Just this side of heaven is a place called Rainbow Bridge.  When an animal dies that has been especially close to someone here, that pet goes to Rainbow Bridge.  There are meadows and hills for all of our special friends so they can run and play together.  There is plenty of food, water and sunshine, and our friends are warm and comfortable.

All the animals who had been ill and old are restored to health and vigor; those who were hurt or maimed are made whole and strong again, just as we remember them in our dreams of days and times gone by.  The animals are happy and content, except for one small thing; they each miss someone very special to them, who had to be left behind.  They all run and play together, but the day comes when one suddenly stops and looks into the distance.  His bright eyes are intent; His eager body begins to quiver.  Suddenly he begins to run from the group, flying over the green grass, his legs carrying him faster and faster.

You have been spotted, and when you and your special friend finally meet, you cling together in joyous reunion, never to be parted again.  The happy kisses rain upon your face; your hands again caress the beloved head, and you look once more into the trusting eyes of your pet, so long gone from your life but never absent from your heart.

Author unknown....

(Donna Sweeten sent this poem with this note.)
"The poem was never signed. I don't know
who wrote it, but it fits my old horse and me."
Donna

(Submitted by Anna Freeman in honor of "Misty" and "Azra".)

My Big Red Horse, no more of this land
Your spirit roams free with a heavenly band
Yet I am left here with tears in my heart
Trying to heal, unable to start

You loved us well for the time that was yours
Enjoy your peace on distant shores
There is a rip in my soul where once you did run
Still I'm not alone, you left me your son.

Mahagony glows softly through summer rain
The dark horse stands waitng to comfort my pain
He will guide me through this endless night 
To share a new day at morning's first light.
 

We are thinking now of a mare, whose coat would shimmer in the sunshine and who, as far as we are aware, never entertained a mean or unworthy thought. 

This horse is buried beneath a cherry tree, under four feet of garden loam, 
and at it's proper season the cherry tree strews petals on the green lawn of 
her grave. Beneath a cherry tree, or apple, is an excellent place to bury a 
horse. Beneath such trees she stood shaded, and drowsed in the summer, or 
munched lush grass, or lifted her head to some strange intruder. These are good places in life or death.

Yet it is a small matter, and it touches sentiment more than anything else. For if the horse be well remembered, if sometimes she runs through your dreams actual as in life, eyes kindling, questing, asking, laughing, it matters not at all where that horse sleeps at last; on a hill where the wind is unrebuked and the trees are roaring; or beside a stream she knew; or somewhere in the flatness of a pasture land where most exhilarating cattle drive. It is all one to the horse and all one to you, and nothing is gained and nothing is lost - if memory lives.

But there is one best place to bury a horse. One place that is best of all. If you bury her in this spot - the secret of which you must already know, she will come to you when you call - come to you over the grim, dim frontiers of death, and down the well remembered path and to your side again. And though you call a dozen living horses, they should not be threatened, nor resent her coming, for she is yours and she belongs here.

People may scoff at you, who see no lightest blade of grass bent by her hoof, who hear no high pitched whinny too fine for mere audition; people who have never really loved an animal. Smile at them then, for you shall know something that is hidden from them and which is well worth knowing:

Author Unknown

Submitted by Anna Freeman in memory of Miss Bay Bee (May 9, 1973 - July 20, 2002), CMK Foundation Mare of Freeman Arabians.  Dam of 1 *Witez II grandson and granddam of a *Witez II great granddaughter and a *Witez II great grandson.

Maratez+/ was the winningest son of Nitez (*Witez II x Nafa, by *Raseyn), who was himself the leading sire of champions of all the *Witez II sons.  Maratez+/'s dam was by 1960 U.S. National Champion Stallion Radamason.  Imaja, second dam of Maratez+/, was 1961 U.S. Reserve National Champion mare.  Uncannily bright, kind and a top show horse, Maratez+/ would make an unusual contribution to the Arabian breed:  One which would be his alone.

In 1982, Caftitz, a Maryland resident, turned her attention to the as yet unnamed equine illness which seemed to be killing horses all around her.  She contacted the Morris Animal Foundation about the disease, raised much need funds for research, and ultimately became National Chairman of the Morris Animal Foundation's Potomac Horse Fever Committee.

Cafritz then volunteered her own horses as part of the researchers' test herd when the University of Illinois's Miodrag Ristic, PhD, DVM, a world renowned microbiologist and immunologist, isolated Potomac Horse Fever's causative agent and initiated work on a preventative vaccine.  Thus, Maratez+/ had the honor of being the first horse  in the world to receive a shot of PHF vaccine produced for USDA testing.  By no means confined to the Potomac River area where it was first recognized, the widespread killer disease has since been brought under control.