Oh the things that happen in a month's time

HI everyone...I know that I said I would post more often and here we go, a month later.  Damn life, gets in the way of all the fun.

The biggest news is that I lost one of my horses last week.  We had the vet humanely euthanize Joey on Mother's Day.  (Great day, that was). A few weeks prior, he got really depressed and we watched him for awhile. He would brighten and then seem to get deeper in his funk.  We noticed he was moving a little bit funny, he seemed to step on himself a little bit so I got a recommendation from our farrier for a vet.  I called her out on a Thursday to do an examination and it wasn't positive.  Cutting to the chase, he developed some neurological problems.  He didn't know where he was in space, whether he was up, down or sideways. That was why he was stepping all over himself.  As she put it, I had a whole horse from the ears forward.  His neurogical symptoms were severe. She thought it could be a few things, Lyme Disease, EPM or he broke a vertebrae in his neck causing pressure on his spinal cord that affected his hind quarters.  We decided to put him on bute and have him tested for lyme, which came back negative.  We never did get to test for EPM but that was a long shot because our other 2 horses exhibited no signs of the disease and they eat the same food and sleep on the same bedding. Our guess is that he injured himself or his vertebrae was compromised by his age. He was 29.
To make a very long and painful story short, he got worse as the week passed and on Saturday, Dave found him laying in his stall.  He had fallen down and couldn't get back up.  He finally got up after much exertion and Dave and I had THE DISCUSSION.  Both of us agreed that if he fell down when Dave wasn't home during the week, I couldn't handle it by myself.  So we decided to wait until Monday to do the right thing.  On Mother's Day early morning, David found him again laying in his stall.  He never got back up.  He tried but he didn't have the strength.  So we called our friend out to help us, called the vet and then had to find someone with an excavator to dig a grave.  Fortunately, someone was willing to do that.  So at 2:30 PM on Sunday afternoon, after many, many tears and saying good bye to him,   I let Mighty Joe Navajo pass peacefully away.

I miss him more than I can tell you and his death has really played a number on my head.
I get that he was just a horse.  But he was MY horse and until you bond with such a creature, you will never know how big of a hole you have in your heart when they are gone.  I miss his nickers when I would come into the barn and he would lay his head in my arms every morning just to say hi.  His neck was big enough to cry onto and his ears were big enough to listen to all my secrets (which he never told a soul).  He was gentle, kind and honest.  He took care of my son who was just 4 years old when he rode him in big shows in Syracuse.  He took care of me when I was scared and so was he when we tried new things.  He always gave me more than I asked for and I hope that I did the same for him.

Anyway...I'm in a small stitching slump now, I haven't picked up a needle since the first part of May.  I started another small, even though I have eleventy dozen WIPS.  I get excited when looking at all of your beautiful work and reading all of your stitchy posts but I am "MEH" when it comes to my own stitching.
I'm thinking seriously of selling off most of my stash and just keeping what I think I want.  I don't know what to do.

So, I'm going to take some pictures of what I've stitched and post them. Maybe that will help. At least I will share them with you instead of sad news.