Periwinkle
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It’s time for you to hear the story of how Barney came to be part of my life.  But in order for me to tell you that story, I need to back the bus up a few years so you’ll understand why he and I had an instant connection when we first laid eyes on each other.

Long ago, in a far away land … when I was a mere child of the tender age of 12 years, my beloved horse, Gypsy, produced a foal.  I had owned Gypsy for only 2 years when this, the culmination of all my dreams, occurred.  You probably have to have been a horse-crazy little girl at some point in your life to appreciate just how important this was.

All during Gypsy’s long pregnancy (horses are pregnant for 11 months and this is a lifetime in child-years), I dreamed of the perfect horse.  I wanted her to have a filly, and I wanted it to be a leopard Appaloosa.  Thank goodness she’d been bred to an Appaloosa stallion, so I had a fighting chance for part of this dream to come true.

As Gypsy and I traveled the irrigation ditches in the sugar-beet fields where we lived at the time, I would, of course, talk to her about all of this.  Every hour that I wasn’t in school or doing chores, I threw the hackamore on Gypsy and jumped on her bareback, off to explore and cover as many miles as daylight allowed.

I even drew a picture of the foal I wished that Gypsy would have and on May 6, 1967, Gypsy answered my dreams.

That evening I went to the movies with a girlfriend, checking on Gypsy in her stall before I left home.  She was restless, and I called a friend whose family raised Quarter horses.  I gave them a detailed description of Gypsy’s symptoms.  They assured me that her time was close and that I should check on her again when I got home, before I went to bed.

When I got home that night, at about 11pm, I ran down to the barn and threw on the lights.  There, peering back at me from the stall was the most beautiful little leopard Appaloosa foal I had ever seen.   It looked just like the picture I had drawn!

I cried out in delight and ran into the stall to throw my arms around Gypsy and whisper my thanks to her.  Then I checked for the all-important part – girl or boy?  We had a home run!  My little baby was a filly!

I ran up to the house to announce to the world that our baby had arrived.  My parents would only let me call a very few people, since it was so late at night, and then my father returned to the barn with me so that we could check the foal’s umbilical cord and treat it with iodine to prevent infection. 

People arrived from far and wide the next day to meet the newest addition to our family, who I named Periwinkle.  I was so happy I thought I would absolutely burst.  I didn’t think I would ever want for anything again.  How could I possibly want anything else?  I had everything I had ever dreamed of!

Gypsy and Periwinkle

Me, the happiest child on earth, & Periwinkle

Then … as the days wore on … I noticed that Periwinkle seemed tired.  She developed diarrhea.  The veterinarian started making daily visits.  He performed lab test after lab test and did a lot of shaking of his head.  Periwinkle became constipated.  She nursed less and less.  She slept more and more.

I kept pleading with my parents to “fix” Periwinkle.  I knew something was seriously wrong.  Every morning before school I would go out to the pasture and make sure Periwinkle was up and nursing before I left.

I still believed she would get well

On the morning of May 26, just 20 days after her birth, I helped Periwinkle stand up and she crumpled back to the ground.  (How is it that, 42 years later, this can still make me cry?)

I sat there with her head in my lap and I knew she was dying.

“No!” I screamed.  “No!”

I jumped up, ran into the house and frantically called my father at work.

“Daddy!” I screamed at him, “Periwinkle’s dying!  You have to come home!”

I was still hoping that Daddy could “fix” her.

I ran back out to Periwinkle and held her while she died.  I sat there and rocked her and sobbed.  I couldn’t believe that I had lost her.  How could this happen?  I couldn’t grasp the bitter reality that she was really gone. 

Gypsy hadn’t yet realized what had happened.  She grazed quietly nearby. 

My father flew home from work as fast as he could, but didn’t arrive until after Periwinkle had died.  He called the vet, who made some calls on our behalf and arrange for us to take Periwinkle to a state laboratory in Sacramento for a necropsy.  There was great interest in what would have caused the death of a horse so young, and the vet wanted to make sure there wasn’t something to worry about with Gypsy.

My father came out into the pasture and explained to me that we had to move Periwinkle, that I had to let go of her.  You try talking sense to a hysterical 12-year-old.  My dad was never the sensitive sort, and he and I never had much of a relationship, but that was the one time in my whole life that he really went the extra mile for me.  There was no talk, for instance, of me going to school that day, even though in our family you had to be practically dead to miss school (I even stayed at school with my migraines).  It was understood that this was an event, to me, of monumental proportions and where Periwinkle went, I would go.  I needed just a little more time with her to come to terms with what had happened.  Apparently the adults in charge understood what I could not grasp.

We carried little Periwinkle out of the pasture and put her in the back of my father’s van.  It was then that Gypsy realized something was wrong.  She went nuts.  She raced frantically around the pasture, whinnying for her lost baby.  It broke my already crushed heart. 

My father and I spoke very little on the long drive to Sacramento.  He told me how sorry he was, and that he was certain that Periwinkle was happy that I was with her at the end.  I cried the whole way, which I’m sure made him very uncomfortable.  I was dreading arriving at the lab and having to give them Periwinkle, but we did, and we did.  I ran my hands over her beautiful coat one last time and I can remember to this day how it felt, how she looked.  Some things are just burned into our brains, never to be forgotten.  Periwinkle is one of those things – a beautiful memory, ending in tragedy.

Within a few weeks, the necropsy report came back to show that Periwinkle was riddled with cancer.  It was “just one of those things” and there was no reason, the report stated, to worry about the mare.  In fact, the owners of the stallion offered to breed Gypsy again and she had another foal, a healthy one, the following year.  But he was no Periwinkle.

How does this relate to Barney, you ask?  I’ll tell you soon …