By Tim Wetherbee

passed 11/26/2011.  Cherry, as I’ve always called her, was born May 25, 1986 in Carthage, NY (near Watertown and Camp Drum) on a dairy farm owned by Valerie Wilson and her husband. I have always been taken with her breed which is American Saddlebred. This breed was developed in the southern states as a plantation horse and is noted for being easy gaited with animated presence and having tall but fine conformation. Now they are used mainly as high-stepping show horses but also as lively pleasure mounts and sometimes as sport horses. I grew up riding a Saddlebred who looked much like Cherry so when I found her as a yearling in 1987, I bought her. I have had her longer than any other horse and she and I grew to love and understand each other over these twenty four plus years, so I will dearly miss her. She was a handful from the git-go, playing coltish games like stealing the pliers out of my back pocket when I was bent over fixing the fence and rearing and pawing the air like The Lone Ranger’s Silver. She was not handled much by her breeder and needed to learn some manners which she eventually did but not without putting up some objections. In the last few years I have not asked her to do much of anything that she didn’t want to do and she really turned quite sweet. She knew that she was the queen of the Wetherbee farm and frequently exercised the rights of that position. When we got Virginia’s horse Cherokee in 2002, he was used to being top of the pecking order so there was an immediate conflict. I never turned them out together because I was sure neither one would submit to the other. Cherry did come into sexual awareness at the age of sixteen upon the arrival of Cherokee, who displays stallion-like behavior even though he is a gelding. She had only been around other mares in her adult life and never displayed any signs of being in heat but that all changed. Cherry was prone to colic. I often worried that she would not make it through each occurrence. It is terrifying to watch a horse in the throws of a colic episode, lying flat out with eyes glazed over or thrashing about in extreme abdominal pain but I had a few nursing tricks to get her through the attacks and I would wait to see if it was going to pass before calling the Vet since a few times she would be over it by the time the Vet got there. On Saturday night, November 26, 2011 at around 11:30 pm Virginia went out to feed the horses for me since I had been very busy the whole week and I was exhausted. She came right back in to say Cherry was in a bad state of colic. I got out there to see her very agitated, getting up and down and sweating. I knew this was beyond anything I could fix and called the Vet and told her it was the worst I had ever seen her and we may have to put her down. The vet graciously came and tried a Banamine shot which usually takes effect right away but did nothing. Cherry was falling down, shaking , thrashing and moaning so the Vet and I concurred that we couldn’t let her continue in such pain. I really had no problem making that decision which surprised me since I never wanted to see our dogs being put down. With the first injection she calmed and with the second I noticed that her formerly heaving abdomen stopped and I knew she was finally at peace. Today, Monday, November 28, 2011 an understanding animal lover named Roger Treat, who has horses and dogs of his own, came with his backhoe and we buried Maranatha’s Cherry Red Rose in her pasture facing south, the direction she always loved to face while warming herself in the sun and gazing at the world. He treated her body with great respect and tenderness and it was a surprisingly peaceful time for me as we put her body to rest. Fr. Currie who is the Pastor of St Ambrose Church (where I play the organ and sing for many funerals) frequently says that the amount of loss we feel when someone dies is directly related to the amount we have invested in loving and caring for that person. Twenty four years of caring for Cherry every day is a big investment so I do feel a big loss but I am thankful that she will never have to suffer again. Below is my favorite song to sing at the final commendation of a funeral Mass. It gives me comfort at this time.

Go In Peace
By Sarah Hart and Dwight Liles

There will be no more darkness.

There is no more night, no more night.

There will be no more sadness,

Only joy and light, joy and light.

Lift you eyes beyond the hills and see the dawn.

There is beautiful mercy in the arms of the holy one.

Go in peace, God be with you.

Go in peace, be at rest with the saints and the angels.

Now you are free. Go in peace