BY BILL PHILLIPS
Tick is a horse.
Like most horses, Tick enjoys hanging out in the corral, eating some oats, and maybe going for a ride.
But Tick isn’t like most horses. Tick has a troubled past.
Tick was one of seven horses seized by the SPCA from a Cheslatta property last spring. Near death, Tick was brought to the Prince George Equine and Animal Rescue centre to, hopefully, be nursed back to health.
He was the weakest out of the whole group of seven horses.
They named him Tick because they pulled over 300 ticks from his body when he arrived. Tick was completely anemic.
“For him, he was on death’s door,” says Nicola Redpath of the Prince George Equine and Animal Rescue Centre. “He would not have lasted very long at all. In all the years I’ve been doing rescue work, he was, by far, the worst that I’ve had to deal with. Literally, when I would go down in the morning, I would wonder if he would still be alive. But, he is a fighter, he pulled through.”
Tick had lost most of his hair and when he first arrived at the centre, was kept in the barn, out of the sunshine that would certainly burn his exposed skin.
Redpath worked with Tick, who gradually put weight back on and learned how to be around people.
“It was an education for a lot of people, just to see what kind of damage can happen just leaving these animals to themselves,” says Redpath.
Over the summer, Tick made a complete recovery and in the fall was adopted out to ‘forever’ family.
“He turned out to be a fabulous, fabulous boy,” says Redpath.
