Dealing With the Pain of Loss

good afternoon Dwayne here Dry Creek Wrangler school it's evening now it's later it's about well it's 6:30 um and uh we're in the tax I actually got mama in here with me today videoing and uh got the fire going got the coffee and want to I want to talk to you this evening about kind of not a real Pleasant kind of a sobering um subject but it's uh it's necessary um for those that been with me for a while you know that I put this stuff out to help people I mean that's my heart from

the very beginning and uh one of the things I've got a lot of questions on the channel from time to time is Dwayne how do you deal with the pain of loss when you lose a horse and uh and it ties in with loss of everything else and we lost a horse yesterday um and we have a small herd and you know the horses are all kind of family so when you lose one it it it hits you you know and we've lost you know I've lost horses before um but we lost Ry yesterday uh

she's been been on a lot of last year's videos that nice little Bay May that I had purchased uh for myself out of Tacoma and spent a lot of time training on her and and the horses have being kept in a big big pasture up on top um and uh we go up there especially here lately the boys go up about every couple days and check on everything they got a lot of water a lot of grazing um and they had gone went up a couple days earlier and everything was fine and they went up

yesterday check on stuff and to do some riding they called me and said Reay is Ray's in pretty bad shape she's her right front hoof looks pretty bad she's got into something and uh I mean she was standing and and everything so I took the trailer and went up there and when I saw her I knew that it it didn't look good I don't really know what happened um um there's some Old Farm Equipment on this it's like a thousand acres okay so they're not you know but horses are inquisitive and some horses more so

than others and she got into something and and pretty much severed her her right hoof I mean it wasn't just like wire cut it wasn't I mean it was it looked pretty bad to me so I called my vet and he said yeah bring around right in she went right in the trailer she was on three legs but she went right in the trailer so I hauled her to town and he was waiting for me and I opened that back gate and he didn't even I didn't even get her out and he said Dwayne there's

there's absolutely nothing I can do um that everything from basically from the the pastor from the fat lock the whole Hof everything was it was just barely there barely hanging on and uh so she's six years old and you know my original thought when I first saw her is maybe it's not as bad as it looks she's obviously not going to be a sound horse to do a lot of work and stuff but if we can get her healed up enough where she's not spend the rest of her life in pain she'll she'll make beautiful

babies and you know she'll be a family fixture around here but it's it was so bad that I'm like I'm not going to have her go through that there wasn't any saving her so we we put her down there um how how do you how do you how do you deal with something like that well let's understand that everybody's different okay um everybody is different everybody's relationship ship with their horses is different and it just it affects different people different way it affect you different than it does me um I mean I was I was

you know there was a little bit of a tear I was a little choked up you know um but we one of the things that helps for well let me back up here let me say fundamentally first off um and I know there's going to be a lot of people out there that disagree with this and that's okay all right that's okay uh you guys know that I'm that we're Christians and that we believe and and take our life views from scripture and you know Genesis I believe the horse is a magnificent creature that was

created by God specifically magnificently for man that's what I believe um but but I believe that scripture says that God spoke into existence Earth and he spoke into existence the animals and then he got down and with his fingers he formed Out of the Dust of the earth he formed man and breathed into man uh the breath of life and Man became a living soul I believe that mankind are Eternal um I I believe that we are in Eternal uh we have have the Breath of God in us and I I don't believe I don't

see in Scripture that animals do I believe that you know our dogs our cats our horses our whatever I believe they're born and they live and they die and when they die they die okay it's just it's the end and I never lose sight as much as my entire existence around here is geared towards the betterment of the life for horses here on Earth I can't do anything about their eternity because I I don't believe they have an eternity um I believe we give them the best life we can give them here on Earth Book

of Proverbs says a righteous man regardeth the life of his Beast we take care of them and we have as much respect for him and as much care for him as we can uh and then when it's when they go they go all right now that doesn't mean that we we don't feel anything when they go right but it's not the same as when a person goes now they just step through a curtain into eternity it's a whole it's a whole different story okay we're totally different creatures but how do you how do you deal

with it um you have to you have to remember the good and dwell on the good all right now as as down as this is uh at this point I'm going to have to tell you another story that's even more uh and this is where we had to learn this when when my boys were quite young young teenagers my oldest son Ben bought his own first horse and it was a Philly it she was a young Philly she was just a few months old and uh so we left her with her mom until she was

wean proper and and we brought her home to a small controlled area at the house and uh I I believe it was over winter so she was just taken care of she was grown she was handled he called her Dixie um and then when spring came we decided it was time to take her down to the pasture with the other horses now we did everything that we could do all right you want to be logical and reasonable so we took her down there with the other horses and we had her on a halter and the

pasture was about 3 acres and so having been around horses a long time I took her out in the pasture in a halter and I walked her through the other horses and I walked her all the way around the pasture all the way around by hand should her all the fenes we went around and checked so I I showed her all the parameters and she was out there with the other horses of course they were excited that's the way horses are my boys were the pasture was kind of sloping and came up and there were

a couple of um pine trees the kind they might have been Cedars pine trees that grow all the way down to the ground along the fence line and they were up and we were the gate was up on top so they stayed on top so we took all the way around introduced her the horses turned her loose and and then they took off all of them just took off joyously running like they do and so I came down down the fence line to keep an eye on them and as I come down the fence line

about halfway they all come tearing down the fence and for a reason only a horse knows she decided that she was going to try to jump that fence um but she caught the top wire flipped landed and and she broke her neck right there I watched it well that was a horrible thing but immediately my first thought was Ben I can't let Ben see this and so they were coming down because they wanted to watch and Ben if you can imagine I mean his eyes were this big and his face was beaming and he was

so so joyous I mean just so ecstatically joyous about the whole horses running and his own own horse out and pasture and you know the magic that is horses you know and he was just totally and so I'm jogging back up the fence towards him to catch him before he come around those pine trees and saw her laying there and I have to go up to him with his face joyous like this and I have to stop him and in that instance of all things I have to I have to break it to him what

just happened I I can't even I don't even have the words I mean that's been 15 years ago 16 years ago I don't know I don't even have the words to tell you it was one of the worst things I've ever gone through and I had to stop him and I had to tell him son don't don't go down there and as gently as I could I had to tell him what happened well he was crushed heartbroken naturally as one would expect and as a father as a father it is my weight it is my

responsibility to get him through this as best I can and to help him in this horrible time and so I put my hands on his shoulders I said son we have to remember this isn't going to make it any easier but we have to remember only something that is capable of bringing us great joy can bring us great pain and if we want to have the great joy that so many people never experience then we have to be willing when the time comes to accept the great pain okay you can't have one without the other

and so we got through it and we dealt with it and and I borrowed a piece of equipment my dad helped me and you know we took her in the pasture and dealt with it and took care of her it's it's not easy all right it's never easy but some things that help are understanding the nature of it we get great joy from horses and therefore we have to accept the fact that their loss will bring us great pain you cannot have one without the other it's the balance of Life all right but one of

of the things that helps you know one of the things that helps me like with Ry Ry had come from a the folks I got her from she'd come from a really good home and before that she didn't she didn't have such a good life um and she had she had been kayed pretty rough by a bunch of young Cowboys uh she had the white hairs from in several spots from saddles do and when they had got her she she would just buck in a heartbeat because she expected to be jammed with those Spurs and

but they had worked her and loved her and gentled her and brought her down and then we brought her down here and we continued on and and she you know she was petted and she was loved and she was taught and she was trained and she was ridden and she was fed good and she was dewormed and and so I can look back and I can say that up until the time that this tragic accident and we still don't even know what it was happened we did right by her she her life ended at a

high point okay if her life had ended back when she was two and three years old where she came from uh it would have been just a tragic life that was lived tragically um and ended tragically but we took her and the folks who we got her from wonderful folks they gave they gave they did a wonderful job with her really took good care of her treated her well and from there she came here and so we just look at the positive and we focus on the positive and uh and we go on and we

are reminded we use it to remind us that the rest of our horses we're just always reminded to take good care of them to take good care of them to give them the good life and that's not just physically there's more to giving a horse a good life than throwing a blanket on them or giving them feed um you know horses like us all right they have a body but they also have a mind and will and emotions and we need to give them the best that we can give them over the whole horse all

right and so if we invest as much good into them as we can then that balances out when the bad happens because the bad happens okay and it to a degree it's the same with people all right I haven't gone through a lot of loss of close loved ones some I was Paul Barrett my grandfather's funeral on my 14th birthday that was kind of rough um my father passed away last year I had a lot of love a lot of respect for my father uh he he passed away last year um but they were both

good men and they both had excellent reputations um and there were there was a lot of positive in their life and so I don't look back at the people I have lost who have passed who were close to me um I don't have to look back and with a ton of I don't have to carry the sorrow that comes from Deep regret for for relationships that were squandered can I say that like that okay um I did not squander a relation there were there were things my dad and I did not agree on he had

different views than I had he had different approaches to things that than I do uh there were things directions paths I have taken in life that he they were not the path that he wished I had taken and I understood that and I never Dishonored my father I never Dishonored my father I never stood up and got in his face we never argued about it it just was what it was and so when when he left there was not not a burden of regrets of relationship squandered and with Ry I can look back at Ry

I only had her for a year but she it it was a good year and I don't have to look back and say I wish we had done this and I wish we had done that you know um she was healthy she was uh fat she had wintered well she looked really good she was happy she was with the other horses which was her natural environment for the winter um so what makes handling of loss harder than it already would be is the pain of regret okay and that's something you can control you can't control

now if a you know if a parent passes and they weren't a good parent you'll regret that they weren't a good parent you can't control that you can't have any you can't carry that burden uh but you can say I never Dishonored my parent I never I never hurt them okay or a friend um I had a a close friend uh few years ago and he uh I I moved away and he he got killed in a car rre and I drove all the way back to the funeral and it was sad to lose this

friend but there was no regrets there was no pain of past actions that had open rooms that were never allowed to heal okay um so Dwayne how do we deal I can't everybody's different but you know I can just tell you that one of the things you can do is make sure there's enough good in in the life and the relationship whether it be your horse whether it be your dog whether it be a person that there's enough good in that relationship that at least you don't have to look back with the pain of regret

okay remember the good times remember the good things and say look in in in the grand scheme of everything there was more good than there was bad and so I'm going to remember I'm going to remember the good and uh and then I'm just going to go on because like I said uh anything or anybody that has the ability to bring us great grief when they're gone that was somebody who had the strength to bring us great joy when they were here all right and so embrace the joy of what they were and instead of

the grief of what they no longer are all right process it all right and then just keep going and let it be a lesson to you whether it's man or beast be a friend of the world as much as no I'm not going to say that because the Christians will take that as it says in the Bible uh not the world not the S friend of the system but be a friend to your fellow man be a friend to your animal be a friend to those that are around you um and uh and it just

makes the loss more barable okay all right not a real upbeat cheerful video um but I I didn't want to make it I didn't want to do this video de asked me yesterday she asked me she said are you going to get on and talk about this I said I don't think so um but I thought about it today and I thought about I thought you know it might help somebody and so hopefully it helped somebody all right so we're going to quit there I we talk about this um you're going to want to know

some of you guys it's the cigar I did when I was in Tennessee I did a video once about and you can go back and find it uh no name no band cigars are they any good and they were cigars if you go back and rewatch that video there's a there's a charity a children's charity and they have a fell in Nicaragua who's from Cuba who hand rolls Nicaraguan cigars and they sell those cigars and all the provits of those cigars I'm telling you for reason okay uh goes to this this charity Jaden's journey and

and I'll do a full video for them uh later here before long but this is this is one of their cigars uh the man who started that uh had a son and went through a lot of pain and a lot of tragedy with that and uh and made good out of it and made good out of it okay so anyhow that's what that is and then of course the jber Mountain Coffee coffee cures a multitude of ills all right so anyhow uh I'm going to I'm going to sign off there just be logical be real

reasonable all right be safe have fun be tender don't be tough about it all right and we'll catch you guys next time