🌟 Afterstone featured in Your Horse magazine - news 🌟
www.yourhorse.co.uk/news/afterstone-memorials/
Journalist Rachael Turner has told Sky's story beautifully. How his ashes sat in a wooden box on a shelf for years. How that never felt right. And how that feeling ultimately became the birth and inspiration for Afterstone – handmade ceramic pieces created from a small amount of human or pet ashes.
🐴 Sky now lives on my windowsill as a collection of pebbles. I pick them up every day. 💙
If you know someone who has lost a loved one – be it a human or a beloved pet – and felt that a box on a shelf or in a box under the stairs wasn't quite enough, we're here. That's why Afterstone exists.
Sky's story:
I had a horse called Sky. In February 2017 I made the hardest decision of my life, for him.
Sky was a 16.2hh dark bay gelding – stunning, bold, and full of personality. I'd saved up my work bonuses to buy him. He was green when I got him, seven years old, and we had so much ahead of us. But from the start, he was stiff to the right rein, and what followed was a long road with vets and physios, a bout of lymphangitis, and eventually a diagnosis of kissing spines and hock issues.
We operated. We gave him every chance. And for a while, it seemed like it might work.
Eight months later, juvenile arthritis changed everything.
From the beginning, I'd told our vet Emma, "we need to put him first. If there comes a time to make a hard decision, we make it for him."
In early February, I picked up the phone and kept that promise. Those seven days between the call and the day itself were the worst of my life. I visited him every day. I cried constantly. I felt like a murderer.
I know some of you reading this will understand that feeling exactly. The guilt of making the right decision never quite feels like the right decision when you're in it. The day before, I went up and gave him a hot bath. He would be the cleanest horse in heaven. I had his shoes removed and took a small piece of his tail.
The morning it happened, I had a mad idea of just going to the yard and walking him away from it all. I had no idea where. It was madness. But our vet Emma and yard owner Sue had arrived early — they knew me. Sky got an entire bag of carrots. Sue and the girls had quietly tidied the spot where he was to be put to sleep. No mean feat in a Devon winter.
I stayed with him throughout. When Emma confirmed there was no heartbeat, Sue had laid a blanket over him and I saw the crematorium van quietly pull in, I gave him a last kiss and let Sue take me to her house for a coffee and a sob. I was utterly devastated. Despite everything, despite every decision made with love and care, there was nothing more I could do for him.
His ashes came home in a wooden box with a brass plate saying 'Sky'. And there they stayed — for a long time — because I didn't know what else to do with them.
What I've learned in the eight years since is this: loving an animal also means being willing to let them go. It is the final act of devotion. It doesn't stop hurting. But it is love, not failure. Through Sky, I met Sprite — his smaller, younger sister, same father, different mother. We've had eight amazing years together, and she is the sweetest, most affectionate mare I've ever known.
Some losses, in time, open doors you never expected.
If you're navigating horse loss right now – or any pet loss – I hope sharing my own story helps a little bit.
I wrote a guide a while back on pet grief, what to do with ashes, and ways to remember them. It's not a sales page. Just something I put together because I wished something like it had existed when I needed it.
You can find it here if it's useful:
Sending love to anyone who needs it today.
