Yesterday Sugar was sick, and we are not too sure why. She literally laid down in the dirt in front of my daughter’s car all afternoon. It’s so interesting to me because my older daughter, the non-horsey one, is the whole reason we have Sugar. When she was a pre-teen girl, she had a vivid dream about a Palomino horse. Then about 2 weeks later, we got a message on Facebook from a girl who was trying to find a new home for her Palomino mare. Sugar was owned by one of the wranglers who worked at Zapata Ranches, one of the largest ranches in the world, down by the Great Sand Dunes here in Colorado. She was used for trail riding, but before that she had been in Wyoming working on a cattle ranch. Now, however, she was getting a little too old, and sour, to safely take people on trail rides, so it was time to find her a new home. Lucky for us we weren’t homeless anymore by then, so it seemed like something we could manage, so the girls and I took our trailer down to this huge beautiful ranch, signed the ownership transfers papers, and we suddenly had another horse for 1 dollar.

So my daughter and Sugar have always been close, we say she manifested her into our lives. I remember the first week we had her, my daughter braided her mane and put multi-colored hair dye into each of the braids, so cute!

Since then she has been a great addition, because she is the one we can always count on to be safe and reliable with new volunteers. We are not sure if she ever had dental work her entire life, because she has terrible teeth, and chronic diarrhea. No matter where she has lived, or what food she is on, she always has loose stool. And whenever the equine dentist comes out to work on her teeth, she always advises me against doing her teeth myself, as Sugar has some of the most complicated dental problems of any horse she has ever seen. But that’s ok. We just pay for a dentist to do her teeth although I am a vet and could do it myself, and we clean her messy butt, dragging buckets of hot water out to the barn even in the dead of winter to help make sure she stays comfortable because we love her all the same. So when my daughter was sending me pictures of her laying down, I was very concerned.

But I was at the hospital working, so I had to just give her instructions, which was find the pain meds and then via Facetime help instruct her on how to get them into Sugar. Well, Sugar did not like that at all, and decided to get up and behaved normally the rest of the day. But I am still a little worried.

We really don’t know how old she is, and with her teeth, and her constant sore tummy, there is no telling what else could be happening with her on the inside. I know we will have to say goodbye to her one day. I just hope it’s not soon. We will have to say goodbye to all of them one day, and that is 9 painful packages of heartbreak standing around on 4 legs that will each, in their time, expire.

Today I am grateful Sugar seems to be doing better, I am grateful we have her at all and get to give her a comfortable life where she is cherished, I am grateful for the unique bond she has with my daughter, I am grateful I have had the means and ability to care for her over the past few years, even when times were tough, and I am grateful I have the knowledge and tools available to me to help keep them as safe and comfortable as I possibly can.

As we get close to Thanksgiving, what are you grateful for? First and foremost I hope you are grateful you woke up today. We all should have that each day, every single morning when we wake up. Because it means no matter how difficult life seems, no matter how bleak, there must be a purpose in the universe for you to fulfill, or you would not be here. What is that purpose? What good are you meant to bring into the world? What lesson do you still need to learn, and master? Learning lessons is not always fun, going through difficulties sometimes can really suck, but we have to know there is a message within it for us, and it’s our job to figure out just what that lesson is, so that we can grow stronger, better, wiser, and give back to someone else who might be going through the same thing, but has not yet learned what you have learned about how to handle it. So what can your wisdom and knowledge contribute to the world today?

​I hope you will join us for Pet Pictures with Santa the sign up is here https://www.resqranch.org/pet-pics-with-santa-signup and if you have not checked out our Shopify store, we are planning to have our very own Black Friday sale! So check it out today, https://m0ztfs-p7.myshopify.com/ and come back to buy your pet’s Christmas gifts on Friday! And if there is something you want to buy that is not in the store, just drop us a line and we will do our very best to add it to the inventory before Friday, how’s that for pretty cool!

Have a wonderful day you Animal Loving Angels, and thank you for being here!

​​​​​​Check out my YouTube channel for a daily "Good Morning!" from the rescues and lots of free tips and training resources. https://www.youtube.com/@the1drq