The Last Call

We made the excruciating decision last week that should have been made a month ago to let Jessie go. I see her now and realize she told me a month ago she was ready and I ignored her. Now we are dealing with extreme heat (we don’t normally get 90s this time of year) and the flies are vicious. The blood sucking flies don’t normally come out until August and they are already out. So now I feel even worse that she’s had to endure weight loss, heat, and now flies. But I wasn’t ready to let her go and I wasn’t ready yet to deal with Diavlo’s impending depression.

His depression is going to be sever and long lasting. He’s in a herd with Mayhem so he’s not alone. I could put him in with the big herd and see if anyone takes an interest in him. But that leaves Mayhem alone and he knows her and there’s some comfort in knowing one another. Although Diavlo did seem to like Chaos (another big black horse probably reminded him of Pepper), I don’t know that Chaos has the compassion needed to comfort another horse that is grieving.

To say I am worried is an understatement. The day itself is going to be hard enough and Jessie isn’t exactly happy about being loaded into a trailer. When we hauled her to the vet last fall to get her teeth floated, she pawed the entire way there and the entire time we were checking out Ransom. We are also supposed to have a chance for rain on Friday (typical for that weekend since I’m normally in Estelline to perform with Dakota Thunder Mounted Drill Team at the Estelline Rodeo, which was cancelled due to COVID-19). But I suspect it will rain so we’ll have to deal with that added stress as well.

But I looked at her yesterday and I could tell in her eyes that she was tired. Whether it was from the heat, the flies, the weight loss, or just being tired, she’s ready to go. I look at her now and see how drastically she dropped weight and wished I’d made the decision sooner. We always keep them a tad too long instead of help them cross over sooner. I know I’ve done it time and again where I’ve waited longer than I should have. Sadly, when they give me the sign, I need to act fairly quickly. It shows their quality of life is not what it used to be and since I am their care taker, I need to do what’s best for them. Making that decision and not ignoring their request is tough to do but needs to be done. I have no idea why I turned a blind eye to Jessie’s request a month ago. Maybe I was wishing and hoping for the best. Maybe I didn’t want to face the inevitable. I don’t know. But I know I did her wrong in waiting as long as I did.

I’m sure that I will be posting more this week, but we will be saying goodbye to Jessie on Friday late morning. I’m not sure if we’ll beat the heat and the storms but it’s scheduled and everything is lined up. In years past, we’d simply make the phone call to the vet. Now it’s a phone call to the vet and a phone call to my uncle to get the excavator lined up. With rendering no longer an option, we now have to weight quality of life a bit sooner and make sure that we aren’t interfering with not just the weather, but farming schedules. We are blessed with having family who’s willing and has the machinery to help with the final part of sanctuary life. Before when it was the vet taking care of it, the decision was hard enough but now without rendering, I have to ask for favors. We could have the vet hire someone to take them away but it would be to the landfill and although it would solve the problem, it doesn’t seem as dignified and it more than doubles the cost. At some point, we may be forced to go that route but for now, we will stick with begging to bury them on family land.

For now, we are going to spend our days pampering Jessie and doing our best to make her feel comfortable in her final week on this earth.