Good-bye to a Great Grey Mare

Scuba never was a cover girl, though she once made the back page of EQUUS. She was the girl with the great personality. Not that she was ugly. She just tended to be on the drafty side, and there was always a better-looking horse in the barn. But there was never a horse I trusted more to bushwhack through the brush, jump over logs, or swim across a river. She was always the one to greet me with a throaty nicker, and the one who tolerated the cat and the chicken who wanted to lounge on her back and the goat who chewed her tail. When kids visited the farm, she was the one they brushed and the one they rode. Yesterday we said good-bye to Scuba after she suffered a severe case of laminitis. I’ll miss seeing the old gray mare and feeding her treats and listening to that throaty greeting.