The little foal in the video I posted on Mother’s Day had a special spirit from the start.

But a few days later she was taken down by a rattlesnake. She was rushed to the hospital and was shaved down, poked, prodded, punctured with tubes and needles, anything and everything to undo the damage to her nervous system from the snake bite venom.

I didn’t write about it because we didn’t know if she would make it. And even if she did make it, she could come out of the painful and trust-dissolving ordeal trying to strike, bite or kick people, her special spirit broken by what happened to her. It happens to us, too, when life takes us down.

But the little foal did make it. She came home wary and cautious, with catheters still inserted in her neck. Yesterday, after I turned Annie out for her first moments of freedom in months, I checked in on her.

Her spirit didn’t get broken, after all.