Goodbye Frank

Of all the posts I expected to be starting today, this was not one of them. I was going to write about August Goals. I was going to write about my lesson with Tarrin. And I was going to write about my first off-property trail ride with Frank, and how much fun it was, and how much I was looking forward to hitting All The Trails with him this fall.

But I'm writing about none of those things, because Frank is dead. 

There is no way to be less blunt about it. He's dead and I'm still reeling a little bit. I did not expect this. I could not have guessed this would happen. I never would have  thought he would be the next to go. Sure, he was an old man, but he was the healthiest of the oldies. I thought we might lose Pmare this year due to how poor she's handling the heat. But I thought Frank would live forever.

It started yesterday morning. The night before, Frank had eaten his mush, was snacking on hay at night check, and had his usual cookie instead of a carrot, because he was deathly afraid of carrots for reasons only known to himself. In the mornings, he always got another bowl of mush, so he was usually waiting at the gate for me. Yesterday morning, he was not. 

I called to him. I could see where he was, on the far side of the pasture on top of the hill, standing with a leg cocked. It looked like he was still asleep. I was up early because I had a lesson with Tarrin that I was locally trailering out for, so after waiting for a few minutes, I went up to see what he was doing. He wasn't doing anything really, just standing with a leg resting. He looked at me like nothing was wrong. "Well, okay then," I told him, and tossed out their morning flakes of alfalfa. Once in awhile he was a little slow to come down the hill, so at the time it wasn't altogether alarming. I headed out to my lesson, figuring he wasn't acting outright abnormal, and I was only going to be gone for a short while anyway. 

I had a great lesson with Tarrin, which I'll write about later. But when I came back, to my surprise Frank was still on the hill, only he had moved into the shady bushes and was hiding. Now I was more concerned. Definitely not normal for him to be hiding. 

Hiding

I put on his halter and walked him down the hill, and gave him a heavy dose of Banamine. He still wasn't acting colicky, just... wasn't really himself. No classic signs of colic, no pawing, no kicking, no rolling. Just not eating. I put him in the small pen to monitor him and see if he was pooping. 

One thing about mules and donkeys though is that they are incredibly stoic. They do NOT want you to know they are sick. By the time they start to show any signs of anything being wrong, they are usually already in dire straits. So I was concerned, even without the theatrics normally involved in a colic. 

He laid down to rest in the grass for a bit, and I got a very sweet picture of him with all his very concerned nursemaids hanging around on the other side of the fence. Dylan has always been surprisingly fond of him, though I'm not sure why. He doesn't really talk to any of the mules like he does the horses, so perhaps they smell strange to him. 

I monitored him for a few hours, waiting for something to change to tell me one way or another where we were headed. Nothing. No signs of anything. He just stood there in the corner with a foot cocked, while we waited to see if there was poop (there was none). His vitals, however, started to make a downturn in the afternoon. His heart rate went up to 56, his resp went up to 36. Both of those are pretty high for a very slow moving old mule. He had almost no gut sounds. I had a terrible feeling that this wasn't going to end well but up until that point was not sure what to do. That changed in one moment when he suddenly dropped his head, and reflux and green sludge poured out of his nose. Any horse would have been on the ground thrashing well before that point, but not Frank. I pulled out my phone, called the vet, hooked up the trailer, and off we went.

At the vet, he had a bit of his old mule stubbornness when he refused to walk into the barn, then refused to walk into the stocks, then tried to actively coon jump out of the stocks. I have no doubt he would have made it if we hadn't blocked him. We drugged him, then drugged him again when he refused to get sleepy. Even then, the barn hand had to actively hang onto him while twitching him - he thrashed and put up a big fight about a nasogastric tube. He was NOT having it. 

The vet pulled a ton of sludge out of his stomach. It was all just chewed up and eaten food that had nowhere to go, so it just sat there for a long time. She also got quite a lot of reflux out. She did a rectal, and found nothing to note. Everything she could reach - and he had a giant cavernous body, so it wasn't too far in - felt soft and normal. So whatever it was, it was further up. Impaction, torsion, lipoma - who knows. We'll never know. And it doesn't really matter now anyway, and didn't matter much then, because a nearly 30 year old mule isn't a surgical candidate anyway. The vet tubed him and made sure he was good and loaded with meds, then we walked him out to try and wake him up a little. The fluid he had been tubed with poured out his nose every time he stopped moving, and the vet said his esophageal sphincter was loose, most likely from the drugs. She handed me a couple of syringes, one with Banamine and one with Dorm. The plan was to take him home and see if anything worked itself out, but neither of us were too optimistic. My last words to her were, "well, I'll probably see you later." 

Not quite two hours later, Frank had blown through his drugs and meds completely and was uncomfortable again. I called the on-call vet, since it was now after hours, and put her on standby. We agreed to give him the syringes as the sort of "last ditch," but I told her she would likely be hearing from me again shortly. I gave the Dorm IM in the hopes that it would last him a little longer, and the Banamine was of course IV - but it took me ages to find a vein. His blood pressure by that point was so poor that I had to stick him 5 or 6 times to even find the vein at all. I even gave him a little knot, which I've never done before. I've given a million IV shots before no problem. His skin was sweaty and warm on his body, but when I felt his ears, they were icy cold. He started refluxing out his nose again. I knew then that he was going to die. 

The Banamine took immediate effect, and got him to stand still right away. I had that little window of time to prepare myself for what was coming, although it was little comfort to me. I've never been quite able to tell which is better - to plan for a euthanasia and then have some days to prepare yourself and wait, or to not know it's coming and be blindsided by it? I had to deal with both in that moment. I knew he was going to die, but I was being forced into a choice right then. There was clearly only one choice to make. There was no picking a date for the next week like the last 3 I've euthanized have been. It was now, and that was that. 

The drugs didn't last long. He gave a few lurches around the pen, and I frantically called the vet, frightened that he might die of his own volition before she could get there. True to Frank form, he righted himself, parked his butt in a corner, and stabilized, reflux pouring out his nose. It was dark by that time, and the vet pulled him and strapped on her headlamp. She examined him briefly - he still had no gut sounds, his heart rate was still at about 58, and his gums, which had been slightly pale but still pinkish up until this point, were starting to take on that faint blue tinge. He was teetering on the edge of shocky. This vet, who is a fresh youngster new to the practice, was one I hadn't worked with before, and she told me that if I wanted she could tube him again and we could see about doing a few more things to help him, although you could tell what she was really thinking. My usual vets know how I feel about that, and I told her that no, to me it was very clearly time. 

As I led him up to the spot where we were going to euthanize, his stomach gave a loud popping growl, and he stopped dead. I'm quite sure it had ruptured in that moment. It made it all the more clear that it was time, right then. 

There was a smile to be had in his last moments though. The vet heavily sedated him, but instead of getting really sleepy, he just put his head down and started eating grass. I'm sure the pressure was off his stomach, and he felt just gorked out enough with the drugs to think he was hungry. He refused to get sleepier than that, and just kept eating. It made me feel a little better to think that after all that, at the very end, he was able to eat a few mouthfuls green grass and enjoy it. 

His blood pressure was so low that the vet also had a hard time finding the vein, and it took him a minute for the euth drugs to circulate, but once they did he sank very peacefully. Just like when Gogo died, when I went to pet him for the last time, he had a strong reflex the moment I touched him. Gogo only reflexed that one time and that was it, but Frank reflexed several. Even in death, that old bastard was fighting. 

Frank truly has left a Frank-sized hole in my heart. I am truly, truly heartbroken to lose him. I don't even know what else to say right now. It was so sudden. He was very old, but other than his teeth he was in wonderful health. It certainly could have been the teeth that ultimately took him down, but we will never know. They took him up today to bury him alongside Gogo and Darby. 

I feel terrible. Just terrible.

I'll miss you so much, my floppy eared friend.

Darby, One Year Later

Yesterday was the one year anniversary of Darby's death. Even though she was only technically mine for 8 months, I had known her for a few years prior to that, and had always felt deeply connected to her. 

The question of, "why did you bring that useless old cripple home when she was just going to die?" was asked a few times. To that, I still have no answer beyond, "because I could." And I would do it again, and again. I would rescue a Darby a million times over. It was worth every day to see her out enjoying life. 

I miss her very much. And I did the right thing to let her go when I did. I'm not sad about it, not anymore. 

Darby on her last day

We miss you old girl, but we know you're in a much better place.

In Memory

We lost an amazing horse last week. Actually, we lost two - Cash, who I got to see regularly up here, and Brego, who I have been in love with ever since I first read Daun's blog all those years ago. Eight years ago, to be precise. Daun's blog was the blog that inspired me to start me own - I wanted to have one just like hers. Blogging was a bit simpler back then, less about contests and fancy graphics. It was about a good story, something to inspire people to get out there and try. I wanted to do the same, and so I started Eventing-A-Gogo. As I understand it, I inspired a few people to blog myself, and that makes me feel pretty happy.

Daun and I became friends when I lived up north, and I went to visit her farm on a few occasions to go foxhunting with them. I galloped Brego in the woods, catch-rode another horse in one hunt, and then rode Hobby in another while Daun rode Brego. I catch-rode Brego in the New England Hunter Trials as well, which stands out at one of the most fun things I ever did when I lived up there. Little compares to a gone-away at full speed on a Percheron. 

Then I moved to Texas, and everything changed when I lost my Gogo. But a little piece of New England and that period of time came back to me when I found out that Brego was moving to Austin to be with Jen. Jen and I had also become friends by this time, and I was so excited to be able to see him again. I got to go squeeze his big head again last November when I was in Austin for the No Laminitis conference, when I crashed at Jen's place for the weekend (and ate her veg, and had to talk myself out of stealing their amaaaazing coffee maker). I didn't know it would be the last time I would see him, but looking back, I'm so glad I got to see him again. After I left New England, I never thought I would. Seeing him again brought me back to a simpler time in my life, when the most important thing in the world was a good gallop and a few jumps out in the woods.

Go drop by Jen's blog if you haven't already to let her know you're thinking about her. And Daun too, if you know her. Brego had an enormous, far-reaching impact in the blogging world, and in my own life as well. Rest in peace my big hairy friend... there will never be another quite like you.

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.