(Meet Baby Huey in Raleigh Soon!)

By Miles Tager 

At Rugby Creek they are familiar with pretty much anything four-legged in any condition, or at least so they thought. Then Baby Huey was delivered to the rural southwest Virginia rescue farm.

From the moment the Smarts saw Huey, they knew that the three-day old chocolate standard donkey was "going to be a special rescue," the Smarts said.

Sister’s Ashley & Kelly Smart have been running the 60-acre operation for 8 years, home to numerous horses, other livestock and domestic animals that are neglected, abandoned, abused or injured.

Huey Long-ears "had been rejected by his mother," Smart said, and a farmer in an adjacent community had brought him to the rescue farm on a Sunday evening in the back of his pickup.

Right in the middle of foaling season, naturally, when sleep and time were already at a premium.

The critical IGG test was administered to see if Huey displayed the antibodies he would have received from his mother’s colostrum, the first nutritious milk necessary for the immune system’s development. He hadn’t; “we then thought that his chance of survival was very slim,” Smart said.

Knowing the 35-lb. Huey would need immediate attention, Kelly & Ashley headed out with their charge - sitting up in the back seat of the pickup - the following Monday morning early to a trusted vet; Dr. Lisa Baucom of the Davie County Large Animal Hospital in Mocksville, North Carolina.

Huey received the needed blood plasma transfusion, antibiotics, probiotics and more.  Home instructions included; keep him as sterile as possible - away from other animals (a real test at Rugby Creek), and nurse him every two hours - Day and night.

“In light of the 2 hour feeding schedule and somewhere free of other animals, the only viable spot to keep Huey at home ended up being our kitchen,” said Smart.

The four-day wait to see if the special care would turn him around ended happily, as Huey continued to improve.

Then Smart faced a new challenge, one common with bottle fed donkeys. They had become Huey's "primary imprint," essentially, his mother.

He would follow them around, trying to help answer the telephone or organize papers, while teething happily on a favorite dishtowel.

He stayed in the house for the first critical week, and then was let out in a paddock with four goats, a miniature horse and a miniature donkey to "learn how to socialize."

This complicated and ongoing process "is possibly more difficult than what we had to do to keep him alive," Smart said. "We have to keep teaching him that he is a donkey."

Animal lovers will have the opportunity to meet Baby Huey, at the upcoming Equine Extravaganza in Raleigh, North Carolina, where Rugby Creek Rescue will feature their “little longeared rescue” in Booth # P 25/26 - August 3-5 2007.

For more information on the rescue programs, fund raising projects and other venues at Rugby Creek, please go to www.rugbycreek.com or call the Smarts at 276-579-4215.

For more information on one of the premiere equine events in the Southeast, please go to www.equineextravaganza.com.

To learn more about donkeys please visit www.lovelongears.com