Horse Crazy (12 page)

New topics will begin to dominate your
conversation: Coggins tests, farrier bills, vet bills, feed bills,
tack repair bills, worming schedules, lack of money, various
vitamin efficiencies, bit capabilities,
to-drop-nose-band-or-not-to-drop-nose-band.

Your non-riding friends will start using
words to describe you like: "obsessive," "one-track-mind," and
"boring."

Having a new horse, joyous as it is, is
expensive. Four new shoes range anywhere from $30 to $65 a pop and
they need them every six weeks. It's wise not to think of this in
terms of compact disks, Ralph Lauren blouses or even groceries. You
should only treat yourself so well that you lay out fifty bucks
every month and a half for a pair of new shoes.

If your newly beloved should have a
persistent cough, walk funny, scratch himself, or simply look a
little listless, a visit from the vet will probably run around $25
to see your horse (although if you can find someone else out at
your barn who needs to see the vet too, you can usually split
this), and then anything else--medications or special tests--will
be on top of that.

You'll find yourself riding differently,
better, than you did on other people's horses. You'll tend to sit
more correctly, more self-consciously (at least initially) on your
own horse. His gaits will become as familiar to you as your own.
His habits as endearing and as natural as if all horses had them.
Your first horse is special. In some ways, he'll become an
extension of you, your riding style, your personality. People out
at the stable will likely know you as "Buttercup's owner" rather
than the other way around.

Sometimes you can even believe there's love
involved. There probably will be on your side of things. But your
horse probably won't love you. Not like a dog does. More, probably,
like a favorite geranium. Most times, your horse (in all its benign
glory) will see you merely as the Keeper of the Carrots.

When I say good-bye to my darling, reliable
horse at the gate after our ride, he usually sniffs me aggressively
for any remnant, forgotten carrot or bit of apple and then, either
turns away slowly in disgust or stands staring at me, carefully
blinking his huge, baleful eyes as if to say: "Well, bugger off
then."

One of the big pleasures of owning your own
horse is bringing your friends out to ride and/or pet him on the
nose. That proud moment when you bring them with you to the gate of
the pasture and the herd is dotted before you in little clumps,
grazing peacefully as if posing for National Geographic covers.

The pastoral scene usually is extraordinary
in itself. There are a lot fewer ex-farm kids than there used to
be, so most of your friends will probably be quite impressed with
all of this.

My horse, Traveler, has what I feel is an
exceptional talent, in that he lifts his head and looks at me when
I come to the gate and call his name. It not only gives me great
pleasure that he knows my voice and his name, but helps me pick him
out by his raising his mostly white face in a field of several
similar stocky chestnuts.

My friends, anticipating, I suppose, Traveler
rushing over at my call, perhaps flinging on his own halter and
managing the gate by himself, seem disappointed by this trick.

"That's it? He lifts his head?"

"He knows his name! He knows me!"

"Hey, he's eating grass! Wow! Did you teach
him that?"

"Look, forget it. I never promised you
Trigger."

This is also a wonderful opportunity for your
non-horse riding friends to see you in a more elevated role for a
change. Especially if they're a little timid around these big
animals (and there are few non-horse types who are not), it's a
good feeling to be the one reassuring and unafraid.

This is also a very good opportunity to be
instructive--even bossy--with people you are typically passive
with, like boyfriends: "I said heels DOWN! Don't hold the reins so
short, this mouth has to last him awhile. Well, squeeze harder
then....SQUEEEEEZE!"

After being the greenest rider in the pasture
with eight-year old kids riding figure-eights around you with no
hands, it's a nice confidence boost to be the one with superior
knowledge.

"Don't stand behind the horse, Annie. He
might accidentally crap on you."

"No, you hold the reins like this, Jack."
("Gosh, it looks so easy when you do it.") "Look, why don't you
come out more often? In fact, why don't you come to dinner tonight?
Hell, want to get married?"

On the other hand, it's incredible how just
being around horses can transform the nicest people. Friends who
haven't ridden since they were led around in a circle on a comatose
Corgi at a playmate's birthday party will begin trying to convince
you that they can be entrusted with a whole horse on a trail
ride.

You
may have just spent the last
eighteen months working to get your legs under you and your hands
quiet through hour after hour of lesson and practice, but your
friends are going to want to just hop on and go.

And when you know they're inexperienced, in
spite of their entreaties and huge lies, you can, nonetheless,
sternly prop them up on "Old Butter" to plod painfully, repentantly
around the ring while you watch diligently on the sidelines,
tap-snapping your crop against your reproof-proof rubber boots.
(Anybody that green doesn't deserve to have any fun!)

But when the sly little darlings sit you down
and flatly lie to you... "Susan, I didn't want to say anything
before for fear of stealing your thunder, but, well, I have ridden
in the Grand National...” or: “Trust me! I've ridden all my life, I
grew up with horses!” ...there is nothing you can do but suspect
the worst and pray for the best. Because if you believe them and
they haven't got the newspaper clippings to back up their story,
you had better have a sizable nest egg tucked away. Because their
parents or spouses, or perhaps both, are going to be talking to you
very soon in language sprinkled with cozy terms like: "criminal
neglect" and "manslaughter." And your rebuttal, appropriately
enough, will sound something like: "But, but, but..."

The step-sister of one of my dearest friends
once convinced me that she exercised race horses quite regularly
somewhere up in Canada. After making a minor to-do about how small
Traveler was, and fat and poky, I was almost embarrassed to hand
over the reins. He flipped her off at a dead run within three
minutes of her settling into the saddle.

And it was absolutely my fault.

Another friend, who said he'd ridden for
years--even had his own pony as a child--took a nose-dive off my
somnolent beast into a blessedly sandy riding ring after assuring
me his girth was plenty snug, thank you.

But for the most part, having your own horse
means knowing what you're doing when your
interested-but-not-too-adept non-riding friends do not. And it
usually translates into confidence-boosting and private kudos.
Because it wasn't easy getting to this point. And you should feel
good about what it took to get you where you are. Your non-riding
friends don't want to pretend they ride like Roy Rogers. They want
to pretend they're you.

Equal to the pleasure of being treated like
you're George Morris by your non-riding friends is the pleasure of
riding with your horse-owning friends, of being a part of the
group, the mounted clique.

You're Little Joe in the opening sequence of
"Bonanza," all of you riding out, shoulder-to-shoulder, your horses
obedient and eager beneath you, and all of you ready and prepared
to rescue small children from burning ranch houses, lasso the black
hats and basically keep the pasture free of tyranny and
oppression.

Riding with your well-insured and skilled
riding friends is a great feeling and one that tends to spur a very
special kinship.

There is an intimacy between friends who
cheat death together from time to time. When during the course of a
casual hack, I turn to my friend, Deborah and say: "Want to gallop
to the top of the ridge?" or, even more terrifying: "Want to race?"
when she agrees (and she always does), it is a bond between us that
is much closer than sharing Kroger's Two-For-One coupons or teaming
up for a merciless doubles game.

During that moment when we agree to do this
almost-dangerous thing, it feels like what soldiers must feel
toward each other before a battle. A tiny part of us is saying:
"want to gamble on our lives, together? Want to risk big time bone
breakage?"

Owning your own horse means other things too.
It means coming out to ride when, incredibly enough, you don't feel
like it. It means imposing on your friends (those who ride) to look
after your little dear while you're out of town or sick with the
flu. If your horse is pasture-boarded, it means tramping out to the
barn where you board your horse--and it's likely that it will not
be conveniently located to where you live--on cold, snowy, messy
nights to feed him.

Owning your own horse means making financial
decisions where the horse always wins. To wear your hair in a
post-perm scraggle one more month or pay the vet who cleared up
Prince's eye infection last month? The horse always wins. As he
should.

The money and the time are balanced almost
evenly with the love and the mental therapy of owning a horse.
After an eight-hour day of city pressures, bosses, traffic jams and
untidy air, a lung-cleansing canter in a very green pasture can do
wonders for your mental health.

Even the act of changing from hosiery and
pumps to denims and muckers can begin the smoothing of the lines
across your brow, the softening of tensed muscles. Because no
matter what sort of day you've had, no matter who was ugly to you,
looked sharply at you in the hall, cursed you in the left turn
signal lane, when you walk out to the pasture with that carrot, or
to your horse's stall, you know hard-core reality will go into
suspension--neatly, sweetly and for however long you're there.

Owning your very own horse--even at age
thirty-five--lends a certain believability to the idea that you can
recapture the delights and dreams of your girlhood.

And that's a lot to get for $700.

Chapter Ten

Loving the less-than-sound horse

The day is sunny. The air is crisp. The
ground is firm but not hard. Your horse's eye is bright, his coat
glossy. It's going to be a great hack.

You bound up into his newly buffed and
polished saddle and gently urge him forward into a walk. After a
few minutes, you're heading toward the trail and all is right with
the equine world.

You ask for a trot. He gives it--with an
extra bounce of the head every time his front right foot hits the
ground. He is, as they say, 'off'. Lame. Not walking good.

Lameness is only one of the many things that
can go wrong with your horse's health, but it's probably the worst;
the one thing, besides death, that can effectively prevent your
riding, day after day, month after month.

There is an old saying among horsy types: "A
horse without sound feet is no horse at all."

Lousy, but true.

When I bought Traveler, he came complete with
a foot abscess that he'd had for nearly nine months. Although this
particular affliction didn't interfere with our rides, it did
involve foot packing and endless soaking in Epsom salts, which
would terminate only after he'd kicked over the bucket in which he
was soaking at least two times per session.

His feet were hideously long, having not been
trimmed in months, and this affected his soundness. A nice, trimmed
hoof lets the horse stand upright and solid. Sloppy, long feet can
cause tendons to strain, even change the angle of the foot, adding
extra stress to the animal's legs. Too, Traveler had been shod
irregularly--usually due to the previous owner's lack of consistent
cash. The result of this was that Traveler's feet were weak, his
hoofs chipped and misshapen.

A proper schedule of trimming and shoeing,
combined with pads for extra support and leverage where he needed
it--in short, lots of money--would put Traveler right again. It
would take a year, but at the end of that time, his feet would have
their natural balance and angle restored.

What did affect our rides and was not
immediately correctable, however, was chronic lameness. Day after
day, throughout the last part of our first summer together,
Traveler was simply 'off'. At a trot, at a walk. He limped.
Badly.

The vet, having ruled out navicular during
the pre-sale vetting, prescribed butte and lots of it. There was no
change. The vet upped the dose to two grams a day. Nothing.
Traveler hobbled.

You can dab antiseptic on cuts, put droplets
in eyes, force-feed medicinal concoctions for just about anything
else, but lameness is simply, frustratingly, there.

I soaked Traveler's feet, wrapped his legs,
spread lineament, tried different pads and shoes--wedgies, stacked
and flat--I exercised him lightly to go gently on the feet, I
over-exercised him and put him on a diet to help take some weight
off the feet, I didn't exercise him and kept him calm in a
sparsely-grassed paddock, which, at $5 a day, meant the sound of
money shusshing down the tack room toilet.

And still he limped.

The joys of riding were going up in vet
bills, boarding bills and mail-order medical catalogue remedies.
And at the end of it, I was the proud owner of a very sweet, albeit
un-ridable, pasture pet. I felt anger at the vet who'd vetted him,
anger at friends who suggested I might want to cut my losses and
give him to a charity organization (the horse, not the vet), anger
at the girl who'd owned him before, and anger at the poor beast
himself.

But, most of all, I was angry at myself for
buying him, for not accepting that I just threw seven hundred
dollars onto the proverbial compost heap, for letting my heart rule
my buying strategy and for still loving the aggravating creature in
spite of it all.