In Memoriam, F.M. Megan

My horse Megan had to be put down today. She developed a strange form of colic, probably within the last 24 hours, that completely backed up her digestive system. The vet said we would have found her dead this afternoon if we hadn't seen her laying sprawled on the ground in pain and made an emergency visit this morning. She's been my one of my best friends since I was 12, about 8 years. I cried in sympathy a week or two ago when my roommate and her family had to put down her Golden Retriever that they'd had seemingly forever, but you just don't understand it until you've felt it for yourself. My emotions have been close to the top all day. As part of my grieving process I want to share some pictures of her with you.

This was taken soon after we first bought her, when we were both 13. I'm holding her and my brother Rick is sitting on her.

This is actually my riding instructor, RaNae, riding Megan in a Western Pleasure show before we met. Isn't she just beautiful?

This is a photo I took two weeks ago to put with Megan's ad on KSL.com (which is no longer online). For a 20-year-old horse she still had pretty good form. My sister Katie is holding her.

I also think instead of a USU Press memoir (although it's a good idea, and I might come back to it), I'm going to revisit a memoir I wrote as a high school sophomore in my first Creative Writing class. It's about when I first met Megan and our riding lessons together. Since I wrote it when I was 16, it needs work. It's 8 pages long but it's all summary, and it only covers our riding lessons before we bought her, which is one summer out of 8 years. I think there's some room to play with there. My idea is to revise each paragraph or section for detail, description, dialogue, imagery, stories that highlight the ideas or detail, etc, and then I'd like to post some of them here for your enjoyment and critique. Let me know what you think.