Tag: horse

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It hits me every time I go into Rural King. Or when I pass a barn with a riding arena, set up for rodeo or jumping—that familiar twinge of admiration and envy. It’s an agony of nostalgia if I encounter a trail rider and they are mounted and I’m on foot, hiking.

I miss who I was when I was a horse person.

I’m still a horse person. But not like I was. Not when I smelled every day of leather and horse sweat, when there’d by hay in my hair and baling twine in my back pocket.

I still have round pen panels in the garage. I have one remaining saddle, some brushes, a feed pan. I keep a lead rope in the truck.  There’s a hoof pick in my desk drawer in my office.

I go into the farm supply store to buy chicken feed, dog and cat food. I avoid the horse aisles.

I hate not buying fly spray and dewormer and supplements. I hate walking right past all those rows of horse halters and mineral blocks, hoof treatments and curry combs as if all of that never had anything to do with me. As if I never had anything to do with it.

I’ve been blessed with some amazing horses. Pat, the pony who was my first horse love. Beautiful, brilliant, fast Merlin, the horse of my heart and soul. Sweet Crocodile and Mythic the mischievous, Ghostbuster and my dear Joker. Caesar, the gentleman. Pantheon, the rescue I could never quite reach.

Merlin, my soul horse. And my dear little Robbie, a noble dog.

Since I was about 5 years old, I’ve said I was born loving horses. I said, “My real mom or dad must love horses.” It was a statement that reverberated within my adoptive family.

And as it turns out, it’s true.  

Ironic: I’ve found where I belong, and I’m not there right now.

I found my biological family, including my father, and I’ve ridden his wonderful mare, Keeper, and we can talk horses all night and all the next day, but my anecdotes are from years past.  There’s nothing new to tell him.

I’ll have horses again someday. I plan to, anyway. Right now, I’m focused on my career as a horror author, a teller of dark stories and flash fiction. I’m rewriting (again) my first novel, and I’ve got four more lined up right behind it.

Truth is, if I have a horse, I won’t write. It’s the time, sure, but more to the point, it’s that the angst pushing me to write evaporates in the presence of horses. I don’t have to do anything more than put my face against a neck, right where it meets the shoulder, or run my hand underneath a mane for everything in my world to tilt onto a more stable axis. (Pun intended.)

I feel like writing is what I’m supposed to be doing right now. Some days I’m sure of it, some days it’s cloudy.

As I write this—this reflection so often in my mind—I can see, from where I sit, the edge of what will someday be a pasture for a couple horses. I know that, if I had horses there now, I could walk outside, go to the gate, and they’d come with their nickers and their face rubs and all this angst would melt.

Instead, I’m holding onto it. I’m about to go back into the document labeled Version 11, with Outline 4, and see if I can tempt a future reader (you, maybe?) to fear the cold, dark water of a strip mine pit lake and the primal creature who swims there, not alone—a creature who misses the way things were before the diggers came. And a main character who is trying to hold onto who she is.

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Yesterday I drove past a sad scene on my way home from work—a gray horse on the ground, a woman crouched near him stroking his neck, faithful dog by her side. I turned around and drove back, asked the woman if she was OK, expressed my sincere and teary-voiced sympathy when she confirmed the horse had died.

I’d noticed from the many times I’d passed his pasture he was a bit thin in the way of older horses, despite good grass, and, judging from the obvious health of the other horses, good care. Watching his owner sitting with him, comforting herself by waiting with him for her husband to arrive with the tractor to bury him, of course it put me in mind of the terrible day I lost Merlin.

That day is never far from my mind.

Merlin was my heart and soul horse, and a part of me died when he did. I don’t know if it was like that for this woman and her white horse. But clearly she’d lost a friend.

If you’re a horse person, you cherish that special bond. There’s nothing quite like working with a 1,000-pound animal and feeling a connection that makes you a team. It’s breathtaking when your horse, your friend, leaves the camaraderie of the herd to visit you at the gate. There’s no healing like that offered by a horse, and no view better than the one of scenery between a horse’s ears.

I’ve driven past this farm for five years now and this is the first time I’ve spoken with or even been near to anyone living there—me standing in the road, her about 20 yards away. And yet I have something in common with her, don’t I? Several things, in fact. Probably more, were we to sit and talk. Maybe she has kids and grandkids. Maybe she’s had some difficult family relationships, and some wonderful family surprises. Possibly she has conflicts at her job that make her work less satisfying than it could be, and perhaps she’s sometimes proud of an accomplishment that made someone else’s day better or easier.

Are you with me still? I’m going to ruin it now by talking about politics. I can tell from the signs in the yard—the banner on the horse barn, even—that we aren’t a match when it comes to politics. We may even have some serious disagreements. I’ve thought some fairly unkind things as I’ve driven by, and made some assumptions that probably aren’t completely off the mark.

Now, though, I’ve shared a grieving moment, however briefly, with at least one person there.

The sun didn’t break through the clouds just then, there were no rainbows, butterflies, musically chirping birds. I’m not going to call her up for coffee or even send a card. But I am going to remember she’s a child of God, as am I, and a person, not a caricature.

What I mean to say: It’s so easy to hate someone. Takes no effort at all. It’s equally easy to sit in judgement of other people, to assume the worst of everything about them. No special skills needed for that.

Horse people know: when you are riding a horse you can’t actually force that horse to your will. Oh, you can add training aids, some of them brutal. You can deprive a horse of its will to live and cow it into obedience. But if you want a partnership with a horse, if you want to get something done, you have to find a way to communicate and cooperate.

It’s true that some horses, like some people, are intractable—vicious, even. But most horse people know that in nearly every case, there’s a reason for the horse’s bad acting.

Not sure, but it seems like there might be a lesson here for me.