Thor is Completely Blind

Damnit. I should have caught it sooner. I should have known. I knew there was something wrong but I wasn't 100% positive. Thor is completely blind.

Thor (along with Joe) was pulled from an auction by Great Expectations Rescue. This auction is somewhere near the Minnesota/Canada border. Without Great Expectations pulling these two horses, who knows where they would have ended.

I remember seeing a picture of Thor on Great Exptations' website and thinking he was magnificent. They noted that he was blind in his left eye. After looking at his eye, it looks like he injured it rather than just going blind. But he'd pretty much adjusted to the lack of sight in that eye.

Destiny Youth Ranch in Alvord Iowa adopted Thor and Joe not long after Great Exptectations pulled them from the auction. I believe Destiny Youth Ranch had both horses for about a year. They incorporated both into their program but decided to retire both last spring (May 2010).

That's when Borderland stepped in to offer a permanent retirement home. Unfortunately Joe didn't last very long and he was humanely euthanized in October 2010. I was very worried about Thor but he seemed to handle himself ok.

Jump forward to last week. I noticed there was a change in Thor but we were running so much I didn't have time to investigate like I should have. We were gone for the SD Horse Fair and only home long enough to throw hay so I didn't catch on either.

On Monday, I noticed that Thor was acting very strange. I worried and put him in the barn with Sam. I was worried that he too was having some neurological disorder like Joe. That or he was losing his eyesight. Either way, it wasn't good. I kept to the same routine and put him out with the herd but kept him stalled at night because there was something wrong.

Last night I had Mike take a closer look and sure enough, Thor is blind in his right eye. His one remaining good eye is now blind. I feel so bad. I should have known that he was blind or should have done something earlier this week. I'm calling the vet this morning to schedule an appointment to see if there is any chance of reversing the damage that's done. Looking at the eye, you would never know he's blind.

We played musical pens last night to get Thor into a safe pen. I pulled Dick out and put him into the hayshed stalls for last night and today (and put Skippy in a stall next to Dick much to Skippy's dismay)and put Thor in the pen where Dick was in (between the barn and the cattle chute). It's a fairly small pen so hopefully Thor can wander around and get accustomed to his lack of sight.

I belive Thor can see shadows (similar to what happened with Babe). Thor can see shadows as far as going into a dark building or coming out into the light. But otherwise he's blind. Hopefully he'll adjust to this blindness.

It is a great sadness to me that such a magnificent animal went blind. Hopefully Thor can adjust. We'll see what the vet says and I'll keep him confined to a smaller pen until he adjusts to his lack of vision. Babe gets around just fine without seeing so hopefully Thor can adjust to it too. I am tossing around the idea of putting Thor and Babe together in a smallish secure/safe pen and simply feeding them round bales until their final end. I don't know how else to keep them safe.

Like any parent, they want to keep their children safe and make sure that nothing bad comes to them. I'm the same way with the horses. I am devistated for Thor. Please keep him in your prayers.