His owner and veterinarians said his feisty personality is another reason he's alive.
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KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — For a foal born on the 7th of May, his mom's seventh baby, his owner's seventh foal of the year, on the seventh anniversary of his mom winning a show called 'The Lucky Seven,' there was only one name for him: "Seven."
But Seven was also born seven weeks early, which is several weeks past viability in horses. His owner and many veterinarians thought his chances of survival were slim. He was born so early that many of his bones hadn't even formed yet--they were just cartilage. But thanks to incredible care at the University of Tennessee Center for Veterinary Medicine, as well as his feisty personality, Seven is now ten months old.
His owner, Katie Van Slyke, thought she must have had his mom's breeding date wrong when she found out he'd been born.
"One day we looked out in the pasture, and she'd had her baby," Van Slyke said.
Van Slyke lives in middle Tennessee and took Seven to her local vet. After a few months, her vet said they thought he could receive better care at UT where they have more resources.
Seven had several surgeries, braces, casts and lots of physical therapy. His progress has been tremendous, but he still has a long way to go, said Dr. Tena Ursini, a large animal vet at UTCVM.
Credit: UTCVM
Dr. Ursini has been in charge of Seven’s care since he came to Knoxville. His case is one of the few documented in history where a foal has been born this early, she said.
“Horses are designed and have adapted to develop to be pretty much ready to run within three hours of birth,” Dr. Ursini said. “So with him, that was the biggest thing–his body was not ready for all of those natural things that should have happened.”
Credit: UTCVM
Foals are typically born with long, strong legs and can be walking, running and nursing like normal within hours of their birth. Seven had very little strength from the start, she said.
“A lot of his bones were actually cartilage, and so all of that stuff that should have matured and ossified while he was in his mom had to now happen while he was experiencing gravity,” Dr. Ursini explained.
Despite the tremendous amount of medical work and procedures Seven has had to endure, Dr. Ursini thinks there’s one main reason he’s still alive: his personality.
“He is cunning, devious, really smart, but also very kind,” she said. “He does love people, and he loves human interaction. But then anybody new…he always wants to test his boundaries.”
Van Slyke said that aspect of Seven’s personality was evident from the beginning.
“From literally the day he was born, he's had this feistiness,” Van Slyke said. “He's had this like, ‘I'm here, I'm alive, I'm ready to go.’ That's been him the entire time. I think the grit and the sassiness is the reason he is here.”
Van Slyke is a professional in the horse industry and has over 100 animals on her farm in middle Tennessee.
She’s also amassed over four million followers on TikTok and regularly posts about Seven’s journey, including updates from Dr. Ursini on his health. They videos regularly get hundreds of thousands of views or likes.
“It's like a story of perseverance,” Van Slyke said. “And so I think a lot of people can find a really good feeling from that and hope from that.”
Dr. Ursini said she thinks people can relate to the ‘underdog’ nature of seven’s story.
“People talk about their disabled children or their own preemie [children] and say, ‘We had similar setbacks. We had similar types of experiences that Seven is seeing, and this gives me hope for the future.’ He’s just so relatable.”
Van Slyke said she hopes Seven will return home in the next few months and can enjoy his life just being a horse.
“We want him to grow graze on the grass and go lay in the sun and go be a horse,” she said.