It was a cold, snowy January evening when Susan Wirth and Jürgen Frank stepped onto a road that would lead them to the question every horse owner dreads–just how far will I go to save my horse?

Months later, they had their answer—to debt and exhaustion.

But the answer is less noteworthy than the journey to it, because in the search for that answer, they discovered the true meaning of the words love, devotion, friendship and courage. And on that road they entered that night, they also discovered the bridge that connects the heart of a horse to the heart of a human.

This is the story of a horse, but more importantly, it’s a story about people, about how one horse brought out what’s best in people.

Perhaps most of all, it’s a story of hope in a world where daily news images lead us to believe that humans have lost their humanity.

It all began in the fall of 2004, when Wirth, 39 and a native German living and working in New York City, decided to pursue her childhood dream of owning a horse. She’d grown up in South Africa and lived in the United States since 1989. She began riding as a child, and for the previous year she’d ridden at Lost Island Farm in Falls Village, Conn., a dressage training barn owned by Corinna Scheller.

“In South Africa, riding was one of the things that you just did as a simple pastime, but more like bush riding. I had no idea what a proper seat or anything was, but Corinna is correcting my ways,” Wirth said.

Frank, 43, her boyfriend of many years, is also from Germany. The two met in the United States and shared a career interest. She is—or was—a photo editor with a German magazine. He’s a freelance photographer. What he didn’t initially share was Wirth’s interest in riding. But he picked it up three years ago, driven by a desire to avoid weekend loneliness.

“She said, ‘Why don’t you try it and see if you like it?’ So I did,” Frank said. In 2004, having decided to purchase her own horse, Wirth and Frank set off to Germany with Scheller, 41, also a native of Germany. What they found was an 11-year-old Russian-bred gelding named Goldfever but better known by his barn name of Aragon.

“It was a challenge finding something big enough for Jürgen to ride as well,” Scheller said.

Frank stands 6’4″. Aragon is 16.1 hands. Frank jokes that compared to the other horses in Scheller’s barn, Aragon is a peanut, and he doubts the two women were really thinking of him when they purchased the horse. They disagree.

“I really was looking for a horse that Jürgen and I could ride together,” Wirth said, “but I fell in love with Aragon’s character.”

Emergency Survived?

Still, when they got him home in September 2004, they found he wasn’t quite what they’d expected. His papers were in Russian, and none of them could read Russian.

“The way he moved and the way he looked, we thought for sure he was a Russian Trakehner,” Scheller said. “So, we thought we bought a warmblood. It wasn’t until much later that we found out he was a cross between Thoroughbred and Russian Don.”

But Aragon was trained to the equivalent of fourth level, and in movement and personality, he was a dream horse.

The nightmare began on Jan. 22, when Wirth and Frank received a call from the barn, informing them that Aragon had choked on pellets while eating and was in distress. They drove through the snow to meet up with the veterinarian, who had already resolved the choking problem.

Wirth, who has kept a diary of the couple’s experience, described the event this way:

“Having made it through the snow in time, the unfortunate mishap was quickly resolved. With the adrenaline rush subsiding, we felt rather dapper and proud that night, having, as novices, survived our first equine emergency.”

But 24 hours later, the couple received another call. The diagnosis this time was pleuropneumonia–a more serious form of pneumonia in which the lung and the pleural space surrounding become infected.

As a result of the previous day’s choking, food particles and bacteria had entered his lungs. It was a bizarre and rare occurrence.

Antibiotics were prescribed, and, at first, Aragon seemed to respond well, but as the infection became more entrenched, his fever rose to 103.7. Unable to gain control over the increasingly dangerous situation, they shipped Aragon to Tufts University’s School of Veterinary Medicine in North Grafton, Mass., on Feb. 9.

“If people were to ask me now what I’d do if I knew ahead of time what would happen, I don’t know what I’d say. But at the time, you don’t really ask. You just start and go with it. You just take it step by step. We had no idea it would lead that far,” Frank said.

The road that Wirth and Frank traveled to save their new horse drained their finances and them physically. The veterinary bills totaled more than $40,000.

Along the way, Wirth lost her job as a photo editor when her magazine “trimmed the fat, and I was the fat.”

There were times when they thought they could go no further, but they refused to give in, driven forward by a horse who refused to surrender his life. In a life-changing experience, they found strength in the kind words and deeds of friends and strangers.

Tubular Record

The trip to Tufts turned into a two-month stay. Wirth, Frank and Scheller–who right from the start put her life on hold to join her boarders in the battle to save Aragon–lived their lives two days at a time.

“We were always told, ‘The next 48 hours will be the deciding factor.’ Well, we lived every 48 hours, and each was the longest 48 hours of our lives,” Wirth said.

Although he had only spent a few months with his new family, Aragon had quickly become attached.

“We didn’t adopt him,” Frank said. “He adopted us.”

Initially, the couple thought Aragon’s hospital stay would be a short one, believing the doctors would either get a hold on this infection now raging throughout him, or, he would succumb to it. So sick was the horse and so concerned were veterinarians about any additional infections, no one could even get close to him without wearing sterile gowns, gloves and masks.

And tubes seemed to emerge from every part of his body. In fact, he set a record.

“He’s the horse with the most tubes in his body ever at Tufts,” Frank said.

It was his adopted humans that Aragon most craved. When not visited by his human family, Aragon ceased to eat and appeared to lose his will to survive. Unwilling to let him down, Wirth and Frank visited him nearly daily. When they couldn’t make it, friends from the barn–all people with whom Aragon was familiar–would visit. It was enough for Aragon that one of his humans just sat in his stall with him.

Wirth and Frank put 12,000 miles on their car in three months.

The hospital visits took a toll on everyone. Wirth and Frank lost work time needed to pay the growing veterinary bills. Scheller lost income from cancelled lessons, plus quality time with her fiancé. But through it all, Aragon refused to stop fighting for his life.

“He was a very strong-hearted horse. I never had the impression that he was truly not well. There were times he wouldn’t eat well and needed a feeding tube, but the will to live was always there,” said Dr. Daniela Bedenice, one of the veterinarians who treated Aragon at Tufts.

In early March, Aragon required additional surgery to remove infectious debris from his lung. But by then he was so weak that he couldn’t endure full anaesthesia, so the surgery was performed with him partially sedated and standing up.

“He had catheters in both neck veins, in both front legs, both hind legs, two chest tubes on the right side, one chest tube up top and on the other side during surgery, plus feeding tubes and oxygen tubes,” Wirth said. “But through it all he never bore a grudge. He never put his ears back. One of the things that kept us going was that he always looked optimistic.”

Everyone Wanted To Help

As the days and weeks went on, Aragon’s human support team grew. As Wirth described in her diary:

“Over the next weeks at Tufts, Aragon would gently bulldoze his way into everyone’s hearts. Students, vets and technicians whose rotations had long since changed still brought him his favorite strawberry flavored Life-Savers, sourced nutritious clover hay from barns of friends, and treated him like a deity and us as the parents thereof.”

The number of people who reached out to this horse and his humans astounded both Wirth and Frank. Everyone who met Aragon wanted to help him. A massage therapist, whose horse was also being treated at Tufts, gave Aragon free massages to help him feel better.

“He loved them,” Frank said. “But I’d watch and think, ‘Hey what about me?’ I could have used one too.”

Back at Lost Island Farm, a support team was also forming to rally to the cause, led by Scheller. When it was discovered that even when he felt his worst, Aragon would still eat fresh grass, Sue Boults, a student of Scheller’s who works at Geer Nursing home in Canaan, Conn., got residents there to grow Kentucky bluegrass in trays.

“You should have seen Aragon’s face when we’d walk in with those trays of grass. He wouldn’t eat anything else. So the patients at the nursing home started growing more for him,” said Scheller.

To further enhance the grass supply, Wirth’s sister bought up wheat grass sold at the Union Square organic market in New York City. The farm market later put up pictures of Aragon.

“It was a phenomenal commitment to this horse, by so many people,” Bedenice said.

Financial support even came from Tufts administrators, who listed Aragon as a special case that could advance veterinary learning—a categorization that allowed them to provide some veterinary services for free. The insurance company also paid all that it could.

Still, the bills were mounting. With their finances drained, Wirth and Frank brought Aragon home to Lost Island Farm a bit earlier than doctors would have liked.

“We always asked whether it made sense to him, whether it was still worth his being alive. But he never looked like he was giving up so there was never really a question to stop. Obviously financial things are things you have to discuss, but we never had any doubts about going on,” Frank said.

Home Care

Aragon arrived home on March 28. No one was quite prepared for what would follow.

He still needed antibiotics delivered intravenously, which meant he still had tubes and catheters protruding from his body. Even more medications were needed to protect him from the side effects of the antibiotics. And, a blood clot in his right aorta and one in his heart remained life-threatening. Treating him was even dangerous. One of the medications prescribed–chloramphenicol–was highly toxic to humans. Scheller admitted the dangers of that drug alone scared them all.

Soon, a fever developed again and an ultrasound revealed more fluid in Aragon’s lungs. On April 13, he returned to Tufts for another one-week stay. And again, Wirth and Frank had no choice but to bring him home early. Aragon returned to the farm with a chest tube still in him.

The home care was far more intensive than Wirth and Frank could have ever imagined. Even with all her years of experience, Scheller felt overwhelmed. They quickly succumbed to the realization that they couldn’t do it alone.

“They say it takes a village to raise a child. Well, it took a barn and beyond to make this happen,” Wirth said.

“This horse brought out the best in everybody,” Scheller said.

Badly in need of income, Wirth and Frank were forced to occasionally leave for work, leaving Scheller to provide care and oversight. It wasn’t long before she shared the exhaustion that had descended upon Wirth and Frank. Round-the-clock vigils drained her, and she admitted there were times when she thought that she too could not go on. But, like Wirth and Frank, as long as Aragon was willing to fight, his human family was determined to fight with him.

So they tag-teamed Aragon’s care with other boarders. “Everybody just pulled together and said, ‘We’re going to make this happen,’ ” Scheller said.

The outpouring of support from boarders encouraged Wirth, Frank and Scheller during the worst of times. But for Scheller, her greatest support came from her local veterinarian, Dr. Michelle Ferraro, and from her fiancé, Les Fleming. At the times when Aragon’s human family was certain they’d lose the battle, Dr. Ferraro was there to urge them on, making them believe this was a battle that they could win.

And, surprisingly, the stress of the situation didn’t destroy the relationship between Scheller and Fleming. Instead, it solidified it.

“All of our wedding preparations were put on hold, and Les never once complained,” Scheller said. “And when Aragon wouldn’t eat, sometimes Les would spend half the night with him, trying to get him to eat. And when I thought I couldn’t go on any longer, he was the one who said, ‘You can’t give up now.’ “

With the waning of summer, the battle seems to be ending. Aragon and his human family are still standing. There are no more tubes protruding from him, and he spends lazy summer days in a field munching on grass. But not the whole day. A part of his day he spends with Wirth, letting her live her dream of riding her very own horse. Aragon is walking, trotting and cantering about with Wirth upon his back.

Veterinarians are now optimistic about his full recovery.

“He’ll always have some scarring, but we’re hoping that won’t affect his respiratory ability. I’m not expecting that will have major impairment of his athletic ability, but if you were to X-ray him now or ultrasound him you’d see significant abnormalities, mostly on the left-hand side,” Bedenice said. “For dressage work there is enough healthy lung function available that he should be able to do high-level dressage work.”

Wirth is even allowing herself to dream of showing Aragon next season. Frank jokes that he hopes he’ll be allowed to participate as groom.

“It Brought Us Closer To The Horse”

Since Susan Wirth is still unemployed, she and Jürgen Frank have a long road ahead to financial recovery. But they don’t regret a moment of their decision to fight all out for Aragon’s life.

“It’s incredible to see him now, after all we’ve been through. We had days that we were so close to crying, and we said, ‘How are we going to do that? Why are we doing that?'” Frank said. “Not that I’d wish it on anyone, but it certainly brought us close to the horse.”

Frank even sees a positive side to the near-death experience. “We would probably not have gotten to know Aragon that well if it weren’t for all this,” he said.

Wirth disagrees, but Frank tells her, “You wouldn’t have sat there in the middle of the night to see how he was breathing.”

What Frank can’t say is whether or not he and Wirth will ever purchase a second horse. He jokingly notes that the cost of saving Aragon “would have been enough money for a very good horse. Aragon has doubled in value.”

But for Frank, who never before imagined how deeply one could love an animal, there is no doubt that Aragon’s life was worth every sacrifice.

“You go into that hospital stable and you hear the nickering of his voice. I mean, what else could you possibly want in life?” he said

Said Wirth, “Perhaps our story will give other people hope to fight against all odds.”