After picking up Evan from camp today we went down Buffalo Valley Road in Moran. What a beautiful place. There was a ranch down there with a newborn foal and it's mom. While I could show you the adorable foal, I instead have chosen to show you this abstract photo of the mare's tail.
In the rotten, stinking, lousy day I had on Monday, there was one piece of good news: My sister Marissa and her wife, Brooke, had their baby.
Brooke gave birth to Sia Elizabeth on Monday evening and she was just over 7 pounds. It figured that she’s be born when I wasn’t there to share in the joy personally. They’ve been busy being new parents so the pictures I’ve seen have been few. They had chosen not to find out what the baby’s sex was, so we were all anxiously waiting to hear if we had a new boy or girl in the family. I know that all of my girls are thrilled that it was ‘Sia’ and not ‘Griffin’, although I know that Evan will be disappointed. He remains the only boy on my side of the family. I’m just excited to have a new baby to hold — and that I can give back at the end of the day!
She's already playing peek-a-boo
I cannot wait to meet her.
The ranch where I always boarded Jive, Puzzleface Ranch, kept a collection of boots on the wall of the barn for people to borrow when needed. It was nice to see that my friend Terry moved them to the new place after puzzleface sold last summer and that the collection has grown even larger. We contributed all of the kids outgrown boots to the wall this week too.
These past two days have been a struggle, but i’ve tried to continue to see the beauty in the small things.
(Please excuse the poor quality of these photos. My camera was in my forgotten suitcase, so I was left, extremely frustrated, with only an iPhone.)
The wildflowers blooming in the pasture that Jive was in.
The incredibly handsome English Mastiff outside of the grocery store. He was the color of a weimaraner and had the face and body of a boxer.
The flowers long past bloom in Connecticut still in their glory here.
Or this puppy at Dr. Theo’s this morning. Only six weeks old and looking for a home. She would have been coming home with me if I hadn’t been told that her combination of heeler and catahoula leopard dog would make chickens an irresistible treat for her. Goodness she was just what we all needed at that very moment. Puppy breath licking your face and the most incredible turquoise colored eyes.
Or the proud mom moment of my girls fearlessly entering the time trials of the barrel racing event at the Teton Barrel Racing Association event tonight and doing incredibly well! India got a time of 32 seconds on China.
And Maia, who has never run a barrel course in her entire life went into the ring on Louie, whom we have no knowledge of whether or not he’s ever done it before in his life. They ran the course flawlessly and got an impressive score of 43 seconds.
Even with sadness and a heavy heart there is always joy to be found.
Jive’s nickname was B.A.D. She never was ‘bad’ — it was short for Big Assed Dunn. Her coloring was dunn and she has a really big rump.
She also had a very frizzy forelock that somehow, early on, got named “The Magic Pouff”. The kids even made up a song about The Magic Pouff.
The last two days have been pretty bad. Traveling to Wyoming is always a long day, but when you know you’re going out to put your horse down, it just can’t get much worse. Couple that with getting 2-1/2 hours sleep, forgetting your suitcase at your house and not realizing it until you get to the airport, delays on both flight legs, being seated apart from your children on both flights, and having someone so fat sitting next to you on the longest flight that you can literally feel the sweat through his shirt pressing against your arm that is flowing over into your very limited personal space. Just to top things off the girls’ suitcases didn’t show up in Jackson. Great.
Our first stop was to see Jive. Luckily Dr. Theo was outside with her when we got there. She looks great. She was happy to see us. I couldn’t help but hope that some miraculous event had occurred during our day of traveling and she was all better. As soon as she took her first step I knew nothing had changed. She had nerve blocks on her, but you can see how painful each step still is for her.
The girls and I promptly burst into tears when she took her first painful steps. We stayed with her for quite awhile. Her appetite is still very good, so we had her out eating some grass, talking to her and loving her. We promised Dr. Theo we would come back again in the morning to say our final goodbyes. He would not let me be there for the ‘actual event’. He wanted our last memory of her to be a pleasant one.
I was completely wiped out when we finally got home. I have now cried myself to sleep for 3 nights running like a heartbroken teenager. I forgot how exhausting that can be.
This morning we found Jive already out eating some nice green grass when we arrived. There’s absolutely no concern that she’ll run away in the condition that she’s in. If I thought her condition was bad yesterday, it had deteriorated by this morning. On several occasions you could see her back legs almost give out on her, and we thought each time that she was going down. She somehow managed to catch herself each time, but if yesterday hadn’t been enough to convince me that this was the right thing to do, (and it had), this morning sure was.
It was still awful.
Awful.
Awful.
Awful.
I can honestly say that she seemed to know what was happening and seemed thankful for it. She was as loving and sweet as always as we all gave her a final brushing so she looked her best when she went to meet Cissy up in Heaven.
She’s gone now I believe. Theo was supposed to do it sometime today after we left. We were all so upset that I couldn’t even walk into his office when we were done. We just got in the truck and left. I know he understands, and I’m sure I’m not the first person that’s done that.
I’m just glad her pain is over.
She was truly an amazing horse. Many people have wanted to buy her from me over the years. She had the sweetest temperament and was amazing to ride. Gentle enough to show Maia the basics of barrel racing last year,
Yet spirited enough to enjoy the thrill of working cows with me.
I’m sure that the love one has for their first horse is not unique to me. Unfortunately the bar was set pretty damn high with Jive and it’s hard to imagine every replacing her.
I was very, very lucky to have been able to share part of her life with her.
My last photo of Jive as we were leaving today. Want to ruin my day even further? Have my camera be in the suitcase that I forgot at home. All I had to take my last pictures of Jive was my iPhone camera.
This was our view tonight as we were driving home from the Teton Barrel Racing Association weekly event. One of these days a cop is going to pull me over for taking photos while driving my truck.
For the past few years this has been my favorite view; in the saddle, riding Jive on the endless trails in Wyoming.
On Friday night I got the devastating news that when I get to Wyoming I have to put Jive down. I don’t have a choice. I’m heartbroken.
I’ll tell you my understanding of what has happened, but I may have some of the facts wrong.
Jive sustained a terrible injury this winter. She must have reared up playing with Louie and got her front foot wedged in the metal fencing. She was like that all night. When she was discovered it took 3 of my friends to get her leg out it was wedged so tight in the fence. This is an injury that kills most horses, but Jive has been struggling to recover all spring. While she had spent the winter boarding with another friend, this spring she went back to board with my good friend Terry, who was not as pleased with her healing progress as she would have liked to be. Terry has been carefully monitoring her leg and was pleased with the progress of the healing.
I rode her just 3 weeks ago and was so pleased with her progress.
Kissing Jive at the end of my last ride on June 21st
About a week after I left in June Terry said she started going really lame and was in pain. She thought it was an abscess, which Jive is very prone to getting, and brought her to our vets, Dr. Theo. No absess could be found, and no normal pain treatment seemed to be alleviating her pain. When Theo x-rayed her, he discovered that her coffin bone had somehow become badly deformed. Our best guess is that because of the injury this winter she was putting too much weight on her other, most abscess prone, front leg. Somehow this has degraded the coffin bone and created scar tissue. There is nothing that we can do about it. Orthopedic surgeons have been consulted. Theo is just keeping her pain-free with blocks until I can get out there.
I’ve cried a river of tears since Friday, but kept the news to myself for over a day. I couldn’t talk about it yet. It was my father’s birthday yesterday and I didn’t want to put a damper on the event for my kids. Although it is my policy to speak openly and honestly with my children, my good friend Lisa Adams just happened to do a blog post on her site just the other day on this very subject. Taking strength from that article, this morning I couldn’t avoid it any longer so sat the girls down to tell them. It was hard. We all cried. It makes me very sad that my son won’t get to see her before I have to do this, as I don’t pick him up from camp until this coming Saturday.
Terry advised me not to be there. She said it’s awful to witness. But I feel like I have to be there for her. I feel like I’ve let her down.
I have had so much death this spring on my farm already. I’m tired. I’m weary. I can’t believe I have to do this.
I loved the colors and textures of these logs on an old homestead in Jackson, Wyoming.
I was frantically trying to get ready to go away for two weeks on Saturday with a million errands to run, so my friend Cyrena took Maia, India, and her friend to the beach with her. At one point, Cyrena told me, Maia called out “Look!”, and there, overhead, was a seagull flying by with a big fish in perfect silhouette in its feet flying by.
“Congratulations!!!!” Maia yells at the top of her lungs.
