Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Death of my Mare










A few days ago my mare who was about 20 years old died. I had to put her down with a 22. Now I remember when I bought her at an auction. My step dad took me to the auction and let me bid. I was in my late teens at the time. I bid on the first two sets of teams coming through the ring and was the high bidder at around 2000$ per team. But after the bidding stopped on each team the owner didn’t think he wanted to part with the teams for that low price. Before the third team came out I was so in the rabbit hole that I had to ask my step dad to tell me what I bid on the last team . Then a pair of mares came out and I bid up to 1800$ and bought them. Mandy (the mare who just died) was one of the mares. I trained the team and was there for when each of them had a foal. And even milked them by hand when I took them away from the farm and their foals to pick up corn at other Amish farms. I spent years in the field with these horses until Mandy’s mate died and then I used Mandy for many years after that.



So the other day she didn’t come back to the barn and I had to go into the woods to find her. She had laid down and couldn’t get up so I tried to move her into a better position but she was just not going to be able to get up. At this point I felt I had to stop her suffering, or my suffering. At that point I couldn’t tell the difference. I think when you love, you create an opening for the suffering of the world to enter your life. And so my mom, step day and I were there when I put the gun to her head and pulled the trigger. It was a very sacred moment for all of us and when she stopped breathing, the pain and suffering stopped for all of us. And when I walked away the conviction of,”WE WILL MEET AGAIN GIRL” reverberated through my being.









6 comments:

  1. sorry about the death of your mare - but I've encountered places in the country where people live lives of grim determination too

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  2. Hi David, I have also encountered places in the country where people live lives of grim determination. I guess city grim determination freaks me out more than country grim determination.

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  3. oh you've never tried it - it's fun really - just fun without fields. Like my old neighborhood - dog poo and grafitti alley

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  4. Beautiful. I have shared it. Which part of USA do you live in as it sounds beautiful?

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  5. Hi Vince, I live in North Western Pennsylvania. It really is beautiful around here. So glad to have you share this experience with me. love sue

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  6. Hey David, I can handle cow manure a lot better than dealing with dog poo. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so they say.

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