#TeamHighway shirts

https://www.facebook.com/HighwaytheMiracleHorse/

Highway is the horse that fell off a moving horse trailer on I-75 on his way to slaughter! He is truly the epitome of a miracle!

The previous owner dropped him off at a “random guys” house late at night and told him to euthanize the horse because he was apparently dangerous. Early the next morning around 5am the “random guy” had this horse in his trailer and was driving north on I-75. when he was passing through Alachua county a trailer malfunction happened and the door came open so he horse fell out of the trailer going around 60 mph into the highway, by some miracle he survived the fall and went off to the side of the road and the driver kept going because he thought he was dead and didn’t want to get in trouble. Alachua County Sheriff department picked him up off the side of the road and took him to SpringHill equine veterinary clinic so that they could assess the damage, we made contact with Alachua county as soon as possible and offered to help in any way. We found out that he had an extremely deep injury to his knee and their was asphalt inside of the knee joint as well as many other serious injuries all over his body. He couldn’t wait for surgery or else he could die from infection, we offered to pay for the surgery so that wouldn’t happen. Fortunately a fundraiser was posted and the money was able to be raised for his surgery! The surgery was to flush the joint to remove the asphalt that has became deeply embedded in his knee. His surgery was successful but he had to be closely monitored, he was healing extremely well and making great progress. On December 26th we noticed that Highway suddenly got extremely painful on the knee that had the surgery. We rushed him up to Peterson Smith hospital in Ocala so he could be immediately assessed. They decided to put him on antibiotics and see if that helped.

Unfortunately that Friday morning (Dec 28th) he was in immense pain and he had to be rushed into surgery. we were then told that he only had a 5% chance of making it through the surgery and would likely have to be euthanized once they open up the leg due to the damage being too severe and infected, so we said out goodbyes right before he went into surgery the hardest goodbye I’ve ever said I’m my entire life. I watched the entire surgery very closely, first they tapped the joint to see the what his white blood cell count was. They then opened up the entire knee by about a 12 inch incision. By some miracle when the doctor opened him up he felt that he could fix the damage by removing the damaged tendon (about 5 inches of it) and flushing the entire leg out then placing a drain and stitching his leg back up. It was truly an incredible surgery that is rarely performed due to the low percent of survival and intensive recovery process. Every day after surgery was nerve wrecking as we did not know how he would heal, the first 10 days are always the worst. After 10 days at Peterson smith equine hospital they were comfortable sending him home!

He is still on a very strict recovery plan and is not out of the woods just yet but his future is looking so bright. Highway is one of the kindest horses I’ve ever been around, he has the most incredible will to live I’ve ever seen. He is so admirable in his strength that he has shown, and his love that he continually shows us after having every reason to hate humans