When it comes to obituaries are our four-legged friends who devote their lives to others any less deserving of tributes? At Saugeen Times we don’t think so.
Pegasus Riding Association Nurturing Challenged Equestrians (PRANCE) in Port Elgin has lost a friend who lived up to her name, Diva. She was a favourite sweet, beautiful girl who will be greatly missed.
Born in 2002, she was a cross Quarter and Morgan horse purchased by Liz Ritchie of Ritchie Clydesdale Horses in 2013 for PRANCE when she was 11 years old and was a PRANCE companion helping others for nine years.
Whenever a photo-op would take place, Diva was brought in as she always seemed to relish her ‘model role’.
As part of the PRANCE family, she was trained in Cart Driving and took part in therapeutic riding classes, Equine Facilitated Wellness program, Driving Program and Hippotherapy, giving her senior years to helping others.
During her final years, Diva had been struggling with Laminitis for many years and hadn’t been able to be used for riding for over a year, but PRANCE found her other jobs to do such as supporting riders on the ground for grooming, etc. Laminitis attack causes great pain in the hooves making it hard to walk and, unfortunately, there is no cure and hers was chronic.
The challenge was, that while she looked terrible during one of the attacks, it would often resolve in a day or two after a lot of pain. She would then get back to normal but, for her, “normal” was still uncomfortable and she moved slowly. In Diva’s case, it was a hormonal issue so changes to her feed and medications did not make enough difference and the changing weather made it worse too. There were many variables that were hard to manage but ultimately the PRANCE family did everything that it could do for Diva.
“We were struggling to figure out how much pain she was as horses are so good at hiding it so we had our veterinarian look at her and she recommended that Diva be put to sleep because her quality of life was declining and would just get worse,” says Ann Marie Johnston, PRANCE Executive Director. “She got seriously spoiled with apples and carrots the last few days and got to free range around the farm and was, at the last, put to sleep peacefully.”
Diva is also remembered with paddock mates, Buck and Dee (March 2020), who were also recently lost.
Diva had many human friends as well and is truly irreplaceable.
