I guess this is an odd post to write while still firmly in depression, but so it goes.

A lot of things went right.

Good: I had a truck and a trailer. I took the truck to the barn, and the trailer lives at the barn. I didn’t have to rely on anyone else to haul Fetti to the vet. (I’m sure I could have gotten help, but it’s nice to take out that factor.) I’ve hauled enough in the last six months that even while having an emotional breakdown I could haul safely solo. It was my first time hitching up the trailer without help from my partner. It wasn’t perfect, but I knew how to do it, I called him to check that I’d ticked all the boxes and didn’t make any dumb mistakes, and it was fine.

Something to improve on: I need a second set of truck keys. If I had taken the car, I would probably have had my truck keys with me – adding 45min to me turning around to get the truck instead of just calling my partner to bring it. Thankfully this wasn’t the situation I was in, but it’s something I can do to mitigate potential future disaster.

Good: Fetti loaded, no questions asked. I spent zero time worrying about if we could get her on the trailer. The gal holding her while we hooked up was worried for us, and I think offered to help, and I took the horse and we walked onto the trailer. Done. We live in fire country. I will be continuing to work with Polly to make sure she loads the same way. So far so good, but I don’t take it for granted. The more we do it, the more reliable she will be.

Good: My paddocks are pretty visible at the barn to other boarders, and others at the barn knew what her normal looked like and flagged colic symptoms to me as soon as they noted it.

Something to improve on: My phone number isn’t posted on their stall door, or my name, or the horse’s name.. I will be buying a stall sign with that information. The trainer that noticed happened to have my number, but we’re still new enough to the barn that most folks don’t.

Good: I knew, at least vaguely, what steps I was willing to take in terms of treatment. When our home vet asked if taking her to the clinic was an option, I could say yes without internal debate – if that was going to give her a better shot, I would do it. Vet gave that a strong yes. We went. No need to discuss other options. When discussing treatments at the clinic, I was able to be clear that I didn’t want heroic measures to save her. I felt very strongly that surgery on a 25 year old horse would be an unfair ask. I was also able to be clear that surgery wasn’t 100% off the table; if there was something that wasn’t complicated that would have great odds of good recovery and quality of life, I was open to it. I had thought a lot of this through over the last bunch of years as good friends had older horses that went downhill either slowly or quickly. With older horses, it’s almost guaranteed that someday you’ll have to make these decisions, and it’s so much easier to not be making them while buried in stress and emotions. The vets were great about laying out options clearly and talking me through their thought processes/concerns. There was no pressure to do surgery/not do surgery. I made it clear early where I felt my limits were at. They were able to give information to help me make informed decisions – “This would be an exploratory surgery – and all colic surgeries are but this more so than most” and “The reason to do surgery would be to say that we’d tried everything” – all paraphrased, obviously, I have summaries in my head and no specifics from last week. “This is a red flag and here’s what we’d do, but here’s a different red flag and it complicates things for reasons.”

Something to improve on: Polly is not insured yet. Fetti wasn’t insured due to her age (no regrets on this either, this was the only incident in all my years with her that got expensive at all). Polly isn’t insured because I haven’t gotten around to it. This is something I need to investigate and act on.

I have ride photos from every ride that offered them, digital art from Emilie, a framed portrait from Nicole. I have a puzzle to put together and frame with a photo from our last ride, but that’s been too bittersweet to deal with and may still be a ways off. Another boarder got some recent photos of us on the trail when we went out with her, nothing formal, but so valuable. Don’t wait for the perfect time. Buy the memories. And buy from vendors who will work with you when you ordered the most fabulous new neon pink browband and then realized that adding more neon pink into your life right now is a terrible mistake and perhaps we could shift the whole thing to be Polly’s colors instead please and thank you. More on grief-purchases later, that one deserves its own post.

I told my boss on Tuesday that I was probably out Wednesday, and updated her Wednesday morning that I was definitely out for the day. (A close coworker may have beat me to it. I’m intensely grateful for social media letting me not have a hundred of these conversations, and just dropped the updates a few places instead.) Fabulous boss proceeded to reschedule the handful of meetings I had lined up through the end of the week and told folks that asked that I was out on bereavement leave. Functionally correct, bypassed the bureaucracy, got the job done (even if it doesn’t actually meet criteria, but .. good enough). This could have been so much harder had I felt obligated to do work things while an emotional wreck. I’m still slowly letting folks know who didn’t see it on social media. It doesn’t get any easier, but at least it’s fewer conversations this way.

I’m not ignoring all your comments; I read, love, appreciate. I’m fine til I’m not, and then I crash hard, and apparently comments/replies are still on the list of things I’m not coping with. Polly’s next vet visit is next week; keep your fingers crossed for us.