sad week

A friend of ours and owner of the sweetest horse here on the ranch had a heart attack and died on Monday.He was a big, beautiful, gentle giant just like his horse.(see sept and october for pics of both.) Roger slipped on the ice on New Years Eve and hurt his knee. I called him on Monday to see how he was. He was in good spirits and guffed about how he wasn't even drunk at the time! That was about 10 am. They say he died at between 12 and 3pm. I may have been the last person to speak to him. We didn't know Roger for long but we felt a closeness to him and his horse that has us feeling a deep and painful loss. Roger helped us out a lot with heavy earth moving work around the ranch. In October his contribution to our big clean up was enormous. There is no way we could have done it without him. And just recently, with the onslaught of winter snow and wind, once again he was out there clearing the way for us to keep this ranch going. We are truely blessed to have had Roger in our life even for the short time we have known him. He will be missed terrible. We still have Tiny to remind us of his grand stature and we will ensure Tiny enjoys the best quality of life that we can bring him for the rest of his days. Roger's very good friends Amy, Sara and Ranie have offered to share his board but as it stands good ole Rog with all his hard effort has paid him up at least until the spring. The girls are setting up a 'Tiny fund' for the extras he will need. Seems to me that special caring people grow wild in this part of the country.

On Wednesday night Storm, one of the horses here on the ranch finally died after sufferring chronic bouts of colic over the passed few months. Her very caring and loving owner is grieving quite naturally. It was never hard to see that the two had an incredible bond. We are all very sad for him and the loss of a very beautiful horse. She is at least free from suffering and at rest now.

In comparison to the misfortunes above this may seem of little concern but seems to have started this whole run of adverse occurences. On Thursday of last week Mernie backed over a letter box in his company truck. This sort of thing doesn't go down very with a company trying to maintain a shining image and safety reputation. Which I think it does have. So there was a lot of paper work and hullabahlu about it all. Mernie of course went straight to work to make things good. He is a very responsible person and not one to take something like this lightly. He is also a very capable and careful driver but with the snow and all that nasty stuff that winter is dishing out right now, things like this are bound to happen. Maybe not in a perfect world.

If it is true that misfortunes came in threes we should be Ok now.