Corn marks on my heart....

Until I started horse shopping this past spring I had never really heard of a roan horse. My world was pretty much sorrels, paints and appys. I accidently fell across an ad for a red roan, Rocky, and was intrigued. Not only did something about them catch my eye but also my heart. As I read more about the color pattern (a roan is a horse whose solid color is mixed with white hairs) I learned how that their coloring is really the history of their life, roans wear their story for everyone to see. Not only does the proportion of color to white change yearly, but every interaction they have also changes them. Anytime a roan horse is bumped, bitten or injured the area around the wound is changed. It grows back in solid instead of roan. These permanent reminders are call corn marks. They illustrate the battles a roan has fought and survived in their life.

I couldnt have been more estatic when my dream horse, B'sheret, turned out to be a red roan. He had great breeding, great training and he was mine. All that is here in the blog, I wont repeat it all. But what I didnt know 6 weeks ago when we brought him home was that it was me who was going to end up with the battle scars to carry the rest of my life. That I was the one about to change.

Unfortunately in the last week I have to make a heart breaking decision to return B'sheret to his previous owners. In the short time we had had him his stifle had locked twice and despite our serious attempt at conditioning him we didn't seem to be making progress, and I was not willing to go to the extremes of blistering or surgery, I didn't feel it was fair to him at his young age. So yesterday with the heaviest heart ever we sent him back home.

I have spent a lifetime facing disappointment and pain, I get it life isn't fair and comes with no guarantees, but for all I have been through in my life this feels like one of fate's cruelest twists. I have never worked as hard on anything in my life as I have learning to ride and show and getting to the point of having my own horse and I do feel robbed now of that. Yes there are other horses out there, yes everything happens for a reason, I have heard all the platitudes and at some point I will probably look back and see this as a good thing, will see the purpose, but at this moment I'm not there. I just feel lost in all this. I have built my life over the last few years around horses and riding and for the first time in over 2 years I woke up this morning with no horse in my life. I am not sure what to do with that. For something I never had most of my life I now feel this empty void  and unending sadness.

A friend said the other day "this will leave a mark" when I told her I was returning B'sheret, she was right, this is my corn mark, a part of me I will always carry, the good and the bad, I am changed and B' will never be forgotten from the story of my life.