Hunter, Twelve Years On

Photo copyright Wings, 2021; all rights reserved.

One of my favorite images of our beautiful girl: Hunter, twelve years on now.

It seems impossible that she can have been gone twelve years already; she was part of us many more years than that. And still it was far too early; immune-mediated thrombocytopenia and immune-mediated hemolytic anemia, which we managed to catch and halt the prior July, but by February, it was back.

It was one the worst Valentine's Days ever, art of a long week of traveling daily to Santa Fe to a specialized vet, until her condition became so bad that we had to transfer her to another vet there . . . and it took no more than a day or two for the reality to make itself known.

We couldn't even be there. The vet and the techs all held her collectively on their laps, with us on the open phone line, as we all sent her on her journey. And I weep every time I think of it, because this is the little girl who adopted me the very second she saw me, who refused to let me go, who, with her sister BearGirl, made it plain that I was the one and they were not about to let anything change that.

And I am so tired tonight that I know I will not get through this without breaking down, so I won't even try. At just after 4:30 PM, the time she left us, I took cedar and tobacco and water out to where her ashes are scattered, just barely mobile enough to manage it in a foot of snow. Sunny came with me, perhaps to bear witness in his way; he seems to know these things. And I miss our sweet baby girl desperately, this fuzzy flying bullet, this little ball of fur who was such pure love.

We love you, Hunter.  The hole in our hearts makes room for your spirit, baby girl.

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.

 

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.

Nine years gone, and Hunter still owns my heart.

Photo copyright Wings, 2018;
all rights reserved.

We don't have the snow this year. Hunter's happy little spirit is all around us, though.

It's hard — no, impossible — to believe that it's been nine years since our baby girl came barreling across the fields to greet me every time I came home. Several years before that, she had adopted me on sight, at my very first visit here, and to this day, she has not let go her hold on my heart.

I said the other day that Valentine's Day, for us, always seems to be taken up with sick animals. That was true of Shade this year, although she's thankfully doing better. Last year, it was Cree, who we lost the following evening. On that day nine years ago, a few months before the bottom would drop out of lives completely on other fronts, we were down in Santa Fe at a vet hospital, sitting in the waiting room praying desperately for word that she could be saved. We had spent a week or so going back and forth, and by the 17th, when we were back home and she was still hospitalized, the worst became evident.

It was too late. We couldn't be there, save by phone. The vet and her techs held her on their laps for us, and wept with us, as she slipped away to join her sister. Here on our end, Harmony, the black paint horse who was still with us then, understood, and she is the one who held me upright in the moments after it was over.

We lost Hunter to a terrible, terrible pair of diseases: immune-mediated thrombocytopenia, and immune-mediate hemolytic anemia. She hemolyzed her own blood until there was nothing left to keep her body going. It was the product of malpractice, a drug that had been given too her for far too long and in far too great a dose, and we didn't know until it was too late. We saved her once, but seven months later, her little body was just too worn out to cope again. I have never forgiven the people responsible, either for her or for BearGirl. They know who they are.

In a little under an hour, I'll go out to where her ashes are scattered, in all of her favorite spots, and leave tobacco; I'll put cedar in the main spot. I'll tell her again how much we love her, the same way I do every day when her spirit burrows into my heart again by way of memory. Hunter was a perfect little round bundle of pure unbridled love; when I came here, she was the first to take me fully as her own and she never let go. I dreamed of her later, making her way along the western road by herself to go find BearGirl, trees meeting overhead in a canopy and morning light filtering through onto her beautiful coat, her head high and happy and her cow-dog grin on her face. She stopped for a moment and turned to look back at me, and I swear she smiled and told me everything was all right. Then she turned back and trotted happily along the road, her little fuzzy harem pants swaying with her gait just as they did in life.

I think she knows we finally did this thing she wanted, and is happy.

We love you, sweet Hunter girl.



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

Eight years on, Hunter waits again for Cree.

Photo copyright Wings, 2017; all rights reserved.

The markers come more and more frequently now. As of two nights ago, we have a new one, Cree have departed to join those already gone ahead.

Like Hunter.

Late this afternoon marked the eighth year since she left us far too soon. She was pure joy, pure love, and there is not a day that goes by that I don't feel the hole in my heart left by her loss. Wings, too; she was his before she was mine — or, more accurately, he was hers before I was hers, too — but she adopted me literally on sight. 

A few hours ago, I put cedar out where her ashes were scattered, and some tobacco and sweetgrass, too. I have wept so many tears this week for so many reasons, and yet, there are always more.

We love you, Hunter. Watch for Cree; she's on her way to all of you now.



All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2017; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.

Seven Years Already

Photo copyright Wings, 2016; all rights reserved.

This day seven years ago was one of our worst.

It was the day we lost that little girl, Hunter, to multiple organ failure resulting from IMTP and IMHA, both of which were due to a toxic medication that had been prescribed for her. We had long since taken her off it, but the damage had already been done, even though it took more than a year to surface.

This is how I prefer to remember her, smiling around her toy. She was one of the happiest spirits I've ever known. The day I first came to this place, years before, she and BearGirl came running across the north field like a pair of fuzzy bullets, making straight for the strange car, both grinning from ear to doggy ear. By the time I opened the door, they were there and pushing their way inside the car. Hunter managed to crawl all the way up under my feet onto the driver's-side floorboards beneath the dash.

Wings said they had never, ever greeted anyone at first sight the way they greeted me. She made her wishes known immediately for her humans, the one who had been with her for some time and the one who had just entered her life. 

We couldn't save her from the effects of a drug that she should never have been prescribed, but at least she got her wish for us.

A little while ago, I put cedar out where her ashes were scattered. I think tonight's spectacular sunset was another greeting from this baby girl, her brilliant sweet smile writ large across the sky.

All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2016; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.

Hunter's Day

Photo copyright Wings, 2015; all rights reserved.

Six years ago today. About 4:35 this afternoon, to be precise.

She's been gone nearly as long as she was here. And the worst of it is that it was so unnecessary.

Our beautiful, bubbly baby girl, a furry bundle of pure, unadulterated love — who, in the last seven months of her life, went through so much. I miss her every single day. This evening, I put some cedar on the place where her ashes are scattered, as I do every year.

We love you, sweet Hunter girl.

All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2015; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.

Five Years Gone

Hunter in December, 2007.  Photo copyright Wings, 2007; all rights reserved.

That's our beautiful girl, gone at age 7 to veterinary malpractice.

She adopted me the moment she saw me.  I drove in, she and BearGirl came running to meet the car like a pair of large fuzzy bullets, and as soon as I opened the door, she climbed in and wedged herself under my legs on the driver's floorboards. I was hers from that moment on.  [BearGirl, the adult, was a little more dignified, but not by much.]

She went through so much, toward the end.  Much more than her little body should ever have had to bear.  Griffin was inconsolable; he mourned her for a solid year.  She was, truly, a furry bundle of unconditional love in its purest form, and the hole she left in my heart will never heal.

The time will be just before 4:30 this afternoon.  I'll burn a little cedar for her where her ashes are scattered.  I still think I see her sometimes, and I feel her around me every day.

We love you, little girl.