My Tribute to Luna

A week ago I went out, as usual, to feed and check the ponies first thing. Gigha was eagerly waiting for her breakfast but no Luna. Where was she? Surely just around the corner ready to barge Gigha out of the way to be first at the breakfast table?

No sign of her so I obviously went looking with a growing sense of alarm. I soon saw her lying down and thought that this was an unusual time to be having a nap – she had been 100% normal the previous evening – but sadly she had died during the night and was just peacefully lying where she had fallen asleep. There were no significant signs of distress, thank goodness, but the shock and initial disbelief was enormous.

We let Gigha have a good few hours to say her goodbyes and then buried Luna in the field where she had been born in millennium year and where she had lived her entire life.

I’ve chosen to write this tribute to our, much loved, pony as part of my personal journey of grief and sadness. I will publish it on my blog but probably won’t share posts about it. Instead perhaps you, my reader, have just stumbled upon it whilst scrolling and I hope that you understand my reasons for writing about a very ordinary pony who lived a very quiet life but who was loved for every moment of her existence.

Luna’s Mum, Judy, was my first highland and in 1999 I had a sudden urge to breed a foal from Judy. I asked around and realised that the ideal sire lived just down the road – Blair Atholl of Whitefield – a stunning black stallion, so off Judy went to be covered. She had had a few foals with her breeder so I knew she would make a good mum.

Luna was born on a full moon night in May 2000. I missed the birth by minutes but was with her as she stood up and took her first milk, truly magical moments. She was a strong and healthy foal and we registered her as Whitewisp Luna after the hill we can see from our kitchen window and which overlooked Luna’s field.

Luna grew rapidly and the time came for weaning so we moved her mum to a friend’s field and Luna spent some time alone with Gigha who was a three year old at that time. Judy’s milk dried up, or so I thought, and after a few weeks we brought her back……within ten minutes Luna was suckling with milk running down her chin obviously delighted to have her mum back! I then just left the weaning process to nature and it happened naturally over the next few months.

I showed Luna a bit as a youngster. She was always admired and I usually got comments from the judges about her being a lovely pony but she was a bit too naughty to be placed!! I didn’t mind in the least, she was mine and I loved her.

At three years old Luna went to a friend to be backed and begin her education. One day, whilst there, she escaped from her enclosure and was found in the morning curled up, fast asleep, outside the stable door of a friendly mare! She wasn’t mature enough to be ridden regularly so we turned her away for another year and then re-started when she was four. By that stage her manners had improved and she proved to be a lovely riding pony with nice floaty paces.

We had lots of lessons together and I loved the feeling of riding her. She was fun to ride and I have many happy memories of times together with her.

However, when she was about 8 she damaged the tendons in a back leg and, despite some treatment and rest, she was never fully sound again. She was paddock sound but a ridden life wasn’t her destiny so she just became a companion to my riding pony Gigha.

Luna was always the boss in the field, I think she had inherited this role from her mother, with Gigha generally giving way peacefully to allow Luna first choice over the sweetest blades of grass and freshest hay! She would display her emotions clearly with ears back when cross and quick to react with teeth or hind legs if she was sore! However, once I understood how to read her body language we rarely fell out and 99% of the time she was loving and sweet, always greeting me with pricked ears and a soft nicker.

Luna had a few health issues over the years with bouts of laminitis, a couple of nasty skin infections and latterly several episodes of respiratory distress probably as a reaction to hay I think. She never coughed in the summer months and we managed to keep her lungs clear with soaked hay and a breathing supplement. I hadn’t heard her coughing for nearly a year so I’m as confident as I can be that it wasn’t her lungs that gave out.

I have always said that any pony I own will have a life here, at home, until the end of its days and this was the case with Luna. She would have been 24 in May so we would have expected her to have a good few years yet. Sadly this wasn’t to be, we will never know what caused her sudden death but that doesn’t really matter. What we do know is that we gave her as good, and as natural, a life as possible and that she never knew anything but love, kindness and the company of other ponies.

I will always remember her and am thankful that she was in my life for so long. THANK YOU LOVELY LUNA.