By Michael Hartwell

On her small family farm in New Gloucester, Susan Kendrick said it’s hard to believe the gentle, upbeat chestnut-brown quarter horse in her stable is the same miserable creature that limped in this July.

“He is calm and gentle,” said Kendrick, who works as a cardiac nurse. Teddy, the horse in question, needs to have his leg treated with an antiseptic Dakin’s solution twice every day and she said the horse is a model patient when it’s time to have his wound cleaned and flushed.

According to Kendrick, Teddy was driven to Maine in a horse trailer from Oklahoma in April 2007. During transport his rear right leg received a grievous wound; a four-inch tall gouge that covered the kneecap.

Teddy was briefly shown to a veterinarian, but the owners did not bother to give the wound daily treatment, but did decide to ride him on at least one occasion.

Kendrick said she did not wish to identify the owners. She said she doesn’t wish to place blame on them.
“People who treat an animal like that don’t really want it,” she said.

Last December, Teddy received a kick from another horse and the unaided healing that had occurred was split open again. Kendrick said she learned through the animal welfare investigation that a local veterinarian was called in for a single visit, but that was all the treatment Teddy received.

In July, Kendrick’s eldest daughter Ellen Forbes, 23, was asked to take “horse sit” Teddy and the owners’ other horse. She said the two animals were kept in a round pen with no shelter and barely any shade from the hot summer sun.

“My daughter came home in tears after the first visit because of the way Teddy looked,” said Kendrick.

She said she found Teddy covered in flies and sweat, with his head somberly down. There was blood spattered on his hooves from all the flies biting his chest and the gouge on his leg was “horribly infected.”

“We couldn’t walk away,” said Kendrick.

They put Teddy into their trailer and brought him back to the family farm. Kendrick arranged for a friend to put the other horse in his barn, where he remained for the next six weeks.

Kendrick had her veterinarian take a look at Teddy, and things were pretty bad. The wound had

festered for 18 months and he needed to have a lot of dead tissue cut away. He had an intravenous drip placed in his neck with antibiotics and he still needs a checkup every two weeks. Kendrick and her daughter treat and flush the injury on his leg twice every day.

The owners have allowed Kendrick and her family to take ownership of Teddy, but since he is now receiving veterinarian care, Kendrick said that animal welfare can not get involved.

Kendrick said Teddy is having a remarkable physical recovery, with healthy tissue growing on his knee and the large, wet wound is now a smaller dry region.

His demeanor has also noticeably improved.

“It was almost like he had given up,” said Kendrick. She said Teddy would hang his head when he first came to stay with them. She said now he’s vibrant and has a friendly relationship with his pasture mate JC, a white mustang in his 30’s.

To help pay for the medical expenses of Teddy, Kendrick, along with some of her friends in the local horse-riding group that calls themselves the Rough Riders, have been holding fundraisers. These include the traditional bake sales and bottle drives, as well as yard sales and asking for donations.

One thing they don’t seek is a government stipend as a recognized animal rescue.

Kendrick’s family farm, named “Joelsa Farm” after her children Joe, Ellen and Sam, would need to install running water and electricity to the barn if they wanted it to qualify. 

“They put emphasis on the wrong things,” said Kendrick. She said she’d like to have things like running water in her barn, but it would be expensive and hauling water works just fine.

“There’s no requirement that you have to have a big heart,” said friend Nancy Heyner of Cumberland, who had a pickup truck with the back full of bottles to raise money for Teddy. She lives on Forest Lake near the Gray border and said her neighbors have helped by dropping off their bottles in her driveway.

Kendrick said a horse at an animal rescue can be kept in a small stall inside a barn and never be exposed to other animals. She said animals need to socialize with other members of their species. Her farm, for example, has six horses, as well as five rescued dogs and seven cats.