I am about to relate something that happened to me some time ago which some will see as just pure coincidence but others, like me, will read something more into it.

Three years after my father died, my adored horse, who he had chosen for me and who had been with me for 18 years and given me love and comfort through a horrible marriage, got very ill with respiratory problems and as much as the vets tried to they just couldn't get down to the bottom of his problem.  They sent cultures from his lungs off to laboratories, they tried him on several types of antibiotics but without success and they even performed a horrible procedure of trying to drain his lungs of all the phlegm that he had building up inside, during which I hid myself out of his sight because I didn't want him to associate me with the unpleasantness of it all.

But none of this worked and eventually my preferred vet who had known me and my horse during all our years together took me aside to explain that maybe because of his ripe old age of 26 it was probably best to put him to sleep and alleviate his misery.   He had always been a very high spirited horse and we both loved galloping up and down the beach making all the seagulls soar up in the air around us and he would just never tire and I nearly always took him back to the stables almost as fresh and strong as when we had left,  but in the state that he was in then he barely had enough energy to pant out of breath up a slight hill - and at a walk.

I told the vet that I couldn't face the idea, not yet at least as I was too weak to endure yet another loss.   I was still grieving for my father, I had separated two years prior from an unloving husband and was going through a really difficult divorce and I felt that the only real friend and source of love that I had left was my horse. 

With that I went back to my rented bed-sitter and started to look at all the horse books that my father had left me.  I was feeling so alone and would have given anything for my father to be back down on earth with me and to help me through this tough time.  I knew that he would have known what to do.  He had learnt how to ride at a very early age and was such a wise horse man and had always taught me as much as he could but obviously we never got to broach this particular problem that my horse was going through.

I reached for his old vetinary book that was probably thicker, heavier and bigger than the novel 'War and Peace' and which he used as his bible on horses and as I opened it, it automatically opened at a page where he had left one of his business cards.  There I saw my father's name in print again and I couldn't help but smile with fondness of his memory but when I got over my brief moment of emotion I began to read at which section of the book I had landed to find that it was the chapter on 'Respiratory Problems'.  I began reading it all up and it mentioned an ailment called COPD which means Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease and its symptoms seemed to be exactly what my horse was suffering from.  It mentioned that more often than not this can be caused by the horse being given food (hay, alfalfa etc) that contains mould or dust and that once this type of food can be replaced with a supply that is fresh and free from dust the problem usually resolves itself. 

I couldn't help but get a shiver all over me and without thinking any more about the whole incident went rushing off to find the vet and tell him about what I had read.  He listened carefully and agreed that it was a possibility and one that he had overlooked.

We put into practice the new food regime and within two weeks my horse was already showing signs of coming back to being his old self again.  It was just fantastic and when I went out on my first ride on him again I spoke to my father and thanked him so much for coming to help me when I really needed him. 

Since he died he has helped me on various occasions but only when it has been really really serious, in other words I haven't been able to get him to help me win the lottery or anything like that.  It is only when he knows that I really need him and so I genuinely believe that he has become my guardian angel and this story more than made it clear to me because although some of you may think it was all just a coincidence,  what are the odds in a book so large with so many thousands of pages of it opening up at exactly the precise page that was needed in order to cure my horse and on top of it to have my father's business card lying there on that very page?

Unfortunately two years later my horse did actually end up dying of a twisted gut at the age of 28 and there was nothing that we could do eventhough I spent a whole day walking him up and down in the hope that the knot might untwist itself but alas that didn't happen and this time my father didn't help me either because he knew as I also realised myself that it was his time to go and also that I was at last ready to let him go as I had found another love, who today is my husband, and so I wasn't going to be alone any more.