Blue, But Shade Is Three Years Gone

Photo copyright Wings, 2021; all rights reserved.

Most of the sky is once again blue, but Shade is three years gone. 

That was her full name, Shade In the Blue, but we mostly just called her Shade. Also Monster, Brat, Butthead, and occasionally, You Bitch, all affectionately if exasperatedly. Shade was a monster, and she loved every minute of it. She'd as soon kick you in the ass as look at you, and to her it was all fun and games, but of the distinctly dominant sort. She was Cree's daughter, and Cree was the only one capable of keeping her in her place.

We loved her anyway.

That up there was her in better days, in March of 2015 to be exact, when the sun was starting to warm the earth again and their winter coats were getting itchy and they spent as much time as possible rolling in the dirt. It would only be another three years that we'd have her with us, although we had no way of knowing it at the time; the local equine cancer cluster hadn't begun claiming lives from our herd yet, but she would become the third in a very quick row.

But on that July day three years ago, we knew. She could barely stand; it took everything she had to follow us out to the field where her resting place would be. The cancer had shot through her system with astonishing rapidity, and only the love between her and Miskwaki, I'm convinced, had kept her going that long. And Miskwaki, having then lost his entire herd, literally wept for her; if you've never heard a horse cry, I hope you never have to do so. It'll tear your heart in two.

A friend helped, because no one whose job it was could be bothered. It was 4:45 PM on that day when we sent her on her journey to join her mother and her beloved Ice in the sky. And this evening, albeit a little late, Wings and I went out to her resting place to give her some cedar and some smoke, some water and tobacco.

I promised him I would always do that for our animals. Sometimes, he does it with me.

But she was in such distress that I prefer to remember her as she was in the photo above: alive and lively, engaged and thoroughly insolent, always getting into trouble or raising hell somehow. I miss her wild indomitable spirit. We love you, Shade. Your fierce and beautiful spirit still lives in 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.                                                  

Wild Sunflowers For Shade

Photo copyright Aji, 2020; all rights reserved.

My photos of her when she was younger and healthy are all on other hard drives. This was her last day, and frankly, up until the final half-hour, it was a good one. Stubborn, feisty, and completely unwilling to entertain rules or fences, right up to the end.

Her full name was Shade In the Blue, but we called her Shade. Also Monster Girl, Wild Girl, Butthead, and occasionally, always affectionately, You Bitch. Because she was: as dominant as her mother, without the matriarchal wisdom to apply it with discretion; spoiled rotten and utterly wild. She was never broken to saddle or rider; Wings had always planned to do it himself, but first his shoulder injury and then other pressing concerns always delayed it, until it was too late.

Miskwaki loved her, as he loved his whole herd, and he mourned her desperately on this night two years ago, when she was gone. He understood, from the moment we led her away, and a horse wailing with grief is a sound I never want to hear again.

The vet had been insisting that her problem was allergies, but we knew otherwise. It was cancer, a tumor, or rather, if memory serves, a collection of them, in her mammary area. Had we been heeded sooner, perhaps something could have been done, but by the time anyone would listen, it was too late. Years of working with horses, and dogs, too, and of losing them to the cancer cluster that bedevils this place, unfortunately gives you an aptitude for diagnosing these things.  

And so the fact of the matter is that we failed Shade, but not for lack of trying to do right by her. With some help from a friend, we made it quick and painless, so she didn't suffer: 4:45 PM, this day, two years ago. She's laid to rest now with her mother, Cree, and that mustang bad boy that all the girls loved, including me, Ice. They both died, indirectly or otherwise, of unfound tumors, too. 

At the appointed time, I did as always do with our animals who have left us too soon for us to follow: I took her cedar and tobacco and some water, laid and sprinkled on her resting place. And I discovered that, in the ninety-plus heat of this white-hot day, the wild sunflowers had blossomed a whole month early — nowhere else, only there, but directly over her: wild sunflowers for Shade, perfect for a wild spirit now free.

Photo copyright Aji, 2020; all rights reserved.

We love you, Shade. Your hoofprints on inscribed on our hearts, Wild Girl.



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

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.



All content, including photos and text, are copyright Aji, 2019; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.

Shade's body is at rest, her spirit running free. Miskwaki flies alone now.

Photo copyright Aji, 2018; all rights reserved.

That photo is from two years ago almost to the day, June 29th, 2016. It's Miskwaki surrounded by his herd: Cree in the foreground with the fly mask, Shade to his right, Ice to his left. Miskwaki is the only one left now.

The guys with the excavating equipment showed up a little before nine. We had everything ready, and the guy operating the bucket dozer did an absolutely beautiful clean job. It was all done by ten, and Shade's body is at rest. Her spirit, of course, was already long gone, already galloping home to be with Cree and Ice.

For those of you wondering exactly what and why this happened, here's the short form, as well as we can piece it together. Shade was Cree's daughter, by a sire owned by a white woman a few miles away, a former friend of a former friend; the two conspired 17 years ago to convince Wings to breed Cree to that stallion. [Shade was born the year before I returned to New Mexico.] At the time, he had only recently adopted Cree, she seemed healthy, and he had no way of knowing that her previous circumstances, combined with her genes, would lead to her terrible founder and eventual Cushing's. Worse, he had no way of knowing of the irresponsible breeding practices involving the sire (the whole county knows it now, because it's been an ongoing thing, reportedly, with many horses involved, but we only learned of it after Shade was already between five and ten years old). So the bloodline was compromised, but we didn't know it.

Still, Shade had always been healthy as a . . . well, you know. She seemed to have inherited none of either parent's issues. About three years ago, she developed low-grade laminitis in her right front (the precursor to founder), but it was caught early and treated thoroughly. Meanwhile, despite Cree's terrible case of founder, having rotated all the way through both soles on the front, we were able, with a HUGE amount of work and dedication, to rebuild new healthy sole. We went through two solid years of constant, heavy-duty effort to save her, and she was doing great . . . until February 15th, 2016. She lost control of her hindquarters, with trembling and stumbling and impaired motor control, and it became clear there was something neurological at work. A little field-testing combined with location and other evidence, and the vet told us that that sort of behavior was a manifestation of a tumor or other mass pressing on the spinal cord. She would not get well, especially not given the founder and Cushing's, and sure enough, she went down that night. After Ice succumbed to a tumor-induced torsion in August, we had Shade and Miskwaki's labs done to try to prevent exactly this. Shade showed a slight elevation in liver enzymes, but nothing specific nor especially serious; I was more concerned about the incipient signs of Cushing's that she was exhibiting, despite the fact that that test came back negative (which can happen in its earlier stages, especially).

At any rate, a few months ago, Shade abraded her underside rather badly scratching on the stands of winter red willow. The vet thought it was allergy; we weren't so sure. I'm reasonably sure now that it was one or more tumors, even then; as in humans with certain cancers like lymphoma, some equine tumors can cause terrible itching to the skin. She was also showing more signs of Cushing's (topline weight loss, hirsutism, etc.), and her arteries and veins, particularly those on her belly, were consistently enlarged. For two years, she'd been having near-constant heats, which we were assured was not abnormal, but given her other adrenal issues, we now think that this was an early indicator. The vet had had her on two weeks' worth of SMZ, to which I think she reacted as part of the overall complex of disease running rampant through her body. By the time she colicked last week, with the right dorsal colon displacement, her enzymes were more elevated yet, with some other irregularities. But nothing could happen on any other front until the displacement got resolved, so we focused on that; meanwhile, an ultrasound of the liver showed blank black spots throughout what should have been a clean white line. We suspected masses, and the final diagnosis has been hepatocellular necrosis, whether of neoplastic origin or not, but we're sure she was neoplastic. In lay terms, that means the cells in her liver were dying off, secondary to one or more tumors. It was undoubtedly one of the tumors that caused the displacement, and one (possibly the same, growing, shifting one) that pressed on her spine yesterday and caused her to lose sensation and motor control in her back end.

Cancer is way, way up locally among horses across the board. One of our neighbors, who owns the Indian Horse Ranch just up the road from us, had the exact same thing happen with one of his stallions recently, and again, it was cancer that did it. It's a product of climate change, changes in contaminants and in what appears in the hay and their feed and the air and the level of sun exposure complicating everything. This is climate change up close and personal, and it's killing horses all over the county. In Shade's case, given the genetics involved, she didn't stand a chance once this thing, whatever it was, took hold. We're grateful that we could give her one last truly beautiful day, and then make sure that she started her journey in a single second, with no pain.

Our big worry now is Miskwaki. In under 17 months, he's gone from a herd of four to only himself, and he's grieving terribly. He called to her most of the night; he spent much of the morning with his face turned to the back wall of the stable. He's out grazing now, at least, but horses are herd animals, and he needs his herd more than most, given the terrible abuse that he suffered and the constant long-term loneliness and isolation. He will need a companion, a healthy one.

For now, though, he needs time to mourn, just as we do. It's easier now that the burial is over, but there's still a huge void here today. She was a strong personality, and that's a masterpiece of understatement. And now, there's a dark bay Shade-sized hole in our hearts, but she's headed for her blue, with her mother and her boy Ice, and Miskwaki and we will take care of each other until it's time to follow.



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

Shade, In the Blue

Photo copyright Aji, 2018; all rights reserved.

That was her full name, minus the comma:  Shade In the Blue. Cool and dark against the desert sky. We just called her Shade.

Now, she's in the actual blue, running to meet her mother and Ice.

She had a rough day yesterday, and we'd essentially made the decision already. Then this morning, she had deteriorated so significantly that we thought perhaps it might be out of our hands anyway; she was lying down, head up but eyes mostly closed, with insufficient energy even to hold the edge of her tongue fully inside her mouth.

And an hour later, she was up.

She had one of the best days she's had in a week and a half: She let herself out to the north pasture to join Miskwaki, where they grazed contentedly side by side, a few feet apart — snouts busy in the grass and tails switching away the flies almost in unison, just like old times. That's her above about 1:00 this afternoon, pulling one of her hallmark stunts: shoving her head through the fence and craning her neck over the bars to get at whatever obscure bit of green hovered otherwise just out of reach. It never mattered that there was more easily accessible and far better green elsewhere; if she wanted something, she was damn well going to make sure she got it.

"Stubborn" was the parenthetical in front of her first name. Also "Bullheaded," and "Defiant." She was a thousand pounds of pure attitude, and she never was never more than slightly green-broke. She wore a saddle but never a rider, and she liked it that way. What she wanted most was to be free, and she got it.

Around 4:00 or a little before, Wings went to give her one of her doses of meds, and noticed her straining to urinate, her hindquarters trembling and barely able to stay upright. He called me out, and by the time we got there, she clearly had severe neurological impingement; she could barely stand upright, and her hind legs trembled and shuddered with the effort.

It was time. We had to make the hardest decision any horse person ever has to make. it's not the one you're thinking; it's far, far worse.

Because no one would come.

No matter that our money was good; no one would come out, either to help her or to dig. Yes, I know it's Sunday, but I am more than a little bitter about the fact that our situation in this county is such that there are so few options that, no matter how dire the circumstance, a horse can be left to suffer.

We couldn't let her suffer. What you need to understand about being owned by a horse is that, with an animal that large, certain conditions are so dangerous that they cannot be allowed to continue; the danger to the horse, the risk of serious, brutally painful harm is too great. In her case, we're reasonably sure that the underlying problem (and the cause of both her liver issues and the colic with the right dorsal displacement) was at least one tumor, or perhaps a series of them. As occurred with her mother, Cree, in her final days, we think the tumor had expanded sufficiently to impinge on the spinal column. There would have come a point, sooner rather than later, that her hindquarters would have given out. When a horse goes down under ordinary circumstances, that's one thing; when she can't feel her legs or loses proprioception and motor control, there's a risk of her landing wrong and breaking one. And then there's only one option left anyway.

But no one would come. Only Wings's clan brother, who has dealt with this in the past, came, and came immediately, to help. And so we led her gently out to where her mother and her beloved Ice rest, and Wings and Joe took care of it at 4:45 PM today. It was instant, painless, and she has begun already her journey home to Cree and Ice. It was the hardest decision, and yet also one that made itself; you cannot promise to take care of such a spirit and then abandon it in the final hour. Shade wants to be free, and she is now, and it was the one thing we cold do for her, the one final gift we could give her.

Tomorrow, Chris will be here at 8:00 AM to excavate, and we will bury her, as we do, with all that she needs for her journey. But her spirit has already begun to make its way along the sky roads. A few days ago, we said to each other that we felt, somehow, as though Shade's fate and that of the rains were intertwined: If we got the latter, we'd also get the former. They were indeed linked; just not as we thought. Two hours after her final moment, the rains came, running from east to west along the south: a hard, driving rain that soaked the earth thoroughly. A little while later, a second storm moved through. We gave her her freedom, and she sent us the rain as a thank-you.  

I am angry about so very many things right now. Many of them have to do with what brought things to this pass in the first place, things unknown to us then but that cannot be undone. One of them, though, is prospective: what this will do to Miskwaki, because in less than seventeen months, his herd has gone from four to himself alone. He was half-wild with grief, calling to her, weeping as only a horse can do. He's calmer now, but he's going to have a very hard time of it for a while.

We will, too. But we did the right thing for our beloved girl. Her name, in some traditions (not ours), is a synonym for a ghost, a revenant. She is none of those things, but she is a strong, beautiful, willful, powerful spirit, and that is how I will always see her: Shade In the Blue, defiantly happy.

We love you, Shade.



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

Shade

Photo copyright Aji, 2018; all rights reserved.

That's Shade, a little over an hour ago. The eating is a good sign, but as you can see, she's not looking at all herself. 

Shade is sixteen, normally sleek and muscular; perfect weight assertive, stubborn, take-no-shit temperament. Cree, who we lost last year on February 15th (2017), was her mother, and she was really the only one who could discipline Shade at all. Cree was also the herd matriarch, and when we lost her, the other three bonded tighter than ever. Then when we lost Ice on August 6th? Shade and Miskwaki have become inseparable, to the point that neither wants the other out of his or her sight.

I mentioned in the post just below this one some of what's been going on lately. Shade has had a few relatively mild colics over the years, generally nothing that walking and maybe a little Banamine couldn't handle. She did, however, seem to get entirely her mother's genes, so she developed laminitis in her right front a couple of years ago (mild and well-managed), and lately we've been thinking that she's also developed her mom's Cushing's. That is likely true, but it remains to be seen whether we'll have the chance to address it.

She had been dealing with a skin irritation on the underside of her belly that looked like allergy, but along with that, she began losing weight, especially off her topline, and her coat and skin had lost their healthy-looking sheen and texture. All potentially related to the Cushing's (save the allergy, although it and the inflammation could certainly aggravate each other). Two weeks ago, we had the vet pull some labs, and her liver enzymes were elevated: not drastically so; just enough to indicate a problem, or at least a potential one. The plan was two weeks' worth of antibiotics in case it was infection-related, and then re-evaluate.

The last couple of days, she took a dive. Clearly at least pre-colicky, although Banamine and walking, again, seemed initially to take care of it. Not today. Today, she was in enough distress that Miskwaki constantly nipped at her neck and back and flanks to try to get her on her feet (because horses know, and they know what needs to happen; he used to do it with Cree, too). A little before 5 PM, it was clearly time to call the vet (who has been dealing with colic emergencies all over the county nonstop for days, and has had very little sleep, but was kind enough to come out within a half-hour). She spent a couple of hours out here, and initially, it looked very bad indeed.

Without getting too graphic (those of you with horses will know what this means), she was in full colic, such that her intestine was displaced. Now, that's not torsion; it's not good, but it's not the near-death sentence that a torsion colic is (that's what Ice developed at the end, a result of the tumor we didn't even know he had having grown and shifted to such an extent that it turned his intestine into a twist). Shade's is merely moved to the side, which is still dangerous but not at quite the same level. However, on the manual exam, the vet couldn't get beyond the displacement (sometimes it's not so bad, and that can be done; this was not one of those times). What that means is that we don't know what's causing the displacement: simple gas? an impaction? a mass (i.e., a tumor)? that limits what we can do even diagnostically.

So we began with more sedation and tubing her with mineral oil. Then, the vet did an ultrasound of the liver area. That was not promising; she has to analyze the images thoroughly, but it appears as though there might be a whole line of small masses there.  Now, that doesn't necessarily mean cancer; they could be benign. Alternatively, even a benign mass, growing too much or shifting the wrong way, can prove fatal. So that's a crapshoot. Finally, she did a belly tap (think spinal tap, but of the stomach cavity, using a hollow needle to pull out fluid for analysis). We were hoping to be able to see what proteins or other substances might be in it, but instead, it was filled with blood. That likely indicates internal bleeding — although, again, it could be something relatively minor that just happens to coincide with everything else.

Afterward, she refused her grain and lay down again; no thrashing, no seizing, just a half-roll. Then, she emitted a small amount of gas a couple of times, and that is the absolute best thing that could happen right now. The vet recalibrated her chances from 80/20 against to 50/50. We can address the liver stuff down the road (and the Cushing's, too, if it comes to that), but nothing happens if she doesn't make it through this colic. We have two syringes filled with sedative for her should things go south, but as of last check about 20 minutes ago, she was lying down relatively comfortably, head up, eyes clear and alert, looking as relaxed as is possible under the circumstances. We're taking that as a good sign. Miskwaki is standing watch over her. And we'll take all the prayers and good vibes for this girl that we can get, because it's not her time yet. Whatever ya got, please, please, send it her way. 

Thanks.



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

Shade

Photo copyright Aji, 2015; all rights reserved.

That little girl in the middle? The dark brown one, looking this way?

That's Shade.

She's a monster. Cree's daughter; spoiled rotten. All arrogance and attitude.

She also may have inherited a few too many of the wrong genes from Cree.

Cree had a tough time of it before Wings rescued her. What he didn't know, but eventually had to learn on the fly, was that she had a tendency to laminitis — a tendency that eventually became a full-blown case of founder. 

Not before she produced a beautiful filly, though.

In the last year, Cree's also become Cushingoid (insulin resistance that has now developed into equally full-blown Cushing's disease). All of these conditions are intertwined with each other. We thought we were in the clear with Shade; after all, she'll turn 13 in May. 

Unfortunately, that's also a prime age for these problems to begin to manifest, and we may have a problem.

Since early fall, she's begun developing a cresty neck, a sign of potential insulin resistance (and eventually, possibly more serious problems, as well). Over the last few weeks, she's become gimpy, with no apparent cause. We spent a good long while on her feet late this afternoon. Again.

The good news? She currently shows no signs of inflammation of the laminae of the hoof, which would be a clear indicator of laminitis (and, if not halted, eventual founder). The bad? Both her forehooves are painful when tested, and not in an encouraging area.

So.

There are things we can do. Wings took off a little more of the hoof, continuing the work he's begun to correct the shaping she gets when trimmed. We soaked her for a half-hour or so in apple cider vinegar, to help begin drawing any abscesses that might be locked inside the hooves. A little while ago, I ordered a supply of jiaogulan, otherwise known as gynostemma pentaphyllum, a Chinese herb that has shown good results in laminitic horses (and horses with insulin resistance, Cushing's, and other such conditions). We have experience with it; we've used it with Cree. With any luck, it'll be here by mid-week or so. We'll pick up some magnesium locally, if possible. And eventually, we may wind up putting her on the full protocol we've used with Cree in the past, including blue-green algae and a few other things. The goal, of course, is to stop it in its tracks.

But beyond the dollars and cents and supplements and sense, she can always use those intangibles that can't be bought. So if you have anything to spare tonight, some good thoughts and prayers for our monster girl couldn't hurt.

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