Goodbye Old Duke

You've been a good horse. . . (The kids just so happened to learn this sad horse song last week, so they tweaked the words and we've been singing the ballad ever since he died.) I tried explaining how he was getting old and that we'd probably let him go to sleep forever soon. Hudson asked how we'd do that and my response was not very polished and involved the word bullet. Disturbed Hudson retorted, "That's not asleep, that's dead." No one on the farm could put him down, so we ended taking him into the vet. Regardless, the ol' boy is finally out of his misery as he was beginning to suffer quite badly.

We found this ol' Appy named Duke a few years back. Dalanie affectionately called him Dukey. We made him part of our family. He was a wonderful beginner horse for our kids, as he was their first introduction to horses. He was so mellow and gentle that they were able to gain a lot of confidence with him. It's fun to look back and watch the kids grow alongside him. He didn't look like much, but he had a heart of gold. You don't find a horse like that very often.

We'll sure miss him.


Dalanie preferred to eat the rolled corn herself rather than feed it to Duke.