We were fortunate to have had her enrich our lives. Maddie was truly special, her quirks, her talent, her issues!

It seems incredibly unfair for her to be stricken with a degenerative, crippling and extremely painful disease. The decision to have her humanely euthanized was not hard but the letting go was devastating to us all.

From the moment she was born and was highly put out at the inconvenience and the less than acceptable (to her) accommodations, to being the center of attention and star at a horse show, she let us know exactly what she thought of every situation.

When she was diagnosed a year ago with DSLD-EPSA, I had never heard of the disease. I immediately looked it up on line and was stunned. My mare was young, not one of the "usual" breeds to get this horrible and incurable affliction. As I learned more about it, I realized that she had been displaying many of the symptoms, which we had thought were simply MADDIE being Herself or the result of her incredible efforts.

Mystery lameness that we couldn't quite pinpoint, temper tantrums (Not MADDIE! ), overall body soreness, etc. We had massage therapy, we had the vet(s) out but she'd be fine and wanting to DO SOMETHING!!! soon after. Until her legs began changing. Her fetlocks dropped, her stifle and hock straightened and, when we had the vet out for a totally different problem, the vet looked long and hard at our girl and asked how old she was and then if I'd ever heard of DSLD.

After that awful day, we hoped against hope that we would have a long time before the disease worsened and we gave her pain medication whenever she had a flare up. We noticed that we had sweet Maddie much more frequently than furious Maddie and determined to give her a happy retirement but that was not to be.

Several weeks ago, she got a nasty cut on her right hind fetlock. For the first two weeks, we were able to treat it, bandage it and keep it clean and dry. We tried keeping her in her stall but she hated that. The more upset she got, the more it aggravated her DSLD. She weaved and dug holes and cribbed, we separated her by putting her in our ring but she would stand in the corner closest to her friends and weaved incessantly back and forth. She was in a full tilt flare up and the pain medications weren't giving her relief. The wound on her fetlock became a sore on the back of her ankle even as the original wound was healing up.

The decision was made. Maddie was hurting too badly and she had become a danger to those trying to help her. On the last veterinarian report, the notes say "catastrophic breakdown of both suspensories with sores on both hind fetlocks".

Maddie's ankles were hitting the ground when she ran and it was the end for her.

The decision to let a beloved animal go out of your life is always a painful one. Life with Maddie was never dull and we wouldn't trade one moment. The good thing about memories is that the nice ones are stronger and linger longer than the bad and we sure have some incredibly good memories. A close friend got it right when she remarked that an appropriate thought would be “Highway to the Danger Zone”. Maddie was not a Rainbow Bridge sort of girl. She wanted it to be ALL ABOUT ME!

Her last show was the VHSA Associate Jumper Finals at Deep Run in 2007. She nickered when we walked her out to the trailer to ship her down. She adored being the only horse on the grounds the night before, hacking the grounds and jumping the panel in and out of the little ring. When it was her turn for the mini-prix, she bugled as she entered the ring. LOOK! I AM HERE!

Goodbye, beautiful girl. You left your mark on us all.