Hello from Heaven

Case Note No. 5: June 20, 2021      
     Hello, this is Ms. AAngyl. I am still the same being you came to know during my Earthly incarnation as Margaret's blogging therapy horse, Half-Arab National Show Horse VJ Eightdaysaweek, aka Angel, most recently living with she and Johannes in my house on Shore Road. But last Thursday, June 17, I had a flight to catch, back to the ascended realms. I have now returned to the Unicorn Kingdom (the other UK, LOL) where I continue to work with Margaret from the other side. Naturally, before packing my saddlebags and flying away, I made sure that she was sufficiently trained in telepathic communication to continue our mission, as mutually agreed upon in our Soul Contract.
   This is Margaret's first experience with grief after the untimely loss of a family member. I had just reached the age of 19 years on April 2, 2021, whereas these days many well-cared-for domesticated horses can live and work well into their 30s. She had such high hopes for me, and there was still so much we wanted to do together! But the Creator had other plans for us. Like most people on Earth, she has much to learn about the subject of ascending from physical incarnation in third-dimensional reality to life in the higher realms, where the Soul never dies. And about how to find peace on Earth after the devastating loss of a loved one who is no longer in a body. I am in her life to teach her a thing or two about that. But first, I wish to tell all of you about the beautiful days we shared, and to thank all the people who supported me during my Earthly sojourn, and transition.
    Therapy animals, with horses being no exception, are as tough as nails. They will suffer great pain, and are even willing to die for their loved ones, rather than admit that their time has come, and ask for help in leaving. Being a prey animal, the horse is hard-wired to hide any physical limitations until it can no longer do so. In the wild, of course, once any  vulnerability is apparent, ever-compassionate Mother Nature intervenes and swiftly ends the suffering. But it's not that simple for a therapy animal to let go when beloved human beings are involved, because we have such an emotional bond.
     Margaret and Johannes and their superb equine support team lovingly cared for me for three-and-a-half years after I was diagnosed with Cushing's Disorder (Pituitary Pars Intermedia Disorder, PPID) in June, 2018. I received the best available care. They were advised from the outset that Prascend (the prescription medication for this disease) could slow, but not halt, its inevitable progression. And so, hoping for the best, we all kept calm and kept smiling. After I started the treatment, Margaret and I shared many good times, both with her on my back (dressed in style in both English and Western tack), and with me in harness training, in preparation for pulling her in a cart. I was boarded with Nadine at Reaching Strides Equestrian Centre in Port Hood, but Margaret and Johannes built me my own special two-stall heated barn on their Shore Road property, so that we could share quality time as a family whenever I came to visit. The barn was completed last fall, and in late October, 2020, I moved to the home they had made just for me, spending my final Earthly winter and spring with them.
     Being an especially sensitive senior horse originally from Florida, the cold winter weather in Nova Scotia, Canada was hard for me. While Margaret and Johannes were wintering down south in 2018-19, as a consequence of my PPID, I developed acute laminitis, a painful inflammatory condition that affected the inner lining of my front hooves. Some horses recover from laminitis, and others go on to develop irreversible changes to the coffin bone and other essential hoof structures, ultimately resulting in incurable lameness. They don't call it the coffin bone for nothing LOL. No hoof, no horse.
     In my case, I got over the acute phase of laminitis, and carried on. Some days I was fine, seemingly normal for a senior horse, and at other times I had off-and-on lameness and stiffness, especially in the mornings. In the late summer of 2020, after an equine yoga session led by Jenna, I was feeling so happy and relaxed that I could let Margaret ride me bareback. Needless to say, laminitis (sometimes referred to as "founder" after the coffin bone has dropped) is a perplexing, heartbreaking condition that greatly challenges every human who tries to care for a horse with this affliction.  
     Despite living with founder, after moving to my house on Shore Road, I ate and slept well every day last fall and winter, coming and going at will from the barn to the snow-covered pasture. However, one day early in the new year, I took a turn, as they say. Seeing that my stiffness was suddenly much worse than usual, Margaret suggested to me that I might finally be ready to go Home. She called the vet, and began to make arrangements for my transition. In an extraordinary act of kindness, Anne, her lovely next-door-neighbour, offered a spot in her field, where I loved to graze and look down towards the ocean, as my final resting place. The two of them chose a site close to the woods high up on her land, and marked it with a stake. To make sure that I would be able to walk that far, the next day Margaret led me up there, to show me the place where my tired body would be laid to rest. She circled me around the stake, and told me that she would come up there to visit me, her unicorn in the woods.
     Whoa!!! Not so fast, girl!!  It was not yet my time. And so, when she was overcome in the moment by an emotion that caused her to briefly look away and turn her back on me, I yanked the 20-foot lunge line out of her hand, and took off like a shot across the field at a full gallop, dragging the rope behind me! I admit that being a show horse, I do have a flair for drama. My performance looked like a scene from a movie as I charged home across the snowy field, down David and Valerie's driveway, along Shore Road, and then up my own driveway, parking myself by the cottage next to our Chevy truck, Big Silver. She had never seen the full beauty of my unbridled movement, but I gave her the show of a lifetime that day. The sight of that inspired performance is forever emblazoned in her memory. She stood in awe, helplessly watching me from the hill and then called Johannes on her cell phone, telling him to come out of the house and escort me back to the barn! Shortly after that, a retired therapeutic farrier who had successfully treated many laminitic horses during his long career showed up out of the blue (and subsequently disappeared just as quickly). He trimmed my feet, suggested some hoof care protocols, and recommended hoof boots to keep my front feet comfortable while my hooves regrew. 
    After that, I enjoyed the rest of the winter and spring, and rolled and grazed in the pasture when the grass came up. To everyone's delight, I pranced and even galloped in joy from time to time. My coat was shiny and my blood chemistry showed that all of my bodily systems were doing well. Every night when the sun went down, I walked back to my house to let Margaret know that I was ready to go in for the night. (But not to sleep, before she served me my bedtime snack of fresh-cut chunks of apples and carrots, with three Purina Oat Apple cookies for dessert.) While living in my own house, during the day I appointed myself as the Guardian of Shore Road and Little Judique Harbour, and loved to keep watch over all of the people and animals there, and their activities. I often stood at attention like a sentinel in the south end of the pasture, a serious, stately dark horse, acknowledging all who passed by.
    Five months after I started wearing my hoof boots, to everyone's dismay, it became apparent that although my right front hoof wall had regrown, my left front foot had stopped growing completely. I was still cheerful and affectionate and looked beautiful, but in this state, my Earthly mission could not continue much longer. Thank God for equine body workers/animal communicators! With travel finally possible again, Margaret asked my therapist Christa to come by on June 14, to treat me to a massage. After not seeing me for nearly a year due to the pandemic, Christa was shocked to see the change in my feet. I may have been able to soldier on and fool Margaret and Johannes and lots of other people into thinking that I was fine, but with Christa... no way. She knew how to massage me in places that made me openly admit to everyone that I was in a lot of discomfort, which made the inevitable decision much easier for all of us. 
     I was given a beautiful sendoff, and thanks to a collaboration with some wild blueberries that grew around the staked site high up in Anne's field, we arranged to have my final resting place moved down to a spot in Anne's field close to Shore Road, in view of Wildflower Cottage, and opposite the Dutch door on my barn. That makes it easier for me to continue to keep an eye on things on the ground. A huge bowl of wild and cultivated strawberries was on the menu for my last supper, and I wore a beautiful tiara for my ascension party. A wild lupine plant that I watched growing in the ditch opposite the ocean-view window in my stall is in full bloom right now. On the day of my passing, Margaret removed it, and now it marks my final resting place on Earth, planted there at 3:38 p.m. today. Right now I am singing my cover version of a bluegrass song that seems to fit... "Let them know I'm from Cape Breton, by the way you mark my grave..." (See original tune and lyrics for Let Them Know I'm From Virginia, by Big Country Bluegrass, soon to be added to the Spotify playlist on this website.)
      I speak not only for myself, but also for Margaret, Johannes, and Ava, in expressing our heartfelt gratitude to everyone who came to know, support and love me while I was of this Earth. The list of names is a very long one, and you know who you are. If I have forgotten to mention your name, it is because I am still adjusting to the energies in my new Home and my head is still spinning a bit. Special recognition for equine support, in chronological order, is due to Lady Anne Blunt, Shiela Varian, Vicki Shula, William Shatner, Karin MacMurtrie, Mitch Kurzner, Ellian Rosaire, Pam Furner @ Graceland, Ulysses Almeida, Anne MacDougall and her late husband Danny, Nadine Bollig, Adrienne Smith, Beverley Leonard, Barbara MacKinnon, Pirjo Holt, Dr. Jamie Campbell, Dr. Donna Buckley and the caring staff at Baddeck Veterinary Clinic, Jenna Dorton, Christa Veinotte, "Sisters Sturm," Sonja Dahlman, David Hayne, Elizabeth Lawrence, all of Angel's fans at RSEC, Janet McManus, David and Valerie Knapman, Patsy Wayling, Ed at Port Hood CO-OP, Carla Rodgers, Paul Nicholson, Kristen Marcott, Peppermint John MacDougall, Glen O'Connor, Carter Akerman, the staff at Holna Farm Services, Marjorie Simmins, Vickie Mackenzie, Michelle the Haymaker, the good people at Gateway Hyundai and Ron MacGillivray Chev Buick GMC, Hughie James MacDonald and his barn, and Brian MacDonald. We also gratefully acknowledge the endless kindnesses bestowed upon us by our many friends on Shore Road (especially the Shore Road Ladies- loved that rocking horse foal LOL), and kind friends and family from near and far who have told us that they are touched by our story. To be continued... LOL.
​Love to all of you. Chat soon!!  Angel/AAngyl