Horsekeeping (37 page)

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

An Unsteady Trot

A
T LAST. The December day for our own barn-warming carol sing dawned wintry and bright. The season prompted dewy memories of the Billingsly's barn party, and though I doubted ours would measure up, I awoke eager to celebrate our venture with our long-suffering neighbors—all that whacking and whirring—and friends. Noreen, who lives down Weatogue Road concocting indoor and outdoor garden fantasies, contributed the just right touches: two enormous wreaths with red bows and white lights gave welcoming color and warmth to the front barn doors, and the icicle lights outlining the gazebo circled a whimsical halo in the lonely, dark fields.

Inside the barn, she wove garland through the loft railings and along the front twenty stall doors, beyond reach of dexterous lips and tongues. Every horse boasted at least one ornament hung on his or her gate as proof of their owner's devotion. As the main attraction, a twenty-five-foot evergreen touched the rafters invisibly wired with red mackintosh apples. For weeks afterwards the horses and my kids feasted on the fruit. It tasted sweeter having been plucked from a fruit-bearing pine.

The sky covered itself with soymilk clouds, bluish gray and thin, as the guests arrived. Our indoor cheer buttressed the descending New England gloom as did human treats. Mike, The White Hart Inn chef, prepared tea sandwiches of watercress and
chevre
, egg salad and pumpernickel, cream cheese and date, and smoked salmon, along with bite-sized
poached shrimp with cucumber, and marinated flank steak on
bruschetta
with salsa to savory us. Spirits and plenty of hot chocolate and mulled cider warmed us, and mini key lime tartlets, chocolate-dipped strawberries, and oatmeal and chocolate chip cookies sweetened us. The horses lounged photo-ready, occasionally kicking the walls and squealing to remind us chattering humans that they were the whole point.

In finale, several regulars from our local theatre company led us in caroling around the indoor riding ring. The shy crowd eventually joined into
The Twelve Days of Christmas
, singing in group rounds. Jane and Keira jingled sleigh bells and shouted
Frosty the Snowman
and
We Wish you a Merry Christmas
, while my son and his friends stormed the grounds, conquering the remaining piles of dirt. The supportive crowd expressed heartfelt congratulations and blessings, pleased to celebrate a rejuvenated farm and usher in our new venture. It didn't quite live up to the Billingslys' party, but that's my penance for imitation.

 

 

WE RANG IN THE NEW YEAR WITH A HORSE. For several weeks, Bobbi had had her eye on Willy the appaloosa for Scott.

“Bobbi wants you to sit on him to see if he fits.” I casually floated the idea to my husband.

“Don't get a horse just for me.” Suddenly looking crowded, Scott pushed out his elbows. “I'm really busy at work right now. And, anyway, do we really need another horse right away?”

“Well, he'd make a good lesson horse and a spare for trail rides.”

“I thought we didn't want to get into the lesson business, only take on riders with their own horses?”

Killjoy,
I thought, picturing all our empty stalls.

“Well, then a trail horse for when we have visitors. He's really nice, and picture how striking he'll look out in the field with all those brown ones.” I decided to tackle him with aesthetics. “He would be our accent horse: an exclamation point amongst all those periods.”

So Scott sighed in resignation, and Bobbi and I split Willy's cost and expenses. He settled right in, happy for all the attention. I quickly learned that “the pretty white horse,” as Jane referred to him, required separate sets of brushes to deal with all that old lady grey-white hair, especially in shedding season, and we quickly excised black polar fleece from our wardrobes. Light horses, like peroxide-haired women, require copious maintenance. But he proved exceptionally dependable, especially with children, and his homely face and general good manners endeared him to all. Elliot requested regularly to ride him with his comfy canter and willingness to jump.

Willy did freak out once: he jerked his head in wonder at miniature Hawk—
what the heck is that
?—snorted and bolted to the far end of his paddock. Hawk has that effect on some full-size horses: he's not a deer, not quite a dog, not readily classifiable. He seems unnatural to the uninitiated, and I suppose he is, bred by human intervention. But Willy soon habituated to him, both alone and pulling his cart, though the Hawkster hitched to his work often stirred up the horses as he trotted along beating his staccato rhythm down the dirt road. As Bobbi explained, “The big horses want to know why we allow that horrible thing to chase that poor little horse.”

Bobbi always takes the horses' points-of-view, and her willingness to interpret their thoughts—actually speak for them—though silly, endeared both her and the animals to Elliot, Jane and me. We not only learned horse behavior, but also, without embarrassment, easily fell into the fun pattern of anthropomorphic translation; that is, unless Scott was around, good-naturedly rolling his eyes.

Winter into spring brought a new girl, Brandy, to join the Weatogue team, working part-time until we got busier. An energetic twenty-three, she owned a raucous laugh and bonded with Bobbi's horse Toby, riding him regularly. We concluded that Brandy favored him for his voluptuous, naturally wavy brown tail that echoed her own mane, in the way people choose pet dogs that resemble them. She won over Elliot and Jane
with her Cousin It imitations: she would cascade her own long brown hair over her face, replace her wire rim glasses and squeak just like the hairball creature in
The Addams Family
. She worked hard and valued the riding: part of the Weatogue pay package is training under Bobbi, no small perk. She and Meghan learn from an expert on well-trained, -behaved and -tended, healthy horses without the expense of ownership.

Meghan brought over her horse “Q” (for Quixote), a large retired race horse with an overbite so egregious he couldn't nibble carrots flat-handed: we would push them into his mouth end-to-end like you'd feed vegetables into a juicer. But hundreds of dollars later, the dentist maneuvered poor Q's bite into line by about seventy percent. My Bandi hid quite a few oral problems, too. Equine dentistry is the stepchild of horse care, with only about five percent ever treated. According to dentist Cheryl, most can benefit, and even minimal treatment can transform behavior on the bit and significantly improve eating comfort and general demeanor. During World War I the cavalry dentist-to-horse ratio was one to ten, testimony to the importance of the well-tended horse mouth. Sharp points tend to grow on their teeth, often to the non-masticating sides which slice away at gums and cheeks. These can be either “floated” away by hand files or power-drilled down, neither a sight for the lily-livered. My knees weakened amid the protein powder that smoked the air the first time I watched, and cavity-free Scott beat a hasty retreat from the whining drills.

But considering that rider control of these animals is largely through a metal bit in their mouths, good oral hygiene makes sense. While Q's transformation broadcast like a before and after make-over, Bandi's improved teeth showed up in his performance. He chewed less furiously in the bridle and also yielded to the rein more, relaxing his neck into the soft curve, that holy grail of dressage riding known as “going on the bit.” Not that I can do it, maybe only occasionally by accident, but I have watched Bobbi on Angel maintain the perfect rein tension so horse and rider are weighted evenly and neither is pulling or giving too much. Bobbi
managed it more handily with Bandi after his dental treatment. I guess we all feel like new when relieved of one, let alone multiple toothaches.

The dentistry seemed to settle Bandi some, but still he was not himself. Perhaps he isn't a winter kind of guy. Heavy weather means more indoor work, and he is not enamored of the indoor ring. Or maybe the change of barns, the second in four months, set him questioning the reliability of family and home. Still leery of riding him, our nerves reinforced each other's. On trail rides I was too edgy even to trot.

“Don't worry,” Bobbi soothed tactfully. “It's such a treat for me to relax on a leisurely walk.”

We plodded slowly along.

I decided against riding the kids' pony again. It was undignified, and I determined to see things through with Bandi. A small voice in the back of my head whispered the possibility of getting yet another horse, ostensibly for Scott to ride and an easier mount for me: an heir and a spare in addition to Willy. Collecting horses is a horsekeeper's devil-on-the-left-shoulder temptation. I tried to dampen the inclination, picturing a frowning Scott on my right shoulder, but new horses came through the barn now and then, and Bobbi is
au courant
to those for sale. We tried Big Merlot for a couple of days, but while he would fit Scott—we still hadn't lost hope of getting him in a saddle—he was largish and too green on the flat work for most riders. He seemed mellow, but did shy once in the woods at something we didn't perceive. I wanted that autopilot bomb-proof horse that required no work or tension from me, one that I could
trust
. But can a human ever fully trust a herd animal of prey? Can a horse give true and total allegiance to his owner? To love and protect her? To sacrifice his own hide and put her vulnerable, skinny neck first? To value and cherish her ‘til death (by natural cause, not horse accident) they do part? Scott would say, “It's a
horse
, not a husband, you poor mutt.” It is also what led nineteenth-century propagandists for the horseless carriage to proclaim the horse “an untamable brute which
man had cowed and beaten into partial subjection, but which bursts his bonds occasionally, carrying ruin and death through our streets.”

Yet there are many such storied relationships between human and beast, and people swear to their authenticity. Have I seen too many romantic movies and owned too many overly domesticated dogs? Has anthropomorphism warped my brain? Will I die alone with too many cats?

Reality check: horses are large, potentially dangerous animals. Tamed certainly, but not domesticated: still unpredictable, strong and not overly intelligent, at least in what humans consider intelligence.

Hugh Parker, a long-time breeder/trainer who worked for many years at El-Arabia, warned me: “Never trust a horse.”

Okay,
what then? Continue to live in fear, the only part of riding that I had mastered? Figure out how to keep my buns in the saddle during spooks, spins and bolts because they will happen, even to the “bomb-proof” loafer? Recognize that the automatic horse of my dreams is a fiction, except on a carousel? Learn how to fall? Drink more milk? Double up my disability insurance? Add more body armor—that hot, unflattering protective vest? Squat-thrust and crunch myself into thighs and abs of steel? And keep my kids at it?

Wait a minute: what happened to the fun?

At least the kids were progressing smoothly with no serious riding angst. Like animals, Elliot and Jane blissfully live in the moment and don't project. And so far, Cleo had been a perfect lady, just the right side of lazy. “It's easier to Go than Whoa” Bobbi always says. And Jane was going slow, policing herself by refusing to trot. “There's no rush,” I repeated to Bobbi and Meghan. It was easy to forget Jane's tender youth in the midst of this grown-up adventure. She mostly managed to keep up, but her stubby, albeit strong legs offered limited leverage at even a pony's comparatively broad sides. We found her a proper saddle, one that didn't require several looped riggings of the stirrup leathers, but her feet still barely reached pony belly. Every once in a while she would remind us she was only five.

“I know all the parts,” she boasted at dinner. “The brain is the boss of the body and helps you think.”