Thank you Bluey, your words are heartfelt and come across as emotionally genuine.
I am naturally an enthusiastic and positive bleeding heart, but I need to make it clear that myself, my mom, and the others around her are all quite aware that her future is deeply uncertain. The club is obviously the least of her problems.
When we talked to the seller in-depth about her difficulties, and were up front about the immediate vet costs – let alone whatever lurks down the road – the seller made the deal with us to give her to us for free. “Rani” has impeccable ground manners, beautiful body condition, and it is clear the seller has cared about her. She made it clear that a good home was more important than money.
Ok, so now we have this sweet horse through no fault of her own is facing some medical hardships, who connected with us (a figure of my human sentimentality or not, I won’t postulate now), being offered for free and needing some attention to give her a soft place to land, at the very least.
There are a lot of factors that go into why a mare like this would or should be turned down and I totally get that. Fortunately for her, and maybe both fortunately and unfortunately for us (depending on your outlook on life), we happen to be in a situation where we can field the vet bills and aren’t attached to getting a riding partner out of it in the end.
Yeah, the original intent was looking for a horse to “replace” the recent DSLD-diagnosed gelding (bad word, he isn’t going anywhere but his saddle days are over for sure). So this is definitely not exactly that, or may be, depending on a lot that is out of our sight right now.
I guess I am trying to say that I am prepared for the heartbreak, and the potential bad news when the vet looks at her more closely this week, the decision to PTS now or sometime in the future, perhaps never riding her at all. I mentioned the prior needy souls to point out that we are not unfamiliar with this sort of thing, a thing that is shared by many if not most equestrians at some point or another. But here we were again presented with a horse in need, at a time when we can do it, weighed the options, and are proceeding.
And a personal riding horse isn’t a huge thing right now, my goals are simple, lay outside of competition, and I get along well enough with the schoolies at the barn. 
So, the good luck wishes are appreciated. Hopefully we are picking her up tomorrow and the next plan is to get her to the clinic. Could be a happy story, or bittersweet as they tend to usually be, but either way there will be some good memories along the way. I intend to keep her story updated, here or on the other thread. Perhaps there will be some good info about managing melanomas and other stuff for those interested.
Going to get radiographs of that foot if possible.
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