Shelby Dennis saving Milo
It ’ s a story you see in the movies , a university student , with very little funds other than what she earns from her three jobs , meets a horse rescued by the SPCA . Milo ’ s short life had been full of neglect when Shelby took him on . He was a challenge but Shelby put horsemanship first and has managed to turn him around . At only four years old she can already ride him bridle less and has begun taking him to his first training shows . The bond between the two is remarkable and their future together is bright . Sit down and get your tissues out for this is a story that will tug at your heart strings for certain .
“ I came across his ad on the SPCA website and was very interested in going to see him , despite the fact that he was listed as a yearling which was much younger than I was looking for ”, explains Shelby . “ When my mom and I went to see him , he was very nervous and cautious of people . He was still quite underweight with tufts of his starvation coat clinging to what should have been a summer coat , though he was far better than the emaciated 1.5 on the body scale he was when he was seized by the SPCA . His feet had been trimmed but were still in need of major TLC that would take many trimmings to fix . As far as the SPCA knew , he ’ d been neglected and left out in a field to starve along with a pregnant mare , a stallion , a colt and a gelding .”
He wasn ’ t halter broke or handled to the SPCA ’ s knowledge and was very much like a feral horse . “ I later found out from someone who was the neighbour of the people who used to have him that his old owners did not feed the horses despite being offered free grain , beet pulp , shown how to mix grain and what to feed AND offered a neighbouring hay field to cut and feed their horses . They apparently did harvest the hay but instead sold it for profit in lieu of feeding their emaciated horses ,” she says with sadness .
Due to Milo ’ s nervousness and distrust of men , Shelby thinks there may have been some form of abuse in his past . Since he ’ d been handled so sparingly and had no reason to really like people , he was incredibly jumpy and cautious . He was also very stubborn and had no will to do what people asked of him , this made him exceedingly difficult .
“ After we applied for adoption and were approved , he came home . We had him vetted and found out he was actually two , not one like the SPCA had thought . And so started the battle with teaching him to lead properly , lunge , blanket , wear a fly mask , bathe , fly spray and trust people ,” she remembers . “ We took it slow , working daily on getting him to want to be caught and to stand quietly while we fussed over him with various things . Lunging , hosing and fly spray were extremely time consuming to get him to tolerate , even to this day he still will panic sometimes when being fly sprayed . Blanketing was a little easier but he was still so nervous for the first while that it was more difficult than it realistically should have been , even for a horse who hadn ’ t been handled a lot .”
Shelby remembers how exceedingly stubborn he was . “ He would plant his feet , rear or just flat out refuse to do something . One day , it took us three hours to get a bit of fly spray on him ; even just trying to wipe it on him and it took months to get him lunging properly consistently .