Brittany Foust and Oink. Photo by JJ Sillman.
Fight. Flight. Freeze. Fawn.
Ask any rider how their horse responds to danger and the two most common responses you’ll get are flight and freeze. Naturally prey animals, there’s a reason why there are livestock guardian dogs, not livestock guardian horses. As eventers, we look for the rare horse who is gritty enough to run towards the scary obstacle. The horse who will battle to the end of the cross country course and come back the next day to show jump. In short, we look for the horses that naturally have a little more “fight” in their genetics.
When Brittany Foust purchased a 4-year-old off-track Thoroughbred from the Arapaho Park Racetrack, she couldn’t have known that the grit she saw in this mare would one day pay off in a way she could have never seen coming. Salida del Sol, barn name “Sunny,” was originally purchased to be her upper level eventer. “We start our Thoroughbreds pretty slowly, so she was getting ready to go out and compete at Novice last season. But she was a super scopey jumper. If she wasn’t gonna be an event horse, she wanted to be a Grand Prix Jumper,” Brittany said.
Unfortunately, Sunny didn’t get to go out and compete at the Novice level.
Brittany and her sister, Elli, have been riding since they were young. They were students of 5* eventers Jimmy Wofford and Mary Schwentker. Now, they work together to use their horses to help riders with their mental health. “I’m a licensed therapist and I have a therapy practice, which I use our horses for, and then Elli runs a nonprofit called Nature Heals, which is a 501c3 that offers nature based mental health services to those who can’t otherwise afford them.”
Brittany’s problems started in July 2022. Located in the Front Range Foothills of Boulder County, Colorado, it all started when a therapy horse named Hog’s Hollow, aka “Oink,” didn’t come in with the rest of the herd one morning. After searching for him on the 30 acre pasture, they found Oink standing alone by the creek.
“So the best we could figure when we first walked out and found him was that he somehow got himself stuck in a fence or chewed up by barbed wire,” Brittany said. “We have smooth ranch wire on our farm’s perimeters. But it almost looked like with high winds, maybe old barbed wire flew in from another farm or something. And he looked like he got tangled up and rolled around in it. It was around his face and around his neck, all across the sides of his body and around his leg.”
The idea didn’t quite fit with what they knew about Oink and their farm, particularly because they couldn’t find the barbed wire they thought he got tangled up in. But, because they’ve seen bears on the property before, Brittany thought that he must have been spooked by a bear and ran into the fence. His worst injury was on his right front leg.
“The most life threatening injury was that he basically degloved his right front leg and tore through the area by the tendons, and was leaking synovial fluid,” Brittany said. “When the vet showed up, she wasn’t sure if there was any initial tendon damage, so there were three options on the table. He could go up to CSU, which is an astronomical expense. Option two we could do regional limb perfusions at home for him, and hit him with heavy duty antibiotics and do all the bandage care at home for him. Or euthanasia was on the table of how extensive the tendon damage was and the fact that he was leaking synovial fluid.”
As she runs a breeding operation, owns several personal horses, and runs an equine therapy program, Brittany has a close working relationship with her veterinarians and opted to treat him at home. It was touch and go at first, the vet wasn’t sure if he would make it the first 24 hours, then the question became, will he make it the first 72 hours? The first week? Despite it all, Oink pulled through.
Brittany and Oink celebrate a clear round at The Event at Archer Farms. Photo by JJ Sillman.
“So we got really lucky with him. There was damage to the right front shoulder as well, we think it’s muscle damage. And then we also think there was some compensatory damage, as well. He was pretty lame on his left hind,” Brittany said.
Then, two weeks later, it happened again in the same pasture. The herd who lived in this large pasture was a unique mix. There was Oink and a few other geldings, then Sunny and “her” youngsters. Sunny was Brittany’s go-to horse to babysit the yearlings and two-year-olds. The OTTB loved to hang out with the “little kids” and treated them like her own. While Oink and the geldings were in one part of the pasture, you could always find Sunny babysitting and hanging out with her three kids, two yearlings and one two-year-old.
This time when Brittany arrived at the paddock in the morning, the horses were all gathered by the water trough in a panic. Reader, be warned. The next few paragraphs are a bit of a tough read.
“They were covered in blood, she was covered in blood. I had no idea what was happening,” Brittany said. “Sunny was just standing guard over them by the water trough. I realized that none of the youngsters were bleeding, it was all Sunny. So, I took Sunny back into the barn and immediately we started to basically just do triage and pack the wounds. I didn’t clean too much because our priority was to stop the bleeding. It was just a bloodbath.”
Sunny’s heart was still pumping her full of adrenaline, which made caring for her wounds that much more difficult. “Because she was so pumped full of adrenaline she couldn’t tolerate any of the nerve bonding agents and would just burn through all the sedation,” Brittany said. “So, we had to do the full blown, lay her out with ketamine. I remember the vet was suturing, my sister, Elli Foust, was cleaning and prepping, and then I was sitting on her, making sure she didn’t all of a sudden stand back up.”
“She degloved the front right of her cannon bones, like just a huge flap of skin down all the way,” Brittany said. “Her entire chest was shredded. Her haunches on both sides were shredded. Her shoulders were shredded. There were punctures on her left front, shredded her left front shoulder. It actually looked like they had grabbed her muzzle and she had lines across her jugular. She had a hole in the back left of her lower hock by her chestnut and another puncture down by her fetlock.”
Once Sunny was stable enough to be transported, she was taken to the equine hospital at Colorado State University. At the time, Brittany was thanking her lucky stars that Sunny was insured, but found out later that she wasn’t insured as well as she thought.
“What I had not realized is that because she was an event horse, she lost her major medical insurance and was only insured for surgical and mortality,” Brittany said. “So all of the vet bills that were incurred that were non surgical for this incident are not going to be covered by our insurance company. I knew there had been rumors of it. And I knew it was in the works of happening. But it wasn’t really something that on a day to day basis, I thought a lot about.”
At CSU, they were able to lay her down for surgical intervention, which luckily was still covered. During the procedure they discovered that there was an infection that had traveled from one of her puncture wounds into the joint and that there was also an incomplete fracture of the splint bone tracking up into the joint, as well as a sequestrum. Sunny stayed at the hospital for two weeks until she was stable enough to come home.
Now with two horses with similar injuries two weeks apart, Brittany was suspicious that there had to be more to the story than some errant barb wire. “ I asked our vet, ‘Is it statistically possible for two horses to have the same type of injuries, but one more severe, two weeks apart?’ And they were like, ‘Well, it’s pretty much statistically impossible for this to happen.’”
“We walked our fence line for hours trying to see if we could find anything, to see if there was anything that could have been done to prevent this and found nothing,” Brittany said. “We started thinking maybe this was an animal attack, especially with the marks on her face. We found her fly mask that she had been wearing, a brand new black mask, and it was shredded across her face, basically.”
Certain that mountain lions were somehow involved, even though they usually stuck to their territories higher up in the mountains, Brittany called Colorado Parks and Wildlife. The story that unfolded speaks to the unbreakable bonds that our horses have with each other.
Typically, mountain lions jump on the backs of their prey, which creates wounds along the spine and haunches. Sunny’s wound patterning was unusual in that the majority of her wounds were low, along her chest, legs, and neck. Based on Sunny’s wound patterns and the amount of blood that was on the other yearlings, it’s believed that Sunny was down by the creek with the youngsters when a mountain lion went after one of the yearlings who turned around and galloped to Sunny. Sunny, instead of running, turned and fought back, protecting all of her babies and the rest of the herd, eventually either killing or scaring off the attacking lion.
“You’re more likely to be struck by lightning than be attacked by a mountain lion,” Brittany said. “Mountain lions don’t usually go after horses like Sunny and Oink, who are both 16 hands. They don’t usually go after domesticated horses because they’re usually shod and can do a lot of damage. Basically, the consequences aren’t worth the reward for them. It’s more common for them to go after goats and smaller livestock.”
“Parks and Wildlife is assuming that it was probably young and juvenile mountain lions that were looking to expand territory because the attacks were two weeks apart to the day,” Brittany said. “So the young lions were basically kind of patrolling a perimeter, or going down the draw and coming back up, while looking for new territory because it was about the time of year that the parents kicked them out.”
Mountain lions are smart. According to Brittany, they learn from their mistakes. Oink was actually lucky that he was attacked first. When the lions went after the yearling and got Sunny instead, they applied what they learned from attacking Oink, leading to much more severe injuries for Sunny.
After Sunny came home and the months of rehabilitation dragged on, it became clear that Sunny would never be riding sound again. Brittany had hoped that Sunny would at least be broodmare sound, but it became apparent her damaged joint wouldn’t hold up to the added weight of a baby. “It got to the point where we started wondering, would she even be able to be pasture sound?” Brittany said. “Especially in Colorado where we have snow and ice. That mare was not a stall horse– she has to go out for at least eight hours a day. She loves to run and gallop. Steeplechasing fences was her favorite thing in the world. As time kept going on, by November, by October, we were pretty certain that the quality of life that she was going to have was going to be pretty awful.”
Between July and December, Brittany and her sister could not catch a break. They had to deal with Oink’s medical bills, a colicking mare who had to be euthanized, and the loss of her sister’s top dressage horse. They also had to move farms after spending the last ten years at their home in the foothills.
On top of this, Colorado Parks and Wildlife denied their claim for reimbursement for the mountain lion attacks as there was not enough definitive proof of an attack and Brittany had to fight with the insurance company to get some of their bills covered. To avoid paying out the mortality coverage, the insurance company wanted Brittany to haul Sunny back to CSU to see if there was more surgical intervention that could be done.
Photo courtesy of JJ Sillman.
“Finally CSU and our vets were finally both in agreement that even if there were surgical things we can do the only thing left is the fusing of her joint which is a poor quality of life,” Brittany said. “She was completely non-weight bearing. She was on heavy duty painkillers still and she was on Trazodone to keep her sane enough to even be safe to handle because this is a mare that had never bitten, never kicked, never offered to do anything nasty, and she was getting nasty, dropping a ton of weight, not eating, not engaging with people anymore. We had to move farms by December 15th and I couldn’t put this mare on a trailer to move her. She wasn’t stable enough to move. Her joint had deteriorated to the point where she wouldn’t be able to catch herself anymore and so she almost fell several times. It was pretty traumatic for everyone involved.”
After Sunny was peacefully euthanized, Brittany was left with two maxed out credit cards, a huge Care Credit loan, and all the expenses of moving to a new farm. Despite it all, Oink was a bright spot in the otherwise dreary year. At first, the now 18-year-old gelding struggled mentally to adjust back to spending time in the pasture. Moving to a new farm actually turned out to be the best thing for Oink.
“Since we moved, he’s just happy every day to be alive right now,” Brittany said. “He’s gotten fitter and stronger, he feels safe at the new place. He is back to living out 24/7 with his best friend and he’s got a different 30 acre turnout that they go out on during the day and they all come in at night.”
A true steady eddy, Oink taught walk trot lessons to a variety of the students in Brittany’s therapeutic riding program. But, as he got fitter and stronger as they rehabbed him, he started to get some of his old spark back. An adult amateur started riding him regularly and in early June, competed him in the Starter division at The Event at Archer.
“He was fantastic,” Brittany said. “We had this huge glow up in April/May. It was like all the pieces that we’ve been working on for almost the last year came into place for him. He won! He won his whole division. He finished on his dressage score, he packed around his adult ammy and yeah, brought home his blue ribbon.”
Next up for Oink is Area IV championships at the end of August. I’d like to think that Sunny will be cheering him on from the other side of the Rainbow Bridge. “Oink deserves the world. He will never want for anything in his entire life ever again,” Brittany said of the brave little Thoroughbred.
As for Sunny, Brittany says that “Not a day goes by that we don’t miss her and her larger than life personality.”
After the mountain lion attacks and moving farms, Brittany and Elli are facing a mountain of bills. To help offset their costs, a GoFundMe was set up in their name. If you’d like to donate to Oink and Sunny’s bills, click this link.
