The Foal in the Deep Ditch

The rain had run off the grassland all night, and by morning every ditch was a brown river looking for the low ground. A farmer walking his fence line at first light heard splashing from the drainage ditch at the bottom of the long field, and went down expecting a trapped sheep, and found something bigger and sadder than that.

He was a foal, not yet a year old, standing in the ditch with the water at his chest. Some time in the night he had gone down into it, perhaps crossing in the dark to reach the far bank, perhaps slipped on the wet edge, and the ditch had kept him. The banks rose steep and slick on both sides, greasy clay polished by running water, and his legs had sunk into the soft mud of the bottom past the fetlocks. Every attempt he made to scramble up had dug him deeper and cut the banks into slide marks that ended lower than they began. I could read his night in those marks. Near the top they were long and hopeful. Lower down they were short. At the waterline they had stopped altogether.

He stood with his head hanging low over the water, his dark coat plastered and muddy to the shoulder, his eyes half-closed. His whole body trembled in long waves, from cold and from hours of standing in moving water. Every few minutes he gathered himself and heaved, and the mud sighed around his legs and held, and he settled back a fraction lower, breathing hard, and the trembling started again worse than before. When the farmer called softly to him he did not turn his head. A young horse who cannot be bothered to answer a voice has spent almost everything he has.

You do not haul a horse straight up a ditch bank. The suction of deep mud would fight any rope, and a leg could be injured by force the animal cannot help you guide. So we made him a road instead. While two of us stayed at the waterline talking to him and keeping his head up, the others dug into the far bank with spades, cutting it down into a long, shallow ramp that sloped into the ditch, packing the cut clay with straw and hurdles to give hooves something honest to grip. We laid boards at the top of the ramp on firm ground and set the vehicle’s tow line to an anchor point well back from the edge.

Then I went down into the ditch in waders, working along boards so my own weight would not churn the bottom worse, and slipped two wide padded straps under his chest and belly, working them through the mud by hand, a little at a time, until they sat where they could lift without pressing anywhere delicate. He leaned, slightly, into the hand I rested on his shoulder.

The complication came at the first real pull. The tow line took the strain gently, the straps held, and his front legs came free of the mud with a wet, sucking sound, and he lunged up the ramp with more hope than strength. Halfway up, his hind legs, still trailing in the ditch mud, pulled his weight back, and the straw matting under his front hooves tore loose on the wet clay. He slid backward in a slow, terrible rush, straps and all, and for a moment I believed he would go over sideways into the deep part of the ditch. We did not pull against him. We eased the line slack, let him settle back into the water standing, and simply held him there with the straps while he breathed, shuddering, his head against my shoulder. Then the others rebuilt the ramp where it had failed, driving the hurdles deeper and laying fresh straw over the tear, and we waited until his breathing slowed before we asked him for anything again.

The second climb was slow, and I counted it by his efforts. Heave, rest. Heave, rest. The straps took part of his weight and his own legs did the rest, trembling at every step, until his hind hooves found the ramp and kicked free of the mud with a sound like a held breath let go. He came over the lip of the ditch and stood on the grass swaying, water and mud streaming off him, and then lay down in the straw we had spread, because standing had cost him everything he had borrowed.

The vet checked him there at the field edge: no broken bones, joints sound, only cold deep in his body, cuts of exhaustion in every muscle, and mud worked into his coat to the skin. We washed him down bucket by bucket with warm water and walked him dry in circles until the trembling eased. By evening he was back in his own stable, eating, and his owner swore the ditch would be fenced by the end of the week.

We named him Loi — the Vietnamese word for wading. It seemed honest: the deep ditch tried to keep him, and lost.

I think about that grassland sometimes, after heavy rain, when every ditch runs brown and the low fields shine with standing water. I think about a young horse standing in cold water through a whole night, trying less and less, in a hole the rain dug deeper around him. And someone happened to be walking that fence line at first light. And someone happened to hear splashing that had almost stopped, and go down to look instead of walking on.