Dear Carole,

After I talked with you and you relayed Penny's desires about her upcoming euthanasia to me, I arranged a good-bye celebration at our barn. My husband and daughter helped and we brought flowering plants and food to the barn.

I put a note on our horse Penny's stall explaining we were going to say good-bye and praise her for her participation in our lives, as you had suggested. I also called people who had learned to ride on her, or who had shared her life with us, both adults and children. The children, now teenagers, made a book of pictures and poems for her. It was wonderful. I had not realized how many lives she had touched in our barn, or how many wonderful memories we had and still have of her.
 
Penny was not an easy horse for adults to ride. She expected us to know what we were doing. Except if you chucked your reins, grabbed her mane and said "save me." Then she would do anything in her power for you. That is how she took the little ones around, both over fences and on the flat. But I digress.

At her going away party we all munched in the barn aisle, Penny included, and then went to the arena were the flowers were set up in a 3/4 circle. I walked Penny, all groomed and trimmed in her dress sheet, into the circle. All her friends stood around on the outside. She walked over to each one and ceremoniously knocked over the plants in front of them. Then she stood in the circle for a few minutes while we spoke to her and related our stories and praise and joy in knowing her. After a bit she wanted to walk around the arena. She was walking very carefully and deliberately; it was not easy for her. I unclipped her lead rope and she rolled on the ground, and shook herself off, and came back to me and returned to the circle where we finished our good-byes.
 
Wednesday was the day I chose to put her down. There were too many complications from EPM and she was getting worse and worse. After we arrived at the clinic and I unloaded her and walked her inside, we visited a few minutes. Penny was agitated because she was the only horse there, but we spoke to her and she calmed down. Connie, one of her trainers who had loved her very much, and who works at the clinic, was the one who assisted the vet.

Later I was meditating with a few crystals and other healing stones. The quartz led me to a vision:

I saw a tree-lined path/road through a hilly or even mountainess area. The trees were bare and covered with ice. I became aware of a lady-more a spirit woman, almost elf-like. I felt I was there-but not there. Suddenly a horse appeared. It was Penny, in another form- a Mongolian/Chinese horse of old, small headed with a large muscular rump. She looked over her shoulder and bid me farewell. The elf woman was on Penny's back. I felt this was an old adventure Penny and I had shared in spirit together. I knew it had not ended well and I was crying when the vision cleared.

I continued meditating and became calm knowing Penny was my horse in another lifetime and another part of the world, in a timeless past. I was a man then and the lady I was helping was in danger. There was magic involved and Penny aided me. I was not allowed to see the ending because I know we died.

Penny gave me more than any mortal horse should have given. She helped me clear this old Karma. She aided me in ending the yearning and the loss that has always been part of my present life. Penny had a message for me; to alter my beliefs and accept that not all is here and now and reality is varied. Further, Penny cleared me to continue to research crystal healing and meditation practive. Her courage, the courage of her spirit, has extended to me in ways I didn't realize until now. I rescued her from a starving, bedraggled existence, and she rescued me from fear, physical frailty and defeat. I miss her enormously but know I was fortunate to have known her spirit it as long as I did-the spirit of the wind.

Your assistance, Carole was invaluable and I plan to continue providing crystals to others in my shop and communicate and heal with stones, devas, angels, Faeries and others who are connected to them, and to the Animal Kingdom. Our language may not be the same, but the connectedness with Love and Light is.
Thank you for helping me at this difficult time.