Plenty of shade and plenty of blue, but no Shade In the Blue.

Photo copyright Aji, 2019; all rights reserved.

It's been a tough day. Plenty of shade and plenty of blue, but no Shade In the Blue; as of late this afternoon, 44:45 PM, to be exact, she's been gone a year.

It doesn't seem possible. Not just the fact that it's been a year already; not possible that our dominant, defiant monster girl is gone. That was her on her last day, a few hours before it all went inevitably the way it was going to go: head shoved firmly through the ProPanel bars, determined to get the weed on the other side simply because it was on the other side instead of with the hay piled up in their trough. She had a few wonderful hours before the end, and for that we're all grateful. That's Miskwaki behind her; he knew, I'm convinced, and yet, like us, he couldn't bring himself to believe it.

He wept as hard as we did. Have you ever heard a horse cry? I don't mean a squeal of physical pain; I mean an incessant keening, grief from the very depths of a horsey soul. He did that on this evening last year, and it broke something in my own soul.

And it was inevitable; we'd known it, even though we weren't getting the responses needed for her at the professional level. What was dismissed as allergies I was sure was cancer, and I would have been ecstatic to have been wrong.

I wasn't. Unfortunately, after all these years, with horses and with dogs, I know the signs.

She was far too young — only sixteen, and that just barely. Miskwaki had her beat, age-wise, by one year. Every now and then, the dogs will venture out that way, to her resting place in the south field by her mother, Cree, and her bad boy Ice; Chinook never knew her, but Kit and Cricket did. I went out that way myself at the appointed time this afternoon, took dried cedar and tobacco and a little water. She doesn't need it now, of course — she and Cree and Ice are all running with the stars — but I think like all spirits, they like to know we remember.

And we do remember. We love you, Shade. Always.



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