. It takes time to see a few things such as the severity of the lameness, if it flares up with activity & to what degree, the rate at which it is progressing & how it responds to treatment. His front knees have improved drastically with conservative treatment, the hind legs however have gotten worse & need to be surgically corrected. He was beginning to be unmanageable as a stud & recovery on stall rest would've been impossible. We elected to castrate him first & he is soooo mellow less than a month post castration.
Munchie is now ready for his arthroscopy - where they will go in and remove the damaged cartilage, bone fragments & compromised subchondral bone in the joints. The sooner he can get this done the better. He is growing so fast & is now approaching 18 hands. The longer he waits the more long term, irreversible damage he will have. Anesthesia will also be harder on him as he becomes heavier & bigger.
This wasn't an expected rescue, but I know we had to step up for him. We as rescues can NOT rescue horses to leave them like he was left. It can make people bitter to all horse rescues which just hurts good rescues & more horses in the end. He was one of the lucky ones who landed with a foster who truly loved him. We have to help others & have support for horses after care. If we donate to save them & they end up like Munchie did - we are supporting the wrong side of this battle.
Please help us reach Munchie's surgery goal, so we can give him the best shot at a happy, long life. His initial work up done in TN noted his prognosis was guarded & the likelihood of a quality life was slim. I firmly believe, with all the severe medical issues we've managed to turn around, he can have an almost normal life with routine maintenance, similar to Moosette, Regina, Petrie, etc.
Please share if you cannot donate! Thank you all for loving & fighting for Munchie. He deserves this.