Britney  and Clementine	Claire and Shane	Sandman our  Angel Pony	PETOOT Poster Pony 2001	Ryan's best friend	Matthew and "Mine 'Orse"	Tyler  with Clyde & Dale
Jacob and Mafusa	Sonja's Taffy	Steven and Mikey	HOPE! Poster Pony 2002	Muffy and an Angel	Mark and Maggie

Meet HOPE, an abandoned foal who has had the heart and courage to survive and her surrogate mom, PPL volunteer Charlee Messick, who helped make it possible.

HOPE! Poster Pony 2002

HOPE isn't pretty and her conformation leaves a lot to be desired. In fact, HOPE was an "accident" --the result of an unplanned breeding by an incompetent owner. She entered life with little "hope" for survival, but unlike the two colts who died at birth in her herd last spring, she got lucky.

Very lucky. In fact, we like to think that HOPE had a special angel looking out for her, one that whispered in her owner's ear to ask PPL volunteer, Charlee Messick, to come get her dam and help her foal. That was miracle number one. The fact that Charlee responded, and went and got this little mare and brought her to her farm to foal was not a miracle at all. That is just the kind of thing that Charlee does.

The second miracle is that HOPE lived, and that despite her difficult start in life, she has thrived and become one of our best (and most experienced!) PPL ambassadors before even reaching her first birthday! We are proud to have HOPE as part of our program.

This is HOPE's story as told by her "mom," Charlee Messick.

A little orphaned foal...

Little HOPE came from a very old woman whose husband used to raise ponies. When he died, the woman "loved" the ponies and continued to let them breed, but she was so frail that she couldn't do more than put feed over the fence. The ponies never saw a vet, never got their hooves trimmed, never had human touch, or even wore a halter--and worst of all, the majority are severely inbred.

This woman called me twice last spring to help two other babies who were born too weak to stand. Twice I went out to try to help and twice I buried dear little colts who were too sick to survive. It was heartbreaking and I made up my mind that was the LAST time I would kneel in cold and muck to help a mare who was too scared to let me near her, to help babies who didn't have any chance to survive...

I had been trying to help this woman understand that letting the ponies breed indiscriminately and without the proper care was doing them harm and I am glad to report that in the past year she has sold the remaining ponies. But last spring I knew there was one more mare yet to foal in the herd. This tiny mare was very inbred and had such narrow hips, I knew this baby, like the others, would have all the odds stacked against her just to be born alive. I tried to close my heart to the situation, but when the owner begged me to take the mare to my house before the mare foaled, I just had to try once more.

After a long, hard delivery HOPE was born, but it was clear she didn't have much of a chance either. She had the worst set of legs I've ever seen and couldn't stand alone. Even worse, the mom would NOT let me near her to help the baby nurse and kicked at HOPE whenever I tried to get her near. So instead, I snuck HOPE under another mare, TAFFY, who had foaled the day before. HOPE did manage to get some colostrum from TAFFY several times before TAFFY realized that this was not HER baby and wouldn't have anything more to do with her. Then HOPE's dam died (presumably from heart failure) and little HOPE was truly on her own.

HOPE finds a new mamma!

As soon as it was daylight, I was on the way to the vet with one very "HOPE-less" baby. The vet stitched a tube through her nose to her stomach, gave her two pints of man-made colostrum, and I took her home with instructions to feed her 2cc's of milk through a syringe every twenty minutes, day and night. I refused to name this baby because it seemed impossible that she could survive. All I kept saying was "I hope you live, I hope you live."

After three days, the little filly was sucking her bottle well and I removed the feeding tube and bottle fed her--again, every twenty minutes day and night. She slept beside the bed (ok...sometimes IN the bed) and would nicker and tug on the covers when she wanted milk.

Two weeks later this crooked legged little fighter was hanging in there, and the name HOPE was the obvious choice. And when she started bucking around the bedroom at 3am, I knew it was time she was introduced to the barn.

Raising an orphan foal

Raising an orphan foal is a full time job! From the day she was born, wherever I went, HOPE went. For months I never went anywhere without a diaper bag full of bottles and a playpen to put her in. Now, at only eight months, HOPE has been on more car rides and backseat truck rides than most dogs, is house trained, and when she sees me hooking up the trailer, she better be going along! To her it's natural to go everywhere I do. She takes her naps in my lap (we won't even talk about the naps on the sofa and her fondness for TV) and despite now being a bit too big for this, she still insists on being "held." I even went so far as to build a "surrogate-me" out of my clothes, complete with face and wig and LIPS, and tied it to a tree in the yard so that HOPE would have a "friend" when I snuck off to do much needed chores.

Since her birth, I have held my breath each morning when I go to the barn, never able to take her health for granted or to forget that she may develop problems as she matures from being severely inbred. It's taken over $1000 in vet bills, serious corrective hoof trimming to help straighten out her little "chicken wing" legs, special feeding, and a lot of love for HOPE to become the (HOPE-fully) healthy little filly she is today.

Miss "Personality Plus"

I doubt that HOPE will ever consider herself a "real" pony. She still sees nothing wrong with lying on the sofa to watch TV and has more than her share of clownish moments. We go to lots of birthday parties for PPL, and I can always let HOPE loose to visit and not worry about her wandering off. I have to warn everyone, though, to lock up their coolers because she is the nosiest pony you will ever meet. At picnics she even tries to help herself to everyone's meal! When she gets too tired and obnoxious and people are fed up with her antics, I hear "Momma Charlee, come get your kid!!!." Then I just stop what I am doing, sit on the ground, pull HOPE onto my lap and tell her to take a nap. She'll lick my face, close her eyes --and she's OUT--and I means SNORING out.

In our last visit to a nursing home, I turned HOPE loose in a room filled with wheelchair bound adults and one-by-one HOPE went down the line and "visited" each person. She would give each one three to four minutes at the most, and then look at each one as if to say "ok, gotta go, more folks to visit." Then she would go down to the next person until she had "visited" ever person in the room. The funny part was that she would make a turn and start in another direction when she finished a "row" all by herself and never went back to any person twice.

Probably the funniest outing was taking HOPE to Petsmart for a picture with Santa. She stood in line with the dogs and wanted to play with them (and if they ignored her she would give them just a bit of a nip so they would pay attention to her). And, if I didn't have my eyes on her every second, she would grab a bag of dog bones off the shelf and toss them towards the dogs! At one point I was telling HOPE "no" with a giggling little girl at the other end of the bag trying to help me get the bones away from this playful and precocious pony.

Afterthoughts...

Physically, HOPE is everything we wish NOT to see in a pony, and I tried my best NOT to become attached to her, certain that her time with me was limited. Her legs are terrible, she's not at all a "pretty" pony, and her overall conformation is poor--but for now I have a little girl I love very much. And despite her crooked legs and silly face, she truly is an Ambassador Extraordinaire for PPL--a most special pony. She delights children and adults alike and has already touched many, many lives. HOPE is also a fighter, overcomes every hurdle put in front of her, and is ready to do everything a pony should.

HOPE is great of heart and spirit and I have been greatly blessed to know her. I pray that she will be with us for a very long time.

Charlee Messick
Virginia State Director
National Director, Breeding/Placement