Originally posted 04/15/2018
It has long been said that breeding horses is not for the faint of heart (or wallet) due to all the sad and bizarre things that can happen. And when people have said that to us, we kind of sighed, shook our head and said 'wow, we've been so lucky'. After all, we have bred 7 foals without incident and foaled out an 8th for our aunt. Apart from some frozen doses of Hilken's Black Delight which were unusable, we have had first-try pregnancies and foals born without trouble.
2016 changed our streak of luck.
After traveling in-person to meet the German Riding Pony Golden State, it was clear to us that he was a great match to our older Hanoverian mare, Willow. We acquired Willow a few years prior from her owners, breeders of Swedish Warmbloods. With them, she had produced four Class 1 Swedish foals. Before that, Willow had been raised, trained and showed up the dressage levels in Florida. We were told she is trained to FEI (and I assure you she knows how to Piaffe, even if I've not quite figured out how to correctly ask for it!).
Willow has an older style build; heavy in bone, substance and power from behind. She is active in her hind leg and has an elegantly shaped neck; two things that Goldie doesn't generally improve upon. She is also slightly steep in her shoulder and a little hot; two things Goldie IS known to improve. All things considered, this was a fantastic match.
The breeding process went as planned; fresh chilled arrived as ordered, Willow ovulated and on the first insemination she caught! Our vet is talented and they have been leaders in the area of artificial insemination (AI) for many years. Despite the textbook breeding, her uterine tissue tone wasn't ideal, so Willow was sent home on a drug called Regu-Mate, intended to keep her hormone levels in balance so that she didn't accidentally loose the growing embryo.
At her 14 day check, we had our black dot and her tissue still wasn't looking ideal, so she was ordered to stay on the Regu-mate for another 90 days to insure the little one's safety. At around three months, I had her checked again and sadly, she had absorbed the fetus. Very recently as well since all that was left on the ultrasound was a 'puddle' of fluid. My heart was broken. Our streak of impeccable luck had ended and we experienced first-hand the heartbreak of loss when breeding horses.
I wanted to know why this had happened and if she could be bred, ever again. After all, we had purchased her with the intent of breeding in addition to her teaching us to be better riders. So in early 2017, I scheduled a uterine biopsy. The process was fairly simple; I trailered her to the vet when she was in season (her cervix needed to be open enough to access her uterus) and Dr. Marta sent a probe in to 'snip' a cross section of tissue from her uterus. The tissue sample was sent off for analysis. And the wait began.
Several weeks later, I received a call with the results. It turns out that the tissue of her uterine wall had been scarred from her prior pregnancies. And though there was still a chance she could be bred and carry to full-term, it was not much better than 50:50. After experiencing the heartbreak of losing her foal, I couldn't bear to go through that again. I opted to retire her from breeding and stick to riding her.
Little did I know then, that luck would smile upon us. Only a few weeks later, the phone rang and our breeding plans drastically changed. But we'll save that story for another post...