The horse Susan Richards chose for rescue wouldn’t be corralled into her waiting trailer. Instead Lay Me Down, a former racehorse with a foal close on her heels, walked right up that ramp and into Susan’s life. This gentle creature—malnourished, plagued by pneumonia and an eye infection—had endured a rough road, but somehow her heart was still open and generous. It seemed fated that she would come into Susan’s paddock and teach her how to embrace the joys of life despite the dangers of living.

An elegant and often heartbreaking tale filled with animal characters as complicated and lively as their human counterparts, this is an inspiring story of courage and hope and the ways in which all love—even an animal’s—has the power to heal.

When Susan Richards adopted an abused horse rescued by the local SPCA, she didn’t know how Lay Me Down’s loving nature would touch her heart—and change her life.

For more than a decade she had aspired to be a published writer but it was only with the memoir she wrote to honor Lay Me Down that she achieved this goal.

The book led to a book tour in the course of which Susan reconnected with family and friends from who she had cut herself off. She had given up on romance, but at the second reading of her tour she encountered the man who had sold her his house twenty-four years earlier, a world famous photographer, Dennis Stock. Despite her many qualms about age and intimacy, they fell in love.

One day, at the age of thirty-one, Susan Richards realized that she was an alcoholic. She wrote it down in her journal, struck by the fact that it had taken nine years of waking up hung-over to name her illness. What had changed?
Susan had a new horse, a spirited Morgan named Georgia, and, as she says, “It had something to do with Georgia. It had something to do with making a commitment as enormous as caring for a horse that might live as my companion for the next forty years. It had something to do with love.”
Every day begins with a morning ride. Every day Susan lives a little more and thinks about her mistakes a little less. Every day she learns a little more from Georgia, the kind of horse who doesn’t go in for indecision, who doesn’t apologize for her opinions, and who isn’t afraid to be herself. In Georgia, Susan finds something to draw her back to herself, but also something to keep her steady and focused, to teach her about stepping carefully in unknown territory, to help her learn again about balance.
This is a memoir about the power of animals to carry us through the toughest times of our lives-about the importance of constancy, the beauty of quiet, steadfast love, the way loving a good (and sometimes bad!) animal can keep you going. It’s a wonderful story for Susan’s (and Georgia’s) fans and for anyone who has ever loved an animal enough to keep on living.