Goodbye to Glory

Passed away 9/21/17

Shockingly, Glory is gone.  While I was filling water barrels on the main stall line, Pepe, Keller and Glory where there. She laid down for a short nap.  Pepe and Keller wandered off, and then Pepe realized she wasn't with him and started yelling, waking her up.  She got up and headed off - his yelling stopped - and one half hour later when I went to the southstream side to fill barrels there, I found her, down and dead, in the creekbed, with Pepe standing next to her. I'm ashamed to say I yelled "what did you do?" at Pepe.  There was nothing to see. I'm thinking it was as sudden as our loss of Jasper, which I actually witnessed.  And Pepe is distraught.  Despite his knowledge of her passing,  he woke me early this morning calling and calling....

 

Dear Glory wasn't the easiest mare to love. Like all the palomino mares I've ever met (except Saki), she was distant and had a little suspicious look in her eye almost all the time. Her cooperation always seemed resigned, not really willing.

Ok, she did have a cookie face.  But mostly, she vanted to be left alone! Or more properly, be left with her boys, Pepe (who adored her and whom she adored) and his bodguard Keller (who pretended it was his job to keep her in line, but who is mourning her just as much as Pepe).

Glory came in with signs of a serious wreck in her past. She'd been sent to auction, probably because of the severe damage to her left hind foot (a crack that went well up thru the coronet band, causing great pain). Our wonderful farrier Travis was able to fix that crack long enough for it to heal, but we had seen that because the coronet band was damaged, the new foot material was not holding up. Just last Tuesday we were discussing more permanent stabilization for that area, since being barefoot wasn't working.  She had scar tissue all up that hind leg, and achy hips. I'd been putting her on a maintenance dose of previcox for her many aches and pains, and she loved her senior feed to keep her weight good.  I honestly thought we had Glory for another many years.....

She did well here. 3 and a half years of peaceful 'horsing'. Having a boyfriend and a bodyguard; plenty to eat; pain relief. These elderly horses often have heart murmurs or other problems simply related to age. She was literally in the pink one minute (to my eye) and then gone.  I hope she was happy because even if she didn't have much use for me or other humans, she was a nice cooperative mare when she had to be, and like all of us, deserved a little time to be herself.  Pepe and I, and maybe even Keller, are gonna miss her.