Horse Crazy (14 page)

She was positioned directly behind me and
Traveler and when she and her horse--a huge dun gelding named
“Monroe”--approached the water, she applied her bat at his first
balk, and then urged him forward and through the filthy water.
Monroe edged into the muck, then, just before they reached the
other side, he stopped and did the most incredible thing. He
dropped to his knees.

Squealing in shock and surprise, his rider
dug in her heels and squeezed with her knees to get him back up.
Nothing. Just when we all felt she should be climbing off him, he
slid onto his side and began a luxuriant roll in the mud--saddle,
tidy little leather saddlebag, bridle, the works, now black with
mud. The rider, having finally kicked free, managed to escape being
pinned under him by milliseconds and was now dancing around him in
the mud, tugging on his bridle and whacking away at her boots and
the mud with her crop.

I’m afraid we were never really fond of this
woman and we reacted rather badly--with smiles and even howls of
laughter and teasing: “Liz, when you said Monroe had a problem with
water, we thought you meant he didn’t like it” “She said Monroe was
a cross-breed. Just left out the part that he was part pig!” (Horse
people are so funny I’m surprised you haven’t seen us on Conan.)
Liz, dripping with mud, finally got the little dear out of the mud
and onto his feet and with one final and violent shake of his
be-soiled self (yes, just like dogs, horses will shake themselves
dry) he allowed her to pick up a sticky stirrup and remount.

Sometimes a horse will choose to lie down at
a bad moment, and sometimes they will just fall down--and of
course, no moment is good for that. One sunny fall day
(appropriate), about a half a dozen of us grouped for a long trail
ride. One of the trails that was popular (and has since been
claimed by a lovely subdivision of houses priced from the $450’s)
went as far as Turkey Mountain, about ten miles away. It followed
the Chattahoochee River for a part of the way, and then twisted off
into a jumbled copse of woods in the direction of what was a rather
unremarkable mountain.

We hadn’t gone two miles before Traveler fell
down…at a walk. All my fears of losing it at a gallop in a pothole
never came to be. He just dropped to his knees in the narrow path
and froze there. I kicked free of the stirrups, ready to hop off if
necessary, but he soon scrambled back up. The rider behind us did a
wonderful job of not stepping on us and we soon resumed our ride. I
was a little perplexed and concerned but Traveler seemed none the
worse for the experience.

Why do horses fall down? When I asked my vet,
he just shrugged and replied sagely: “Sometimes horses fall
down.”

Once, when I’d cantered out onto a polo field
with Laura where she was showing Shadow to a polo player in the
interests that he might buy him, I amused myself by trotting
aimlessly around the field. A polo field is very smooth (and
usually off limits to the hacking types in order to keep it that
way). As we were trotting about, Traveler, once more, fell to his
knees. This time I went over his head in a neat little flip and
landed on my back--crop and reins still in my hands. I jumped up
immediately. Traveler was looking wild-eyed this time, a sure-fire
indication that he would attempt to leave the scene of the accident
at top speed. I soothed him, checked his knees, which he’d skinned
a little bit, checked the girth, and remounted.

Why did he fall? He wasn’t off. The ground
was as smooth as he’d ever had the pleasure of trotting over. A
week before, Laura was schooling Shadow in the ring and the same
thing happened to them. Shadow just fell down. Boom. No reason.

Sometimes horses fall down.

Chapter Twelve

National Velvet Grows Up and Eats A Lot of
Advil

In the crackle and calm of early morning at a
barn, you can breathe in the muskiness of the nearby horses and the
glorious crispness of the day that's coming. Early morning rides
may be the very best of all. Leather boots crunching across the
packed dirt drives that lead to the barn and your horse's stall,
cozy nickering greeting you from within his warm niche. Or standing
at the gate and watching your own beauty pick his way carefully
toward you. (Contrary to what some horse people may tell you, many
horses will come agreeably, even happily, to their owners--carrot
or no.)

The pungent-sweet smell of leather tack is
sharper in the morning. The scurrying of little mouse feet
evacuating your tack box, the lazy morning stretch of the indolent
and remiss barn cat, the absorbed munching of the stall horses
enjoying their Wheaties. All fitted perfectly into the morning
stillness. And when you've mounted and stepped out into the mist,
you could be a heroine out to find her lover in the heather-dusted
moors or a young Viking warrior. The strength and power of the
early morning brings to mind battle-mornings that must have been
and smelled and looked much like this one, or must have the
beginning of many a romantic and adventuresome journey. Surely,
such journeys started early in the morning, before the day had the
wits to turn ugly and forbidding.

So you quietly walk into the moors, eyes
scanning the horizon for Heathcliff, unconscious of the easy gait
of your mount, as steady and familiar as your own breathing. And
when you canter quickly and rhythmically through the glen where you
know the castle rebels have grouped, or gallop passionately to the
edge of the wood where the world-shatteringly important exchange of
secret messages is to take place, you know that no one in your
typing pool, or in your bridge club, or in the campus cafeteria
later that day will have experienced anything like what you have
just experienced. And as you re-affix your veil and bid your Arab
smoothie adieu, turning your horse back toward the barn and the
blinking, suddenly-alert sun, you know that there's nothing else
quite like this morning in the world.

It was in North Georgia, four years after
that first wobbly jaunt on horseback in New Zealand, that the full
meaning of loving horses and being with them had finally emerged.
After what seemed a lifetime of borrowed horses, injured horses,
damaged confidence, poor weather and generally rotten conditions,
everything fell into place.

The thrill of jumping, heart stopping
can-we-do-it gates and coops that loomed two titanic feet high.
Trot, trot, trot, eyes ahead, up and over! And will he fall? Will
that soft, safe landing on the other side continue after his feet
hit the ground, or after his front feet, will his chest and his
nose and then my head follow? No! Bounding effortlessly over
streams and logs and caviletti like they were so many sticks across
his invincible, sure-footed, scornful path. And cantering a jump's
even easier! More effortless! And faster even! You just canter
toward a jump, get in two-point, and stay out of his way while he
gets on with the business of jumping it. Simple! And people win
Gold Medals for this?

If your horse enjoys these mornings and
evenings and afternoons out in the field with you as much as you
do, wonderful. If, on the other hand, he views you as a walking
feed bucket and little else, he'll probably spend a good deal of
his time out in the field trying to convince you to go back to the
barn. Sometimes he might skip the "convincing-you" part and just go
back to the barn. Very fast.

Most horses view the barn as a source of
security and food and therefore as a positive place to be.
Traveler, for example, considers the barn a very positive place.
This situation will typically mean some rather stern conversations
about who is, in fact, the boss. As far as I can tell, the results
of these little conversations do little to nothing to convince my
horse that the barn is any less a positive place to be, but they do
quite a lot for making me feel like a Real Horse Person. And that's
something.

Part and parcel to being a Real Horse Person
(aside from snapping at the cashier at Winn Dixie for no apparent
reason) is having a new, and virtually constant, element into you
life.

Pain.

Riding a horse will make you sore. Stiff and
sore. Stiff and sore and aching and bent over so you can't get your
car door open. Most riders, even the ones who ride frequently and
who canter as smoothly and as expertly as an angel on a
moonbeam--even these people groan with conviction when they get out
of bed the next morning.

There are a wide assortment of bones and
muscles pounding away at each other in the exquisite art of
horseback riding. And this isn't even considering the occasional
dumping. If you fall, roll neatly and then jump to your feet while
gaily and correctly waving your crop to signify that you're
okay--having not suffered even the loss of your wind--then you can
count on having a black and purple map of Australia tattooed to
your hip by lunch time the next day. (Assuming it wasn't a
concussion all along.)

Also, riding down hill with a tense spine
will do never-before-felt things to your back. If you haven't
discovered chiropractery before, you will no doubt do so once
you've begun to ride on a regular basis.

The know-everything horse person usually has
a pretty fair knowledge of medicines and balms for their horses and
for themselves. They have to. One friend I know regularly pops
ibupropen right along with her One-A-Day and orange juice because
she never knows where that inflammation may be lurking--unseen or
even as yet undeveloped.

Alongside bit converters and saddle soap,
you'll want to place ice packs, aspirin, ace bandages and Ben Gay.
Maybe young sprigs can ride all day and bounce out of bed ready to
play hard at recess, but for the older horse-hobbyist, getting up
from a prone position often requires a force of will that feels
much like a reenactment of Lazarus.

Of course, it's not just riders; anyone who's
active will probably get hurt sooner or later. The idea is to heal
faster when you do get hurt. Your body is pretty resilient and can
bounce back amazingly well from large doses of abuse and in very
little time. But one of the most important lessons to understand,
especially the older you get, is that hurting yourself isn't really
the end of the world. Usually, you'll recover. And hurting yourself
is sometimes what you need to risk in order to get the maximum
pleasure from whatever physical event you're involved. At least it
seems to be with horses.

Without the danger, the mad gallop through
the woods wouldn't be nearly as thrilling, the joy of sailing over
a four-foot fence wouldn't be nearly as exhilarating. You have to
risk something. There it is. And sometimes what you risk tells you
something about what you value.

Unless you've broken a bone or dislocated
something major, most of the time you can treat your own
horse-induced hurts and scrapes yourself. Pulled muscles and
tendons are by far the most common horse-related injuries. If you
don't stretch adequately before each ride you'll probably pull
something now and then. And almost always below the waist, although
a hard-pulling mount on Sunday can have you show up at the office
on Monday looking like you're trying out for a pasture scarecrow's
job: arms starched straight out or bent woodenly at the elbow in
stiff memorial to your beast's triumph the day before. But mostly,
it's pulled something-or-other along your inner thigh, knee, calf,
hip or buttocks.

The fact is, most horse people are sore a
good deal of the time. (Which, I suppose, could account for why
they're so cross a good deal of the time.) If you ride regularly,
it's true that your legs might not ache the next day but your back
might feel tense or your neck won't be quite right, or you'll have
twisted your ankle a little or picked up some splinters or slammed
the feed box lid on your hand.

A barn or a stable with its various animals
and equipment is simply more likely to give you a bruise or a
scratch than meeting friends for a drink at your local pub.

Usually the rule of thumb is to stop using
the injured part of your anatomy until it stops hurting. This
doesn't mean you stop riding however. I once pulled a tendon on an
inner thigh that took nearly six months to heal because I kept
re-stressing it every time I rode. If you take a month off to tidy
up one of your lesser injuries, you can expect to sit a horse like
a somnolent jellyfish your next several times out.

One girl I know was so worried about losing
her seat while a broken leg healed (don't ask) that she continued
to do ring work with her leg in a cast. Many horse people wouldn't
think twice about riding with sprained ankles, nerve-damaged backs,
even broken feet.

A rider's legs take nearly forever to
develop. An incredible amount of work is needed to fine-tune the
ability to make each calf muscle telegraph its own, separate
message to the horse by a subtle yet definite flex or to train your
born-normal feet to automatically conform to unnatural and
initially painful positions, and then to be held like that for
hours. (If you thought the Orientals were bad to bind women's feet,
wait until you see what your own poor ankles and toes are in for
when you start caring about your riding form.)

It would take a lot more than a few pulled
thigh muscles or even a fractured toe to relearn all that. So many
riders ride with pain. It's a slower, more uncomfortable, way to
heal. But it beats losing the muscle tone and discipline you've
worked so hard to attain.

Fear of injury is one of the reasons why many
riders stretch before they mount up. Besides lessening your chances
of hurting yourself in the first place, the more flexible you are,
the faster you'll recover from an injury when it happens.

There's a temptation, after a grueling (but
heavenly) trail ride-- a ride where you slide to the ground aching
and moaning--to want to sink into a hot tub or curl up with a
heating pad to soothe and assuage all the unpleasant things you did
to your body that day. Unfortunately, an ice pack (and a
stiff-upper) is more what's needed. Applying heat too soon to
swellings and general boo-boos is bad because it dilates the blood
vessels and you want to be constricting those little darlings. The
ice will help reduce swelling and the less swelling you have, the
less pain you'll have and the more you'll be able to move the
injured area.