Goodbye to Surely
Deceased 6/30/2020
After 12 years here at The Golden Carrot, one of our longest residents has passed. Dear Surely looked worse in her last 6 months here, than she did when she came in. The last three days of her life, which pushed me to end it, she had a bloody nose every morning – something internal. She would have kept on, stubborn little girl that she was, and god knows I didn’t want to hurt her best friend and caretaker Anya, but it was past time.
Here’s a link to her page. You can see how bad she was in the first few months here. Once I got her thru that, she had no further use for humans. Well behaved once you caught her, yet for 11 years she was a PIA to catch! She wanted to hang with her friends, Joyful and Anya. And I’m sad to say that her decline began in earnest when Joyful passed. Anya did all she could to help her little friend, but even she, at the end, knew it was almost over. Night after night, Surely came back to the stalls alone, and then her little old lady voice quavered out until finally Anya came thundering in. That voice. All by itself it told me her time was almost over.
As I anticipated, Surely wasn’t happy to be taken away from her friend, even for a short time. But I Fed her cookies, and talked to her. I promised I’d do all I could for Anya, and that Surely’s pain was almost over. (The human animal has endless capacity to instill trust, and then betray it.) She passed very fast, almost scarily so, as I think she was almost gone anyway, with only her iron will holding her here with her friend.
Surely’s page said she was sponsored, but she hadn’t been for several years. But her sponsor had been huge for us, and I kept her on there as I did expect Surely to pass anytime these last couple of years. She was a funny looking little mare, with a forehead bump like a calf, and a moustache, longer on the left, that made inserting a cookie, or a wormer, a real trick. She was always a little cranky with me, she did prefer her horse friends, and it was with great sadness as I watched her physical condition decline, that I saw how nice she was acting toward me. When the personality changes, the end is usually nigh.
A little red pony mare. A friend was just laughing with me about that particular combination of traits. A handful, for sure. I wonder. You see, It seemed obvious to me that someone fed Surely up to vast overweight, and I wonder if it was to get a better meat price at the auction? Or did it founder her, and then she was no longer wanted? And those things seem so … cold to me. Was Surely sensitive to what was happening. Did she lose faith in her previous people, and pass on her suspicions to me? Maybe her kindness at the end was her acknowledgement that I hadn’t been that bad, all these years. God help me. Because then I ended her life.
Surely was a pill. But she is dearly missed – as I type this, I hear Anya screaming out her anguish, as she has for the past 3 hours. And I wished I’d known my current farrier 12 years ago (although, that’s silly, she’d have been practically a baby, but you get my drift). Someone different might have helped Surely’s painful feet. Maybe these 12 years could have been easier. But until the last year, she was holding her weight, moving around well, and had two best redheaded buddies by her side, to face the herd, and those pasky humans. I think TGC did ok by Surely.