Help Stella Get Her Grooves Back

Hi, everyone! My name is Taylor, and this is our newest little barn baby, Stella. We bought Stella’s mommy, Vanellope for our daughter at the sale barn last fall and were pleasantly surprised by this tiny girl’s arrival in June.

The day Stella was born we quickly noticed something was off. She wasn't standing, although she was already a few hours old, and we were fairly sure she hadn't nursed yet. Both of which are super important in the first hour or two. We were able to get a little bit of milk into Stella and off to the vet we went. The vets looked her over and determined that she had probably gone without oxygen at some point. As terrible as that sounded, they said more than likely she would be okay. Stella would probably just take longer to hit her milestones and need a lot more help with regular day-to-day things than most foals would. Although, not ideal, that news was great news in my opinion.

We excitedly brought Stella home and got to work. We learned how to milk a mini horse, which was interesting to say the least. Climbing under a tiny horse when you're 8 months pregnant is tedious work . Stella would need to be fed every couple of hours, so I pulled a trick out of the 'ol mom book and made tons of pre-measured little bags of milk to make the middle-of-the-night feeds as easy as possible. We even made Stella a little tiny harness so we could help her walk.

In the next couple of weeks little Stella learned to stand and nurse with assistance and eventually was able to do it all on her own. We were so excited for her because our vets had assured us that her little legs would strengthen and straighten out as she grew. So, naturally, we thought that with each tiny step forward Stella was getting better. Sadly, last week we found out that Stella’s little legs were not getting better after all.

After consulting with an equine surgeon at K-State, we were devastated to learn that she has been suffering from luxating patellas and will need corrective surgery on both of her legs in the coming weeks. If she doesn’t get the surgery her quality of life will become so poor that she will have to be euthanized. For those of you wondering what in the world luxating patellas are, this essentially means that she was born with dislocated kneecaps. To make things more complex, the grooves that her kneecaps are meant to be in are non-existent and her surgeon will have to create new ones for her. As you can imagine, this condition makes it impossible for Stella to walk properly and is likely very painful.

Our goal is to raise enough money to cover the costs of surgery and her post-op care so that our tiny Stella can live a happy, healthy, pain-free life alongside our kids. We sincerely appreciate each one of you that took the time to read our story, share our story, or chose to donate to baby Stella's surgery. Thank you all ❤️