Shade, In the Blue

Photo copyright Aji, 2018; all rights reserved.

That was her full name, minus the comma:  Shade In the Blue. Cool and dark against the desert sky. We just called her Shade.

Now, she's in the actual blue, running to meet her mother and Ice.

She had a rough day yesterday, and we'd essentially made the decision already. Then this morning, she had deteriorated so significantly that we thought perhaps it might be out of our hands anyway; she was lying down, head up but eyes mostly closed, with insufficient energy even to hold the edge of her tongue fully inside her mouth.

And an hour later, she was up.

She had one of the best days she's had in a week and a half: She let herself out to the north pasture to join Miskwaki, where they grazed contentedly side by side, a few feet apart — snouts busy in the grass and tails switching away the flies almost in unison, just like old times. That's her above about 1:00 this afternoon, pulling one of her hallmark stunts: shoving her head through the fence and craning her neck over the bars to get at whatever obscure bit of green hovered otherwise just out of reach. It never mattered that there was more easily accessible and far better green elsewhere; if she wanted something, she was damn well going to make sure she got it.

"Stubborn" was the parenthetical in front of her first name. Also "Bullheaded," and "Defiant." She was a thousand pounds of pure attitude, and she never was never more than slightly green-broke. She wore a saddle but never a rider, and she liked it that way. What she wanted most was to be free, and she got it.

Around 4:00 or a little before, Wings went to give her one of her doses of meds, and noticed her straining to urinate, her hindquarters trembling and barely able to stay upright. He called me out, and by the time we got there, she clearly had severe neurological impingement; she could barely stand upright, and her hind legs trembled and shuddered with the effort.

It was time. We had to make the hardest decision any horse person ever has to make. it's not the one you're thinking; it's far, far worse.

Because no one would come.

No matter that our money was good; no one would come out, either to help her or to dig. Yes, I know it's Sunday, but I am more than a little bitter about the fact that our situation in this county is such that there are so few options that, no matter how dire the circumstance, a horse can be left to suffer.

We couldn't let her suffer. What you need to understand about being owned by a horse is that, with an animal that large, certain conditions are so dangerous that they cannot be allowed to continue; the danger to the horse, the risk of serious, brutally painful harm is too great. In her case, we're reasonably sure that the underlying problem (and the cause of both her liver issues and the colic with the right dorsal displacement) was at least one tumor, or perhaps a series of them. As occurred with her mother, Cree, in her final days, we think the tumor had expanded sufficiently to impinge on the spinal column. There would have come a point, sooner rather than later, that her hindquarters would have given out. When a horse goes down under ordinary circumstances, that's one thing; when she can't feel her legs or loses proprioception and motor control, there's a risk of her landing wrong and breaking one. And then there's only one option left anyway.

But no one would come. Only Wings's clan brother, who has dealt with this in the past, came, and came immediately, to help. And so we led her gently out to where her mother and her beloved Ice rest, and Wings and Joe took care of it at 4:45 PM today. It was instant, painless, and she has begun already her journey home to Cree and Ice. It was the hardest decision, and yet also one that made itself; you cannot promise to take care of such a spirit and then abandon it in the final hour. Shade wants to be free, and she is now, and it was the one thing we cold do for her, the one final gift we could give her.

Tomorrow, Chris will be here at 8:00 AM to excavate, and we will bury her, as we do, with all that she needs for her journey. But her spirit has already begun to make its way along the sky roads. A few days ago, we said to each other that we felt, somehow, as though Shade's fate and that of the rains were intertwined: If we got the latter, we'd also get the former. They were indeed linked; just not as we thought. Two hours after her final moment, the rains came, running from east to west along the south: a hard, driving rain that soaked the earth thoroughly. A little while later, a second storm moved through. We gave her her freedom, and she sent us the rain as a thank-you.  

I am angry about so very many things right now. Many of them have to do with what brought things to this pass in the first place, things unknown to us then but that cannot be undone. One of them, though, is prospective: what this will do to Miskwaki, because in less than seventeen months, his herd has gone from four to himself alone. He was half-wild with grief, calling to her, weeping as only a horse can do. He's calmer now, but he's going to have a very hard time of it for a while.

We will, too. But we did the right thing for our beloved girl. Her name, in some traditions (not ours), is a synonym for a ghost, a revenant. She is none of those things, but she is a strong, beautiful, willful, powerful spirit, and that is how I will always see her: Shade In the Blue, defiantly happy.

We love you, Shade.



All content, including photos and text, are copyright Aji, 2018; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.