My furry bundle of blessings

Hey everyone...I have some very sad news. This past Wednesday (Sept. 23), my darling horse Lady passed away of a ruptured intestine. However, God - as always - is faithful and has just reminded me of some very cool things. But more on that later.
On Tuesday evening, Mom and Dad noticed that Lady was shivering really hard (she never was a huge fan of the winter). They brought her into the garage (our lovely makeshift barn), dried her off, put a blanket on, and left her to warm up. However, Cowboy is a big mama's boy and couldn't bear to be parted from her and screamed piteously. Well, Lady never handled him screaming with any particular grace, so instead of risking her injuring herself (or breaking the garage), they returned her to the paddock where she obviously wanted to be. When we woke the next morning, she was listless, lethargic, and not interested in food. We called the vet and recieved instructions to monitor her carefully and call if something changed. (For the past week, she had been passing loose stools - something slightly concerning, but not terrible. I had been in contact with the vet and he didn't seem too concerned.) In the next 20 minutes or so, she had laid down in the paddock (which is a really bad thing when there's a concern that a horse is sick - particularly when they don't even try to get to their feet when you approach them.) It took us 30 minutes to get her to stand again; when she did, she was so weak she could barely remain on her feet. After the longest hour of my life, the vet arrived. It took four of us to get her out of the paddock onto a flat area where she could be examined - three men pushing her from behind and me at her head encouraging her to move forward. The intial examination found that she had sand colic (when horses ingest sand that stays in their intestine). The particular danger of sand colic is it can cause the intestine to rupture - at which point their system shuts down quickly. She was also very dehydrated. (We later found out that she was much more dehydrated than we knew - her blood was double the consistency it should be - and her protein levels were dangerously low.) The vet rehydrated her with horsey gatorade and said to keep our fingers crossed...we would know within four hours if she had ruptured or not. At three hours (almost to the minute), she passed blood - a confirmation of a rupture. So, instead of watching her die slowly over several days, we had to put her down. She died at 2:40pm that afternoon.

Now for the good part. (I hope some of you are still reading this after my very sad monologue.) I was thinking about her today and remembering what a blessing she had been to me throughout her life. (At times, a stubborn and obnoxious blessing, but a blessing nonetheless.) Here are some of my favorite examples....

I had prayed for two weeks for a horse when Grampa called and offered her to me for free

I was blessed with a foal from her

She taught me some of the most important lessons of my life

Some of our best rides were the ones I prayed about before getting on

If ever a horse had a sense of humor, she most certainly did

She always knew when I needed a horsey love and she would give it to me...likewise, she always knew when I needed a fight and would give that to me too (she was an appaloosa through and through)

Jesus has been preparing me for this day for a long time...I knew it was her last summer

She was not in pain; for the first time in her life, she didn't need a double dose of meds

I got to spend her last 45 minutes with her, loving her neck and scratching all the right places

It was very clear that it was her time...there was no doubt about her condition or the solution

It was a day I didn't have class, so I didn't have to make up anything for being with my horse

Daddy was also home that day already

Our last ride was practically perfect

So, thank you Jesus for my furry bundle of blessings. She was a joy!