Last week in a new excerpt from the book Equine ER, Quarter Horse mare Surely Awesome was found in her paddock with her long pastern bone shattered. Today, we see what happened next for the gentle, sorrel-colored horse.

Also last week: Equine ER author Leslie Guttman was the guest speaker at the Novel Nine Book Club in Lexington Kentucky, whose members read Equine ER for their most recent selection. More about that below, plus pictures, after the excerpt. If you’re interested in having Leslie come to your book club, whether by Skype or conference call, or in person if you’re located in the Central Kentucky area, email equineer(at)leslieguttman.com.

Now, onto the next installment of Surely Awesome’s story: 

Surely Awesome’s owner, Susan Blackburn, is a large and small animal veterinarian with a passion for horses. When she got out of veterinary school at Tufts University in Massachusetts in the 1980s, she had been offered an internship at Lexington’s Rood & Riddle Equine Hospital, but was unable to take it for family reasons. Now, decades later, she didn’t know if the clinic would be the place to send Surely Awesome for the best medical care. She called an equine veterinarian-friend in the Bluegrass for advice. “There’s one place to go and one person to go to,” he told her: Dr. Alan Ruggles at Rood & Riddle