Rough day

Today I did three things:

1. Euthanized my beloved pony, Shane.
2. Scanned a ton of family photos, including several of Shane and other pets I’ve loved and had to let go.
3. Reorganized my books.

There’s nothing like semi-mindless, organized labor to soothe me when I’m upset.
I’m going to miss Shane, he was a wonderful pony.

This is probably my all-time favorite photo of Shane (to the right). The day this was taken, we won the high point in dressage for the Connemara Pony Show. Not bad for a youngster on an aging pony.
Shane and I did a ton of stuff together. We got him when I was 12 and he was 17. Now I’m nearly 29 and he was nearly 35. It’s hard to believe we had seventeen years together. We have had Shane longer than we haven’t. But now he’s gone. I’m really going to miss him. He was a fantastic pony – he put up with me racing him around, playing Brave Pony Scout (his hooves had little suction cups on them or something, I swear – he never slipped even on narrow trails), and generally being a stupid teenager on him. When he got too old for us grownups to ride him, he helped little kids learn to ride. He was a sweet, loving pony. What a great guy.
The vet is planning to do a mini-autopsy to try and figure out what exactly was the nasty infection that led to us putting him down. We couldn’t stop it, only slow it down, and it kept getting bigger and bigger no matter what we did (including curretting the inside of it daily and rinsing it with an antiseptic! ARGH!). Sigh.

The bajillion pix I scanned are over here in my Flickr account. Check it out.
When I got home, I took my library from its previous, halfassed state, and shifted the shelves around (got a new shelf last weekend, yay) so now it looks like this:

I’m tired as heck but glad to have done it. Now I get to put all the books in order and catalog ’em all on LibraryThing. Several of those shelves are double-stacked, so there’s not quite as much free shelf space as there seems to be. I’ll post another shot when I am finally all the way done and everything is all sorted.
Of course, by then, it’ll probably be time for Twon and myself to move into our new house, and I’ll have to start all over. Sigh.