Heritage Horse Tales - Polyfilla

Gunnadorrah Polyfilla

Yes it wasn’t a great name, but it suited her. Polyfilla was the thirteenth horse. During the first Gunnadorrah Station rescue, back in November 2006, Dr Sheila Greenwell only had room for twelve horses on the truck. (Standard number.) However due to the small size and poor overall condition of the horses, once Sheila had chosen the initial twelve, there was still a tiny bit of room left on young truck driver Andrew’s vehicle.

Andrew informed Sheila, who announced that she was "tired of playing Schindler’s List” and that Andrew would have to pick the last young horse to save on that trip. The young truck driver, campdrafter and horse trainer looked about the pen, and chose a petite, skinny, plain looking bay filly. They called her “Polyfilla” because she filled the gap.

Like a small number of the Gunnadorrah horses, although “Poly” was only about two years old, she had been traumatised from her experience at the station. She was reasonably quiet and calm, but she didn’t trust people. Unfortunately, Poly had a terrible accident during her first few weeks in captivity. Stirred up by the highly strung DJ ("Desert Jewel" - see also her story), Poly panicked and tried to jump a fence that was too big for her, and got badly caught in some old barbed wire. She cut her shoulder and also very seriously injured one hind leg, the wire cutting deep in to her fetlock. Sheila thought she might end up permanently lame and have to be put down, but we treated Poly every day – sometimes twice a day – and her old bloodline healing ability won through. She recovered, and after four months wasn’t even lame. (These days you can hardly see the scarring and she moves as beautifully as ever.)

Poly went through a great deal during her taming down process. We don't believe in athropomorphising - in putting human emotions on animals - but we do believe that perhaps Poly had actually decided that she was going to die, and had, on some level, prepared herself to depart this life in the pet meat yards. Because of this, when she was rescued, she then had to make a new decision - to live again...and to trust humans so that she could move forward. Prior to making this decision she was a very “detached” horse who would not make any positive move towards a person. We call them "shut down" horses and we have come across several now, in our rescues. Poly would just stand still and let people do whatever they liked, if she could not run away. Even if you stroked her she would not acknowledge you or turn her head towards you, she would just stand there, looking away. If you have ever witnessed this “shut off” sort of equine behaviour you will understand what it looks like.

It took Poly many months, but with gentle and patient (almost daily) encouragement she made that big decision, and chose to join the world again...one day she turned her head in to a caress, and that was a great day for us all.

aka Merrilegs...

Because of her good confirmation, elevated action and lovely large, gentle eyes, Poly was purchased by Debbie from Geraldton who also owned one of the Earaheedy Walers, “Roscoe”, at the time. Debbie’s teenage daughter Astrid fell in love with Poly, and renamed her “Merrilegs”, after the high stepping pony in Black Beauty. Several months ago now, Merrilegs went to live in Geraldton with Astrid, Debbie and the family.

Recently Astrid emailed us, and told us that not only had Merrilegs just been to her first show with the family, but also that Astrid had put a rug on her, and sat on her back for the first time. Merrilegs apparently took it all in her stride, trusting that Astrid would look after her. Astrid was thrilled, and so were we. The best thing is that Merri is still enjoying her cuddles!

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When dealing with traumatised or incorrectly handled wild horses (referring to any wild horse, not necessarily named rescue cases), it take a great deal of time and patience to get through to them. Sometimes, sadly, it doesn't work and the horse has permanent issues. It took more than six months with Poly/Merri but we got there in the end. We have learned a great deal from rehabilitating wild horses such as Polyfilla, Kybo, Twiggy, Gunna and DJ...and future rescue cases will benefit from this knowledge.

Again, we are sincerely grateful to the owners of Gunnadorrah Station for allowing us to purchase these horses and ensure the future of some of the bloodlines - as well as giving the individual horses a brighter future. It's wonderful when we can work together with people like this.

Let’s hope we can show all future rescued horses the same love and persistence because it does, almost always, pay off.

Photos of Polyfilla, aka Merrilegs, at right. Top photos just after her rescue, bottom photos more recent.