Bringing Donut Home

The day before I was scheduled to pick up Donut, I brought my trailer home to do a much-needed cleaning and reorganization.  I hadn't even looked at the trailer since I'd hauled Nimo to the hospital, so I wasn't sure what I would find.  As it turned out, I would find a lot.

Nature had moved in a very real way.  As I cleaned, I found a snakeskin, some kind of insect hive, a bird's nest, and evidence that mice had been making themselves at home for awhile.  Thankfully, I didn't find anything alive to go with all that evidence (if I had, there would probably have been a lot of screaming and running and I would have had to borrow a trailer to go pick up Donut...).  There were also dried leaves, old hay bits, a manure bucket with manure in it, garbage, and dirt.  So much dirt.

First, I hauled out the trunk I used for my tack, and then every other thing.  Assorted buckets and lead ropes and hay nets came out.  There was something that looked like it might have been a petrified sponge (or maybe some kind of dead body - I'm trying not to think about it too much), plus lots of hoof boots, a manure bucket and manure fork, and a bucket with first aid supplies in it.  It was like unloading a lifetime of stuff.  All the things I kept handy for the conditioning rides Nimo and I went on.  I wouldn't need most of it for a long time, so I moved those things to the garage until I could figure out what I wanted to do with them.  (I assured my husband it was temporary, but we both knew that was probably a lie.  I have a tendency to hoard horse-related items and they are present in the garage and several rooms in our house.  I may have a problem...)

Then I began sweeping the big bits of nature out.  After a while, though, it became clear that a broom was inadequate to the task, and I dragged the shop vac out of the garage.  Up to that point, my daughter had been diligently helping me, but the level of dust in the air had gotten intense, so I sent her inside to get cleaned up.

I turned my attention to picking up the mats.  They were much heavier than I remembered them being, so I didn't get them lifted up all the way.  But I did check as much of the floor boards as I could as well as any metal parts I could find.  I determined that one board had minor termite damage and probably would need to be replaced at some point, and there was some rusting that could use some professional attention.  I made mental notes to have those areas checked out when I took the trailer in for an inspection.  It also needed new tires and a couple of other maintenance items.  At seven years old, it was getting to the age where it needed some TLC.

Finally, I got the trailer cleaned to the point that I felt comfortable putting a baby horse in it.  And then I headed in to the house to wash what looked like a year's worth of dirt off of my person.  I kind of wished I could have hosed out my respiratory system too, because I breathed in a lot of crap.

And then it was time to head out to pick up Donut.  We (yes, my daughter was coming with me - she would have been horrified if I had suggested she stay home!) were supposed to get to my friend's house at noon.  In hindsight, that may not have been the best plan, but I had been thinking that I wanted to give Donut the opportunity to hang out in her stall a bit before going out to the field in the evening.  However, it meant that the temperature would be close to 100 when we got to my friend's house.

The first part of drive went as planned.  But traffic came to a grinding halt on the state highway we were using.  I assumed it was yet another accident, because this particular stretch of road has serious accidents all the time.  Often, the road is simply closed for hours at a time.  Which is nuts, because it is a state highway with few options for detours.

In this case, after waiting for a few minutes, it became obvious that whatever had happened, it would be enough to close the road.  I'd have to find another route.  As luck would have it, we were stopped right at the intersection where I would normally turn to go to my barn; otherwise getting turned around with a horse trailer would have been a bit tricky.  (I've done it before but sometimes it is nice to push the Easy Button.)  I wasn't quite sure how far ahead the accident was, but I was positive I could use backroads to get around it.  

I headed out in a new direction and engaged the navigation app on my phone just to see what it came up with.  I knew one route that would work, but it would take us farther out of our way than I wanted to go if I didn't have to, so I was hoping there was a better option.  According to the app, there was.  Although I was pretty skeptical at a couple of points, we did finally emerge back on the state highway and past where the accident had shut down the road.  So we were back on track without having lost much time.

I wish I could say the rest of the trip was uneventful, but there was one more "incident."  As I was fuming a bit and wondering how people could have so many accidents when they were driving, the universe decided to help me understand.  As I was driving about 60 miles an hour, I caught a glimpse of a spider falling from the ceiling of the truck out of the corner of my eye.  Where did said spider fall, you ask?  Well, it fell down the front of my shirt.  I mean, out of all of the places to go, why?  This was not good.  I'm not particularly fond of spiders, although I try to respect their right to live and I don't usually kill them.  In fact, I'm happy that they are part of the world, as long as it isn't in close proximity to me.  As it turns out, being down the front of my shirt counts as being in close proximity.  I'm trying very hard not to panic and I'm reaching through my shirt to find the spider and I can fell it crawling around and I'm trying to stay in my lane and I'm looking for a safe place to pull over.  Which is really too many things to do at once for me.  I ended up really focused on the Get The Spider Off Of My Person Plan and somehow I did manage it without killing the spider, although I suspect that when it was flung across the truck, it probably didn't feel any better about the encounter than I did.  I was hoping the experience discouraged it from any further attempts to get close to me.

Despite the traffic and spider issues, we managed to get to my friend's house just a minute or two after noon.  We followed her out to the remote field that Donut was living in, and I got the trailer parked in a half-way decent spot for loading.  (And I was so thankful for all those times Nimo and I had gone to hunter paces and endurance rides where the parking was in a field on the side of a hill - or a mountain.  Otherwise I might have been a bit intimidated.)

Now we had to find the horses.  It was definitely hot by that time.  Just standing outside for a minute resulted in profuse sweating.  So the horses were taking shelter from the heat...somewhere in a 20+ acre field.  We started walking and my friend called the horses.  No response.  She sent her teenage daughter out ahead to scout for the horses - after all, what is the point in having children if you can't get them to do the dirty work sometimes!:)

Finally, the horses heard us and we could see them moving in some trees.  And then out they came, with Donut in the lead, cantering toward us.  The horses gathered around for a quick snack to reward them for coming.  I haltered Donut and my friend caught another horse, so Donut would have a buddy for the trailer loading experience.

We walked the horses to the trailer without an issue.  First, my friend loaded her older mare, who walked in without a problem.  Her daughter stood at the front of the trailer to hold her head because I had left the middle divider out.  I figured it would make it easier to load Donut if we had to get in there with her.  Plus, I didn't want to have to back Donut off the trailer until I'd had a chance to work on it with her.

Then it was time to load Donut and we hit a bit of a snag in the plan.  Donut had loaded many times on a trailer before.  But it was a trailer with a ramp.  My trailer is a step up.  She would walk up to the edge of the trailer and stop, not knowing what to do.  We tried for a few minutes to get her to step on, but we could tell she just couldn't understand what to do with her front legs.  She would walk up to the trailer with her front legs basically touching the edge of the floor and then move her hind legs as close as she could get them, looking like she was trying some kind of horse yoga triangle movement.  

So we did what any rational horse person would do.  My friend got behind her and pushed and I picked up her left front leg to place it in the trailer.  There we were, sweltering under 100 degrees of heat and probably an equal amount of humidity, with the sun beating down on us, basically trying to pick up a 700 pound animal and put her in the trailer.

Both my friend and I were in precarious positions and if Donut decided to act up or freak out, one or both of us was vulnerable to getting hurt.  We'd relegated both of our daughters to the front of the trailer behind the front divider so they would not be hurt if things went horribly wrong and to help with holding the horse already loaded plus Donut if she got on.

I picked up Donut's front leg and put it on the floor of the trailer.  She moved it back down.  I lifted it and put it back.  She put some weight on it and then moved it back to the ground.  We repeated that a couple more times and then she had the leg on, but didn't know what to do with her other front leg.  So I moved around and picked up that leg, putting me right behind the other horse on the trailer (I was pretty thankful for the extra two feet I'd had built on the trailer's length right then).  My friend kept encouraging/pushing Donut from behind, and after a couple of tries, we had both front legs on the trailer.  

Now, what to do about the back legs?  Would Donut figure out she could pick them up and put them on the trailer too?  It turns out she did.  With just a little more encouragement, she loaded the rest of herself on the trailer.  And I was pretty impressed with how quietly she had handled the whole loading experience.  I'm not sure how many older horses, much less younger ones, would have tolerated that level of handling during what can be a stressful situation, especially involving a person they didn't know.  (I silently thanked my guardian angel for once again keeping me safe during what may possibly have been another instance of my poor judgment skills.)

We got Donut tied and then we unloaded the other horse.  And I felt so bad about that.  I wish I could have hauled the other horse with Donut, but it was probably better for the other horse that I didn't.  It was a hot day, and she would have been in the trailer for quite awhile (much longer than I would have expected, as it turned out...)  So Donut had to be in the trailer by herself and she was clearly worried about that.  She whinnied and stomped a little to show her concern.

And then it was time for us to go.  My friend and her daughter said goodbye to Donut.  I wanted to get moving as soon as possible, so she would be on the trailer for as short a time as possible.  Also, it was just so hot outside, and none of us wanted to endure the heat any longer.

I drove as carefully as I could, but there was no disguising that we were off-roading with the trailer, and it was pretty bumpy as we drove through some woods and a hill and finally emerged out by the road.  I was relieved, and I'm sure Donut was too, when we got to pavement.  For a few minutes, she seemed quiet, but then I felt a pretty good shift in the trailer.  I was worried Donut might have fallen or somehow gotten in trouble.  (Note to self, get one of those trailer cameras so I can see what is going on back there.  Nimo was always a super quiet hauler, even when he was young, and I never worried about him, so I didn't feel the need for a camera.)  I asked my daughter if she could see Donut's head through the front trailer window, and she said she could, so I kept driving.

I was thinking it was good that it was only a half hour trip to the barn from my friend's house.  So really not a big deal, right?  Except you might remember that there was an accident on the road I needed to drive on to get to the barn.  If I'd been thinking, I would have remembered to take the same backroads back to the barn that I had taken on the way out to my friend's house.  But enough time had passed that I assumed the accident would be cleared.

I was so wrong.  (I found out later that the accident involved a family traveling in an RV and a small car that had passed either in a no passing zone or just when there was oncoming traffic.  The driver of the car misjudged the available distance and caused a collision, killing the whole family in the RV.  One car ended up wrapped around a utility pole and there was a major amount of repair needed.  The road was closed for at least six hours.  That kind of accident, minus the fatalities, is common on that road.  Drivers are simply too impatient to wait to pass safely.)  We ended up on a lengthy detour that took us in a round about direction past where I needed to turn for the barn.  So I ended up having to drive about 15 minutes out of my way to get to the turn.

But we finally made it to the barn.  I opened the trailer door to find a reasonably calm horse who was ready to come off the trailer.  Because I didn't have the middle divider in, I could turn her around and walk her off.

She stepped off the trailer like a pro (whew!) and took in her new surroundings.  I gave her a couple of minutes to adjust and when she seemed ready to move, I asked her to walk toward the barn.  She led well, but slowed down quite a bit as we got to the concrete floor of the barn.  I hadn't thought about it until then, but I don't think she'd been in a barn much except for when she was born.  My friend didn't have a barn, just some run-in sheds and natural shelter, so Donut hadn't had any recent exposure to buildings, especially one as big as this one, which was probably about 48' x 120'.

She stepped in to the barn, lifting each leg up as high as she could and carefully setting it down.  (It reminded me a lot of the time I put booties on my dog's feet.  He was convinced that he couldn't walk with them on!)  She was definitely concerned about the surface beneath her feet, but game to keep going forward.  Of course, her stall was at the other end, so we had to walk nearly the whole length of the barn to get there.  With each step, she got a little less concerned.

But then we had a new problem.  In addition to not having much experience with barns, she didn't have experience with stalls either.  She froze at the entrance to the stall.  I suspected it was the change from the light gray concrete floor to the black rubber mat that was a big part of the problem.  I let her stand where she was for a minute and then inspiration struck.  My friend had said she was pretty food-oriented and almost all horses love alfalfa.  I had a whole bale sitting in front of my stall to feed Donut, so I grabbed a flake, and let her sniff it and eat a bite.  Then I threw it into the stall.  Donut walked in like she had been walking into stalls every day of her life and contentedly started munching on her hay.

I stayed with her for a few minutes to make sure she was going to stay quiet and then parked my trailer.  I also sent a message to another friend of mine - the one who has Donut's mother.  She lives near the barn and wanted to see Donut when she arrived.

It wasn't long before my friend and some of her family arrived to see Donut, plus a few boarders and the barn owner stopped by to see the new horse.  So Donut had quite an audience!  She didn't seem to mind, though.  And she got what I think must have been her first experience eating carrots.  My friend had brought some and I gave Donut one, not realizing at first that she didn't know how to eat it.  I helped her figure out how to break off a bite of carrot, and the expression on her face as she started to chew it was such a pleasure to see.  She looked like the whole world had become a better place.  Her eyes widened just a bit and got bright and happy.  She quickly looked for more carrots and figured out how to eat them in no time.

Donut was so good with Gemma

Eventually we let her eat in peace for a few hours before getting turned out.  I'm sure she appreciated the chance to decompress after all the stress of traveling and the attention.  Meanwhile, I breathed a huge sigh of relief.  One step of a very long process was over.  The next step would be to make sure Donut settled into her new routine and her new herd.

The Wait

After Nimo died, I made arrangements with the barn where I had boarded him for the last seven years to keep his stall for the indefinite future.  Even though I didn't feel much like thinking about another horse at the time, I knew that it would be a bad idea to let the stall go.  For one thing, the barn has a fairly long waiting list and if I gave up Nimo's stall, it would be years before there would be room again.  For another thing, having Nimo's stall and tack locker gave me some comfort.  I think if I'd had to immediately pack up his things, it would have been too much for me to handle.  Though it was hard to see the stall without him, I felt better knowing that it was there.

Unfortunately, not long after Nimo died, one of the horses in his former herd had some terrible issues.  At first, it was thought that the situation could be resolved within a month or two.  But as time passed, it became clear that it would not.  So Nimo's stall ended up being used for awhile to help manage that situation.  The affected horse had not been on full board, so he didn't have a stall and ended up needing one as part of his recovery.

While I had nothing buy sympathy for the owner of the affected horse, once I decided to get Donut, I needed to make arrangements to bring her to the barn.  (The barn owner had told me that Nimo's stall would be available for me to fill as long as I needed or wanted it to be, and that was really helpful to my mental state.  It also meant I didn't have to rush to make decisions.)  There was plenty of time to figure out a solution, though, because Donut needed to have some things done before I could bring her.  (If I'd had my own place, I would have simply brought her home and taken care of those things later, but boarding stables have a reasonable expectation that horses brought in will be dewormed, vaccinated, and healthy.)

The first thing I needed to do was to set up a vet appointment to have her Coggins test updated.  I planned to have a wellness check and update some vaccinations at the same time.  It took almost two weeks to get the appointment.  A very long two weeks...

I entertained myself in part by trying to figure out what her name would be.  I would need it for the Coggins paperwork as well as all the personalized stuff that horse people are prone to getting for their horses, like halter name plates and stall signs.  Donut wasn't registered, so I had complete discretion over what I called her.  Which was maybe opening the world of horse names up too far.  The rescue had christened her Sedona, which I liked very much.  It's definitely uncommon, which was important to me.  But three syllables is kind of a lot for an everyday name in frequent use.  I prefer one or two syllables.  My friend had changed the filly's name to Donut (possibly at the request of her daughters, who were instrumental in making sure Donut was easy to handle and liked people).  I kind of liked that too.  So I asked my daughter if she had a preference, and she said she liked Donut best, but liked Sedona too.

I quizzed my friends and got mixed advice.  (You should never consult people about names.  I learned that when I was pregnant and we were coming up with a name for my daughter.  We kept it a secret until the very end, which caused more than one person to get fairly upset with me.  But I figured that was better than having to argue with people about the name we had chosen.  Once she was born and it was on the birth certificate, I felt like most people would give up the battle before it started.)  The biggest issue with using the name Donut appeared to be that some people thought Donut was a male name.  I really thought that we had entered a time when gender identification through names, especially for animals, was maybe not such a big deal.  But I was wrong.  This issue resulted in a pretty lengthy conversation with one of my friends about the wisdom of using pastry names for horses.  Our conclusions were as follows:

1. Donut is a gender neutral word and could be used as a horse's name for either a mare or a gelding.
2. Beignet would be a pastry name more suited for a female horse, but would potentially create numerous spelling errors at competitions and in other written forms because it isn't a common pastry in this part of the country.
3. Most pastry names are really unsuitable for horse names and should be avoided.

I'll save you the long version of my decision-making process and tell you what I decided to do.  Even though the filly was not registered and would not be able to be registered (except for the possible hardship registration I might be able to get through one of the pinto associations), I really wanted an official name for competitions and more importantly, for her stall sign.  I mean, all horses should have a fancy name.  Because the dam's name was Illusion and because I did like the name Sedona, I settled on Sedona's Illusion as the filly's official name.  And I decided to keep Donut as her barn name.  For one thing, Donut kind of sounds like an offshoot of Sedona.  And for another, it was the name she knew.  Also, once you see more pictures of her coat pattern, you'll see that with a little imagination, there is a donut pattern in there.  Most importantly, I love donuts.  (especially the cream-filled ones with chocolate glaze, but I digress...)  (For a further digression, most people absolutely think Donut is a colt or gelding instead of a filly because of her name, which does not seem to bother her at all, because she is a modern filly whose self-worth does not rely on what gender people think she is.  And my daughter absolutely started calling her Sedona all the time instead of Donut, so many people are confused about what her name actually is.  It's good that I put all that effort into it <eye roll>.)

Now that the important business of deciding on a name had been resolved, I was ready for the vet appointment.  For the day of the appointment, my friend had thoughtfully trailered Donut from the remote field she'd been living in over to a small paddock she had closer to her home.  That way, we didn't have to go on an expedition to find Donut for the vet.  But it was mercilessly hot.  It was still summer at that time, and Virginia summers can be brutal.  I think it was close to 100 degrees that day, with all the requisite humidity.  Even though the horses had shade from big trees, my friend had set up one of those giant fans that huge warehouses use to help the horses stay cool (or rather cooler - there is no such thing as cool in the outdoors in the summer).  The vet was running late, so I hung out with Donut in the melting heat for a little while, but eventually I succumbed to the call of air conditioning and spent the remainder of my time inside, chatting with my friend.

Even horses can appreciate modern technology in Virginia summers!

Finally, the vet arrived and Donut was pretty compliant about the exam, the vaccines, and the picture-taking for the Coggins test.  Although, I'm not sure who could possibly have had any energy at 4 pm on a sunny, summer day.  By that time, all living things are just praying for the sweet relief of the sun going down (which of course, it wouldn't for several hours yet).

Getting the vet visit taken care of was a huge relief.  Now I just had to wait for the Coggins test to come back from the state.  In recent years, the process has gotten quite fast, and the results were typically available electronically with 3 business days.  But the vet had told me that because of COVID-19 (I feel like it is getting to the point that maybe there should be some kind of shortcut or acronym that we can use instead of "because of COVID-19" but I digress again...), the processing time was significantly longer, and it would likely be 10-14 days before the results were ready.  Sigh...

One of the lessons that I learned from Nimo was that it was critical for me to be ready to get another horse before I got one.  That it would do a major disservice to any new horse if I was still wrapped up in my grief over Nimo.  The reason I learned that is because that is exactly what happened when I got Nimo.  The horse I'd had before Nimo was a gift to the universe, and the universe, in my opinion, completely screwed up by causing his death at only six years old.  I loved him dearly, and his loss hit me hard, especially because it was only a year after I'd lost my other horse.  I was so angry about his death and so bitter.  For a really long time.  Like years and years and years.  And all that time that I spent being angry and bitter prevented me from truly connecting with Nimo.  I didn't realize it at the time, or maybe I could have done something about it.  But I didn't start giving the best of myself to Nimo until he was probably about nine years old.  That is a long time for a horse as special as Nimo to have to wait for his owner's attention.  But he did wait.  And when I was finally able to really see him, he was ready for me.  But it wasn't fair or right of me to have made him wait so long for me to become invested in our relationship, and I was determined not to repeat my mistake with Donut.  I needed to prepare myself ahead of her arrival so that she would have my full attention from the start.

I'm not sure there is any right way to work through grief.  I think it has to be what works for the person.  Of course, I didn't really know what the right way for me was.  I knew that simply raging about his loss wasn't going to work.  But what would help me?  I finally settled on re-reading all of my books by Mark Rashid.  He was a trainer that I was just learning about when I got Nimo and in fact, one of the first things I did with Nimo was go to a clinic with him.  I love all of his books and his thought process, which is continually evolving as he learns more.  So I settled in to the books.  I read them back-to-back-to-back.  Sometimes it was really hard, because it forced me to think about Nimo.  But the lessons in the books were so good.

Plus, there is a book about a special horse that Mark had, named Buck.  After re-reading that book as well as some other things he had written about him, I began to suspect that Mark's feelings for Buck were not so far from my feelings about Nimo.  It helped a little to know that someone out there had gone down a path similar to the one I was going down without Nimo (Buck died a few years ago and I think it hit Mark pretty hard).

Then I started writing about what I was thinking and feeling.  In fact, the name for this blog came about during that time.  Because I realized that what helped me the most was continuing to learn about horses and write about what I discovered.  I dove into more of my old books and I even took an online class on equine nutrition.  Falling into the old pattern of educating myself about anything horse-related was exactly what I needed.

I also came to the conclusion that whoever came up with the saying, "Time heals all wounds" is an idiot.  There are some wounds that are never going to heal and we shouldn't expect them to.  What we do is adapt to them.  Nimo's loss feels to me like what I imagine it would feel like if I lost a limb.  (I'm not trying to trivialize the loss of a limb here.  Instead, I'm trying to convey how much I relied on having Nimo in my life.  How much I trusted him to tell me what he was thinking and feeling whenever I communicated with him.  How valuable and integral my communication with him was to my own sense of self.)  And thinking of it that way, as a situation that I need to adapt to because it isn't going to change, is the way I've chosen to proceed.  It is the way forward for me so that I can honor his memory and the lessons he taught me and share them with another horse.

As much as the time to bring Donut to the barn chafed at me (and I kept imaging that all sorts of horrible things would happen to her), it was necessary.  So that I would be ready to focus on her and not on my sense of loss.

In the end, it took the state 13 days to process Donut's Coggins test.  And I was just about beside myself when I finally got the word from the vet that the results were in.  I sent the last minute text messages to confirm a time for me to pick Donut up from my friend and let the barn owner know when she would be arriving.  Now all that was left was for me to go get my new horse!

The Visit

As the days counted down to go visit the filly, I spent a lot of time explaining to my daughter that we were going to look at a horse for me, but that we were just looking, not buying.  (Note to self:  Do not give my daughter any advance notice of going to look at a horse.  She was a bundle of energy and asked questions all day every day.  It was exhausting...)  

When the day came to meet the filly, my daughter and I got in the truck and drove about an hour to my friend's house.  And I spent the whole drive alternately reminding first myself and then Gemma that we were just going to look at the horse, not necessarily buy her.  I had wanted to bring a friend with me for moral support and to give me feedback, but in the age of COVID-19, probably the fewer people the better, so I was on my own when it came to impulse control.  Plus I had a little more faith in myself now than I did when I was buying Nimo 17 years ago.  (That faith was probably misplaced, because really I love all horses, and the little girl who wants all the horses is still inside me...)

My friend was keeping the filly with a couple of other horses in a large, remote pasture, so we all piled into her truck with her husband and drove out to the pasture.  The horses were out of sight when we got to the pasture gate, so my friend called them.  At first, we didn't see anything, but maybe 30 seconds later, one horse and then another and another appeared galloping out of the trees.  When they arrived at the gate, my friend brought out the grain bucket she had brought to reward them for coming and I witnessed the most surprising thing.  All of the horses happily shared the grain.  There was no ear pinning or face-making or biting or kicking or posturing.  The little filly, who was with a 10-year old mare and a 6-year old gelding, actually got the first bite.  I think that is the first time in my life when I felt completely comfortable being with loose horses in a field.

Once, when I was in my mid-twenties, I got in the way when a mare attacked my horse in the field.  The attack came from behind me, so I didn't see it coming.  When it was over, I was on the ground with five hoof-sized hematomas that took over two years to completely heal.  I'm probably lucky that the damage wasn't worse, but I spent many weeks in excruciating pain, and I've never trusted horses in a field since then.  In fact, I was so thankful that when Nimo grew up, he was always the alpha horse in the herd.  I never had to worry that I would be attacked because he always kept the other horses at a distance when I would go to catch him.

But my friend's horses were so well-behaved that I even felt comfortable with my daughter in the field near them.  In fact, at one point, she got to sit on the gelding's back and hang out while my friend and I talked about the filly (and other horse-related stuff, because you know, horse people can't stop talking about horses!). 

I had no expectation that the filly would feel comfortable with me right away.  When Nimo was a yearling, he latched on to every human in the vicinity and tried to woo them, but I don't think that is normal yearling behavior.  Instead, what I was hoping to observe was how she acted with people she did know in a place that she felt comfortable.  And what I saw was good.  She was happy to stand near my friend and her husband and be led around with a halter and lead rope.  And after a few minutes of observing me, she asked if I would please scratch her butt.  My last two horses have had this same habit, so I recognized the behavior and obliged.  After I scratched her butt for a few minutes, I started moving to different areas of her body, looking for itchy spots (most horses are constantly itchy during Virginia summers because of the bugs and heat and humidity).  I was able to touch her all over, including her face and she seemed happy to stand next to me without a halter on.  I was also able to move her over with light pressure.

Gemma and the filly got along really well!

The other thing that I liked was that she was curious.  While Gemma was sitting on the gelding, the filly approached and started to sniff Gemma's legs and interact with her without being obnoxious.

Oh, and did I mention that my friend gave all the horses their rabies shots and dewormed them while we stood there?  None of the horses (including the filly) had any halters on while she did it.  They just hung out and stood quietly.

Overall, I was really impressed with the filly.  She didn't demonstrate any nipping or pushy behavior which is really common for horses her age.  She moved away from pressure with minimal effort.  She was curious.  She was quiet.  She interacted well with my friend and with me and my daughter.  She had a few basic skills, including being caught, leading, having her feet handled, and loading in a trailer.  And she was friendly without being too assertive about it.

I mean, how could I resist?

When I bought Nimo, I went through an extensive process that impresses even me when I think back on it.  I fully educated myself about the Friesian breed.  I did a nationwide search of breeders.  I sent emails with questions and I looked at sales videos.  I even looked at Friesian crosses and occasionally something completely different just to make sure a Friesian was what I really wanted.  I visited horses in person.  I brought knowledgeable friends with me to give me feedback.  And when I finally picked the horse I wanted, I slept on it for a few days before I made the offer.  Then I got a pre-purchase exam and signed a multi-page purchase agreement.  It was a textbook approach to the way a person should buy a horse.

Because back then I was still my perfectionist self.  Since then, life has happened in many ways. The biggest thing, of course, is that I had a baby.  If you are a parent, you'll know that being a perfectionist and having a child are usually not compatible.  I've had to adapt.  Also, I'm usually too tired to care about perfection these days:) 

And over the years with Nimo, particularly when we entered the world of endurance riding, I had to put myself out of my comfort zone so many times.  I survived every time (although there were a couple of times that it was close!), and that has given me a lot of confidence.  (Potentially misplaced confidence because it is entirely possible that I am only still alive due to a guardian angel who has been working over time more than once to keep me in the land of the living.)  

My confidence isn't based on feeling like an expert with horses, though.  Quite the opposite.  I feel like there is so much to learn about horses that I will never learn it all no matter how long I live.  My confidence is more along the lines of knowing that I can recognize if something isn't working and knowing that things will be OK even if I make a mistake.  If Nimo taught me nothing else, it is that horses are remarkably forgiving of their humans.  There are very few mistakes the average person can make with a horse that can't be fixed - although it might take some time to fix them!  

The old me was very concerned about making mistakes.  I didn't want to make them, and if I did, I would spend a lot of time beating myself up about it.  Now, I've made so many mistakes, I couldn't remember even a quarter of them if I tried.  And yet, somehow the world kept on spinning and my life kept on going and my horse kept on interacting with me.  Plus I learned that many things that I would have classified as mistakes before are really just part of the learning process.  I mean, when you think about it, the idea that humans can communicate with horses at all is pretty amazing.  We are predators at the top of the food chain and they are prey.  Even more amazing is that the desire to communicate is often a two-way street.  Horses want to talk to us too!

And so, because of my beautiful Nimo, I was able to trust myself to recognize a good horse when I saw her.  That is how for a dollar and a handshake, a little filly named Donut became mine.

The Message

After opening the package and taking some time to process all the feelings it evoked, I sent a message to my friend letting her know that the package with the pommel pack had arrived and that I was very happy with it.  And then I briefly explained the circumstances of Nimo's death.  My friend was shocked, of course, and we exchanged messages for a bit as she tried to process what had happened and I tried to elaborate a little without sending myself into a deep despair.

And then she wrote, "It just dawned on me.  I have a baby you can have when you are ready.  My little black and white rescue."

To say I was stunned would have been putting it mildly.  It was an incredibly generous and kind offer.  And one that I wasn't even close to being able to accept.  I didn't even really know that I wanted another horse again.  I literally could not even imagine interacting with a horse other than Nimo in any kind of significant way.  I also wasn't even sure I knew which horse she was talking about.  She had quite a few.  I vaguely remembered she had a baby from one of her mares, but I was sure that couldn't be the one she had mentioned.

I found what I hoped was a gracious and appreciative way of thanking her for her offer and explaining that I wasn't ready to even think about another horse at the moment.  And I put the message out of my mind.

Days flowed into days and then weeks...  

As I watched what was probably the fifth Aurora Teagarden mystery of the day on the Hallmark channel, it occurred to me that I might have a problem.  I'm normally not much of a TV watcher, so my recent binge-watching of a show about a librarian who solves mysteries was pretty unusual.  There were other indicators of my problem, like moping around, not feeling motivated to do any of the things I normally enjoy, and a general sense of not being able to focus.  And let's not forget the random sadness and crying every time I thought about Nimo.  Which was a lot, because everywhere I looked there were pieces of him - pictures, bridles, saddle pads and other assorted tack, and the stupid Facebook memories that kept popping up every time I tried to use the app.

I realized that I could not go on like that.  I had already purged dozens of friends from my Facebook account because I was so frustrated with the ability of other people to keep living their lives as if the most devastating thing in the world hadn't occurred.  At that time, a lot of people were still very anxious about the COVID-19 pandemic and our political situation, and I have to admit, I simply didn't care.  At all.  I didn't care about people dying.  I didn't care that my friends were worried about leaving the house.  I didn't care about who was president.  I didn't care what was on fire or what was flooding or who was fighting whom.  I didn't care about my job.  I know those are all signs of serious grief and that they are normal and part of the process.  But knowing that doesn't make it any easier to go through.

And one day, I decided that I needed to find a better way to work through the grief than hating everyone and watching TV all the time.  I needed some purpose.  The only way I was going to get some purpose was to get a horse.  All through my life, when things have been difficult, I have headed out to the barn.  The barn and the horses in it are soothing in a way that nothing else can be.  But I had found that going out to the barn with my daughter a few times a week was a challenge.  I was starting to have trouble letting her take care of the pony we were leasing for her.  Not that I didn't want Gemma to take care of the pony, but I felt useless and unfulfilled.  So I was brushing the pony and helping to tack up the pony.  And leading her around.  Instead of letting Gemma do the things by herself, like she really wanted to (but was too sensitive to say) and deserved to do.  I couldn't even watch her lessons.  Plus I started feeling very isolated at the barn.  Even though people talked to me.  But there was this underlying awkwardness because of Nimo's death.  Like what do you say?  And I didn't know what to say either.  Sometimes I talked about Nimo like he was still alive.  Sometimes like he had been dead for years.  And sometimes, it was all I could do to say his name.  I was, in short, completely miserable and disconnected and confused and angry and doing my best to keep myself together for the sake of the people around me.

I know everyone has their own timeframe for working through grief.  For me, I realized that working through my grief about Nimo was not going to be an easy or quick process.  It was going to take a very long time.  I think it took me 10 years after the death of the horse I had before Nimo before I could say that I had fully processed his death, and I had only owned him for four years.  I'm not always that great at math, but even I could see that simply waiting to feel better was not going to work.  I needed to be proactive or I was going to have some serious problems.

So I started really thinking about what I might want in my next horse.  The search for a horse under any circumstances is daunting.  But in my case, I had all of northern Virginia, an equine mecca, as well as contacts all over the county to help me in my search.  To complicate matters, I had no idea what I wanted.  Well, that isn't entirely true.  I've joked before that my next horse would be ugly, short, and dirt-colored.  But somehow the joke fell flat after Nimo's death. 

With the reality settling in that I was going to have to start from scratch, I was at a loss.  Over my lifetime, I've owned two quarter horses, an Arabian, an Appaloosa stock-type horse, and of course, a Friesian.  I didn't really feel like revisiting any of those breeds again.  And I have generally ruled out Thoroughbreds because I don't trust myself to be able to find a good one.  All of the ones I know have an assortment of physical and behavioral issues, regardless of whether they raced, and I definitely didn't feel up to trying to find one that might not have those issues.

In the past, I had thought about the Akhal-Teke breed, but when I looked at pictures of them, I didn't feel inspired.  And I also want to get a Mustang, but I don't currently have the facility to handle training a wild horse, and honestly I wasn't feeling up to that level of training anyway.  Then I came across a picture of an old Morgan that had won an endurance race back in the 1920s or '30s.  I really liked the way he looked, so I started researching Morgan breeders.  The unfortunate thing was that many of the breeders had not maintained their websites for years, so I had trouble finding any information about availability and pricing.  Other breeders were clearly more focused on show Morgans, which had no appeal for me. 

I mean, who could look at this horse and not be impressed?

The one thing that I started figuring out during the process was that what I really wanted was a young horse with a good temperament and who would be easy to work with.  I didn't care too much about color (although who doesn't love a good buckskin, palomino, or grulla?) and I didn't care about specific bloodlines or breeding.  Plus I didn't want to spend the kind of money that it appeared people were asking for their horses.  It wasn't because I didn't think the horses were worth it - breeding and training horses is an expensive and time-consuming process if done well - but I had significant medical bills from Nimo's treatment to pay off and I was hoping to be able to buy a good horse for my daughter within a year or two.  I would need to spend good money on that purchase to make sure I got a safe horse for her.  But for me, I could get by with something much less expensive that needed work.

I even looked at the horses available at several rescues in the area.  But every one of them seemed to have multiple, chronic physical issues, which I didn't even remotely feel up to dealing with.  And then I came across a 17-hand 8-year-old Friesian gelding, and I completely shut down.  I couldn't look at another rescue page after that, for fear of seeing another Friesian pop up.

Which brought me back to the message I'd gotten from my friend that I had been steadfastly pretending didn't exist.  The one about a black and white rescue baby.  I finally decided that it wouldn't hurt to learn more about this horse.  But I didn't want to ask my friend for the details, because I had absolutely no intention of getting the baby.  I was just curious and figured I could distract myself from my lack of decision-making ability.  So I turned to Facebook for assistance.  I stalked my friend's page and figured out which horse she was talking about.

Oh, dear God.  It looked like the horse was a yearling paint filly that was probably gaited.  None of those characteristics were remotely like what I had imagined I would want in a horse.  For one thing, she was a filly.  Under no circumstances did I want a mare.  I had an Arabian mare for 15 years, and I often think of her as my first horse, even though she was really my second.  I did everything on her and she was an amazing animal.  But she could be a handful and she definitely had OPINIONS as only mares can.  After her death, I mourned her for a good long time, but never had any desire to own a mare again.  I liked my easy-going, people-loving geldings.  So definitely, I did not want a mare.  No.  Absolutely not.

And she was a paint.  Or pinto.  I have never been attracted to that coloring.  I can't even explain why.  I just had this negative association with it.  The only thing I can think of is that I used to have a friend who had a paint horse.  I had a falling out with the friend many, many years ago (as did everyone else who knew her because she turned out to be a horrible human being) and whenever I think of her horse, I remember all the conflict and tension and bad things that my friend did, and I guess maybe I associate them with her horse.  Which is totally awful.  The horse had nothing to do with any of it.  But nonetheless, I definitely did not want a paint horse.  No.  Absolutely not.

Finally, it looked like she could be gaited.  From what I could find out, the dam was a Missouri Fox Trotter.  I educated myself a tiny bit about fox trotters and while it looked like they could be good horses, I had zero experience with gaited horses.  I wouldn't have the first clue about how to train her or ride her.  Plus, my riding instructor, whom I'd worked with for 4 years with Nimo, would have been appalled.  She comes from a school of thought that believes any gait other than walk, trot, and canter is inappropriate for horses and causes long-term soundness issues.  I wasn't at all convinced that a gaited horse couldn't be balanced and coordinated, especially because I know someone who rides a gaited horse and she and the horse look beautifully balanced and coordinated.  That said, I still didn't want a gaited horse.  No.  Absolutely not.

Despite learning all these things about this filly that meant she was completely inappropriate for me, I kept digging.  I found out about the rescue that she was part of.  I found out a little about her sire.  And then I found a series of pictures of her as a baby, from just after she was born through several months old.  If you are a horse lover, I challenge you to look at pictures of baby horses and not fall in love with them.  It isn't possible. 

Look at that face!

 

Her conformation looks pretty good...

She looks athletic!

OK, the filly had been super cute as a baby.  And having all the pictures and even a couple of videos meant I had good stuff to use for evaluation of her movement.  If you've never bought a young horse before, you may not know that it is very difficult to get an accurate picture of any horse in terms of conformation and movement once they get to be older than about 6 months until they are 3-4 years old.  Because they are growing so fast, they often look awkward and disproportional and move like they are drunk.  Some breeds and/or bloodlines will look mature at an earlier age (think Quarter Horses), but even then, it's a bit of a crapshoot.

When I got Nimo, he was a yearling.  In fact, he was almost the same age as this filly that I was looking at that I had absolutely no intention of getting.  He was strikingly ugly.  I mean, really awful.  I bought him in part off of his first inspection results, where he was the Grand Champion out of a class of 22 babies still with their mothers.  Because that is the best time to judge them until they get to be at least 3 and 4 or even 5 would be better.  

So I already knew that having the baby pictures and videos meant a gold mine of information, especially for a rescue horse.  I obsessed over those pictures and videos.  I analyzed her conformation and movement, looking for any potential flaw.  The only thing I found was that her pasterns seemed a bit longer than I would like, and even then, it was hard to judge whether they would stay long.  It was entirely possible that her legs were a little out of proportion due to her age.  But I researched the implications of long pasterns anyway, and I satisfied myself that it was unlikely to be a significant problem.  (Some people believe that long pasterns make a horse more likely to have a soft tissue injury, while others believe that pasterns that are too short are the bigger flaw and that longer pasterns can help a horse more than they hurt it.  I suspect that the best thing to do regardless of your horse's pastern type is to make sure you train it properly with the goal of helping the horse achieve the maximum balance and coordination it can reach.)

Then, I chose two good friends to send some of the pictures and video to.  I wanted their opinions because I began to suspect I might not be objective...Both of them thought the little filly was beautiful and they strongly encouraged me to take a closer look at her.  (One reason I chose those friends was because I knew they would be honest with me, and if I was about to embark on a path of stupidity, they wouldn't hesitate to tell me.  That would not necessarily mean I wouldn't do the stupid thing, but at least I would have been warned.)

If you've followed my other blog, The Journey to 100 Miles, you may have gotten the sense that I can turn even the simplest of tasks into a complicated, frustrating, and often expensive marathon of activity.  I mean, even when it came to painting the walls in my house, I used a time-consuming faux-finishing technique instead of just buying regular paint and rolling it on the walls.  My life's motto has become, "If it isn't more trouble than it's worth, it isn't worth the trouble of doing it."

But it finally occurred to me that maybe I don't have to follow that motto for every single thing I do.  Instead of turning my search for a horse into a nation-wide endeavor involving interviewing dozens of breeders, watching sales videos, and traveling all over, while spending thousands of dollars, maybe I could look closer to home.  I decided that it couldn't hurt to at least go look at the filly my friend had.  I mean, the worst that could happen was that I didn't like her and that would be that.  In fact, I was still telling myself that I didn't really want her, and I was using the trip to go see her as an acceptable social event during a time when people were still pretty hesitant to go anywhere other than the grocery store.

So I got in touch with my friend and set up a time to take a look at the filly.  In the meantime, I contacted another friend.  This particular friend owned the filly's dam, a black Missouri Fox Trotter.  I knew some of the backstory on the mare, which included a rescue effort, and my friend gave me some more details.  

The basic story is that the filly's dam and sire had been taken in by a rescue that over time had accepted too many horses to care for properly.  The situation had deteriorated to the point that the county was called in and decided to seize over 40 horses.  I think 4 or 5 different rescues in Virginia and Maryland ended up participating in the seizure because there were just too many horses for one operation.  The filly's dam was pregnant with her at the time of the rescue.  A few months later, the mare gave birth at the rescue.  

At about that time, though, the rescue that had her sold its farm.  The effort of running a rescue had become too much and the coordinator wanted to shift the physical care of the rescued horses to foster homes only for the future.  The rescue was trying to place all the horses left in its care before completing the sale of the farm.  But no one wanted a young mare that was not trained under saddle and her baby.  Eventually things were getting desperate and this poor mare, who had already been rescued at least twice in her life, was facing euthanasia, along with her baby, because no one wanted them.  As it happened, the friend who had sent me the message about her decided to take the mare and baby.  Her sister worked at the rescue and had shared the story with her.  My friend had taken on project horses in the past with the intention of rehoming them among her wide circle of friends and acquaintances once she could find a good match.  She had plenty of land and another mare with a baby, so she thought she could make it work.

Over time, my friend weaned the babies and sent them out to live other horses in a huge 20+-acre field surrounded by woods with a creek running through it.  Basically, heaven on earth for horses.  But it was remote, and not the ideal location if you wanted to work with a horse regularly.

And my friend started looking for potential new owners for both the mare and the baby.  She found one fairly quickly in a mutual friend of ours.  The mutual friend wanted to take both the mare and the baby, but she really only had room for one horse, so she decided to take the mare.  

I found out that the mare was a delight to be around and to ride.  She had been about 6 years old at the time my friend got her and not trained to be ridden as far as anyone knew.  At first, the mare was incredibly defensive with other horses, likely due to the starvation situation she had been in at the time she was rescued.  She had also been difficult for people to handle when she was rescued.  But the rescue staff worked with her and she quickly became friendly.  And after she settled in for a few weeks at my friend's house, she stopped being defensive with horses too.  So she was incredibly smart to be able to quickly figure out that she was in a safe place and her troubling behavior stopped. 
She was also smart when it came to being ridden.  She was safe for my friend's boyfriend (who had minimal riding experience) to ride out on trails within several weeks of being under saddle.  She wasn't spooky or otherwise challenging to ride.  And she had good feet - no shoes needed for the trails.

I also found out a few details about the filly's sire, who had also been rescued along with the dam.  He was a paint stock horse.  According to the farrier who worked on his feet after he was rescued, he was easy to handle and had good quality hooves.  My friend didn't know where he ended up, and I wasn't able to track him from the rescue's website or Facebook page, but I hope he ended up in a good home.

I was encouraged by all the information my friend had given me, and I started to look forward to meeting the filly.  You can read about our visit in my next post.

The Package

When the package was delivered, I had no idea what it was at first.  I hadn't been expecting anything, and I couldn't remember any outstanding orders.  Then I looked at the return address.  And it felt like my heart stopped for a second, and I couldn't catch my breath.  I think I had to sit down for a minute or maybe an hour.

A couple of months before, the global pandemic that was COVID-19 had just started impacting the U.S.  State governments started restricting our movement and businesses were shuttered.  We still didn't know what the scope was of the virus or how to prevent it or treat it.  It was a very scary time, and a lot of small business owners were really worried.

One of those small business owners happened to be a friend of mine.  She makes saddle bags for trail and endurance riders.  Really well-made, high quality bags.  I had wanted to order one for awhile, but hadn't been able to justify buying a new bag while the one I had was perfectly serviceable.  But over the winter, I discovered that mice had used my bag as nesting material, so I needed a new one.  And when my friend put out the message that her orders had dried up because people were drastically reducing their spending on anything that wasn't toilet paper, paper towels, or hand sanitizer, I felt like I could finally do something to help someone in a world where everything seemed out of my control.

So I sent her a message and we worked out what bag I would get and the color.  It would still take her some time to make the bag because she had some outstanding orders to fill, but that was no big deal.  I wasn't doing any trail riding at the time because no one was going anywhere.  But I was hopeful that I would be able to use the bag not just for trail rides but maybe even for an endurance ride once the craziness from the virus died down, because it had to be temporary, right?

Once I placed the order, I kind of forgot about the bag.  I was focused on all the things that parents everywhere were focused on - getting food, finding basic supplies for living, educating my child, preserving my sanity, and engaging in some kind of activities.  Through some miracle, I had had the opportunity to start leasing a pony for my daughter literally days before the state basically shut down.  It meant that I could continue to bring her to the barn with me and that we could still get outside and do something while so many people were basically restricted to their homes.

So we rode.  We rode several times a week.  Sometimes we worked in the arena and sometimes we rode around the farm where the horses were.  Looking back, it was easily one of the best times in my life.  (At the time, a lot of people were very opposed to people riding their horses or even going to see their horses, and many barns in my area and surrounding states closed their doors to boarders.  While a part of me can understand that viewpoint, given what happened to Nimo and the joy I had riding with my daughter, I hope that my perspective can be understood too.)

It was so funny to watch us ride together.  Because the pony that I was leasing for Gemma was very small - just over 11 hands, I think.  And Nimo was so big at 17 hands.  But that little pony followed Nimo all around the farm.  She followed him through tall grass and mud and out on the trails in the woods.  She had been a show pony, so I don't know how much experience she'd had with being outside the arena.  Her temperament was so good, though, that she willingly went all over the farm. 

 We got into a really good routine.  Without all the other extraneous stuff going on, we could focus on riding, and I started to have hope that Nimo would be ready to go back out and do some legitimate trail riding once the restrictions were lifted.

But, of course, that isn't what happened.  The journey I shared with Nimo can be found on my other blog, The Journey to 100 Miles.  And the story of the final days of his life can be found here: http://fit2continue.blogspot.com/2020/05/the-day-i-didnt-go-to-barn.html.  I can't write about it in detail again.

After his death, I was in a pretty dark place.  And the day that package arrived was just six days later.  Inside the package was the custom pommel bag I had ordered from my friend many weeks before, when I still had hope that the COVID-19 restrictions were just temporary and that Nimo and I would be out on the trails training for another endurance ride.

I forced myself to open the package and look at the bag.  It was perfect, just what I'd ordered.  And everything that I lost hit me all over again.  And again.  And again.  Over and over.  It was this overwhelming grief that wouldn't end.

I finally realized that I would need to let my friend know the bag had arrived and that I was happy with it.  She didn't know what happened to Nimo.  Very few people outside the barn where I boarded Nimo did.  I hadn't posted anything on social media or even written the post for my blog yet.  I simply could not do it.  The biggest reason was not that it was too painful to write the words, although that was certainly part of it.  Rather it was because I could not bear to hear or read expressions of sympathy from anyone who didn't know Nimo.  I have plenty of friends from different times of my life or even different parts of my life and they had never met him, although I'm sure they knew of him from conversations or posts on Facebook.  But they didn't know him.  And they would say they were sorry for my loss, but they wouldn't have the faintest idea just how intense that loss was.  I'm sure everyone who has lost a loved one has the sense that their grief is unique, and now that I am months down the road of feeling that grief, I can see that.  But right then I couldn't.

As I went through my journey with Nimo, I started realizing that knowing the basics of horse care and training was not enough for me anymore.  Particularly when we started training for endurance riding, I learned there was a whole other world out there with respect to the environment the horse is kept in, nutrition and feeding protocols, hoof care, medical care, fitness, training, and tack use and fit.  The more I learned, the more I realized how much I didn't know or understand.  I kept digging and uncovering more perspectives, more research, more ideas.  As soon as I would think I understood something, I would learn something new that made me think  I was wrong or that there was more I needed to know.  At some point I figured out that there would never be an end for me.  I would always want to know more and then take that knowledge and do something with it.

And I arrogantly thought Nimo would be with me through all of it.  Even though a part of me recognized that horses don't live forever, I somehow thought that because Nimo was so special he would be exempt from the laws that govern life.  That he would set some kind of record for the longest-lived Friesian.  Plus, I had dedicated my life to giving him the best care I could, even to the point of learning how to trim his huge, rock-hard hooves myself because I began to understand that the farriers I was using were not trimming them appropriately.  I developed a new turn-out plan for him that was different than what other horses had at the barn so that he could have more time outside to be a horse.  I experimented with his food to find something that seemed to work best for him.  I played around with tack, trying different bits and hackamores and saddles and saddle pads, looking for Nimo to tell me what he preferred.  I tried different conditioning plans and schooling exercises, and I even completely changed the way I rode so that I could be the most balanced and educated rider I could be.  

Surely with all of that effort and dedication, my horse would live forever.

But he didn't.  He died.  Not only did he die, but he died in great pain and I couldn't even be with him at the end because of the COVID-19 restrictions.  If there was ever a horse that deserved a good, long life with a peaceful end, it was Nimo.  I felt like I failed him to the nth degree.  I looked around at other people I knew with horses.  They didn't know half of what I knew, and they were perfectly happy that way.  They didn't even want to know more.  They were content with their lives with their horses.  They didn't want to be better riders or better handlers or improve their horse's nutrition or fitness because they already felt like they were on the right path.  And those horses were doing just fine.  So what good was all my knowledge if it didn't help my horse?  In fact, maybe if he'd lived with someone else, someone who wasn't constantly experimenting and trying to do more, he would still be alive.

When that package came, that was where I was.  And that was where I stayed for a while.  Weeks.  And if I'm honest, maybe I'm still there to some degree.

But something completely unexpected happened because of that package.  I'll tell you about it in my next post...