A Hard Call

 I received a call today from the lady that bought Soul's 2019 colt by Evan and this was a hard hard call to take. He was diagnosed with melanoma that has already metastasized into his lymph nodes. He isn't going to turn 2 until April and I have NEVER heard of a yearling having melanoma. I'm posting this to ask any of my readers if they have ever seen or even heard of this. The colt was born black and is slowly graying. I've seen older gray horses live years with melanoma under the tail but the vet said this is aggressive and spreading rapidly and told the owner there is no treatment. The owner is devastated. She loves him and he loves her. When he sees her he comes galloping up to her for attention.                                                     This morning after the walk I went to the Berean office to get the Bibles entered. Skip came and stuffed and wrapped them while I entered and printed out the labels. I was glad he came it took both of us to figure out how to print the postage stamps for the Bibles. Once they were dropped off at the Bartonville post office I picked up a few groceries and headed home. It is another very cold day starting at 6 degrees this morning for our walk but warmed up nicely to a whopping 12 degrees for our high. I'm very thankful for the wood burners. Instead of warming up by Saturday we are again going to be below zero the forecast for Sunday is a low of -12 and a high of -1. We also had another 2 inches of snow today.  We picked up mom for church. David had the message on the Acts Bible study of Paul's second missionary journey. It was snowing again when we got out of church and snowed all the way home. Today I am remembering our 2nd and 3rd Friesian mares Sanna and Samantha. Mark and I drove all the way to Florida to buy them. They were both 17 years old and both had been imported from the Netherlands years before. Sanna was 16.2 hands and Samantha 16.1. Pictured first is Sanna.

We bred her to Raven and got an absolutely gorgeous filly.

She was a gracious mare, sweet mare, very well behaved and beginner safe. She was ridden in parades even with a foal by her side.

Sanna went on to have 4 fillies for us then we sold her in foal to a wonderful retirement home and she had a colt for her new owner. Samantha we didn't do quite as well. She got pregnant but lost the first pregnancy which was a filly at 9 months. We were just sick about that. Then she started pooling urine in her uterus which prevented pregnancy and had to have a surgical procedure Dr. Hoerr called channeling to make sure the urine would be expelled correctly. That worked, she got pregnant and had a filly for us but by that time she was 20 years old. We bred her again and sold her in foal with that filly by her side to a lady that wanted to have her as a therapy horse. She had another filly for her new owner. Samantha's first filly is pictured below the morning of her birth. 

Below Rhoda is riding her at Bridlewood.

We were honored to have the opportunity to own both of these mares. Pictured below is Sarah riding Samantha, Monica riding Jenis and Sandy riding Sanna.