Back in April 2014 we were horse hunting as we’d just purchased our dream property with 2 stables and several acres of land and I wanted to ride again after a 30 year break.
My confidence was quite low after all those years not riding, so the intention was to buy an older, semi-retired plod as a pet to do some gentle hacking with, but fate had other ideas!
Someone pointed us at a local rescue that had a 3/4 year old filly that they had saved from starvation over the previous winter, who now needed re-homing. We went along to meet her and when they opened the stable door, she just gently whickered at us and that was that, in May we had a very thin, quite feral filly come to live with us!
The rest of that year was spent gradually building up her weight and confidence, and then at the end of the year we had her professionally broken in and she came back in mid Jan, ready to start to ride. I was very rusty and she was very green, but somehow we instilled enough confidence in each other to start going for quiet rides with the dog leading the way.
From there on in, she became a treasured family member, who enjoyed her gentle hacks, but eating and cribbing were her real passions. She had a huge personality, was a typical opinionated mare and would even let us know in autumn when she needed to be stabled overnight..!!
It was a normal February morning and we were outside sorting all the animals, when Chris noticed Kitty wasn’t quite right even though she’d eaten her breakfast okay.
We took her for a little walk to see how she was, and she went down twice. Called the emergency vet out for a suspected colic, by the time he arrived about 40 minutes later we were virtually holding her up walking around the yard.
Over the next 2 hours the vet monitored her and administered drugs and then decided she looked a bit more comfortable and left. Within an hour of him leaving she was worse than ever and by the time the second vet arrived there was nothing she could do. She took one look and said she needed to be PTS straight away.
We just couldn’t believe how quickly we lost her and in such traumatic circumstances. It was such a difficult time, but I do take comfort from wearing my jewellery and showing it off to people, so thank you very much.
Many Thanks, Jill, October 2021
