Ice: the perfect free spirit, now four years in the wind.

Photo copyright Aji, 2021; all rights reserved.

Today is always a terrible day.

Ten-thirty this morning marked the fourth anniversary (four years! how did it get to be four years?) since Ice left us. He didn't want to go. But we had to help him do it, because there was no chance of recovery, and the pain would soon have been unbearable.

He showed up in the general area in December of 2013, having materialized out of precisely nowhere a few days before Christmas. Just before sundown on Christmas Eve, he crossed over onto our side through a downed section of fence . . . and never left. We put the word out, but no one ever claimed him, so he just . . . stayed.

He was my beautiful mustang boy, a high-stepping horse of many names and an indomitable spirit, even when he showed up here, starved, apparently abandoned, even when a hidden case of sand colic tried to take him for us the following spring. The vet took me aside and warned me privately that it was unlikely to have a good outcome; it was a 75+-pound mass, years in the making, and the bowel was already compromised. 

He made a liar out of her. Oh, it took work: days and weeks and months of work, and IV hydration and meds and the endless, endless walking on a lead, circles upon circles in the hot May sun, but we did it. He had a couple of subsequent small episodes, but the vet had also agreed that he might be passing small amounts of sand for the rest of his life. Either way, we were prepared to deal with it, and we did.

And he finally had the herd he'd so obviously always wanted. He was so happy, if still traumatized by his past; gelded, but clearly something had gone terribly wrong, most probably a complete lack of any anaesthetic or subsequent pain relief, and he would not let anyone near his back end. Fortunately, his hind hooves were perpetually short and solid, and even his forehooves didn't need much work. 

I had begun, very, very slowly, putting my jackets on his back just to get him adjusted to the idea of something there. I had intended one day to ride him, this high-stepping warrior boy with the flawless natural gait.

But something else got there first.

The colic recurred on August 3rd or 4th of 2017. The reason for the colic was a tumor that had, unbeknownst to us, already been present when he showed up here and growing all that time. It had finally reached that terrible magic point where it forced a full torsion of the bowel, and there was no return from the compromising of its wall. He was ready to try; he was my tough guy, after all. But it wasn't even a slim chance. The only chance was of prolonged agony for him, and we weren't willing to do that.

So we made the hardest of hard decisions, and my heart tore in half, and it has never healed. He's buried out where Cree, and now Shade, too, are, in the shadow of a field full of wild sunflowers. And I miss him every single day. At 10:30 this morning, I went out there, as I always do, with cedar and tobacco . . . and I put a few of the bright yellow blossoms next to the stone, too.

I don't see him in the flowers so much as I feel him in the wind. He was that kind of horse, Ice: the perfect free spirit, now four years in the wind.

We love you, Ice. You still run across our hearts.

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.