CJ and I have been friends since 2003, and this has hit me hard. CJ came to me then to ask if I would take her beloved Blackie if she was unable to care for her, and I told her I would without hesitation. It goes so far beyond this, as we came so much more on a personal level.
Her music made me laugh and smile. We would chatter away, and I would help her when I could. When it came to the loss of Blackie, I was there for her as well in many aspects along with others.
I have asked Fred to please whisper in her ear that I love her, and she will be forever in my heart and soul and that her music will always live in my heart. I know that this to some may not be enough, but I know CJ understands me and I her.
In her honor I will continue to fight for our horses and will do this till the lord tells me me I cannot do this any longer.
I pray for all of us, to give of us the strength to change those things we can and to accept those we cannot. May the angels welcome you with open arms.
CJ always told me that we had the most beautiful sunsets here and she had always wanted to see one. In HONOR of CJ we will be placing a bench under one of our pine trees facing west and next to this bench will be a post with a horse head and hitching ring for Blackie to stand next to her.
CJ I will miss you my friend, but I know you are at peace now, never to feel pain, and you will be singing with the Angels!
CJ wrote a story about her beloved horse, Blackie, and I'd like to share it with you:
The Best Horse I Never Rode
by Caroline Jaffe
You’ll have an idea how I regard critters if I tell you "The Story of My Grandfather And The Caterpillar." The family was waiting for flu shots in a second-floor walk-up doctor’s office on the West Side of Chicagah, in the 50's, when my grandfather noticed a caterpillar on the windowsill. He bothered the receptionist for a cup, then captured the thing and proceeded to walk down the stairs to release it. As he was coming back up the stairs, a strange lady in the waiting room was ranting, "What a crazy old coot, going up and down a flight of stairs for a caterpillar." My grandfather replied, "That caterpillar has just as much right to live as you or I do, lady."
I grew up an only child in a dog-loving family, with boxers for brothers; but once on my own I wound up with cats; more compatible with a swingin’ lifestyle, and a side-effect of hanging around stables, where needy cats and kittens abound.
I grew up privileged, no wish not granted, money no object, so naturally I had riding lessons and childhood horses. They went the way of all flesh, and I went to law school.
In the mid-70's, in my 30's, due to my horsey past, I was delegated to take a friend’s son for riding lessons. I took lessons along with him, and met Orange Sunshine, The Horse Who Changed My Life -- but that’s another story.
Since Sunny went lame and I acquired The Roan, and then Joe, George and Shanty (at least another story apiece . . .) -- I have never been horseless for long. And I had ALWAYS taken the first available horse I came across. Never shopped around.
After Shanty died in early Spring ’03, I decided this time I wouldn’t rush into anything, opting to shareboard a friend’s old Appie mare in the "old woods" so I’d have somebody to ride while I looked for the right horse for my old age. After consulting Buddy, the horse pro who found Shanty for me, I went to see Blackie, an aged Quarter-Horse type (no papers) mare. The owner, who had bought Blackie through Buddy and had boarded with him, built his own facilities and took Blackie with him. She was "bomb-proof," he put his grandkids on her and rode her in parades. However, he evidently had no idea how to care for horses; Blackie and the other horses there (other people’s horses, boarding there), looked extremely thin, like the starving horses rescued on Animal Planet. The owner claimed they were so thin because they needed to be dewormed, and it had been a hard winter for them outside (indoor facilities were newly ready). I had to wait to move her, as I didn’t have a place with trails and turnout lined up to board her. Places like that have waiting lists. I saw her loose, running around, active, and in the stall, and at that point, other than being very thin, she appeared normal. The owner assured me that he would feed her Equine Senior and get her dewormed. I set out to find the right place to keep her. I had to get her out of there.
She seemed extremely "herdbound" to her turnout mates, getting very agitated when separated from them – so, to avoid her having any negative experiences with me, I decided to wait to bond with her until AFTER we got her to a strange, new place.
On May first, when I got Blackie to a boarding stable in a southwest suburb of Chicago where I was paying extra for daily turnout, she still looked emaciated (I put a note on her stall, announcing I had just acquired her). She had an eye condition for which she needed eye ointment, and she would hold her head out of the stall for me, nice and low, to let me put the meds in. Didn’t even have to put her in cross-ties. She was getting this treatment several times a day, and the stable staff also reported how cooperative she was with them. For reasons explained below, I had great difficulty operating simple things like the buckle on a halter and the snaps at the ends of crossties. She was very patient with me, did not toss her head or fail to cooperate. She stood still for long periods of time for grooming, and seemed to enjoy and appreciate it, and let me pick her hooves one by one.
Once we were settled at the new facility, I went every day, close to 2 hours round trip, getting to know her. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was undergoing a medical crisis. Long story short, a tumor (shwannoma) was slowly growing in my spinal canal pressing on my spinal cord at about cervical vertebra 2 and 3. The immediate numbing effects in my right hand, I’d originally mistakenly attributed to side effects of a rotator cuff injury, from a terrible fall on my right shoulder, flipped over on icy sidewalk, picking up takeout at a neighborhood restaurant, St. Pat’s 2002. (Of all my horsefalls and car crashes – the only incident that left me really injured, still feeling the effects, was that one.) At the time I first started interacting with Blackie, my right hand and arm were getting number and number, and I was getting numb around my chest and shoulder, and down to the waist, and didn’t realize it then, but my left leg was also becoming affected; one day in the bathtub I noticed that I couldn’t feel heat in my left foot. I didn’t realize to what extent my balance and motor control were out of whack.
On the second day at the new stable, I was going to turn Blackie loose in the indoor ring. (The alleged turnout facilities turned out to be a joke; like a big dog run, with each horse promised no more than 15 minutes out a day; I was already searching for a barn with REAL turnout. Even at the cost of great trails . . . ) At this point, she did not know me at all. I hand-walked her from the barn she was in, to the separate barn that included a big indoor ring, with rows of stalls on both sides of an aisle around the perimeter. It was a very old facility; the concrete floor in the aisles was cracked and uneven. The stalls had dutch doors, so each horse could stick his or her head out. Someone was using the ring, so while I waited, I started to cross-tie Blackie.
As I held her on a leadline attached to her halter, and was trying to fasten one of the cross-ties to the halter loop, the horse whose head was about even with her butt, stuck his head out and poked her in the rump. She went up, pulling me off my feet; and still holding the leadline, I hit the floor and couldn’t get up. At that point – by training or instinct – Blackie froze. I had been talking to some people in the aisle at the far end of the barn and I wanted to let them know that although I wasn’t getting up, I was OK; I hollered, "Don’t worry, I’m OK, I can’t get up because she’s standing on my shirtsleeve!"
I nudged her and asked her to move over please, and she did, and I got up, and cradled her head in my arms and told her, "Thank you so much for not hurting me. I love you and will always take care of you."
10 days later -- 12 days after I rescued Blackie -- we moved to a top-of-the-line stable with REAL daily turnout and space to ride around a field on their property, albeit no real trails like I was accustomed to. But I could live with that, as I was still shareboarding that Appie mare. I knew it would be a while before I’d be able to ride Blackie; my new vet said she needed to put on at least a couple hundred pounds, and had to overcome anemia brought on by malnutrition. Just when she put on the weight and her blood tested normal and I was beginning to think about getting on her -- would dress her up in a bareback pad and hackamore to go for a walk and graze -- her left (front) knee was starting to look "big" and the vet said it was unlikely she would ever be ridable; she had only 15% range of motion in that knee. We did all the tests, x-rays, nothing could be done except to keep her as comfortable as possible.
All this time, I was getting more and more affected by what was growing in my cervical spinal canal; could hardly use my right hand; and that old mare would stand like a statue while I clumsily picked her hooves, groomed her, medicated her, and de-wormed her. I have never seen a horse more cooperative with the things that have to be done to keep her healthy. She treated me like a good critter treats a human child.
Finally I quit the neurologist who insisted my problem was carpal tunnel syndrome (I say he suffered from carpal tunnel vision), found a new neurologist and discovered just in time, the tumor that was slowly paralyzing me. In the course of the diagnostics, the originally-scheduled carpal tunnel surgery was canceled when a routine chest x-ray revealed something suspicious in my lung (it’s still there, and still not causing any problems; I think it’s scar tissue from an old horse accident). On the day I had a thyroid biopsy (another false alarm, but it had to be investigated), I still didn’t know I would soon need ortho-neuro-surgery to remove the tumor; didn’t know they would had to remove multiple cervical vertebrae to reach the thing, then put me back together with titanium. But the minute that thyroid biopsy was scheduled, I knew I had to find a plan for Blackie, should I turn out to be unable to take care of her. It’s one thing to rest assured that your extended family will take in your cats, but quite another matter with a horse, especially an unridable horse.
As luck would have it, when I got home from the biopsy, on Animal Planet (I always leave it on for the cats when I’m gone), there was Sonya Fitzpatrick, "The Pet Psychic," visiting Miracle Horse Rescue. I wasn’t "on line" yet, so I phoned a friend who was, and got him to google the facility to find a website and phone number. I immediately called, explained my situation, and Stephanie, in charge, agreed to take Blackie if and when I couldn’t care for her. WHAT A RELIEF! When I found soon after, that I needed surgery, I was able to go into it knowing that no matter how I came out, that sweet old horse would have a good place to live out her life.
I am relatively unscathed and able to ride my friend’s mare, while Blackie remains a pet. She runs, rolls, acts perfectly normal, until you get a look at her left foreleg. Looks pretty awful, but she compensates so well that she even sounds "sound" when you listen to her hoofbeats on the cement barn aisle. She’s on a low maintenance dose of a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory, and is very contented. She "talks" for treats.
I’ve always kept my horses as long as they had a good quality life, whether or not they were fit to ride. There was never a question that I would keep Blackie. But the other side of the coin is, if I hadn’t been so fortunate with my surgery, and turned out unable to ride, I would still have had a wonderful equine companion. As I say about her in a song, "She’s the Best Horse I Never Rode."
About The Author:
Caroline Jaffe, a/k/a CJ of The Mythic Figs. Age 65; voluntarily disbarred lawyer, devoted to music and animals. Lives in the basement of the band house in Hammond, IN with 10 rescued cats, most bottle-raised. See http://www.mythicfigs.org for music info site, and for info on the rescue facility mentioned in the story see http://www.miraclehorse.com . CJ’s original keyboard/vocal CD, "Horses in Bondage," is free, with donations requested to Miracle Horse Rescue, Inc., a federally-recognized sec. 501(c)(3) not-for-profit corporation.
CJ, I love you with all my heart. You are my sunshine and have brought joy into my life, even at my lowest point and I hope I have done the same for you.
I love you my friend, my sister, my confidant.
I will continue the battle! Your fight shall live on.
Stephanie and Robert Pierce
Miracle Horse Rescue
October 25, 2009
