Memorial Garden for Lea, the horse born blind

UPDATE- Unfortunately Lea lost the fight to the infection.

We are very much still in disbelief and grieving bad from the loss of my sweet born blind girl, Lea. God was ready to bring her home, I can’t say that we were.

I was praying on what to exactly do to honor the spot we buried her which is in the heart of LES Haven as she was just that for this place. Without her being born blind, LES Haven Ranch and saving blind horses wouldn’t have happened. She had inspired many to keep their blind horses as well as take in blind horses to care knowing that blind horses are just as capable as a sighted horse.

We will be building a memorial garden where Lea is buried to commemorate the inspiring life she had, to bring Glory to God and for many to visit and be still and know. It feels so right to do a memorial garden to honor her life as she was so full of life and color! She allowed me to have flowers in her mane and tail and she truly was the sweetest as the flowers nectar is to the honey bees.

To achieve this, we will need your help. We need to cover her vet bills and start raising to build this memorial garden. If you can please continue to donate and share our GoFundMe as we would love to have this in her honor as she is the main founder of LES Haven Ranch. Thank you and God bless y’all!

The Garden of Lea

Hello everyone, our names are Korey and Louise Schmidt and we are the founders of LES Haven Ranch, a blind horse sanctuary nonprofit based in Northern Montana. EIN: 92-0264852

Lea, our born blind horse scraped her hind fetlock joint on a trail ride. Things looked like they were heeling after oral antibiotics, triple antibiotic ointment, and wrapping it daily and letting her stand tied to air out, she was not lame nor did it seem to bother her and she acted herself.

Unfortunately things drastically changed for the worse when we came home from a wedding trip a couple of hours away and she was unable to place weight on her leg. We took her bandage off and it looked as we feared with a major infection. We rushed Lea into our emergency vet and the results were as we feared; the infection and cellulitis was badly in the joint.

The vet tried to flush what bacteria she could out unfortunately with how inflamed and swollen her joint was, there was not much success. Unfortunately after she had finished her oral antibiotics, the infection grew rapidly as the antibiotics given were temporarily preventing bacterial growth but not completely removing it. Therefore it rapidly grew after she was done with the antibiotics.

Her next option of any hope is to have her go to a specialist at Montana Equine in Three Forks, Montana. We are currently on our way now. There she will undergo surgery to try to remove as much as possible. This could be multiple sessions depending how bad it is.

There is a high chance that Lea could be lame for the rest of her life. We had the option of euthanasia but we truly believe in fighting for her, especially because we have done that for every blind horse we have saved, so why could we not do this for the horse who started all of LES Haven Ranch! Without her being born blind, this nonprofit to help save and sanctuary blind horses in need would not exist. She has proven many owners of blind horses that a completely blind horse can do all things a sighted horse can do.

surgery for this is estimated between 3k up to 15k. We personally do not have this to save her and we need your help. We want to do the very best for the very blind horse who has saved many blind horses. We cannot do this without you. We are doing this through our nonprofit as any extra funds will be turned over to our blind horses at LES Haven Ranch.

for more information on our organization and our blind horses, please, check out our website www.leshaven.org

Please keep Lea in your prayers for miraculous healing. We do not want to loose her, we absolutely love her! Thank you so much and God bless you all!