08/28/2025
Get your tissue ready 😪🤧😭any help you can do for rescues is saving a life and giving them the love they such much deserve. We lost our 15 YO Slick yesterday to cancer. He was such a sweetheart, he was a house baby and loved the sun from the skylights, not at all interested in going out! We have a doggy/ kitty door but he was not interested. RIP Slick
TOMORROW
Tomorrow I am going to walk my best friend down to a shady tree in a beautiful meadow. I’ll hold him while his treating veterinarian will dispense medication that will take him gently out of this life and into whatever is coming next.
It will be peaceful but it will take a piece of me too.
It’s my duty as someone who loves him as much as I do to stop him from suffering. He’s no longer eating any grain and his markers on bloodwork (plus the fluid that he is retaining despite medication to stop him from doing so) is beginning to make him dull and uncomfortable.
I hate that I feel like I have to justify this online, but I do. That’s the world we live in.
I wish I could just say if I could keep him for another minute, another hour, another day — I would. If there was a path forward to fix him, I’d gladly pay any price.
But it’s time.
Its time.
Saying goodbye to him?
It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do, but I take comfort in the fact that we have exhausted every possible opportunity to give us more time, and that now I am making a decision to spare him any suffering or pain.
I take comfort in the fact that he’s spent the past three years being loved by millions online, and spent every single second with his beloved brother and best friend, Obsidian.
No one will ever write a story that says “I put your mule down today because you weren’t brave enough or kind enough to…” because I will be brave enough and I will be kind enough.
I will love him enough to say until we meet again.
His brother, his family and his friends will all gather around to say goodbye. He will eat as much of his favorite treats as he wants to and he’s spent the last several days in a perfectly sunny and 75 degree meadow (it’s like God knew and gave him perfect weather as a gift), and in shaded barn with fans on when it’s above that.
I couldn’t ask for a better end of life journey for Onyx. I know that.
Obsidian, his brother, seems to know we’re at the end. He looks at Onyx for long stretches and then into the sunset. I can empathize so strongly with him. I know exactly what he’s feeling.
Sadness, longing and the love that prevents us from asking Onyx to stay and suffer.
We’ve brought another mule to comfort Obsidian after Onyx has passed. They will be together when it’s time and Obsidian will know and understand that Onyx is gone to heaven.
Three years have passed (nearly 4!) when they said I wouldn’t get even get three days with Onyx.
It’s never enough time.
But right now, I don’t feel guilty or am second guessing.
I just feel the immense sadness of having to say goodbye to a best friend. It’s a weight I wouldn’t wish on anyone to carry, but I understand it’s the price of great love and friendship.
So I will gladly bear it.
I love you so much, Onyx.
I’ll be right by your side.
We all will be.
And it’s not goodbye, just until we meet again.
You are the best mule God ever made.
You already know that.
But I won’t let you go without reminding you all the way…
You were the most legendary mule.
Tomorrow raise up a glass to a legend who will gallop into heaven. I’d love to see a comment section of who will be there to meet him when he arrives.
(Olivia said she wrote this today because she understandably won’t be able to write it tomorrow. Thanks for your understanding.)
