Getting Ready to Say Goodbye

Darby is going to go over the Rainbow Bridge on Tuesday.

It sounds abrupt. In a way, it is abrupt. She has been doing so well this winter, so much better than I had anticipated. I thought she might pull through the whole thing. I marveled at how well she was getting around.

Really tragically, something happened while I was on vacation that tilted the scale in the opposite direction. Future Hubs was here with the horses while I was away in California for a few days - I had set out enough hay to last the horses through the entirety of the vacation, but he was under instruction to keep an eye on everyone and to fill water troughs. He is not a horse person and hardly knows anything about them, but he does recognize when things are wrong and can identify what to do. And I will preface this story with the fact that I am in no way angry or upset with him for what happened. It really was an accident and I am not mad. 

On Saturday the hoses outside froze in the morning, so he couldn't fill troughs. The horses had water but the water did need filling, so he fretted about it all day long and when he arrived home after work (in the dark, at night), he went to fill them right away. He noticed one of the horses (which actually was Darby) was lying down and not getting up. He fretted some more, then decided to go into their pasture to check on her. He promptly wiped out about 10 times in the mud near the gate, but Darby did get up and was fine. When he left, he didn't full latch the gate. It really was a truthful accident.

Well, naturally all of the horses got out overnight. I don't know how he didn't hear Dylan trumpeting and freaking out all night (because surely he was), but the amount of poo and damage to our yard was proof that they were out there for quite a long time, probably all night. Our front gate is closed and locked at night, so nobody got off the property or anything, but they did gorge themselves on our fresh green lawn grass all night long. Poor Future Hubs came outside at 5am to find the mares all over the place. He managed to get all of them back into their field by some miracle - he chased the mules in, and led everybody else with a rope around their necks, including the baby... good baby! - and then went off to work.

I got home from California at 2am and gave everyone more hay, then inspected the damage. The yard is largely destroyed, poo everywhere, Dylan is covered in bite marks on his neck from where he probably was enticing the mares over the fence and getting strongly rebuked, Zuul's panels were all askew, Darby's blanket was completely off and stomped into the mud. And Darby was absolutely crippled.

A whole night of fresh green grass after living in what is essentially a total drylot for a chronic founder case is not a good thing. In fact, it's the worst thing.

I really am not mad at Future Hubs. It was really and truly an accident and could have happened to anyone. All he was trying to do was check on the horses because he was worried about them, and he made a mistake which totally backfired. How can I be angry at him for that?

So, I decided this was it. I had already said I wasn't going to go through heroics to try and salvage this poor old creature who has already suffered so much throughout her whole life if anything else happened to her. Especially with her, I don't want her to suffer unduly. I don't want to make her go through anything else, because she's already had more than a lifetime's worth of suffering and she didn't deserve any of it. What she does deserve it to be let go with her dignity. 

Everyone deals with these things differently. Everyone approaches these situations differently. Somebody else might do a whole bunch of heroics to try and get her through this and give her more time. Others wouldn't have even given her the time that I did. I don't think either of them are wrong, and I don't think I am wrong either. I promised her when I brought her home that I wasn't going to put her through anything more. And I stand by that promise today.

On Tuesday, she'll be put in the yard to eat as much grass as she likes. She'll get cookies, and snacks, and any food she wants. She'll be brushed and scratched, the way she likes. And then she'll be put to rest here at our farm, and then taken to be buried next to Gogo. Because after a lifetime of suffering, and pain, and starvation, and hardships, she deserves it. She deserves every bit of it. 

The hardest part for me was finally making the decision. So many times over the past eight months that she has been mine, I have fretted and worried and tried to decide if it was time. Over and over, it seemed like it might be time soon, but it wasn't. I feel strongly now that this really is it, and in that I have peace.

I dearly love my old mare. She just called to me from the moment I first laid eyes on her, and she worked her way right into my heart. To have suffered so much, and still be so kind and gentle and easy and sweet - it just says so much about her. Everyone always wants to know, why did I bring home a crippled old creature? Why did I want to spend time and money on this useless old nag? I can't tell you why I did it logically, because there is no logic in it. I did it because she called to me, and I knew in my heart I could not let this old horse starve and die alone and forgotten. I did it because I wanted her to know, at least for a little while, what it felt like to be loved. And I would do it all over again.

The Hard Questions.

Having very old animals is one of the most wonderful and heartbreaking things I have ever had to go through. 

When I lost my old greyhound a year ago, it was soul-crushing but also necessary. She was very ill with kidney disease and she went downhill very fast in the end - it was the only humane option and therefore the choice was easy.

This year, I am facing losing both my very old Twiggy the corgi, and my very old Darby too. Both of these descisions are weighing heavily on my mind and heart right now, because neither one of them are easy to make. Both of them involve locomotive failures and not sickness. It's not like I haven't gone through this before - both Metro and Gogo were chosen euthanasias because of lameness issues. Both of them were much younger though - the idea of them having to face a long lifetime of crippled limping sealed the decisions, as I felt it was unfair to both of them. Both Twiggy and Darby are very old and lame, which means I know the decision is looming.... but when to make it? When is the right time?

The old corgi is my companion of about four years. We found her running on the freeway several years back, drying up from nursing puppies - her pads were super soft, like she had never really been outside. We think she may have been a breeder dog who got too old and got dumped - we never found an owner, and fell in love with her while we were looking, so she stayed. She used to be my work buddy, always riding along in my truck with me. About two years ago, her arthritis got to be bad enough that even a half day of work was too much for her, and she'd be pretty lame the following day. Up until about 6 months ago, she was still able to go for little 1/2 mile walks once or twice a week. As of late, she is now struggling to rise from her bed in the morning, and a lot of the time I have to help her stand. She's very lame and pain meds don't control it well anymore. Her back and her hips are very bad and there isn't anything we can do about it except keep her comfortable. Some days, she is great - still manages to lope around the yard, still barks at the big dogs when they play, still has her voracious corgi appetite. But some mornings, I can't get her out from under the bed. Today she didn't even lift her head when I called her to go outside - I thought she was dead. It was only after I turned the lights on and looked down at her that I was able to make sure she was still breathing. 

I made an appointment for her once already, but she rebounded so well in the week leading up to it that I couldn't in good faith put her down just yet. Now though, I am facing that decision again. I'm not ready but I'm also not willing to make her suffer longer than she already has. 

Only the cutest corgi you ever saw

I'm also not sure what to do about Darby. I took her on knowing full well that she was going to die. I took her on knowing that she is crippled in all four legs, and that she is never going to be sound or normal again. What I didn't anticipate happening was how much she really has bloomed at our place. She really filled out - she looks fantastic! I've never seen a horse of her great age look as good at she does. Good food has taken ten years off her life visually. She absolutely sparkles in the sunlight.

But she is not sound. She gets around well enough but she never really recovered from when she tanked so badly in the spring, right before I brought her home. If her feet get wet or if she packs anything in up against her soles, she is dead lame. She grunts and groans with every step when she is sore. Some days she looks really good, but a lot of the time she doesn't. On her worst days, bute helps her get along. 

I think about how lame Gogo and Metro were when I euthanized them. Neither of them were ANYWHERE near as bad as her on even her good days. I think about ever letting either of those two get to Darby's level of lameness, and there's no way I would have EVER let them suffer that much. I would have - and did - let them go long before they ever got to this level. There is some level of lameness that is controllable and acceptable to me - like P's lameness, it certainly isn't enough to warrent euthanizing her just yet. She is not very sound if she is in work, but she is able to run and play and go for light hacks - that is definitely a decent quality of life. Darby is not even able to do more than walk, and never has, ever since I have known her.... which actually I think is making the decision more complicated for me. I think that because I never knew Darby when she was sound, I have an altered idea of what comfortable is for her. The fact stands that she is so much better now than she was a few months ago when I first brought her home - and that makes it hard. She has really improved from what she was back then. That makes me want to keep fighting for her, to keep helping her feel good in any way that I can, because she deserves it.

But she also deserves to be comfortable and pain free. She deserves respect and dignity. She deserves the right thing - but what is the right thing?

Darby the day I brought her home

Darby now

I am helped in these descisions by knowing that horses and dogs aren't thinking of what is going to happen tomorrow. They live in the here and now - they only think about what is happening right now, or when they anticipate something in their daily routine. They aren't thinking these existential thoughts, wondering what life is all about, wondering if they are going to feel better tomorrow or in a week or a month. And when they are old and infirm, they pass gently when they die, their old bodies ready to be free of their everyday suffering. I don't know what happens after this life, but I like to think that animals are restored to their full health and vigor somewhere off in the universe, able to run and play again. I don't believe in suffering or making animals live longer just because these decisions are hard for us humans to deal with. 

It's weighing heavily on me and I'm not sure when the right time to make these decisions is. Is there ever a right time? I don't know.

Baby Shenanigans

Approvals are exactly 3 weeks away now. I'm working hard every day to make sure everyone's coats and tails are holding up in the sweaty Texas heat, dumping feed into P, and working on leading skills with Pax. (Not that P is skinny... but a little extra cover for her saggy topline can't hurt. Go ahead and judge me for that one.)

I ordered a leather halter for Pax, and it nearly fits! In 3 weeks it definitely will.

She looks so grown up wearing it. She'll be four months old next week - where has time gone!?

Every night, she gets up to shenanigans after dinner:

If she fails as a driving/dressage horse, she can cut it as a reiner

O gets in on the action too!

O says, please leave me alone, Flymask Marking Girl

P is getting increasingly tired of these shenanigans. Most of the time, she totally ignores Pax, letting her do whatever she wants and pretending like she doesn't exist. She never grooms her, touches her, or pays attention to her. When Pax nurses, P stands there clenching and sneering. She's a very tolerant mother but I think if she had the choice she'd be spending her time eating and not caring for a baby.

"Really kid?"

"Maybe if I ignore it, it will go away."

See what I mean about "not skinny but also not muscular"? She is 19 years old and not sound enough to work much, with a heat intolerance and a giant red parasite sucking her down. Can't blame her for being a bit cranky and saggy these days!

It's a depressing day when your 30+ year old cripple mare has a better topline than the broodmare:

Darby says, if you could get me a better fitting halter and a flymask without holes, that would be greaaaaattttt

She looks pretty fantastic. I'm actually starting to wonder if she isn't younger than I was told. She is clearly over her mid 20's but she may be some years less than I thought. I have a hard time reading teeth, but the dentist will give me a better idea when she comes next month. What 30+ year old looks that good though? She is now eating even less grainfoods than P is! She is getting around great, so long as I keep her feet dry. Sometimes the water trough overflows (because I am spacey and forget to shut it off in time), and if she stands in a bit of mud even for a short time, she gets tenderfooted. This spring, she was getting 1-2g of bute every single day to try and turn her around. Now, I haven't given her any bute in a month and a half - she hasn't needed it. Our dry spell definitely has helped!

I'm sure she has extensive bony and corium damage in her feet (and of course, the left hind fetlock). She's not really one that we can 'fix' per se, just keep her comfortable until it is time for her to go to the gates of Dark Forest. She's not ready to go yet though - at this rate we might have quite a bit of time left with her, far more than I expected! We'll just have to see! I won't put her through any lengthy ordeals though, so we'll just keep on keeping on for however long she has. 

It's too bad she's too crippled to really move faster than a walk anymore... she'd really let Pax have it if she could get her hiney moving. That filly needs a good butt-whipping and I'm the only one around here who ever does it!

35,000,000,000,000 Gallons of Rainwater

 If you've not been paying attention to the news lately, you'll be interested to hear that Texas, land of the perpetual drought, is absolutely drowning under a staggering amount of rain. This is the wettest May on record, and as of a few days ago was also named the fourth wettest month out of all the months on record. We've had nearly 8" of rain since then (and more in some places), so it is quite possible that this month may end up being THE wettest month on record in Texas ever. 

How much rainfall have we gotten? 35 TRILLION gallons of it. We've had nearly 20" of rain this month in my area. Here's a handy infographic on what exactly all that rain amounts to:

The devastation has been extreme. Entire families have been lost when their houses just lift clean up off the ground in the floodwaters and wash away down the swollen rivers. Farmers are calling this year a total loss. Businesses, homes, entire neighborhoods have been just plain washed away. Dams have broken, rivers are swollen so far beyond capacity that it's not measurable, and people are still  missing. An entire freeway in the DFW Metroplex was shut down for more than 8 HOURS yesterday when torrential flooding trapped motorists and left them stranded with no way out. 

As such - and I'm sure you're not surprised to hear it - working O has been just totally out of the question. We're finishing up the move to the new place tomorrow - which is SUPER fun to do in rainy weather - and after a torrential downpour this morning, the sun has come out and is supposed to stay out for at least a couple of days. Or at least, we can hope....

There's just no way to work O in our pasture right now - it's totally flooded out. However, our entire property is on a hill, and as such things dry out quickly. Or well, they would if our ground wasn't so completely saturated that there's nowhere left for the water to go anymore.

A wild snorlax appears

As of today we have a lovely river complete with waterfall flowing through our property. Does the property value increase now that it is waterfront?

Enormous shed... huge protective trees... and they choose to stand out in the middle of the deluge. Ingrates! 

We still have no internet at the new house (it comes Monday!), so I'll be back to a more regular posting schedule soon, but until then I'll leave you with the quicknotes version of how the beasts are all doing:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Pax:

The tiny beast is 5 weeks old now and I can't believe it. Where does time go?? She was supposed to be trimmed for the first time last week, but it's just been so muddy and miserable that I haven't done it yet. A baby's first trim takes literally all of 5 minutes, if that... all I need is 5 seconds of sun to dry out a spot to do it. 

She discovered Monster Dog, and Monster Dog discovered her. Moo is about the derpiest and sweetest dog, so she likes to do that floppy play bow in front of Pax, asking if she'd like to come play with her (she does this to cats too - very gentle with all creatures). Pax thinks she's great, but I don't want to encourage the playing much. It will be a lot less cute when Pax weighs 1100lbs and squashes Moo under a striking front foot.

O:

O is the most protective auntie ever. She spends pretty much every waking hour watching out for Pax, even when P is off doing her own thing totally ignoring her own child. She LOVES the baby and looks out for her all the time - but lays down the law as she sees fit. When Pax gets too annoying, she'll lay her ears back, push her over, and threateningly pick up a foot. She is very gentle otherwise - she's be a super momma herself. 

I'm desperate to get her back to work. Cowboy Country HDT is in two weeks, but we haven't worked in over a month now - we're just not ready. I was really hoping, but we're just not. I'm going to scrap that one, and shoot for the ADT at the end of June - it's an arena driving trial so there will be no marathon. We'll be ready for that one for sure! Unless there is more freaking rain!

P:

P's had a crappy week. She choked twice, much to my total alarm and surprise, and then got an eye infection. She's been eating the same food for literally over three years, and it is always wetted, so I was floored to see her choke. It was easily resolved - I just stuck a hose in her mouth and washed it down, and she was fine in a few minutes. The only thing I can figure is that I wasn't putting her hay in nets for the first week, since the baby had tried to hang herself in an empty one while she was in the stall. Watching her eat hay, she gulps down enormous mouthfuls of it, shoveling it in as fast as she can. I decided that the nets needed to come back out (also they were trampling ridiculous amounts of very expensive hay into the mud), so I hung them back up and kept P off her grainfoods for several days. She's been back on very sloppy hay pellet soup as of three days ago, and no problems to report.
And her eye! Poor mare. She always tends to get one gloopy swollen eye whenever the bugs are out (which is year round here), so she wears a flymask pretty much 24/7, 365. For whatever reason, when I pulled off the mask a few days ago, her eyelids wwere hugely swollen and giant goobers were oozing out of it. When lavage and eye ointment failed to help it, we put her on an antibiotic and an anti inflammatory, and thankfully the eye is 90% normal again and getting better every day. Also thankful that despite going through this on a somewhat regular basis with her, it is never the actual eye that has problems - just the eyelid. We flush her ducts all the time and it does help some, but the problem comes back regularly. She's just a sensitive mare. 

A rare moment of sun, horses under the tree with their haynets. Pardon the overgrown lawn and garden, there's no way to mow when you have a river running through your property!

Darby:

Wait, who is Darby??

Yes, there is a new face at our property, a 30+ year old mare named Darby who I have a long history with. Darby came home with me yesterday, because after all we've been through, I couldn't stand to watch the old girl waste away and die, forgotten and unloved as she was her whole life.

I'm sure none of you are surprised to hear that she is also red with a lot of chrome. Because apparently I'm collecting them now...!

Darby is either QH, Paint, or grade, nobody really seems to know for sure. She's also been 30+ years old for at least 3 years now, so nobody is really sure of how old she is either beyond "really really old." She's also a cripple with a deformed leg due to negligence.

When I first met Darby in 2012, she could barely walk she was so badly foundered. She was brought to one of the local barns I frequent with a fancy custom shoeing job, but was still crippled. She apparently had been turned out in a big lush grassy field for who knows how long, and she foundered out there and nobody noticed. At that time she also received a puncture wound to her left hind fetlock that compromised the joint, and nobody noticed that either. As a result, the joint got destroyed, and from the fetlock down on that leg, she is calcified into the crooked position like she is cocking a leg. It doesn't bend any other way anymore, but she gets around on it surprisingly well - it's amazing how well horses can adapt. 

Despite the fancy shoeing job, the owners didn't pay bills on her, and the shoes stays on until they fell off. Her feet were horrible and she could barely walk. The barn asked me to trim her, so I started with her in 2013. I saw her on a somewhat regular-ish schedule, when they paid their bill every few months - but I managed to fix her up pretty well.

She was super sound at the time of that last picture, in December.

That's her crippled leg, and she's not resting it, that's just how it is calcified - and that's the shape the foot takes, and how you have to trim it in order to support the limb. It's funky but it works for her.

This winter, we had a slew of neverending ice storms and mud. The ground would freeze solid into giant ruts, and the compromised horses suffered for it. Darby bruised so badly on both fronts that she could barely get around, and the owners didn't do anything about it. The other horses bullied her off the haypile, and she became too depressed and crippled to eat. About 200lbs fell right off of her. 

I stepped in at this point and started bringing some Thrive for her (with permission). I also futzed with her feet some, with Durasole and Magic Cushion and boots paving the way for me. She blew two giant abscesses, then started to get around better again. But the owners had vanished once again, not paying their bills. There was only so much the boarding barn could do - they have to run a business after all, they're not there to give out charity to pathetic old cripple horses - and they lamented to me many times about how they wished they were in a position to do more.

I made a promise to Darby that if we ended up with our own place sometime in the future, I'd bring her home to die at my place, happy and loved and well-fed. Yesterday, I fulfilled that promise to her, and brought her home.

She's really, really, really old. She's going to die in the not-too-distant future I'm sure, and I will cry for her and send her off to be buried next to Gogo. But she will at least have spent some small measure of her life somewhere that is soft and nice, with good endless food and brushes ever day, and cookies and love. She is about the nicest old bird you could ever have the pleasure to know - she calls to you, comes to you, loves to be brushed and soaks up the attention. After being forgotten over and over and over again, she deserves this.

Who are you, new friends?

Finally getting a good solid sleep in, who knows the last time she had somewhere soft to sleep!

I put her in with the girls for a bit today, and everyone was civil enough. Pax wants to run at Darby and play, and Darby wants nothing to do with her. O wants to keep Pax away from Darby, so she has chased Darby off a few times, which Darby is all too happy to oblige with. My pasture is mostly weeds, not really grass, but I'll have to keep a close eye on that with her history. The other pasture is nothing but rocks and weeds, so she has a place to be drylotted if she can't handle what's in my pasture. It's about what she had access to at the other pasture. She deserves some time to be a happy old grandma horse out in a big soft field though, so even if it is beyond what she can handle, I'm happy to let her have her time out there enjoying herself before she goes over the Rainbow Bridge. She really does deserve it. I'm not here to save her, just to give her a good cushy end to her life.

Here's hoping for some sunshine and dry weather... never though I'd be saying it, but we need it!!