2026-11-03
Twenty-nine days. That is how long a tiny colt called Banks fought inside a neonatal intensive care unit before he came through. His registered name is MP My Goodbye Banks, and for one terrible month it very nearly came true.
He came into the world about three weeks early, after a red bag delivery, when the placenta comes away before the foal and cuts off his oxygen. Anyone who has ever sat up on foal watch, torch in hand, hay in her hair, knows those are words she never wants to hear.
Then it got worse. Banks had sepsis: a severe bacterial infection running through the whole body of a foal who should still have been safe inside his mother. Picture it. Legs too long for him, and the infection already in his blood.
The vets at UC Davis found the signs. They took him into the Lucy G. Whittier Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, and they did not let go of him for 29 days.
He made it.
The rider who gets back on after the fall gets the likes. But this is the comeback nobody sees. No crowd. No commentary. Just a premature foal, a neonatal unit at UC Davis, and the slow arithmetic of whether he will still be there in the morning.
Twenty-nine mornings. He was there for every one.
So here is the villain of this story, and it is not a person. It is the voice that says it's just a horse. The one that shrugs at a premature foal and asks whether he was ever worth the fight. Banks is the answer.
And the best part? Dave Aguilar isn't selling. He plans to keep Banks and, one day, train him for barrel racing. The foal born three weeks early is being lined up for the fastest, tightest, loudest pattern in western riding: three barrels, a cloverleaf, and a clock that does not forgive.
Barrel racers, you have a new favourite. He has already beaten a harder clock than any you will ever set him.
Dressage people, show jumpers, happy hackers: you are allowed to cheer too. This one belongs to everyone who has ever stood in a stable at 3am, praying over something small and wet and wobbly. It belongs to the man who now gets to watch that wobbly thing grow into a barrel horse.
So tell us. Have you had a foal who wasn't supposed to make it, and did? Or did you sit up through the night that ended the other way?
The comments are open. Banks is still standing.
Photo: Horse & Hound