Horsekeeping (43 page)

The morning of our show, the predicted stormy weather scattered and the novices rode in a white-grey mist. By afternoon we endured a steady downpour, but only three of the scheduled sixty riders had cancelled. Bobbi's horsey friends shouldered in against the work required to stage a show, much of which cannot be undertaken in advance. The day preceding and the day of, many hands are needed. There are entry forms to organize, entrant numbers to disperse, score sheets to label, alphabetize and eventually tally, signs to make and post, the prize table to display, food vendors to direct, cars and trailers to park, horses to wash, brush and comb, manes to pull, riding rings to groom, a big barn to clean, port-a-pottys to situate, organizers to instruct, riders and horses to calm, and, and, and. Plus we still had our boarded horses to care for. At 10:00 p.m. Saturday night, I reluctantly left the girls atop footstools at their assigned horses' necks, braiding manes in a quiet calm. Snipped black yarn littered the floor. Mesmerized, I procrastinated leaving their
night-check tasks and idle horse chatter, the low hum and soft smell of late evening in a barn.

Near dawn eight hours later the barn pulsed with activity and nervous energy. The first ride was 8:30 a.m., the last around 5:00 p.m. Bobbi perpetually stood ringside to read the test to riders who hadn't memorized their courses (most). I knew mine cold and declined Bobbi telling me where to go and when, aiming for some extra credit. Or so I thought: confused during my second test, I lost points with a wrong turn. Elliot knew that having a reader call the course out loud during the ride is benign score-wise at the lower levels and laughed at my vain attempt to get a jump on the competition.

So before my first ride, Bobbi, who needed to be in ten places at once, was not in the barn helping me prepare. Nor was anyone else. The umpteen last minute glitches kept everyone hopping, and Meghan and Brandy, in addition to calming the boarding horses who didn't thrill to the invasion of their territory, also had to sort out Toby, Angel and Q for their own rides. Orphaned, I decided to buck up and get on with it, nerves aside. Elliot and I had to dress, tack and emerge ready to warm up twenty minutes before our test times. Elliot groomed unruffled and steady, but the uncompromising deadline threw off my timing, and I stop/started several times, first running late, then too early, then a mad rush at the end.

Elliot and I rode twenty-five minutes apart. Bandi and Cleo took good care of us, taking the warm-up and the test as seasoned pros. We did well, earning four ribbons; one first (blue) and one third (yellow) apiece, a compatible tie. I also won the intro level high score overall with a 67.1% averaged over tests A and B. Friendly and encouraging to all riders, the judge, Katie Rocco, took time at each ride's conclusion to compliment and offer pointers. Worthy of her attention, we felt like real horse people. Elliot and I huddled over our test sheets to compare our marks.

“Look, Ellie,” I raved, “you got lots of 7s. Your halt was ‘very straight and square' and your left circle had ‘nice energy.'”

“Wow, Mom. You got an 8 on your working trot, but too bad about that 5 on your free walk—‘needs to cover more ground.' And that had a coefficient of 2.”

At 11:00, Scott delivered Jane to the barn for her lead line walk trot class, their delayed arrival my idea to forestall their inevitable boredom. We readied the ponies. Jane's friend Keira would ride Cleo, and we wove elegant pink spray roses I somehow remembered to clip from my garden at 7:00 a.m., into her elegantly braided mane. Jane would ride Hawk who, we found by experiment, accepted her under saddle without ire. Into Hawk's wild black forelock we stuck heartier yellow daisies, better suited to his red plaid pad and western saddle. Poor manly Hawk: bad enough to have been emasculated from stallion to gelding, but to suffer a flowered coif as well? Jane couldn't care less that he still owned a Y chromosome. Indignant, Hawk shook the daisies out, but we persevered and enough held to wow the soggy crowd as they paraded the ring. The kids walked, trotted and reversed direction, playing to collective “ooh”s and “ahh”s. Keira's talented posting earned a first, Jane's attentive posture and serious demeanor won her a second, and a tiny boy perched on a big grey took third. It passed all too quickly for Jane, who pouted “That's it?” and wanted desperately to go again. Keira's parents and Scott and I photographed away with full hearts anticipating the memories this scene would long inspire.

 

 

DESPITE THE RAIN, IT PROVED A BELLWETHER DAY. No dangerous rides or falls, and the relaxed flow of incoming, outgoing, exercising horses and trailers signaled that our farm made sense physically and could operate smoothly. Emotionally our connection to animals was deepening, and we were gaining strength, agility and confidence, all within a context of hard-earned, gratifying fun. I hung around all day, helping Bobbi, running errands from ringside to the barn, watching the riders and, come evening, lingering in the fellowship of the barn.
As darkness fell, we storied the day in low voices while seam ripping the yarns from braided manes and praising our horses and ourselves for tests well-ridden and a show well-executed. I silently thanked the spirit of Mrs. Johnson and fantasized that she watched from afar. Exhausted and deeply satisfied, we already looked forward to our next show in September.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The Apotheosis

W
HILE WONDERFUL IN EVERY ASPECT, the show was only a preview of the delights that a summer hanging around horses and the farm would avail. The heavy construction work behind us, we tackled the domestic finishing touches—hanging curtains in the bathroom, hammering handsome saddle holders and bridle hooks to tack room walls and grooming stalls, hanging Bill Binzen's photographs (which I had commissioned to document the process of renovation), establishing routines, allocating all bits and pieces to their nooks and crannies, and, last but not least, indulging my new favorite pastime of catalog-shopping both necessary and not-so-necessary equine-related accessories. I wallowed in horse- and barn-keeping. That I was still queasy about the riding didn't diminish the myriad pleasures of barn life.

We grew to about twenty horses including the one or two who periodically boarded for a training tune-up or a rest. Hawk, Bandi and Cleo belong to the Bok family, Toby and Angel to Bobbi, and Q to Meghan with Bobbi and me sharing our “lesson horse in-waiting for Scott to ride,” Willy. Theo aged 31, Katie, 29, and Glimmer, 27 are out-to-pasture retirees, and Glimmer's owner Big Jane rounded out our stable of full-time workers by early September. That left ten active boarders including our earliest, Chase; the Hanoverian black stallion Royaal Z and his colt OneZi; Symphony, a large, sweet Holsteiner Thoroughbred cross mare; the white dressage master Dutch warmblood Aram; the Danish
chestnut warmblood Colombo; and Quarter Horse Eddie who has Cushing's disease and can't eat hay. He wears a muzzle basket to keep him safe from grass-induced tummy upsets when out in the paddocks, along with Hawk who blimps out if left to graze the salad bar all day. We affectionately call them the “basket heads.”

There is also the Thoroughbred Monty, the blue-eyed white-muzzled paint Casper, and Chester, an ex-dressage horse that hated Florida but seems content in our New England stable. We nicknamed him “Castanets” for his nervous habit of clicking his teeth. Humble Bee, a racer on rest for a hairline fracture, doubles as a civilizing “buddy” to the young barbarian OneZi.

Already I could attest to the wonderful characters of “horse people,” and Scott and I looked forward to hosting all our boarders and their spouses, along with Bobbi, Meghan, Brandy and Big Jane and various service providers like the vet, chiropractor, farrier and dentist to a dinner at The White Hart in September. We had more boarding prospects in the works and figured that growing to about twenty-five horses might enable us to operate without losses. The economics still puzzled us, however: more horses involved more staff, as well as additional wear and tear.

A family of sorts with the boarders, we were patient with one another in getting this fledgling operation through its toddler stage. Our boarders were gracious even the few times things hadn't been perfect despite Bobbi's masterful orchestration of the rhythms and routines of horse life. Rigging a shipshape organization happens according to “barn time” which is warped, and I have never known hours to slip away more quickly, not even in the whirlwind rush of NYC. I was still making excuses to my family for my tardiness returning from the horses, and other pursuits also suffered: tennis (my usual summer sport), errands, biking, and even showering and grooming myself properly. If my many suggestions of barn organization and aesthetic improvements lacked immediate attention by Bobbi, I knew it was because horses, like kids, demand to come first. Barn work never ends.

But I had succumbed to this life that generates such sweet pleasures; showers never rained down more delightfully than after a day at the farm, sometimes riding two horses a day (well, once I managed that), cleaning, organizing, grooming, grazing my horse, swapping and absorbing horse stories. The pure physicality of hard labor brought bone-deep fatigue, but also bound me in a cocoon of contentment. It took me out of my head; I transferred the fruitless static of my worry brain into the tasks at hand. If not necessarily horse-sold yet in the riding aspect, I was certainly barn-crazy.
I could really be happy doing this as work,
I often thought as I filled buckets, rolled the feed wagon or sauntered the aisles disbursing treats;
I've stumbled onto my own animal-based therapeutic program.

The mini trail rides I increasingly risked became infinitesimally more relaxed, and I forced myself to strike out on my own (facing my fears!), if not through the woods then at least around the near field. Lazy Bandi inevitably dragged his hooves away from the barn and quickened his pace on the return. Everything bothered him—the bugs, the rustling brush, the calls of the other horses from the barn—and his jumpiness ignited mine, which fostered his, which accelerated mine, which re-inspired him and... and... and. But the land lay lovely, and viewing it from horseback allowed a slowed-down, broader perspective. Forward motion without engine or effort is a rare mobility, and the togetherness of human and animal in nature together flipped all kinds of soothing switches: it was quiet, old-fashioned, time-honored, historic, rare and empowering. And something whispered that my forced solo rides would make the training easier. Slowly Bandi and I were gaining a deeper acquaintance. I acknowledged his tics and quirks and he mine. I accepted that fully knowing my horse would take years. I believed he knew me as his “special person” if not his regular keeper.

“Bandi loves me when you're not here, but totally ignores me when you are,” Meghan claimed.

“Oh yes. He knows his Mama, don't you Bandi?” Bobbi added, tickling his withers.

Feel-good flattery perhaps, but I appreciated the girls' efforts to center me in the life of Weatogue Stables even though I disappeared weekdays most of the year.

George hacked out several virgin, very windy trails (Scott protested any tree-cutting) through the prickly undergrowth of the twenty acres of woods, enabling us to ride without backtracking and to vary our routes. Our greed for more extensive wanderings knew no bounds.

“Do the horses have to take over
all
the land?” Scott asked testily.

“Well, ‘er, they do keep the trails nice and clear for
our
walks,” I tried.

“Can't we just keep the horses relegated to the horse farm property? I like the woods wild, the way they were.”

“I'll tell Bobbi,” I said, disappointed at any barrier to our expanding frontier, not that I was brave enough to travel them with a horse.

But our explorations continued, and the horses pushed at our borders—north, south, east and west. I cringed when Scott and I walked our old trail, knowing that every deeply divoted, muddy hoof print and sneaker tread-jamming pile of moist, hay-flecked manure somewhat offended him. Horses were hijacking his wife, his children, his land and his wallet. And it wasn't long before we regularly saw horses traipse around the alfalfa field out our kitchen window.