Give Pistol the chance to survive that she deserves

Hi, for those of you who don’t know me my name is Emma McDougal and I’m a 16 year-old horse girl. I am starting this page looking for help to save my injured horse and best friend.

I’ve been riding horses since I was 5 years old. My mom purchased my first barrel horse for me 4 years ago and before we could even get going together, we had to retire him due to a whole host of medical issues. I saved up my money and bought myself a new horse last year. Her name is Pistol. She is my horse and best friend and I am her person. The lady I had the privilege of buying her from even said to me this horse has picked you! She saw what I felt. With the help of some fantastic people me and Pistol were on our way to becoming a team. I’ve been working so hard learning how to train her and finish her into a bad ass little barrel horse. She was going to help me go to college, to rodeo, to pursue ALL my BIG horse girl dreams! Things had been going great until about a month ago when, after a successful race, she was playing in the pasture rolling and she got up awkwardly and trotted off lame. She never really came back sound and what we thought was a bad bone bruise led her to being admitted to the equine hospital on April 11 for a CT scan which showed nothing more than a tendon sheath infection. 10 days later they said she could come home, just to relapse not 48 hours later. We drove her back to the hospital and additional diagnostics revealed a piece of her seismoid bone was infected along with the tissue around it. This was the source of the infection that got into her tendon sheath. The surgeon removed the dead infected bone and surrounding tissue the next day. She is still in the hospital and everyone is trying really hard to save her from an infection that just wont go away. The bills are piling up and my mom is doing her best to keep up but it may not be enough. My sweet mare deserves a fighting chance and we are trying to help her but we need help so here I am. She is MY horse and it is MY responsibility. I am working all that I can when I am not in school to help my mom but I am scared it wont be enough, that the money may run out before the time she needs to heal and I would have to say goodbye. So I here I type humbly asking for your help. Any amount will help. Anything to just give her a chance to fight this, to give us more time together. I am not ready to say goodbye. I don’t want to do this without her.