Venus is a little liver chestnut mare who was rescued from a now-defunct “rescue.” She had gotten a splinter in her left eye at the rescue, which festered and created a great deal of scar tissue. The people at the rescue didn’t bother to treat her eye, so a volunteer offered to foster her and was able to get Venus some veterinary care. By that time, however, the damage was done, and her eye was permanently scarred and she lost the majority of her sight.
The “rescue,” realizing that Venus would be difficult to adopt out, was going to shoot her (yes, you read that right. It’s not illegal to shoot horses in California), so the volunteer adopted her to keep her from being killed. Sadly, she could not keep Venus, so she reached out to Hanaeleh to see if we could take her…and we said, YES.
Venus has done well at Hanaeleh. When she first came she could not be caught, and was very skittish and would randomly freak out and pull back when tied or even just being walked. Now she has learned to walk up to people and stands well while being groomed or for the farrier. She has to wear a special fly mask that completely blocks off the area to her bad eye as she had an eye infection last year, and we want to keep her eye as clean as possible. The eye is shrinking due to a lack of blood flow, and there will be a time when we will have to eventually remove the eye, but for now it’s OK. She does have some sight in the eye, and is able to see when we run her around in the arena, although she obviously can’t see us very well on her bad side.
We have no plans to train Venus to ride- she just doesn’t retain information very well, and she is often silly and spooky, and we can’t guarantee she would be safe under saddle, so she is retired at Hanaeleh. Venus lives in the top paddock with her BFF Noelle. They enjoy living together and we have often seen them mutually grooming each other or just lying down. Not a bad retirement!