Hunter and Cree, our sweet girls, running with the moon and stars.

Photo copyright Wings, 2020;
all rights reserved.

Today is one of those markers that brings me such grief. Saturday, too, if my pain-fogged brain had only remembered exactly what it was that was nagging at me all day. I knew I was forgetting something important, but the pain would not let up, and I couldn't get my memory to break out of its vicious cycle. So for the second year in a row, I will mark Cree's resting place at the same time I do Hunter's.

Hunter was, in so many ways, my baby girl. The very first time I came here, she and BearGirl were off like a shot, running from the northeast field so fast they nearly levitated, racing to greet me. I parked and finally got my door open, and BearGirl planted herself in the opening to be adored, so Hunter promptly climbed in over the gas pedal and brake, under the steering wheel and also under my feet.

And she never let go.

She left us on this day in 2009, just after 4:30 in the afternoon, a whole city away, too far away for us to be there and so a weeping vet stood in for us, along with two or three vet techs, all holding her collectively with us on the phone, and all sobbing with us. She had developed immune-mediated thrombocytopenia and immune-mediated hemolytic anemia the summer before, a brutal one-two punch resulting from the same veterinary malpractice that took her sister from us in the fall of 2007. [Do not ever give your dogs Metacam. It killed both of our girls.] We saved her once, in the summer of 2008, but the second go-round was too much for her little body to fight, and so we had to do that hardest thing for her so that she wouldn't suffer anymore. And it broke us.

But she is still here with us, not merely her ashes, scattered in all of her favorite spots, but her beautiful sunny spirit. Sometimes I feel her here, contented now, as though she, too, is enjoying the house, enjoying the land again with her sisters and brothers now able to wander the space between the worlds and both sides of them at will. And I miss her every moment of every day.

Cree was more recent, three short years ago, and it was such an upheaval for the entire herd to lose their matriarch.

Photo copyright Aji, 2020;
all rights reserved.

That was the moment in which we all knew what was inevitable. We had been fighting to save her for a decade by then, for as long as she wanted to be saved, but she let us know that there would be no coming back this time. It was the day after Valentine's Day, a little after five-o'clock but nearly full dark in the stalls by the time the vet could get here. In her case, we had learned just before I captured that image that it was not the founder that was taking her, but a tumor we had known existed, having grown and shifted and suddenly pressing on her spine in a way that was irrecoverable.

And so our big girl left us, too, to run among the stars. For her, it was no doubt a gift in the same way that it was for Hunter: two active spirits forced to ground too long by pain, in Cree's case, unable for years to carry a rider any longer. But she was stubborn, and she wanted more time with us and the small herd she ran with an iron will, and so we trimmed and packed and clogged and taped and worked to rebuild her hooves in all kinds of weather, once even in the studio to keep clear of blizzard conditions, and we gave her two inches of new sole even after she'd rotated all the way through, and gave her two additional years of a happy life that no one else would try.

And with both of them, when they depended on us to do what they could not for themselves, we did it, weeping tears enough to fill the sky.

Now, when I look outside, I see them both with all their siblings with them on that side: on the earth, in the sun — Hunter and Cree, our sweet girls, running with the moon and stars. In a couple of hours, I'll take cedar and tobacco and water to the resting places, as we always do. We honor them as we would any family member; after all, these are the ones who give us everything, selflessly, and remembering them is the least we can do in return.

We love you, Hunter. We love you, Cree. You're never out of our hearts.

All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2020; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.