Benny is only a few days old, and he has already given his owners plenty to think about.

The foal was born Thursday morning at Living the Dream Stables in Brackley, P.E.I., with wry nose, a rare deformity that causes the nose and jaw to twist to one side. His owners say that has not stopped him from making an impression straight away.

“He can really only breathe through the one nostril right now, but it doesn’t seem to be keeping him down any,” said Morgan Sheppard, a standardbred horse trainer and operator at Living the Dream Stables.

“He’s a fighter through and through. He’s kind of beaten all the odds that were stacked against him.”

Sheppard said Benny’s condition is rare, but a few other horses in the Maritimes have overcome the physical challenges of wry nose and gone on to become successful racehorses.

“We’re just going to take everything in stride,” Sheppard said, noting that the ultimate goal is to see him race.

“That’s the hope, that’s the dream … anything less than that, we’ll take that too.”

In Benny’s first hours, Sheppard said the biggest concern was if he would be able to nurse. She said that step matters because it helps a young horse build up its immune system.

“Foals are basically born with no immune system, and the colostrum they get from their moms will help build up their immune system,” she said, noting that Benny’s immunoglobulin levels were very low initially.

“It was nerve-racking for sure, because if he was to get sick, he wouldn’t have had an immune system to fight that.”

But Sheppard said Benny went to his mother and “started nursing as if he’d done it his whole life.” She said more recent plasma tests have shown his immunoglobulin levels are up.

“He’s fighting and he wants to be here,” she said.

Shannon Kelley, a large animal veterinarian at the Charlottetown Veterinary Clinic who helped deliver Benny, said the long-term outcome for horses with wry nose can vary.

“[It] depends on how severe it is and what kind of interventions are taken,” Kelley said.

“Given they get an adequate amount of colostrum and they are able to breathe, they can live long, normal lives.”

For now, Kelley said the plan is to let Benny grow and get a little stronger before any surgery.

“There is a surgical procedure that can be done to improve the alignment in their jaw and kind of diminish some of those effects, like their ability to eat normally and have relatively normal wear of their teeth,” she said.

Kelley said the procedure would involve breaking Benny’s upper jaw, taking a bone graft from his rib and using it as a bone implant to create more space in his nose.

“After that, he would essentially just go back to living his life, growing, getting stronger and figuring out what he’s capable of and seeing where he goes from there,” she said.

Sheppard said she hopes Benny’s story gives people a better sense of harness racing, especially the care involved.

“I think it’s really nice for kind of people to be able to see this side of harness racing,” she said.

“See how much he’s fighting to want his place here on the earth and how many people are kind of going around him and working around the clock to give him the best care possible.”

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