Rescuing Luke

 This is Luke.  He appeared online as a free horse last week, and a local rescue group agreed to take him if someone could go pick him up in Laramie, WY.  I had time yesterday afternoon before the snowstorm rolled in, so a friend and I went up to get him.  He spent the night at my place last night and the owner of the rescue picked him up from me this afternoon to take him down to Berthoud where her rescue is located.  He looks pretty good in these pictures, it's hard to show exactly how thin he is.  I would put him at a 0.5 to 1 on the body condition scale, and it's amazing to me how an animal this emaciated stays upright.  It may sound a bit morbid, but he would have been a good candidate for painting the anatomy onto a horse, because you can see and feel every tuberosity and joint on him.  Just bones and hair.  He has a little bit of a belly in these photos because he was able to slowly eat grass hay all night out of a small mesh hay net in the stall.  Hopefully it wasn't too much, but I didn't want him to be cold.  You have to reintroduce feed very carefully to a horse in this condition so that you don't overload the liver and kidneys with protein.  He is old, probably a 25 year old quarter horse, and I wish him all the best in his new start.