Jake Loves (and needs) Food

Jake has been with us 2 weeks. He is a 26 y o Arabian that the owners said always did well on pasture. I guess they didn't think to buy grain or call a vet. He weighted 742 pounds when we picked him up and brought him to SaveTheHorses Rescue farm. He gets Senior feed several times a day. He makes sure because he gets to walk around free rather than in a pasture and when he sees a human head toward the feed barn, he comes over and whinnies, 'Feed me, please!'. He is a sweet horse and has probably been taken care of most of his life until recently. I don't know what happened that he lost so much weight and it was just ignored but he surely suffered for it. He was starving. I doubt he would have lived much longer without grain or hay. He was on about a 2 acre pasture with green grass, lovely black board fencing in a very well to do neighborhood. 

We couldn't put shavings in his stall because he was so starved, he'd eat them. We let him just be staled on rubber mats and put food grade diaomaceous earth on it to absorb the smell. If he was in the stall and we took a shovel of shavings and put it on the urine pool to absorb it so we could shovel it out, so he could have a clean stall, he would start gobbling the shavings. He couldn't help himself he was so hungry. The other day, he walked into a few stalls that the horses who occupy them were turned out, he was looking in their feed buckets for left overs. Then he rolled in a stall and he was covered in shavings. It was a breakthrough, he is past the starving point. We realized he was ready for shavings in his own stall, to keep it clean and to keep him comfortable. It was a simple thing, shaving in his stall. It was joyous for everyone at the rescue farm. Jake had taken a step forward. 

The day he was brought to the farm, started out bad. He ate some grain in the 30 minute trailer ride from his home back to the farm. He  was so starved he gulped the food down. When the trailer door opened for him to get out to the safety of the rescue farm, food was coming out of his nose. He was choking. Dr Laura Duvall Mohoney came out quickly to get a tube down his throat and clear his choke. He is on antibiotics for any aspirating that easily happen]s when you wash water down a horses esophagus. 

He loves his new girlfriend, Lady Jane. They look like Jack Sprat (who could eat not fat) and his wife (who could eat not lean). You have to love their relationship. He loves her, she could care less. 
She actually love to tease little Humphrey, a miniature horse with a hump on his back. 

Drama sat the rescue farm! 

Thank you for your compassion and support! 

You save lives of horses like Jake, Lady Jane and Lil Humphrey everyday!  Thank you so much!