When a Good Day Goes Bad

Dry Sliding, 2 year old filly

Yesterday should have been a great day.  The weather was gorgeous for the first time in what seems like ages.  I woke up with these big plans to get up, ride my horse, rope the sled, and then hopefully go rope out at the cowboy church.  Unfortunately, it didn’t really work out that way.  It seemed like no matter which way I turned yesterday, I found drama.  I experienced a lot of “he said, she said” problems and by the time noon rolled around, I wanted to break my phone.  I decided my best bet was to sit in the sun and try to enjoy the last half of my day.

Besides my good horse, Solo, I also have a two year old filly named Sly.  She is a Dry Doc filly that I got for extremely cheap as a long yearling.  Despite growing up on a ranch and messing with a lot of young horses, I have never started a colt on my own from the ground up.  She was supposed to be my first but I’m pretty sure with my lack of time and the fact that I have been working diligently to finish Solo out as a head horse, I will probably send her out this spring for a couple of months.  I really haven’t done much with her in the year that I’ve had her, but she sure is a pretty cool little filly.  Yesterday, I decided to jerk her out of her pen, saddle her, and attempt to pony her for the first time. She typically throws a bit of a fit when you first saddle her, but she has been getting better and better every time.  She has been sacked out a ton, you can throw the blankets on her with no problem at all, but when you attempt to throw the saddle on her, she boogers, pulls back, and throws a little fit.  My patience isn’t near enough to deal with that most days…hence the reason I will probably send her out this spring.  But apparently, she has grown up a little bit these last few months. I brushed her, threw the blankets on her, and when I threw my ranch saddle on her, I was surprised when she stood there like a wooden indian.  I tied her over in one of my empty pens and saddled up Solo. 

I really wasn’t sure how ponying her was going to go.  She can be so good, but she is a baby and sometimes they just act ridiculous.  I could just see her jerking away from me and running off down the road saddled.  And I know that while Solo is pretty strong, if she wanted to set back hard, she could probably jerk him down.  I tested the waters in a small pen and it looked like things were going to work out pretty well so we ventured out into the great, wide open.  She wanted to hang back a little bit so I just dallied up and drug her along for a while.  At a walk, she was fine.  But once I tried to get her into a trot¸ she started really dragging.  She tried to choke down a few times, something that I’ve seen her do several times since I’ve owned her.  She picks up things pretty quick, but she can be a stubborn little thing when she wants to be.  I felt my patience wearing very thin.  I gave her some slack and prepared Solo for a big jerk.  I urged him forward and when she hung back I gave Solo a kick and he jerked her ahead, causing her to jump right into the back of him. We walked a little ways and as soon as she started to get tight on her lead rope, I’d give her another big jerk ahead.  Every time she jumped ahead I would give her some slack, showing her that as long as she stayed beside me, she wouldn’t choke down.  After doing that about four or five times, she figured it out.

"Sly" when I first bought her

I clicked my tongue at her and away we went at a lope.  She was perfect.  Picked up her leads easily and never got stupid.  We loped a few big passes around the hay field both directions and then headed back to the house.  I was very satisfied with her and I have high hopes for her in my string.  I just hope and pray that she gets as big as I’d like her to get. She has gotten to be pretty good sized and has a really nice, big hip on her, but she is still pretty narrow.  I think because she is such a foundation bred horse that perhaps she will fill out a lot more as she gets older.  That’s what I’m hoping for anyway!

I decided that since Solo had a pretty hard workout, I would call it a day.  I was hoping I could get someone to come over and pull the sled around for me, but everyone was busy so I just dinked around the house doing chores.  I had my few remaining puppies out running around with me and we were all playing in the sun and life was good.  I walked out to get the mail and as I was walking back I heard one of them crying.  I ran to the back of the house and saw that my favorite pup was standing there with a big hump in his back, unable to walk.  My heart sank.  I knew that he had been stepped on by my old horse.  I dropped everything, put the other two pups away, and hauled ass to the vet.  My gut feeling told me that it was bad. He didn’t have any abrasions, but his breathing was very labored and he was going into shock. The vet did an x-ray finding no broken bones.  They said they needed to give him fluids and a steroid shot to see if he would come out of the shock.  If he did come out of it, he most likely did not have internal bleeding.  Twenty minutes later, he seemed to be making an improvement. They decided to keep him overnight for observation.  At seven this morning, the vet called to tell me he had died in the night. 

He wasn’t my puppy and I had no intention of keeping him.  But I had raised him.  I watched him be born, watched him grow for nine weeks, and I was extremely picky about who his forever family would be. I prayed a lot that I would find him an amazing home where he would be treated like family and not just like a dog.  In the end, he got hurt under my supervision and that broke my heart.  Death, in any capacity, is pretty hard for me to handle.  I’m feeling better as the day goes on, but my heart is still pretty heavy when I think about his little face and how short his life was.

As I sat in that vet office yesterday, I couldn’t help but think of the best dog that I ever had.  I said goodbye to her a week before I moved to Texas and still to this day, I tear up when I think about her.  She was a Queensland Heeler/Jack Russell cross that I had arranged for. I set up the two dogs through an ex-boyfriend and a good friend of mine with the agreement that I would get a pup out of the deal.  I had initially picked out a white male, but when I went to pick him up, I fell in love with the rambunctious, onery little female. I named her Annie Oakley…Annie for short, which later got changed to “Brain” because she was so incredibly smart.  That dog went with me everywhere for 5 years. Although I loved her more than anything in the world, she was a pain in the ass.  She was sneaky and would bite the shit out of people when they least expected it.  She got me in trouble more times than not and I absolutely could not take her around kids.  She hated kids. 

Annie, AKA "The Brain"

But she was a funny little dog.  She was full of life, bursting with energy, and overflowing with intelligence.  For the most part, she was a good dog.  You could keep her in the house for four days and she would never potty on the floor.  She stayed by my side through thick and thin.  And as long as she was around, I knew that there wasn’t a soul alive that could hurt me.  She was my right hand, my best friend.

I was working two different jobs bartending to save money so that I could move to Texas.  It had been rainy and cold so I left her in the house before I went to my second job of the day. I had given her a cookie before I left the house and was somewhat surprised that she didn’t gobble it up right away.  If you even mentioned the word “cookie”, she usually went apeshit so I was slightly concerned by her unusual actions.  When I got home late that night, she didn’t greet me at the door like normal. I walked over to see that her cookie was still on the kitchen floor, untouched.  I called for her, but she never came. I felt an overwhelming sense of fear come over me.  There was definitely something wrong. I walked back into my bedroom to find her lying on my bed.  She had a guilty look on her face and I noticed she had peed on the floor. 

Brain with Santa (before she started biting everyone)

“Did you do this?”  I asked her.  Usually when I asked her that, she would look away from me very guiltily.  She just sat there, looking at me with so much pain in her eyes. I called her down off my bed and put her outside.  When I let her in, I gave her some food and water but she wouldn’t eat or drink.  I called my mom and decided that I would take her to the vet first thing in the morning if I didn’t see any improvement.  That night, she slept on my bed.  When I woke up, I saw that she had peed right where she had been lying.  I hauled her to the vet with more fear and sadness in my heart than I can even put into words.  After examining her, the only thing the vet could conclude was that she was, in fact, a very sick little dog.  But, he didn’t know why or what was wrong so they needed to run several tests.  I took her home and as the day went on, she got sicker and sicker.  She started vomiting and soon the vomit turned to blood.  The next morning the vet called with her blood results.  Her kidneys had failed and she would need to be put down.

It felt like someone shot me in the heart. I cried and cried, but I couldn’t make the pain go away. My best friend drove the Brain and me down to the vet and we both cried as I held her in my arms and watched her take her last breath.  How was I supposed to move halfway across the country without her? Since I graduated college, she was the only friend that I could truly rely on to be there for me through everything.  We had moved all over, been through breakups together, seen a hell of a lot of country together…she was always there to comfort me and she loved me unconditionally. The vet made it clear that it was not my fault and there was nothing that I could have done differently, but you always wonder. To this day, I can’t figure out why death has to be so damn painful.  Everyone who reads this blog knows how much faith I have in the Lord and that I know that when we die, we are finally sent HOME.  Home to heaven where there is no pain or anguish. Home:  where we can finally be at peace. But that sure doesn’t make it much easier for those of us that are left behind.

I’ve dealt with a lot of loss in my life.  Be it a human or a pet, it still hurts and is hard to overcome.   Ecclesiastes 3:19-20 says, “For what happens to the children of man and what happens to the beasts is the same; as one dies, so dies the other. They all have the same breath, and man has no advantage over the beasts, for all is vanity. All go to one place. All are from the dust, and to dust all return.”  All dogs go to Heaven.  All horses go to Heaven.  Someday we’ll all meet again. 

I’m going to clear my head today, ride my horses, and hopefully find a spot to rope this afternoon!  I'm going to use this pain and hurt to drive me forward in life, not hold me back or hinder me in any way.  We all suffer from grief at some point. While it is tough to overcome, we have to use that pain for a greater good.  Understand that those that we love who have moved on, are in a better place.  They are watching over us and the last thing that they want to see is their loved ones struggling to overcome the sadness and not living their own lives to the absolute fullest.  I pray that all who read this have a wonderful day today!  May your skies be sunny, your horses be well behaved, and your ropes have a lot of catch in them!! Oh, and Happy Valentine’s Day to all you lovers out there.