In Part Two of this excerpt from the new book Equine ER, Selena, a Bluegrass polo pony, is rushed to the emergency room after being found critically injured in a field. Will she survive?

The farm’s theory that her horse ran through a fence doesn’t hold up with Mia Proto because Selena’s front legs and chest aren’t torn up; no pressure lines are evident on her skin. As Proto looks around the pasture, she doesn’t see any ripped bushes near the fences or any new fence posts being put in or old ones being straightened. Later, she drives around the entire farm twice: same thing.

Proto believes what really happened that night in the pasture was that Selena got attacked by another horse at the farm, a bully Proto says she had previously seen picking on other horses, chasing them across the property, teeth bared. After playing so much polo, she cannot imagine Selena running around the pasture and putting herself through a fence; her normal routine after a match is to eat and immediately go to sleep. Proto believes the mare was so exhausted from her third chukker Ð the one she made her play Ð that the twenty-one-year-old mare got chased around the pasture by the dominant horse, run through bushes and other foliage, dropped from exhaustion, and was kicked in the head. Proto can’t forgive herself.

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