Friday Rescue -- Meet Babe

Babe - the blind beauty

Meet Babe. She's my 27 year old blind mare. She's been with me since the middle of June 2008. I have learned so much from her it absolutely blows my mind. She's probably the smartest horse I've ever met!

Her previous owner listed Babe in the classifieds as a free horse. I couldn't resist and offered to take her. I'd recently put my first rescued mare, Blondie, down and had room. Babe was listed as partically blind. I figured since Blondie had been blind in one eye, I could easily work with Babe.

Much to my dismay, Babe is completely blind in her left eye and can only see major shadows in her right eye. And when I say major shadows, I mean she can tell when she's walking into a darn barn or walking out into the light from a dark barn. I'm not sure if she can see shadows on a cloudy day.



She's amazingly smart. When I put her out to pasture, she figured out where the fenceline was and remembered. In the open pasture, she found a landmark so that she could figure out where she's at. I swear this ol' girl knows how to count.

Every once in a while she'll lose her place and can't find where she's at. So instead of freaking out, she starts walking in circles until she can find her designated landmarks. How impressive is that?!?! I love this girl.


About a month after I bought her, I decided I'd better buy her some shipping boots. She could have cared less when I first tried putting them on. She's such a mellow horse.


She does freak me out. She's so smart. She usese her ears to "see." She'll turn her head and act like she's looking at you when really she's just listening. She does get a little confused when there are loud noises around her, or when the dogs are out. I swear she could hear a pin drop.

In November 2008 I loaded her up with Queen and took her to the vet to get her teeth done. Of course she loaded like a champ (including me fumbling around with the shipping boots). She unloaded and walked right into the vet's office without missing a step. I walked her into the chute and the vet started looking at her teeth. I insisted that he hand float her because of the noise. I knew she wouldn't understand what's going on and couldn't "see" with her ears over the noise. Lucky for me, my vet is very understanding and didn't bat an eye when I said handfloat only.


So my vet put the mouth guard thingy in to take a peek and he started poking around. He asked me a few questions but I couldn't really answer most of them since I'd only had Babe five months. The vet then started poking around in Babe's mouth and since Babe never moved my vet said, lets try floating her without any tranquilizer. My vet also said he's only handfloated about three horses in his entire life without using tranquilizer. Babe makes four. Babe never flinched the entire time. She stood there like a perfect angel. I'm simply blown away.

I like to keep her previous owner updated every once in a while on how Babe is doing. I told her about the vet and her previous owner said Babe had never had her teeth floated. I can't believe she stood there without any tranquilizer and never threw a hissy fit. Have I mentioned how impressed I am with her?! :-)

I haven't really had much of a chance to play with Babe since then. We decided that she and Queen should spend the winter on the "home farm" with mom and dad. I have to keep the mares and geldings separated at the rescue and don't have enough stalls to accomodate that type of segregation (just yet).

I'm hoping that spring will come soon so we can get some fencing done and bring the girls home. I'd like to get better fencing up that will accomodate Babe better. We'll see how deep my pocket book is. We may only get the essential fencing done and go from there.

I sure do miss hearing the "girls" talk every day. There needs to be more girls at the rescue. I'm out numbered.

The pictures are of Babe this winter at her "winter home."