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!