The owner of a filly who fractured her skull, lost an eye and severed a extensor tendon as a result of a freak stable accident hopes the story of her remarkable recovery might inspire others.
Carol Webber and Mitchell Hickley do not know exactly how their 14-month-old home-bred Go With The Flow suffered her horrific injuries in June – but they have been fighting as hard as they can to save her as this is a filly who “wants to live”.
“She’s been showing so much will to live; even the vet said she can see Flo wants to be alive and is fighting everything that’s thrown at her,” Carol told H&H. “We felt we had to give her the chance and that’s what we’ve done.”
Carol said Flo lives at Mitchell’s yard and that some liveries found her very early in the morning when they arrived to go to a show. She said they heard a loud bang and ran to the stable, where they found Flo.
“We still don’t know exactly what happened; there were cameras up but you still can’t see what freaked her out,” Carol said. “But she attempted to jump out and left her foreleg so she was hanging on the door. She must have pulled the door off and we can only imagine she hit her head on the concrete, and her eye on the door. She had a massive wound at her poll – I could put my whole hand in it – a huge haematoma on her eyelid and the tendon on the front of her right foreleg was severed; cut all the way through. It was horrific.”
Flo was taken straight to Bell Equine veterinary hospital in Kent, where MRIs showed no brain damage.
“But the front of her skull and her jaw on the left were fractured, and her left eye socket,” Carol said. “We were trying to save her eye but the best thing was to remove it.”
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Flo’s condition improved and she was allowed home to East Sussex about six weeks later where Carol, a nurse, was changing her dressings daily.
“But then her head started to swell and there was an odour,” she said. “It wasn’t right, we thought there was an infection.”
Flo went back to Bell where the vets found she had a serious infection.
“They had to open up both sides of her poll, drain it and get all the muck out,” Carol said. “Bell has been amazing; they did it all in house. Flo’s not insured and they’ve been very kind, working with us to keep costs down. They’ve been incredible.”
As of this week, and after intensive treatment, Carol said, she is hopeful that Flo is properly on the mend.
“She’s such a stoic, strong, fighting little filly,” she said. “At one point we wondered if we were doing the right thing but she kept perking up and we thought ‘Do you know what? She wants to live’. She’s incredible.”
Carol wanted to share Flo’s story to give hope to anyone else in a similar situation.
“She’s growing; she looks incredible, and beautiful,” she said. “The vets said if it had been the tendon at the back of the leg, she would have had to be put down but they hope as it heals, the scar tissue will replace the tendon. Her bandages are off now and she’s walking well. We bred her to event but even if she can’t, she will never go anywhere.
“We would have made the decision to put her down if she was suffering but she’s just kept fighting. I’ve had horses all my life and bred National Hunt racehorses and never seen a foal so strong and with this will to live. We love her so much and she’s given us so much, we wanted to give her the chance.”
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Eleanor is an experienced journalist who spent over eight years working for local and national newspapers before joining H&H as news editor in March 2016. Passionate about equine welfare and exposing the truth, Eleanor has reported on all aspects of the industry, from Brexit to anti-bullying campaigns, and from dressage rules to mules. Her sport of choice is showjumping, in which she competes her own horses, and she also enjoys reporting at local jumping shows through to international championships.
