Lily Recovery Fund

I want to introduce you to one of my best friends. Her name is Nicole, but many of you might know her as Saiph. She has been writing the blog, Wait for the Jump , for several years now about her adventures with her mare, Tigerlily. Tigerlily or Lily as she is called, is a mostly Thoroughbred mare of indeterminate breeding that Saiph rescued four years ago. At that point she was a spooky, skinny, scared little thing, but Saiph took her in, loved her, worked with her and helped Lily find herself. Saiph and Lily have grown together in confidence and ability, completing two 50 mile endurance races last year and a 30 mile LD this year. They are quite the team.


Unfortunately, Lily decided two weeks ago to sit back on her halter in response to some unknown at the barn . This is a bad habit that she had prior to Saiph taking her in and which she has not grown past. This time when she pulled back, the top rail of the hitching post she was tied to came off. Lily was secured to a four foot long piece of wood with four inch nails sticking out of either end. She bolted with the piece of wood chasing her. I've had this happen to a horse I owned before and there is nothing you can do but watch with your heart in your throat and pray the horse stops. In this case, Lily did not. She bolted and even after the piece of wood hung up and shattered into pieces, she kept going. She was caught by a kind stranger and Saiph was able to recover her horse.

That was the good news. The bad news is the four inch screw at the end of the wood, sliced into Lily's hind leg, doing massive damage and shattering her splint bone. It would require surgery to fix. Saiph hauled her to New Bolton, fearing at that time that her riding adventures with Lily were at an end. The hospital was able to remove the splint bone and sew up the wound, keeping her in the hospital for a week.


This Go Fund Me is being set up to help with the extra cost of care Saiph and her hubs Charles are having to foot. Saiph has insurance on Lily, which covered the cost of the hospitalization and surgery, but does not cover the after care . So far, they have wracked up over $1000 in additional vet bills, since Lily has developed cellulitis in her skin that needs attention, and the original injury still needs special vet care .

Saiph and Charles, like many of us, are managing on a shoe string budget and the extra >$1000 is a huge blow to their carefully balanced budget.  Both are already working fulltime jobs and have taken on overtime shifts to try to make up for this extra cost. Nicole is darting back and forth from the barn in addition to all of her hours worked to do as much self-care for Lily as she can to further cut costs; due to this, she is unable to take on a second job currently to help with the financial implications. We have set up this fund hoping to defray the impact by helping her with these additional costs.