Nearly 40 people gathered Monday at Misty Meadows Farm in West Tisbury to celebrate the birthday of a horse that survived incredible odds to make it through his first year.

Greeted with homemade horse cupcakes while in a stall decorated with birthday banners and posters, the yearling seemed to take his amazing recovery in stride.

Mary Ann Brock bred her quarter horse mare, Tough Enough To Keep, to Rugged Painted Lark, a stallion in Florida and then waited the normal 340 days, expecting a foal in early March of last year. For days she checked the baby monitor in her mare’s stall on an hourly basis, only to find her horse snoozing away. The long overdue birth occurred last March 30 after 367 days and earned the foal the appropriate name Tardy.

Tardy is a Tobiano Paint, meaning that most of his legs are white and that white crosses over his back; the rest of his body is sorrel or chestnut. “Tonto’s horse was a Tobiano,” Ms. Brock offers for reference. She looked forward to showing him on-Island and riding in the state forest.

But when Tardy was three weeks old, Ms. Brock went to the barn one morning to discover that he had broken a rear leg. At this point many horse owners would have chosen euthanasia, but Ms. Brock had veterinarian Dr. Kirsten Sauter splint Tardy’s leg so he could be trailered to Tufts Veterinary Hospital in North Grafton.

And Tardy’s mom had to go with him since he was relying on his mother’s milk. He was truly a young thing that could not leave his mother.

After surgery to insert two locking plates and 18 screws, Tardy’s chances for recovery were only 50-50 but after almost seven weeks at Tufts, Tardy and his mom returned to the Vineyard.

Assisting Ms. Brock with Tardy’s care all last summer was Tracey Amaral Olsen of Pond View Farm, who says she was quite pregnant at the time. “My husband would have killed me if he’d seen me under that horse wrapping his legs,” she said. “Mary Ann and I must have been quite a sight.”

Tardy returned to Tufts in July to have one plate and several screws removed and went back again in August for removal of the remaining plate and screws. While still at Tufts recovering from this surgery, Tardy broke his leg again.

“Just when I thought we had climbed Mt. Everest and finally reached the summit, we had now fallen into an abyss, again facing to euthanize or to return again to the operating room for yet another surgery,” Ms. Brock said.

This time Tardy had a permanent plate and screws inserted and recovered well enough that he and his mom returned home in September. After spending almost his entire life confined to a stall, Tardy was finally allowed out into a pasture in late November. “Being afraid of sunlight, Tardy had to be backed out of the barn,” she said. “He thinks he is supposed to be an inside horse.”

In a training method for foals called imprinting, constant exposure to humans teaches them to relax and be respectful. Ms. Brock says if there was any benefit to this ordeal, it was that Tardy’s constant handling at Tufts and at home has made him a very social animal, even if his career as a show and trail horse is in question.

And he was such a favorite at Tufts that his vet, Dr. Patricia Provost, has been to the Island to visit him twice and plans another trip in the next week or two.

“Tardy is such an amazing story of surgical innovation and recovery,” Ms. Brock said. “We wonder if others won’t follow his life, which I now believe will be a wonderful and prosperous one.” Without the love and tenacity of his owner, Tardy’s story would have had quite a different ending.

Ms. Brock plans to register his official name as Rugged Lark To Keep. After all they’ve been through together he seems like a keeper.