AstroGypsies

It’s so hard. The goodbye, making that life and death decision. Do I even have the right, am I doing what’s right…it never, ever get’s easier. But suffering makes that choice for you sometimes. By the time we got to the barn Maya could barely walk, one back leg was swollen to twice it’s size, the entire leg, from top to bottom, very odd, very strange and she was hurting. It was time. I’d called the vet out to check her as Jennifer said she had been running a fever from the night before. Something was very wrong. The idea of making her stand in a stall for weeks possibly and experiment with more antibiotics was something I was not willing to do. Was it complications from Lyme and Anaplasmosis and age and possibly other issues? I don’t know. She was nearly 25 years old. She had a good life from the time she was born in front of us on a busy lesson morning in 2000.

We had a shot at showing in dressage and she made me so proud. She was lovely, headstrong, feisty as a youngster, very independent and oh what a mover. Her first walk/trot class she came away with the top score for the show 79%. I beamed like a proud parent. We were.
As a filly she would lay in the field opposite Mike’s observatory and he would go and sit with her cross legged, her head in his lap. She was so trusting.

She came to Mexico with Mike, Dusty and I and the cats. It suited her fine, the dry air, she’d had breathing/asthma problems as a foal and later as well. She and Dusty didn’t always see eye to eye, but I don’t with my siblings either;) Maybe it was a bad marriage, arranged. I couldn’t leave either of them behind, they were my family.
She’d chase coyotes out of her field in Mexico but let the bobcats walk right past, hunting the gophers. She knew cats from the barn. She was always alert to things.
When they did finally move back to Ontario it was an arduous journey. I sat fretting in Ensenada until they were safety delivered to Jennifer and her barn of retirees, several from our farm, Ranyhyn, all good old friends…

If they only lived longer. I’ve had a hard time, it’s letting go of a part of my life, realizing, it’s almost over, maybe it’s attachments to memories and friends, equine and human, good times, laughs, so yes, hard to think a part of it is over. My other boy, Dusty, could be 32…he gave me a scare this last week too with his teeth, what few he has left!

I’m so glad a few other lovely people got to ride my girl! Some here, some gone…they were always smiling:)

She will be in my thoughts every horse I see. Her big ears and soft eyes. She taught me so much. I am so grateful to have had her in my life and to have had so many other friends who helped us out along our journey together.
My heart is still aching, it will, for a long long time. Fly high little one, you will always be my 16.2 hh little one.