Gary Sanderson and Amigo: When you say ENDURANCE, you mean it!

Today was not a good day for me. I have some emotional things going on that I'm, um... working through... and to be honest, this afternoon, I just came home and cried. But it's like that Christmas special--you know, The Island of Misfit Toys? "Remember: it could always be worse!"

Gary Sanderson, for example, and his horse Amigo have certainly seen better times, and I'm sure my little problems are nothing compared to what they have been going through. I came across this story (and this shocking picture) last night on The Equestrian Vagabond.



This was how Gary Sanderson found his nine-year-old Arabian endurance horse at his barn earlier this year on January 17.

Gary's summary of the event? "I said, 'what are you doing up here?' He whinnied at me. I walked around to the side of him and saw the stick in his side." The stick, as Gary simply calls it, was a tree branch nearly two inches wide that had impaled his left side, snapping two ribs and penetrating the inside of his chest. It had already piercing Amigo for some twelve hours.

Amigo's vet came out to euthanize the horse, but Gary wanted to give him a chance to live. "His gums were already blue," Sanderson remembers. "His breath was toxic." But that horse, he explained, was like family. He had bought Amigo from his girlfriend five years ago, for only a slice of cheesecake and a Mountain Dew. Amigo instantly took to endurance racing, finishing consistently in the top ten; he even won 'best time', finishing 50 miles in just 3 hours and 40 minutes. But after being punctured by a tree branch, Amigo faced a much more challenging race: the race for his life.

Despite being told that Amigo's chances of survival were only 2%, Gary Sanderson had his horse brought to the Large Animal Clinic of the University of Tennessee. Amigo kept his courage, loading into the trailer and braving the 45 minute drive with a 35 inch stick protruding from his side. He even managed to eat some hay along the way.

At the clinic, Amigo stood through an hour-long surgery to remove the branch, as well as damaged and rotting tissue in the wound. His left lung collapsed during the operation, but it was repaired. Now, with the stick gone and his lung reinflated, Amigo's future was still grim. He had an incredible road to recovery ahead of him, and the risks of laminitis, colic, and bacterial infection were life-threatening.

But Amigo is an endurance horse by nature, and endure he will. His odds of surviving slowly increased from two percenty, to twenty-five percent, to the fifty percent that are today. As for the endurance races themselves? "I don't know if he will [race again]," his owner says. "I don't really care. I just want him to come home."

And he truly does. Despite the bleak original prospect and the steep vet bills (around $15,000-20,000), Gary Sanderson and all of Amigo's family have fought for his life. "I'm willing to go into debt for him," Gary says. "He wants to live. I am not going to give up on him." And its paying off; Amigo continues to pull through.

Now that's what I call an endurance horse!

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Want more information?
You can follow Amigo's progress here.

If you want to donate to help ease this amazing horse owner's vet bills, you can do so through paypal using katpirate@comcast.net or by sending a check payable to University of TN Large Animal Clinic Patient #211197 Amigo

Address:
University of TN c/o Business office
2407 River Drive
Knoxville, TN 37996

Any money raised over the amount of the vet bills will be placed in an Amigo Fund at the hospital to help other horses in need.

*Images by Kara Disbrow.