flight from New Zealand. I was so jetlagged my brain was swimming and I could barely talk. “We can go back to the hotel and get room service instead if you’re tired?” Mum said, looking worried.
“I’ll be fine,” I promised. I knew that Mum felt unprofessional having her daughter along. It had never been the plan to bring me and it would never have happened if things hadn’t turned out like they did with Piper.
It had been the start of the eventing season. I’d been doing loads of fitness work on Piper, riding her on the beach each day, doing timed gallops along stretches of hard sand and then cooling her legs by walking her home in the salt water. We’d finished the season at the top of the one-metre class rankings at the end of last year and were about to step up to the big league. Taking on the Open class fences at a metre ten was like going pro, but we were ready for it. Nothing was going to stop us. Until it did.
It’s an odd thing because I don’t usually check on Piper at night, but that evening something made me go to her paddock. As soon as I saw her lying down like that, I knew. She was in this weird position, her neck craned uncomfortably, and she was sniffing at her belly, as though she was about to have a foal, except she couldn’t be – she wasn’t pregnant. I climbed over the gate and ran across to her, and when I reached her I could hear her making these groans, and then she nickered to me with this pitiful cry as if she was saying, “Oh, thank goodness you’re here – I’m in such pain!”
I pulled at her neck rug and got her to stand up, but almost straight away she dropped back to her knees and was lying down again. Then she kicked out at her stomach, really hard, so that she actually struck it with her right hind leg and then she collapsed back to the ground with an agonised groan.
“Piper!” I dropped to the ground, undoing her rug, seeing how soaked in sweat she was beneath it. I needed help.
“I’ll be back,” I promised her.
I remember running to the house, stumbling in the dark, feeling like I was going to throw up, and then I couldn’t find Mum or Dad anywhere and I was yelling for them and finally Mum came into the kitchen and found me sobbing.
“Hilly? What’s going on?”
“It’s Piper!” I couldn’t breathe to get the words out. “She’s got colic.”
Mum looked at me, her face ashen. “You go back to her,” she said. “I’ll call the vet.”
Piper was still on the ground when I got to her again. It took me, Mum and Dad to get her up on her feet. Then, for the next hour and a half while we waited for the vet to come, I had to keep her up. A horse with colic doesn’t realise what’s wrong. All they know is that their gut hurts, and so they can injure themselves really badly by trying to kick their own stomachs and you have to keep them walking to stop them from harming themselves. And so I walked her, in circles, around and around the yard, waiting for the vet to arrive. When it was almost midnight Mum had offered to take a turn, but I said no. Piper was my horse and she trusted me, I had to stay with her. Besides, I was so sick with fear I needed to keep doing something.
I had been so relieved when I’d seen the headlights of the vet’s truck snaking their way down the bush road that led to our farm. It turned straight towards the stables and when she got out of the truck she immediately began grabbing vials and needles out of her supply kit, gathering everything she needed before she ran to join us.
“Sorry it’s taken me so long,” she said. “I was delivering a foal on the other side of the gorge and there are no other vets on call tonight.”
She took out her stethoscope and began to listen to Piper’s heartbeat. I stayed silent, letting her concentrate.
“How long has she been like this?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I found her at around seven thirty, so at least since then.”
The vet filled a syringe and injected Piper in the neck.
“What’s that?” Mum asked.
“Muscle relaxant,” she said. “You were right. It’s colic. Hopefully, if the relaxant works, then the contractions should subside.”
“And if it doesn’t work?” I asked. The vet didn’t look at me and she didn’t answer my question.
“I need you to keep her walking,” she said. “Check in with me by dawn and tell me how she’s doing.”
Dad went back to bed after that and so did my sister, Sarah-Kate, so it was just me and Mum after that. She made us toasted sandwiches and cups of tea and I walked Piper. I wouldn’t let anyone else do it. I stayed up all night walking her in circles, and the kicking subsided. Mum just about had me convinced that we were over the worst of it, and we should go to bed too, when it all started up again. Worse, this time. She was thrashing on the ground, kicking and kicking.
This time the vet got to us in under an hour. As she examined Piper she looked much more serious than she had last night.
“I think we need to go to surgery,” she said.
“What does that mean? What’ll you do to her?” I asked.
“We’ll put her under an anaesthetic and get her up on the operating table, and then make a cut along her underside on the belly from chest to tail so we can take the blockage out of her gut.”
I tried not to think about Piper with her guts inside out.
“How much will it cost?” Mum asked. I knew what she was thinking – Piper wasn’t insured.
“Including box rest afterwards? You won’t get any change from $10,000. And it’s major surgery. You need to factor in at least three months for the wound to heal on box rest.”
“Will she compete again?” Mum asked.
“Depends,” the vet sighed. “Some horses heal perfectly and they’re back out there doing what they love. Others never come fully right. I can’t give you guarantees. I’m sorry, surgery is still a risk.”
“Is there another option?” Mum asked.
“At this stage?” the vet said. “If you want to keep her alive, there’s no other option.”
Mum looked at my face and she didn’t hesitate. “Get Piper in the float, Hilly. We’re taking her to surgery.”
It’s funny how quickly priorities change. Twenty-four hours ago, the most important thing in my world had been competing at the Open. Now, all that mattered was keeping Piper alive.
I remember sitting in the darkness as we drove that night, crying, and I felt Mum reach out to clutch my hand.
“I promise, Hilly, everything is going to be OK,” she said. And when I didn’t stop crying, that was when she said, “Maybe, instead of eventing this season, you should come with me to Iceland?”
Now, sitting in a Japanese restauarant on the other side of the world, that all seemed like a lifetime ago.
