Dead Horse

Dead Horse
No, this isn’t the figurative dead horse (as in, to beat).  Sunday I spent the better part of a very tiring day walking the farm looking for a horse that we were sure had passed away.  Doc, Brandon, and myself basically started at one end, and doing basically a full search grid for her (Actually, it started with Brandon and I – Doc was hauling hay, which takes a while).  I used my iPhone’s GPS feature to kinda track how close Brandon and I were getting to covering all the area – in the wooded areas of the farm, you only get a maximum of 1/4 of an acre visibility at a time, so we tried to be pretty good about keeping a straight line, etc.
Evergreen was 28 years old (she’s a warm blood, so depending on what exact breed, they have a lifespan of between 25 and 30 years) and had started having problems keeping weight on over the summer.  She was getting rail thin, and despite feeding her 4 scoops of grain a day (most of the mares get 1 to 1 1/4, or up to 3 if they are still feeding a yougn’ and are thin).  Doc knew she wasn’t going to make it through the winter.  However, she didn’t make it that long – she failed to come up to feed on Tuesday of last week, and never showed up again.
So we find her clear in the farthest back south west pasture.  It will be just a bit before she can be buried, since there more than one swollen creek between where the tractor with the loader is and where she’s at.
Finding Evergreen was the expected part, and is just “one of those things.”
About 200 yards from there, a colt (Bochas) had attempted to jump a fence and failed. He got both of his back legs caught up in the fence, then it appears he somehow managed to flip himself back over the fence, completely entangling both back legs, and there he died.
FUCK.
Talk about one of those random stupid fucking things.  

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