Goodbye

James Immordino

Ms. Tomich

English 10

November 8, 2017

Goodbye

        It was like any other Sunday, getting ready to Fox Hunt with my mom, her best friend Rockette, and my best friend, Majestic. Fox Hunting is a sport where a group of people ride with their buddies and follow hounds, who are following a scent laid down by another rider.  Everything was going according to plan, from putting on the saddles to filling up the water buckets to quench their thirst after a long ride. Little did I know that that morning would be the saddest moment of my life.

        My mom was getting Rockette ready, while I tied Majestic up to a tree near our trailer. The trailer was rustic and had many things that needed to be fixed, including some metal sticking out from near the tires.  I walked away to aid my mom but that was a terrible decision. About five minutes have passed, and then I hear the most terrifying scream. When I looked in the direction of the noise my heart dropped. Majestic had somehow cut himself on the trailer. The gash was on the upper part of his back-left leg. It was huge, about the size of my hand. My mom questioned for a second on how he could have cut his leg so high when the sharp metal was so low compared to him. We immediately knew he cut himself on that piece of metal, there was blood and brown hair attached. After we tried to put together what happened, my mom called our Veterinarian. The moment he arrived the first thing he noticed was the gash, oozing with blood. He immediately splinted the wound and informed my mom that the injury was very serious and we had to take him to a hospital. We tried to move him into the trailer but he was in so much pain that he barely wanted to budge. We carefully eased him into the trailer, he was limping the whole way there. Such a short distance took multiple minutes. We missed the hunt that day.

        The closest Veterinary hospital for my buddy was about 3 hours away, off Long Island. My parents and I were on the road. I was playing on my DS, trying to hold back my emotions, the car ride felt like an eternity when we finally arrived at TUFTS Veterinary Hospital. My memory is a bit foggy past this point, but I remember going into a room with a bunch of medical equipment. It was a small room but it had enough room to fit Majestic and about five or six people. The doctors did little tests to find how much damage was done. While they were experimenting, I looked at one of the screens and saw two strands that were broken. After the tests, the Vet took my mom out of the room for a few minutes.

I just kept looking at my friend, thinking about how it is all my fault. The Doctor came in after a few minutes and sat next to me. She stared at me and said, “The ligaments in his leg are torn apart.” She gave me a choice, “You can either have him not be able to walk and be in pain for the rest of his life, or we can put him down now.” I understood and nodded my head in agreement. She took me outside of the room to my mom. She was weeping. She bent down and I ran into her arms. I started to cry as well. I could not hold back my emotions any more. She spoke, and I could barely understand her from her tears. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I know you love him so much.” I could not respond. We returned to the room and the Vet said that I could say goodbye, but the only thing I did was give him one little stroke on his neck. I was too emotionally destroyed to do anymore. We exited the room and I looked back. I saw him, my best friend. And when the door closed, that was the last time I ever saw my horse again. When we were getting in our car to go home after the worst day of my life, my dad sat in the back seat with me, trying to comfort me. He softly said, “where’s your game?” He spotted it and put it in my hands, hoping it would calm me down and help me relax. It didn’t. I still cried all the way home, and for the next two days, I had tears on my pillow in the morning.