Tomorrow is the day.

We set the date today for Gogo's final farewell. Tomorrow afternoon will be her last on earth. It's too soon, but my vet is going out of town, and I want him to be the one to do it. He's been such good support throughout this entire ordeal. In a lot of ways, I am ready. In some, I will never be.

She's tired, and hurting. Her demeanor has really changed in the past week.... she is ready for it to all be over. Every time I've seen her in the past week, this has been her attitude:



That is the face of a mare ready to let go.

I had one little last hoorah on her today, a bareback jaunt with a few other people in the arena for a few minutes. We had 6 inches of rain yesterday (I KNOW, right??), so everything was mush, and she was covered in mud. But she was happy to go for a ride, and so was I.




I gave her a bath, and she seemed to enjoy herself. She won't stay clean overnight, but I did it mostly for me. I just wanted to spend some more time with her.

Tomorrow afternoon, she goes to the vet for the final time. She won't be coming home. There are a lot of little children running around at our farm, and there's no really private place for this to all happen without some poor child stumbling upon an awkward scene at some point during the whole thing, so we decided to do this at the vet clinic instead. There is a local pet cemetery that will be picking her up from the clinic and burying her. Cremation is too expensive, so it's nice to have this option available. It will also be nice to be able to visit an actual physical place, like I can do with my boys when I am home in Michigan. (They are buried side by side at the place where I grew up riding.)

It's awful. And sad. And miserable. And the right thing to do. Thanks to everyone who has sent me well wishes.... you don't know how much it means to me. I have my Mo here too, so I'll be all right.

Send her some good thoughts before she goes over the Bridge. I'll be with her until the very end.