Kiki

12 years old, with a tendon injury, Kiki was a skidding mare. We took her in to care for her, and to save her from the knife. After many months of convalescence, Kiki is doing well and can now go for walks. It wasn’t easy to find a place for her that suited her size. Then Olivia fell for this very nice mare who was as wide as she was kind. 800 kg of kindness, that’s the description of Kiki who fell asleep in her park… a beautiful death but a bit brutal for Olivia when there was no sign of it….

Olivia wrote her tribute….Thank you for everything you gave her!!!! Kiki was happy in your home!
To you, our big dondon, you leave one hell of a memory for the whole Refuge team….Good luck pretty dondon!
Tribute from Olivia:
I welcomed Kiki in 2015 to keep my mare company. She came into my life like a second journey, like something that’s always extraordinary, but with less novelty – and yet, novel and extraordinary she was, in the strictest sense of the word! 800 kg of roan hair, tall as a bus, huge hooves, able to gobble 2 apples at once, a mountain of calm and phlegm.Kiki, more than a horse, was an evidence, a fact. She was there, part of the daily routine, part of normality, without all the fuss that spirited horses can sometimes bring. It wasn’t so much that I counted on her, as that she was there, no question asked. Then one Sunday, from the top of her hill, she suddenly left. Without a hitch, without a shout, without waiting or illness. What I saw as a certainty was no more. Without realizing it, she had forged my daily life, in her own way, calmly, slowly, but surely. My choices, my equipment, the paths I took and the decisions I made didn’t seem to be dedicated to her, but with her gone, I have to admit that they were. Many things now seem obsolete and remind me painfully of her departure: my stepladder at the stable, my bus towing 3.5T, my huge slant van, my xxl equipment… She wasn’t just a mare, she was THE mare. All this emptiness breaks me.
Kiki had what we call a beautiful death, without suffering, at home, but also without notice. As much as the fact of not having been able to prepare herself makes the pain more acute, I salute destiny for having offered her this departure.
So today, January 26, 2020, with all the empty space she occupied with her big, soft heart, we’re going to have to re-form normalcy, without her. It seems impossible at the moment, but it will come in Kiki’s way, calmly, quietly, but surely. And she’ll always be my mare, Kiki.