PrintAlthough the author doesn’t find the horse she’d envisioned, something convinces her that he still has just the qualities she’d been seeking.
My horse died, and I was not there. My beautiful, slightly neurotic, 27-year-old Thoroughbred mare dropped dead in the driveway while a friend was leading her to the barn at feeding time.
There was no warning, no gradual decline. Until the very end she was sound and sleek. Her dark bay coat shone almost black, and she could still run the fenceline like a champion, until that very last moment, when it is probable that one of her major blood vessels ruptured.
I got the distraught call just as we were sitting down to my son’s birthday dinner. My husband and I had taken our sons to see the Atlanta aquarium; it was an ill-fated trip from the start.
In the impeccable logic of horsewomen, I packed in the last 5 minutes before we left the house. My thought process, I have realized, goes something like this: If I am packing for a horse show, I can do it on autopilot. If I am packing for another occasion, it does not really matter. Either way, it only takes a few minutes.
The last thing I recall about leaving was that my husband, Joe, was impatient with my horsewomanly ways. Apparently, normal women are concerned with clothes and pack ahead of time—who knew? The boys were squabbling, and since we were almost ready to leave Joe carried them out to the car and turned on the video player. That seemed effective, until we stopped at a restaurant four hours later and realized he hadn’t put shoes on their feet. We made an unscheduled stop at a shoe store.
Arriving at the hotel late, we did not bother to bring everything up to the room, as our car was parked in the gated hotel lot. That night someone broke into our vehicle and stole all of my son’s birthday presents and the video player too.
Horsepeople are a superstitious lot, and I am no exception. Perhaps the frantic call from my friend was just the inevitable third event in a series of mishaps. Still, my mare’s death hit me hard. I spent much of the return trip in contemplation.
When you have a horse for 16 years you get to know every whorl of hair, every quirk, every mood. I never wona single blue ribbon with my mare. The best we ever did at a show was a third in a low jumper class. Yet she gave me an entire higher education in sensitivity, with minors in patience and perseverance. Most of all, she taught me to appreciate bona fide spirit. In her case that meant she gave me the sense that she would go over or through anything. Riding her, you felt that she would fall over before she quit trying.
The Sensible Thing
In many ways my mare’s restless nature was both her strength and her downfall. In her early days, when she was on the track, she washed out before races. An event trainer bought her but could not keep weight on her. I bought her from that person and began my long education. I learned about nutrition, and I learned what it really means to ride off your seat.
However, a good dressage score remained elusive the entire time I competed my mare in lower-level events. Some judges are very insistent (and rightly so) that “canter” is not the same as “hand-gallop!”
