Hello, my name is Jennifer and I would like to share with you the life of a remarkable horse. Her name was Mellow Might. I lost her yesterday, January 25, 2010. She was 40 years old. The day I first saw her I was a 10 year old child, I am now 37.
In a child's life they tend to remember the "First" experience of many things. Mel was my first best friend...I talked to her late into the night, sitting in her feed bucket on the wall in her stall at my childhood home in Ohio. I would sneak out to the paddock and lay on her back wishing on stars and watching meteor showers. She listened to all the stories of the boys that came in and out of my life. We cried and laughed and shared everything.
She was a fierce competitor. A machine on cross country when I evented, my guardian angel for my "immortal years, she made me invincible. Yet as responsive and elegant on a hunter course or in a dressage test. We won 2 state reserve championships in the hunter ring, three state championships in the dressage ring and my tack room to this day is filled with silver platters and ribbons from our days in the show ring.
I took her to Lake Erie College with me, she even piloted several riders to wins on the intercolligiate circuit...eveyone wanted to draw Melly. After college I moved to California and felt Mel would not be able to make the trip. I entrusted her to a dear friend with 2 small children. Mel was their teacher.
When I moved to the South, Mel was returned to me. Then her real job began. My daughter Jillian began riding her at 14 months old. The next year Melly took her in her first leadline class at the Gulfcoast Winter classic. A new first love, and new best friend was born in Mel. I often would just put Jilly on her back and Mel would just walk around with her. In her prayers every night it is, "God bless all the horses in the barn...and Melly.". I could not keep her away from my dear Mel, and I loved every minute of that! Then my son Jesse was born, he soon was sitting on Melly's back and at 16 months he was in his first leadline class on Melly - Jillian was riding a beautiful Friesian next to her brother on the little morgan cross and she fought tooth and nail to ride her Melly! But since she was more "experienced" at three years old, she then realized it would be safer for her baby brother to ride her horse! Both of my children adored her. The night before she died, Jesse, now 2 and a half, brought her in from her paddock.
The next morning at 6 a.m. my husband woke me. Mel could not get up. This occurred at times, but we would push her up and say...need to get the kids out here and cheer her up. It worked every time. But he and I knew this morning was different. I could see it in her eyes. She did get up and make it out to the paddock, she never would have wanted to spend her last hours in a stall (even though it was a 25 x 25 foaling stall). Her breathing was labored and she was sweating. I watched her and decided to call the vet out. My neighbor came over to stay with her while I helped my husband get the children off to their day care and when I went back out she was lying down in the sun very peaceful, her head in my neighbor's arms. I called the vet and told him to get to our farm as quickly as possible. Twenty minutes later I lost my first best friend, my first true love, my teacher that molded my life that I live.
I spent about an hour with her, laying next to her in the warm sun soaking up our last time to talk in our horse and human form. We buried Melly under a beautiful live oak on the back of our property near a small pond. The "bird girl of Savanna" statue watches over her grave just as it does in the Bonaventure Cemetary in Savanna, Georgia.
Today Jillian and I planted flowers there and sat until the sun was setting...and we both cried when we had to leave her, but we will visit every day. What a miraculous life she had...we had. I told Jillian that the angels took her to Heaven and she would now have wings like Pegasus, and we asked the angels if they could be purple. The breeze around us blew and I told Jillian, "I think the angels just said, "Yes."
Thank you for reading my story of our most treasured horse, Mellow Might.
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Mellow Might
