Bailey, it was an Honour

 It has been a terribly hard week for me.  On May 13th, I had to say good-bye to my beloved thoroughbred, Blizzard, at the age of 23. He had been with me for 18 years, all of them wonderful.

On Monday, his stablemate and best pasture buddy Bailey began to colic, and it went sideways fast. We worked on him throughout Monday, with the vet, and throughout the night.   

.At 6 a.m. Tuesday morning, following complications from a colic, our beautiful 26 year old Bailey (Diamond in the Rough) laid down in green pastures.He did not wait for the vet. He heard the distant call, and followed his stable buddy and best pasture-mate Blizzard out of the whinnying green stables. 

This was a horse to dream about, his entire life, from his start in Ireland, to his jumping career in the Eastern US, to his eventing days in Ontario. 

He came to us to teach Kelly List to be a fearless cross country rider. He handed wings out for free to his other 'jockeys' and that list is long. Special hugs to Krystina Clarke, who loved him so, and who helped him on his final journey. As age shortened his stride, he went on to teach so many more people so many things. Gracious and forgiving with beginners, fearless and bold with the more advanced, he taught with patience and good humour everyone who was honoured to sit on his back.

 In the stable, he was beloved of all, with his constantly wobbly nose that he used to give the best back-rubs ever, his cheerful sense of humour, and his unfailing attitude to please, this horse will be most sadly missed by very many. 

Myself included, as he collapsed from toxic shock and died with his head in my arms and took a chunk of my heart with him where he's gone. RIP Bailey.

And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
In the sun that is young once only,
Time let me play and be
Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,
And the sabbath rang slowly
In the pebbles of the holy streams.

All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air
And playing, lovely and watery
And fire green as grass.
And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars
Flying with the ricks, and the horses
Flashing into the dark.

And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all
Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
The sky gathered again
And the sun grew round that very day.
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm
Out of the whinnying green stable
On to the fields of praise.