Bella Noche

aka "Bluebell"

Although we did not personally rescue Bella, she came to us for permanent sanctuary from a couple who had known her almost since birth and finally, after three years, were able to get her away from her first home.  Bella is VERY touchy about her ears, because when she was 9 months old she cut her eye on a fence and rather than take her to the vet, the owner "eared" her (holding and twisting the ear so hard that the horse holds still because it hurts too much to move) and stitched the eye without anesthetic.  Not only did this cause her to be touchy about her ears, the stitching job was not very good and left Bella with lumps on both eyelids, which look like warts or moles.  On top of that, she had two foals before she was even three years old - and not by accident!  Both foals died very young and poor Bella wanted badly to be a mother...  She is also very picky about having a clean water bucket - apparently you could almost walk on the top of the water trough at her first home, it was so full of gunk.

Bella's rescue mom Maureen spent oodles of time on her ears and now, once she trusts you, she will let you touch them... there is nothing to be done for the eyelids as according to the vet, attempting to cut away the lumps of tissue would not leave enough eyelid for Bella to be able to fully close her eye, which would cause more problems than it would solve.

As for wanting to be a mama, our filly Holly seemed to be wanting to have a mama, so we put the two together and as you can see, they bonded immediately.

Bella spent the winter with our spotted jack Trooper, and it looks very much like she will have our first miniature mule in February of 2007!