Saying goodbye to Clare

Bear with me dear reader, I just wanted to say goodbye to a new, yet old friend who passed away on Tuesday morning 19th May 2009.

Clare hadn’t been with us all that long, but had settled in quickly as one of the family and was very much loved by us all — especially by Max and Roo, our two Paint horses with whom we traveled America a year or two ago.

Clare was my wife Anita’s Irish Sport Horse (14 years old) and had been given to us by a good friend who needed her to have a good home — one where she would be able to enjoy a new vocation on the trail, across country and over the jumps. She and Anita were really developing a great understanding and I know she enjoyed her work as much as she loved being out in the paddock with our other two horses. In fact the three of them had become almost inseparable in a very short space of time, but not so bad that we couldn’t take one (or two) out for a ride without the others. There’d be a lot of whinnying for a while, but then everyone would settle down and everything would be fine.

I feel really sorry for Anita as her heart is broken at the loss of her companion and friend, but also for Max and Roo who had just begun to get used to the fact that every time we took Clare away from them, we would bring her back safe and sound. This time although she did come back, she wasn’t safe, nor was she sound.

Anita had taken Clare out on an early morning “walk and talk” ride at a friend’s place and although everything was fine on the ride itself, Clare had gone down in the trailer on the way home from a broken hind leg. We have no idea how long she had been down but hope that it was only a very short time, and when Anita returned to the barn to unload her horse, she found the poor animal in a state of shock and unable to get up.

The vet was called but the only thing that could be done was to put Clare to sleep and out of her misery — and this on a day when the rain finally stopped and the sun shone to make us feel life was worth living.

I was at work at the time and received a phone call from a tearful and distraught wife who told me the story as she was sitting under the shade of an old Hackberry tree, cradling her poor dead horse’s head in her arms.

For me, the news was equally heartbreaking especially as I had that very morning carried out the usual ritual of serving “breakfast” to all three of our beloved charges, but I know it could never be as bad for me as it was for Anita. She had poured her heart and soul into that horse and had so many wonderful plans for the two of them in the coming years, only to have a cruel twist of fate snatch it all away from her.

Fate is cruel at times and neither Anita, nor Clare deserved what had happened that day, sometimes things happen for no reason at all, but it doesn’t make it any easier to accept.

Only time and love will heal the broken heart and although I cannot have much control over time I, along with Max and Roo, can offer as much love as she wants/needs until the pain subsides. Until the day that the memories turn from cold reminders of a time best forgotten into warm, fond memories of happier days past. R.I.P. Clare, dearly loved and sorely missed by us all.