Four years since Cree left us to race across the sky.

Photo copyright Aji, 2021; all rights reserved.

It's impossible to believe that it's been four years since Cree left us to race across the sky. I took that photo when there was still a sliver hope, just. Deep down, I think all three of us knew already. And it would be only a few more hours, as it turned out.

And much as the image breaks my heart, the truth is that Cree had defied all the odds as it was. Wings rescued her, although he didn't know it then, from a place where they had absolutely no idea that she was laminitic, nor would they have had the faintest idea what to do for it (or have bothered). He thought he was getting a perfectly sound horse, and, in fact, she did okay for a while.

The laminitis made itself known soon enough. But in her case, it wasn't just laminitis; it became full-fledged founder. Climate change contributed to its worsening, and the acceleration thereof; foundered horses often develop Cushings (she did), and also experience high rates of colic, including weather-related ones (which she also did). But she was the matriarch of our then more substantial herd, and she was NOT ready to leave.

We went through so much with her: changes in diet, changes in meds, soaking, padding, wrapping, taping, clogging; on one memorable late afternoon in the middle of a blizzard, we backed her hind end into Wings's studio to do it. Her flares got longer and longer; her remissions shorter and shorter. And then, at the end of 2015, if memory serves, the news became very bad indeed: What had a been a partial rotation in her left front was now a full rotation in both front legs; her coffin bones had gone right through her soles.

Time was, that was a death sentence, and a pretty instant one, too. But we had had to learn more about this complex of equine conditions than most vets bother to know, and over the years, we had become fairly expert. Our vet had, too. And where everyone else assessed only one option, our vet was willing to work with us trying to rebuild her soles. 

It was a hell of a lot of work. Backbreaking work. But she had made it clear that she was not ready to go, and if she was willing to put in the work, so were we. And we helped her rebuild more than a solid inch of new sole on each front hoof. Nothing short of miraculous.

In the end, it wasn't the founder that did it. There is a cancer cluster in this area, one that affects both horses and dogs, and she was one of the casualties. What we did not know then was that a tumor was developing somewhere along her spine, impinging on the nerves in her hindquarters.

And in February of 2017, its development hit that point where it became irrecoverable.

She had no pain, as far as we could tell. It was probably mostly numbness. But we knew, at the moment that photo was taken, that the next time she went down, she would not get back up. It happened about 6:50 PM that night. 

Normally, I go out to the animals' resting places at the same time of day as they left us (sometimes, we both go). I take their spirits an offering: cedar, tobacco, a little water, sometimes a little food. I knew today that it would have to be early. On that night in 2017, the weather was unseasonably warm, and at 6:50 PM we were also sheltered inside the stall. Her resting place is in the south field, which today is beneath several inches of rapidly-icing snow in this bitter cold. I would never find it in the dark, and would not be able to withstand the cold anyway. I came too close to following her a few months later, and the cold affects me now in ways it never did then.

So tonight, I went out just before sundown. It was beautiful: clear and crisp and cold, bands of iridescent clouds trailing across the southwest sky. I took her a little hay with the rest at Wings's request. And SunDog, named for the light in the sky, came with me, as though he knew somehow; our wild boy trotted ahead, blazing a pawprint trail in the snow, then sat and waited patiently from three feet away.

Miskwaki missed her terribly. I think he still does. I know we do; she was, as I said earlier, the matriarch, the boss, the badass of the herd that no one dared defy too much. There's still a void, but at the same time, I see her in the stars, especially on these cold clear winter nights, without pain and running free, with her daughter, Shade, and with our wild mustang Ice.

We love you, Cree. Our hearts are up there with you now.

All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2021; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.