The Horse Chronicles

by Susie Wimberly

© Copyright by Susie Wimberly, 1998-2000, all rights reserved

The setting: My kitchen, about eleven o'clock in the morning on a Saturday. A chilling, gray, icy Pennsylvania winter day. I am alone, depressed by the weather, and only a cup of coffee and my thoughts for company. We won't have any relief from the cold and snow for some very long weeks yet. The sun rises late, sometimes fails to show up for work at all, and always leaves early. My winter-killed spirit is made more disconsolate by a terrible accident that killed one of our horses, the old Big Red One. It is February, 1997.

My introduction to Babe came in the fall of 1994, before Tezzeray came to the farm. I have always loved horses, and I thought I knew them, knew about them. But this mare was indifferent to my attentions. In fact, she seemed to resent me, to shy away from touching unless I offered food.

One afternoon, Joseph and I took a bag of carrots and apples out to the pasture to feed Babe and Big Red. When I held a hand full of treats out to the mare, she struck out at me with her left front hoof. There was no mistake or misstep about it. I had approached her at the point of her near side shoulder, an apple in my left hand, my right hand out to pat her. Without warning, and apparently without provocation, her left front hoof shot forward - a lightning fast, stiff-armed blow.

The steel-hard edge of her hoof connected with my right shin and she bore her weight forward so that the hoof grazed down my shin and ankle across the top of my foot. The pain was shocking, excruciating, and the apparent calculation behind the act left me feeling angry and humiliated. I turned my back on the mare and her companion, hopefully for good. We would not soon be friends. My leg was swollen and painful for a week. It took a full four months for the bruising and soreness to go away.

Babe is an old-style, King Ranch stock quarter horse: bow-headed, feet like soup plates, bulky, blocky body. I have always thought she looked fat, but in truth this horse is wall-to-wall bunchy muscle driven by a hair-trigger nervous system.

Her owner is an affluent business man who breeds fancy Swiss beef cattle, sort of an extended 4-H project cum agricultural tax exemption. He is of the opinion that since wild horses have existed for eons without preventive medical attention, his horses do not need to have their hooves trimmed, their teeth floated, regular preventive worming, or annual shots for disease prevention. My regular horse vet informs me that this is actually a case for reportable neglect, but this man's family owns the home which I lease, so my complaints are limited to muted suggestions that he might want to do this or that for his horses, suggestions which have fallen on deaf ears for over two years. I pick up Babe's basic maintenance expenses and just don't tell her owner. I know that this is not smart, but I do these things regularly for my own horse, and I simply will not deny her basic care. She is, after all, a horse - even if I don't like her personality.

Babe's long time pasture buddy Big Red died this winter at the age of 37. He was a former championship steeple chaser, a rangy sorrel Saddlebred with a wonderful personality. Red was our pasture boss and barn supervisor. He taught my coddled, inexperienced Arabian show horse everything necessary about life on our pastures. With Red gone, I wondered what would become of Babe. Their physical and emotional attachment had been uninterrupted for eight years. The night he died she beat up her front legs, possibly on a wooden fence post; not wire wounds, but deep abrasions which had removed hair and flesh. She let me doctor her wounds and tend her feet. This horse knows about rage.

I have a rule around this mare. If you are on the same side of a barrier as the mare - a fence, stall wall, whatever - and if you are within ten feet of the mare, and if you can't see her: YOU HAVE A PROBLEM. In addition to the earlier pasture incident, this horse has run over me in the stall a couple of times, and even knocked me flat on one occasion, results of unprovoked panic attacks. We just don't know what sets her off. Once bitterly cold winter evening, Joseph was lowering the bay door to the stall run, and she just ran into it. Stripped eight inches of hide and hair off of her nose in the process. That was when we formulated this rule about the mare.

Babe has scars on her body. There is an old wire cut on her right haunch. It is twelve inches long, a hard, knotty scar covered by the only white hair on her coffee brown body, excepting her blaze face and one white stocking. The farrier who visits every other month thinks that the long crack in the top of one of her front hooves may also have been from a wire wound. This horse knows about pain.

Once - and what I mean is one time only - I made the mistake of separating Babe and Red. I wanted to medicate her hooves for thrush, so I brought her into the inside work area in my barn. I closed the connecting door, leaving Big Red in the stall run. Babe was haltered and on a lead rope. Big Red was standing less than four feet away from her. She panicked and became enraged. She rushed the four-foot high solid oak, reinforced connecting door, striking it with her chest and shoulders, and let me know that she fully intended to either go through it, or over it. I found myself trapped in the three-foot wide nook between a concrete wall and my tack bench with no place to hide. After striking the door, she went for me with the same frontal body block. I grabbed some object and struck at her. She backed off for perhaps two or three seconds and came at me again. I screamed at her and struck repeatedly to try to get her to back off. Somehow I managed to release the bolt on the connector door and open it. Babe bolted through the door. Once back in Big Red's immediate presence, literally in a matter of seconds, she reverted to her normal, aloof, indifferent self. The incident might never have happened. It left me completely stupefied. This horse knows about fear.

My beautiful purebred registered Arabian horse EA Tezzeray came to live at the farm about eighteen months after we moved here. Tez was raised in a padded cell in a show barn, the product of calculated inactivity, selective breeding, and selective training. He rapidly moved from junior horse to pasture boss, first being dominated by Babe and Red to being their chief tormentor. His daily care, feeding, riding, training and social requirements gave me the opportunity to get to know Babe and Big Red really well. At one point, I decided that it would be a good idea to rehab the mare from an educational standpoint - to get her back under saddle again, and hopefully to some day wean her from her emotional dependency on Big Red.

I cannot describe riding the mare in words. You would have to do it to understand it. I can compare the experience to other horses, but no words of mine will paint the true picture.

Riding my horse Tezzeray is like driving a high performance sports car: fluid, rapid acceleration, requires precise, careful steering, a vehicle with a mind of its own, powered by high octane jet fuel. Tez loves to move out and I have difficulty keeping him from breaking into a canter on days when his is really wired. He routinely bucks for fun.

Riding the mare is like commanding a Sherman tank: sheer power. The muscles in her legs are nearly twice the circumference of Tez's, although she is a hand shorter than he is. Her stride is a short, choppy walk-trot on tightly coiled titanium steel springs combined with hair trigger reactions. The mare is so agile. She could spin around in a phone booth. Her body hums with anticipatory nervous energy. I have never seen the mare offer to buck under saddle, but my impression from riding her is that she would explode out from under her rider if she needed to. She is so powerful.

I have ridden the mare only three or four times over the course of a year. It was enough for me. I just decided it was easier to concentrate my efforts on schooling my own youngster, and, after all, she is not really my horse.

One miserable February winter weekend, shortly after Red's accident, Babe's owner arrived unannounced. His Land Rover bounced down the icy drive to the barn. He got out accompanied by two other people. Relatives, I thought, or special visitors. Showing off his horse to strangers when he never even comes over to visit her himself.

After a half hour or so, the Land Rover came jouncing back down the drive, stopping at the kitchen entrance. Babe's owner bustled up to the door and motioned me to come outside. He introduced me to a couple of kids - late teens, I guessed. Katie and her boyfriend Aaron. Katie will come to ride the mare. She is a waitress, or something - they met over dinner. Okay, this is interesting. This fresh faced, doe-eyed girl child will come out to my house, use my barn, and ride his neurotic, stupid horse on an unsupervised basis. Right. Wear body armor and a helmet, kid. I kept it to myself.

We chatted briefly on my back porch in the cold. I enthusiastically recanted the mare's many fine qualities. Yes, yes, her owner chimed in. She's a purebred King Ranch Quarter Horse. I told her owner that I had brought his good Western saddle in from the barn to store it in a cool, dry place. I would brush it off and have it ready for Katie whenever she showed up. I said I had a small selection of bits and a couple of bridles. We might need to use another bridle, snaffle bits were better than a curb, and on and on. We exchanged phone numbers. They left. I could have packaged my relief.

Well now, this is interesting. We rarely have company of the local sort here at the farm, and never horsy folk. Our friends usually drive in from Erie or Washington County, or Moon Township, and none of them have ever been interested in riding the crazy mare. I mulled it over all day Saturday.

Sunday arrived, another cold, gray, snowy February day. My mind and my hands were idle and uneasy, needing some task to occupy them. I felt irresistibly compelled to haul saddles, bridles, and bits and pieces of leather accouterments from the cold, dusty barn where they had lain brittle and unused for months, into my kitchen table.

Soon, I had a fine mess going. Breaking down bridles, soaking corroded metal bits in ammonia to loosen their patina of age and disuse. Soaping and dressing old leather. Looking for tears, and hoping not to find anything that would require costly repairs or even more expensive replacement. And there was a prize.

There was a very old English bridle which may have belonged to Big Red's previous owner. If so, this bridle had been unused and left to rot in the cold and dirt of my barn for over a decade. Throw it out, I thought. Maybe the bit can be saved. I worked on this piece of garbage for well over an hour, and just look what emerged. Medium port stainless steel Kimberwicke bit, made in England, with a double-flat brass curb chain. Two trips through an ammonia bath and much scrubbing to remove the years of grime and neglect. The English bridle leather began to respond to various treatments, and this turned out to be only the most exclusive catalogue item with its triple-stitched head band, brass hook-stud closures, and a leather keeper for every end.

The very best part of my new treasure is the reins. Hand woven, laced Courbette reins with a single buckle closure to knit them together. There is one bad tear in the left rein, but this is close enough to the end of the reins so that it can be successfully patched by the shoe repair shop. As I worked a life and utility back into the old bridle, I wondered if some major success, some win had ever happened through this tool of leather and steel. And, if some failure of a horse or a rider had torn the reins.

Now, my tack is all cleaned and conditioned. If it ever warms up, I'll be ready to ride. Hopefully, I will have the courage and the physical ability to tackle the half ton of adolescent attitude which has been furloughed for the winter in my pasture.

Monday morning, President's Day. I have the day off because of the holiday. There is some sun shine through thin winter ice clouds, and the weather man promises that we will be above freezing today for the first time in many days. Midmorning, the phone rings. It is Katie. She has the day off and will be coming out to ride Babe in the afternoon. No "may I" about, just "I'll be there." Great, I say. Looking forward to it. We'll leave the front gate open for you.

I try to ignore this new event, going on about my chores, catching up on some domestic drudgery. But I itch, and not in a place I can scratch. This itch is an admission, a disruption. Somehow, mysteriously, my barn has been transformed from a place of dust and disorder into magical organization. My tack bench is neatly dusted off. All the boxes of stuff for feet, for grooming, for fussing, present themselves in a new light of readiness. We are ready for Katie. Even the horses seem ready. They stand quietly side by side looking over the fence at me, looks of questioning anticipation on their faces. What's going on, Mom?

About twenty after three, later than I thought would be, a small white car slithers down the drive and stops at a cock-eyed angle. There is a driver, no passenger. But she doesn't get out immediately. I go back to my bathroom cleaning and laundry chores, waiting to know if she will go straight out to the barn, or if she will do the civilized thing and come up to the house first. Many minutes pass. So many minutes that I cannot help myself. I have to look out the window. She's still in the car. A door is open and arms and legs and things are flying around the car. Oh, God, she's changing her clothes in her car - in the freezing cold. A few more minutes and she knocks at my kitchen door.

I invite her in and we begin sizing each other up. Katie is impeccably turned out in spotless (not for long) nu-buck lacers, clean, tight stone-washed jeans, and what looks like a brand new red duster. Improbably, she has a full face of make-up and diamond earrings. She explains that she just came from a job interview. I chide her for changing clothes in her car. Should she take her boots off before walking on my living room carpet? No, I say, we routinely track a variety of organic materials into our house.

The wind is numbingly cold outside - do you have a hat? No? Well, here, we have lots of spare hats. I offer her my prize wool felt roll-up cap. Nothing's too good for company. You'll want to lose those earrings - they'll conduct that thirty degree air temperature right into your head and freeze those plump, girlish ear lobes.

Did I say she is tall? From my perspective, she appeared to be just under six feet tall. Maybe my head comes up to her shoulder. That's okay. She may be young and beautiful and strong, but I am older by twenty years, and cunning. We proceed to the barn, the horses, her objective, and my agenda.

I show her a few things in the barn: the light switch, the problems, dangers and inconveniences. No, we don't have a place to tie the mare up in the barn. Babe is excitable and strong, could easily pull down anything in here, especially the fragile old stall walls. We always work the mare with two people. See what she did to the back stall wall? Stove it in with kicks. See that loft overhang? Can't tie up there. I have cross ties for Tez, but I would work the mare into cross ties carefully.

I give Katie my opinions about the mare. The mare lives in a place of fear in her head. Through disuse she has become mentally lazy, though she is physically very energetic. Does she respond to the leg? Oh, quite. You won't have any trouble getting her to move. My information about the mare meets with Katie's comment phrased in a third-person prediction that Babe will tell Katie all about her problems in her own good time. Ooo-kay.

I manned the business end of the mare while Katie tended to the equipment. First she groomed the mare. This horse loves physical attention. The mare is head shy, I warn Katie. The mare promptly lowers her head into Katie's stomach and Katie's arms go around it, stroking her ears and poll and her eyes, areas normally off limits to me. Hmphf.

Katie cinches up the mare who immediately begins to prance and wheel in the barn, laying back her ears and champing her teeth together. Aha. You see.

The bridle is on, no problems there. She has selected my newest, best bridle. Tez's bridle. That's okay. I know that this arrangement is safest for this mare. And I want them to be safe.

I ask Katie if it is okay if Tez and I ride along, or would she prefer to ride Babe alone? No, she'd love the company. I explain that I have not ridden Tez for a month, so he will be a handful today.

Katie mounts up, and before I can suggest that she warm the mare up close to the barn, they are gone. The mare is taken completely by surprise. They move away reluctantly, jerkily forward at a trot. The mare balks and Katie corrects her. Completely. I am amazed. This is a different mare.

Now, I have my hands full with Tez who is an excited, inexperienced teenager. Tezzeray believes that life is a full court press, particularly when it comes to catching up with the mare. I have him in his old original training bridle - an O-ring snaffle, nothing on the chin, no caveson. Today, he has jet fuel in his veins and his muscles. We barely avoid embarrassing ourselves as we follow Katie and Babe up the fence line.

Katie and Babe lead us around the landing strip - actually an FAA certified small craft landing area, and the ideal place to work a horse. It is over a mile in circumference with a moderate upward slope, good for conditioning.

Up at the top of the strip, there is an edge, a precipitous drop off to the valley below. We pause for a moment to look around and I ask her how the mare feels. She tells me that this horse has some serious training under her. She can feel it.

Katie works Babe confidently up close to the imagined hazards, a copse of skeletal black locust trees where there lurks a passel of mountain lions and other boogers; the fire pit, the deck which overhangs the drop off; the electric wire cattle fence; and, slippery, icy footing under the crust of snow. This girl is all leg, and she has the mare irrevocably contained between leg and hand. Katie willed the mare to face her fears and to just get on with it. At the beginning of their ride, the mare's neck is locked in an arch, ears rigidly forward, white side-wall eyes, hooves never touching the ground, and tail firmly clamped between her legs. Nearly an hour later, Katie and the mare are cantering easily up the far fence line, relaxed and collected, balanced, tail streaming out. It was a wonderful performance, and I think it made Babe happy.

Katie called it quits first, due to the cold. After, feeding and putting away, Katie told me about herself. Katie is from Maine. She has been riding and showing Western pleasure since the age of five. She worked at a quarter horse breeding and training farm as a breaker. There is no equine behavior problem which she has not encountered. There is no horse which she is afraid to ride. In fact, fear is not in her mental vocabulary. Yet, I countered silently.

This simple recitation was not offered in any spirit of youthful arrogance. It was her description of where she lives in her head. The physical demonstration of her successful first encounter with Babe was tangible evidence of her own personal equity. She misses her horses which are in Maine, and she experiences painful emotional withdrawal symptoms if she cannot ride quarter horses under a Western saddle. She has friends who live in Evans City, but they only do dressage, and it is a long drive back and forth. Katie does not enjoy dressage, nor does she find this discipline necessary for self-improvement. She has paid her opening dues to the horse world on the show circuit and in the training ring. Her need to work with Babe is essential, like food, water and air. And Katie has come into Babe's life at the most critical time when the mare needs a friend and a boss to replace Big Red.

As I began, what I thought I knew about the mare was correct only to the extent of my experiences with her, only to the extent of my being able to understand and react to her, and vice-versa.

Today was Katie's twenty-first birthday. Katie will come back soon, and we are waiting for her.

Tuesday, February 18, 1997.

Spring is coming. Today dawned with a clear sky, a generous, yellow gold morning sun, and a warm Southern wind to whisk the moisture off the ground. Already by midmorning, six inches of new snow are reduced to one and patches of bare ground and crusty meadow grass are showing themselves.

I have to make a plan for that Arab. After his hot, angry, bucky work out on Monday, I have an idea of what is needed to garnish his cooperation, to mellow this boy out a little bit. Two weeks of

continuous work it will take to put him back on his manners.

Wed., Feb. 19, 1997

One hour on Tez in a.m. Real problems with that O-ring snaffle. Re-rigged bridle with a steel, short-shank snaffle & curb chain. He fights me to break from a trot to a canter and fights me if we get close to the barn.

Katie came out late with Aaron. Rode Miss Mare bareback briefly complete with a show off canter across the field. Joseph and I were both highly impressed with her horsemanship. So was the mare. She cannot come back out until Saturday morning.

3/5/97: 6:28AM

Katie has become a fixture at the farm. Last night she fed us pizza from Aaron's restaurant, her treat. She has given me a great deal of personal history about growing up in Maine, her family, her experiences.

And, we ride.

Katie & the mare led Tez and I on a brief field trip this past weekend. We toured John's barn yard which is full of monsters (chickens, cows, a bale of straw). Going to John's means traveling down the road for a few hundred yards -- more monsters (fire hydrant, storm drain, the reflector on the power line guy wire).

We traversed John's newly plowed pasture area - no grass, but a veritable sea of mud, rocks and stumps. It is a lot of leg work for the horses, good, slow muscle building work to walk around this field.

Katie opened the back gate for us. For the first time in his young life, my horse had to cross running water. This is the spring which makes the creek that meanders through our valley; the creek that spreads into a swampy morass at the bottom of the canyon. The spring where we crossed is only a trickle - about a foot wide, not deep at all. But there is a little depression about 3 feet across. To Tezzeray it appeared to be the edge of the world.

Miss Mare crossed the creek with little urging. Tez did not. He and I fought for 10 or 15 minutes with Tez whirling, backing and rearing. We fought until my arms and legs gave out. I am not strong enough or tough enough to force this animal to bend to my will. He became very angry and I became a little frightened.

Finally, I gave in, dismounted and led Tez across the water hazard. Katie was livid because I gave up this way, and she let me know about it. On the way back, Tez crossed behind the mare and he only balked once before launching his body (and mine) in an exaggerated leap across the trickle. Then, to get even with me for the experience, he bucked the last 50 feet or so to the pasture fence which was fine with me: he had crossed water and we had both survived.

Our ride through the woods was just wonderful. There is a wide trail John must have bushwhacked, but the trail is short - only about one mile. This must be part of an old logging road. Tez hated the ride through the woods, but it was fabulous experience for both of us. It was hard leg work for the horses up hill through mud and across a lot of brush and debris. Even though we were only out for about an hour, they were quite tired and sweaty when we got home. Tez was literally running on nervous energy. We cooled them out with old blankets, groomed them, fed them, and tucked them in for the evening.

The next morning, I went out to inspect Tez for lameness. Since he is so young, I am always concerned about tendon strength in his legs. No limping, no swelling, no problems. I even examined the inside of his mouth for signs of abrasion from the bit due to our fight at the stream. No apparent mouth problems. His still has that pinched spot on his tongue. I think this is from his left lower wolf tooth being slightly crooked, and it appears to be healing.

Yesterday, when we repeated our tour of the mud pasture, I told Katie that I had noticed a change in Tezzeray's acceptance of our outings. The change was barely perceptible, but highly significant. On the first time away from home, I had to be quite heavy handed with him - to control him from bolting, literally at all times, and heavy-footed to deal with his reluctance to face three-dimensional* challenges. While he is still quite tense (alert, highly reactive), he seemed to listen more to my hands; he appeared to pay more attention to assessing the terrain and making smarter decisions about passing through the more difficult areas.

If I had to "quantify" this improvement, it would be in the 2% to 3% range in favor of Tez becoming a little bit more willing, accepting. Katie said that this is partly because my own confidence in Tez has increased. Katie says that Tezzeray has a lot of potential as a trail horse because he "looks around a lot" at the surroundings: he analyzes. Right now, I believe that Tez analyzes three-dimensional terrain and his horse brain interprets challenges as threats, an opportunity to flee, rather than an opportunity to have some fun. Hopefully, as he gains additional experience crossing unfamiliar ground, he will begin to understand that with his powerful body and tremendous energy, he can control the trail, rather than it controlling him. Tez just needs to face his fears and understand that his rider will not willingly or deliberately ask him to go anywhere dangerous.

A few days ago, I was riding Tez in the pasture at home. We stopped to practice opening and closing the wooden pasture gate, as Katie has been encouraging me to do. Katie drove up as Tez and I opened the gate and walked through it into the yard. Miss Mare trotted through the gate behind us and trotted right up to Katie who gave her a hug. Katie jogged into the barn to retrieve the mare's bridle and promptly jumped up on the mare's back, no saddle, from the off-side. The mare did not even flinch.

Another day, recently, Katie rode the mare bareback on the strip, accompanied by Tez and Reilly O'Dog. Tez was doing a lot of sprinting - he was very excited to be outside. Reilly, of course, was doing his best to keep things exciting by running around underfoot, barking and contributing to the chaos in general. From the top of the hill, Katie urged the mare to a canter. Tez and Reilly caught up from behind at a roaring gallop. (Tez, at liberty, can probably travel at speeds approaching 40 mph for short distances, especially going down hill. He is very, very fast.).

The mare's collected canter turned into a runaway express train traveling down hill. They flew past the barn with Katie hanging on for dear life, trying to slow the mare down. The mare had quit listening to Katie's hands. They did stop. Just short of the gravel driveway. This was a sprint at top speed for about BD mile downhill, no saddle, no real control by the rider who was pretty surprised. I am not sure how Katie stayed on. She says she has logged many, many miles bareback and her legs are extremely strong. She told me later that she had actually considered bailing off the mare at one point. Katie takes stupid chances with this horse. She has been hurt before on horses, but not badly enough to scare her into respectful caution. I, on the other hand, have an abundance of respectful caution around Tezzeray. In fact, I have a yellow streak right down the middle of my back!

Previously, whenever Katie and I rode off the property, I would shut Reilly in the house. I did not want to risk taking him out on the road, since he is just a puppy. Reilly would brood and sulk in the house, running from door to window whining and asking to be let out. I am sure he would have tried to find us.

Yesterday, when we rode to John's I decided to risk taking him with us, knowing that either Katie or I would definitely have to get off our horses fast to keep Reilly out of trouble. Well, we made it down the road okay - I only had to yell at Reilly 10 or 15 times.

In John's barnyard, we had to contend with Reilly's first exposure to the chicken coup. Wise chickens, they spotted Reilly before he spotted them. They turned tail in an orderly and dignified manner and marched into the hen house, all except for the rooster who turned around and stood guard in the hen house doorway.

Reilly was quite amazed at the sight and smell of these new birds, but he behaved himself and did not bark at them or linger longingly around the chicken coop. As we rode down the far side fence in the mud pasture, some large German Shepherd dogs were barking from the neighbors house. Fortunately, these dogs are tethered or kenneled (we could hear them but not see them). Reilly wanted to go investigate, but he stayed with us at my urging, instead of running off to find these noisy other dogs.

His only real infraction of the rules involved chasing a small child - an 8 year old neighbor boy who came to visit at John's. Reilly is normally a coward around other people, but he can be a bit of a bully around children. Since they are small, he thinks it is okay to bark at them and to try to knock them down. The little boy, however, said that he had a dog just like Reilly and he was not in the least bit concerned. He called to Reilly and gestured to him. Reilly promptly ran away from him to a safe distance and just barked.

We all made it home safely down the road. Reilly slept very well that night.

Recounting the year. We lost Miss Mare and gained Mr. Beau. Kate did so much with the Mare between February of last year and August. Her work with the mare simply amazed me. And now Babe is gone for good. There are still days when I miss her, and Big Red, just desperately.

One evening in August, Joe and I were returning from dinner-out with our friends George and Vicky Kruth. On the way home, our mobile phone rang. It was Katie calling from my kitchen phone. Something's very wrong with Babe - she's either been poisoned or is seriously injured. Katie said that the mare was stumbling around in the barn, having difficulty keeping on her feet, and breathing hard. No indications of injury, though. No cuts, legs look okay. Walking very, very badly.

I told Kate to keep the mare inside, but to stay a safe distance away from her in case the horse fell or went completely nuts in the barn. >From my car phone I called Tom Waldron, our horse vet, and the best large-animal doctor in the county - in the state for that matter. Tom agreed to come out. I told him that I would guarantee his fee in case the owner would not pay the bill. There we go again.

When we got home, Kate and the mare were standing quietly together in the large stall area in the middle of the barn. I called her owner at work. He promptly chewed me out for interrupting him at work, and told me in no uncertain terms that the horse was to be put down when the vet arrived. Period. I explained to him that the vet call would involve an exam charge in any case, so could we at least have her assessed before killing her? No, it's his goddam horse, and he wants her put down - tired of the hassle. Okay, John, we'll just drop her in the barn then and be done with it! After all, it's not my horse, just in my barn - right?

Tom arrived at about nine p.m. The mare is ataxic: stumbling, uncoordinated, acting confused. Obviously in a lot of pain. He examined her for 30 minutes or so. He explained that Babe has probably fallen in the pasture and somersaulted resulting in an injury to the vertebrae in the middle of her neck. There was no point in transporting her to a horse hospital as she would probably die in the trailer if she jarred or jerked her neck at all. He said that the vertebrae were probably fractured and putting pressure on the spinal cord. The chance of her recovering was very slight; however, if it was not a serious fracture, and if we could keep her quiet and contained, and if we could get the swelling down on her spinal cord.....well, sometimes they can pull through. Not a lot to hope for when a horse breaks its neck.

In the middle of all of this, Babe's owner John arrives. Sugar-sweet and just full of cooperation. He does his cow-man's best version of the knowledgeable, involved owner: "Yep, right, of course, doctor." Forget that he was swearing at me and yelling at me over the phone thirty minutes earlier. He's all manners now.

Okay, John consents to having her treated for a watch-wait & see period. Dr. Tom shoots Babe full of painkillers and anti-inflammatory drugs and leaves me with Bute Paste and follow-up instructions. The vet leaves. The mare is stable. We hay her and give her a light cover for the flies, lots of fly spray, leave all the lights on. It's late and time for bed. I go out periodically during the night and check on her.

Next morning, I call Vicky Kruth who is fond of the mare. I tell her that she must come see Babe again today since we do not know how long the mare will be with us. Vicky visits us in the barn with her two granddaughters. I spend the day in the barn with the mare trying to keep her comfortable and quiet.

Ms. Mare's favorite treatment for her painful neck is hot, wet towels. Sandy Zeiler, Mr. Beau's owner, taught me how to do this. You dip one towel in water as hot as you can stand it. Squeeze is out real good. Place is on the sore spot and wrap it fast as you can with a dry towel around it. Tuck the dry towel in like an ace bandage. Let it cool for a few minutes. Then, start ladling more hot water into the towels and add an extra layer of towels as needed. Miss Mare loved this and would stand absolutely still for her treatments. I did this for her all day long. She passed her second night in the barn. No stumbling yet.

The next morning is Sunday morning. It's August. The weather that day was confusing, wanting to mix late summer with an early autumn, we ranged between hot and sultry to blustery and cool, finally with cold

wet rain in the afternoon.

At ten o'clock, I went out to the barn to give Miss Mare her treatment. I had fed her earlier in the morning, and she appeared to be just fine. I led her into the grooming area and put all her hot towels on. Suddenly, she became very restless and acutely ataxic. I knew that we were done, then.

I called John at home. Katie was at work, and I did not want to disturb her. I explained to John that Babe's neck had finally given out after two days, that I did not want her going down inside the barn since it would be very difficult to move her out. He agreed to help me move her out to the wood-fence pasture.

John and I coaxed this poor, suffering horse out to the pasture. I was terrified the entire trip that she would fall on him, she was losing her coordination that fast. John left.

I stayed with the mare from ten in the morning until two o'clock that afternoon. I only left her once to go inside and tell the vet that he must come out to put her down. Tom said that he was on several serious cow emergencies up north in Slippery Rock, but he would get there as soon as possible, but that it would probably be nightfall. Vet's live by the triage rule: you treat your highest survival possibilities first, and leave the terminal cases for later. That meant that Babe and I were on our own. I also called Katie to tell her that she must come out directly from work. She said not to let the mare die until she got there. I told her not to hold her breath.

Babe's death watch was absolutely miserable. All day, she fought hard to stay on her feet. She could not bend

down to eat hay, so I fed her by hand and watered her from a bucket whenever she would accept it. Her thirst seemed uncontrollable. The other horses stayed nearby in their pasture, seeming to sense that their friend was in peril. To me, it seemed cruel to deny Babe proximity to her three buddies, but I knew that things would really get out of hand if I brought any of the other horses into the pasture with her.

After I phoned the vet and Katie, I went back out to the pasture. It was two o'clock, or just after. She was down on her side, and appeared to be nearing complete paralysis. Even so, for a full hour, she fought gravity, repeatedly trying to rise; always crashing back to the ground with her legs tangling beneath her body. I would beg her to stay down, to relax and lie still. Eventually, she had no choice.

When it appeared that she could no longer try to get up, I straddled her body to straighten her out - to get her neck straight and her head in a comfortable position without putting pressure on her down-side eye. To keep her legs out straight. She was fully conscious and completely helpless.

I covered her body with old bed sheets to keep the flies from chewing her up. When the rain increased and we were both soaked, I put a blanket on her to keep her warm. I suctioned the pools of mucous out of her nostrils so she could keep breathing. I syringed water into her mouth to keep it from drying out. I covered her eyes since she would not close them. I sat next to her head and stroked her and talked to her and prayed for a quiet, faster end for my friend.

At about four o'clock, Katie arrived, and so she had a few minutes with Babe to say good-bye. The vet came at four-thirty bringing the only mercy we knew that day. Thank you, Tom. This man had always shown my horses such kindness and good care.

Now, we only have two horses.

Sandy Zeiler took her crazy, mean Thoroughbred mare Kelly with her to Virginia, and Katie and I said "good riddance!" If there was ever a case for the knacker's wagon, it was Kelly.

Sandy left Mr. Beau at my farm to keep Tez company for the winter. Mr. Beau, a/k/a Bo-Bo, a/k/a Moose Lips. This horse has such a personality! Not necessarily a good personality, but definitely a large one.

Bo is 25 years old, half-thoroughbred, half-Trakehner (German warm-blood jumping horse). He is a retired hunter-jumper. He is yellow with black mane and tail and is very sway-backed. He's also a very large horse.

Now, Bo is a real study in the horse. A few years ago, Bo cast himself in his stall, and during his struggle he whacked his head and fractured his skull, an injury he should have died from - complete with ataxia, partial paralysis, and eventual chronic neurologic disorder in his hind end. Bo recovered, no doubt to his being endowed with an unusually high level of "just-plain horneriness." Quitter, he ain't.

Don't ever try to put a halter on Bo in the pasture. He'll try to kill you. And he means it. Put a halter on him in his stall, in the barn, fine. No problem. If you try to approach him in the pasture, Bo will first ascertain what it is you want from him. He does this by reading your mind. If you mean to make him do anything resembling work, he will charge you with his ears flat against his skull, lips peeled back to maim you with his teeth, and front hooves in the air to stomp you. A veritable whirling dervish at a dead run in your direction - and he has a forty-foot stride at the gallop. You are safer locked in a cage with a wounded she-grizzly bear.

But, go out to the pasture with a carrot or a flake of hay and nothing but Christian kindness in your soul, and Bo is as gentle as a warm puppy.

Fortunately, Bo can't kick. He tries to kick. He puts tremendous effort and concentration into kicking - for a solid thirty seconds he thinks real hard about kicking, then his ass-end goes up six inches off the ground.

The other night, for instance, Joe and I went out to the barn to bed-down Bo and Tez. It was not particularly cold, but the boys were wet from the rain and needed to be toweled down a bit. No problem with Tez - he enjoys the attention. But for Bo, this requires putting on a halter and a lead rope, getting his attention with a stern word ("Stand still, dammit!"). It's a two-man job.

But, the two men in the barn were busy doing six different things, so Joe decided he would towel Bo down by himself. Without the halter. Bo ran Joseph out of his stall pretty damn quick. Not so, Susie, who is much, much smarter that both Bo and Joe put together.

I walked into Bo's stall with the towel. He put his ears back and informed me that no, he would not stand for being toweled off. I explained to him that one of us was going to concede this little argument, and it would not be me - and no, I was not going to put his halter and lead rope on first!

I walked up to Bo at the point of his on-side (left) shoulder, towel down out of sight. He put his ears back and postured to bite. When I did not immediately run away from him, he swung his rump at me to try and kick. I rotated with his front end, trying to keep from getting pinned against a stall wall.

After a few seconds, Bo realized that I was not kidding, and that I was not leaving until I dried him off. I folded the towel and placed it against his shoulder. The aggressive body language started all over again, both of us ducking and weaving around his stall. Finally, after about six fits and starts, old Bo stopped in his tracks, put his ears forward and gave me his largest and best "Moose-Lips" smile! "I didn't really mean it, you know that! So, go ahead and dry me off now."

I did. I worked my way all around his big, lanky, cranky cantankerous body, even standing right behind his bum to wipe his tail down. Bo reminds me of a composite middle-aged Vaudeville comedian, sort of a combination of the innocence and wit of Red Skelton, the caustic meanness of Don Rickles, and the obnoxious, snotty whining of Rodney Dangerfield. But he is a wonderful riding horse, can still sail over a three-foot rail, and he's just great company in the barn. Loves to stand and watch in wonder at the UFO's from the barn door (airplane lights coming in for night landings at the airport).

I am probably the best friend Bo has, besides Sandy, and I know that he really loves me dearly. He is simply a cranky, crotchety old fart, like a retired railroad pensioner who thinks the world owes him a favor. A real meat & potatoes kinda guy. Fits right into our barn, for sure!

Bo will not stand still for very long when you groom him. I like to wash his feet and ankles down and to treat his hooves with conditioner, and I generally ask for Joe's help holding Bo while I work. We have found that if we rig a hay net for Bo, he will munch quietly for up to 30 minutes for a good grooming session. And then again, sometimes he won't.

One morning recently, I decided that Tez and Bo needed their pedicures. I did Tez first and put him up in his stall so Bo would have company near by. But on this morning, it wasn't convenient for Bo to have a foot appointment, and it was quite a struggle for Joe to hang on to him while I tried to tend his feet. Finally, just as I had dabbed on the last of Bo's foot gunk, the horse declared that he had had enough fussing. He began to paw impatiently with his forefoot and insist on being let go. Bo stuck his right foreleg high enough up in the air to plant it right in the middle of the nylon hay net tethered to the stall gate. A blivet in the making.

It is a horse's normal instinct to panic when their limbs are caught in anything, and there is nothing more dangerous than a panic stricken horse in an enclosed area. Joe and I were both on the wrong side of the horse, but before I could say "Oh, Jesus Christ!", Joe reached across Bo's chest, under his neck, and lifted up the horse's entire right front leg, bent the knee and pulled it out of the hay net. He did this in the blink of an eye before either Bo or I had the chance to panic. I do not know what I would do without my quick-thinking partner. We no longer rig a net for grooming sessions. We put the hay in a nice safe bucket.

On "Blivets" and Darwin's Theories of Evolution,

As They May Apply To Human Learning

Blivets are universal occurrences, generally caused by any combination of the application of Murphy's Laws and human stupidity. According to Joseph, the definition of a blivet is "ten pounds of shit in a five pound sack." Sometimes the wisdom and experience we gain from working with horses is purchased at a premium in the form of blivets. Seemingly routine situations can produce unexpected results. Now, my morning feed routine is set, right? I could do it in my sleep. In fact, I regularly do it in my sleep since I feed at 6:00 each morning.

A few days ago, after feeding the guys, I went to let Tez out of his stall. This means I have to pick up Bo's feed dish first, or Tez hogs it. (He gobbles up any leftover feed, and if it's empty, he stands over it and licks it like a dog. I don't know why - they both get the same stuff every day.)

Normally, Tez waits politely for me to walk through the door first. But on this one morning, he must have been impatient to leave. As I started through the narrow stall door, he tried to come through it with me. Now, I was wearing my thick down barn jacket, which was very fortunate.

Tez, with his thousand pound body, trapped me against the upright beam which frames the door way. Instantly, I was stuck between the horse's rib cage and a solid wood beam. Worse, my left wrist was trapped against my rib cage. Not flat, but at a 90 degree angle to the beam. I was completely immobilized.

Tez was squeezing my ribs so hard, I couldn't get a breath to yell at him, and both my arms were trapped at my side. I had many long seconds (three or four) to think about the situation and what I thought was this: left wrist compression fracture, broken ribs, crushed liver and spleen, ruptured intestines. I can't yell at him and I don't want to because it might panic him into moving even farther forward which will be even worse.

Then, Tez stopped in his tracks. He was likewise trapped. He turned his head to look at me as if to say "What are you doing there? You're preventing me from going through this door." So, he just backed-up. No big deal. Here, Mom, you can go through first.

I was so grateful to this big dumb ox for thinking things through calmly instead of panicking as any normal horse would have done, that I couldn't even scold him. Also, my left arm hurt so badly, I didn't have wits left to get mad. After I got my breath back and determined that nothing was broken, I did go over and thank him, though. And yes, he was in Bo's stall licking and licking Bo's dish. He ignores me when I do stupid things.

But now we have a little talk every morning before I open his stall door to let him out. I make sure we have solid eye contact, and he is standing still, and he is paying attention to me. I tell Tez "Back up!" and make him take two steps backward. I tell him to Stand and Stay. Which he does. Now, I am always clear of that damn door before Tez even gets close to it. I want to put a sign in my barn with the pun "Blivets Happen."

When I first went to Empress Arabians to see about purchasing a horse, what I had in mind was a schooled, experienced 10 year old something-or-other; a dependable, ridable pet; a safe bore. What I came home with, or rather who, was a green-broke, four-year old with insatiable curiosity and apparently bottomless capabilities. For trouble.

My Tez. What a learning experience he has proved to be. He's now seven years old, and he has settled down some, but not much. What we gain in experience riding together during the Spring, Summer, and Fall, we lose over the winter furlough.

So, every February when our winter weather begins to lift, Tez and I start training again. Twice daily for two weeks straight, weather permitting; twenty minutes per session. Walk, trot, halt, backup, walk, trot; finally, when I feel like he's safe and under control, we practice a slow canter (not an easy concept for this youngster to master) across a large circle. Then we are able to take on progressively longer workouts and trail rides together. I have to put him back on his manners so that we can take on the longer conditioning work outs.

Two years ago, after I though I had Tez schooled-up, we had our first and only accident in which I fell. Now, we don't do anything which could cause Mom to fall off because she doesn't like that!

One very wet February afternoon, Tez and I had put on a couple of miles going around the pasture - a thirty minute warm-up for him before the real work starts. Going up the far fence line, by John's cows, I let him into a canter and he accelerated to a hand gallop and then up to a full blown run. He lives to run. It gives him great joy, and he just has a roaring good time!

I really thought we had done our homework for this workout. However, as we came to the crest of the hill, near the grove of locust trees where the boogers live, he spotted a twig or a branch or something out of place on the ground. Then time slowed down to the stretched-out milliseconds that inevitably precede my most disastrous blivets.

We were slowing down at the top of the hill, but we were still going way too fast. I saw him look at the branch on the ground, and I know it was 30 or 40 feet away and he probably couldn't see it clearly.

Tez hit the brakes hard and tried to veer to the left, leaving my body weight too far forward to correct in time. As he stopped, he literally stepped out from under me. Later, I checked his skid marks. He went from about 15 miles per hour to zero in the space of one meter or less. I didn't.

In a riding accident, when you are unseated, you fight like hell to stay in the saddle. But, if you hit the point of no return, you have

to make decisions about breaking your fall, and the best way to land. I made all the wrong decisions.

For example, when I saw him begin to react to the "snake stick," I now recall the way he stiffened before he slammed on the brakes. At that point, I probably had at least one second to bury my hands in his mane (instead of hanging on to his mouth with the reins), and to grab the saddle horn. That would have broken my fall, and may have kept me in the saddle - or at least near it.

As it was, I held on to the reins only. When he simultaneously skidded and stepped left, my weight stayed where it was. I found myself suspended in mid-air. My left foot came up out of the stirrup, though my right foot stayed on the right stirrup. My right hand pulled hard on the right rein which turned his head and body to the right, again, pulling him farther away from me. At this second, I had no choice but to pull my right foot out of the stirrup.

I must have pinwheeled through the air before I landed. The fat muscle of my right shoulder took the entire fall. The ground was soft and saturated from recent rains, and I landed on a soft, grassy spot. I remember feeling the ground beneath me yield to the impact of my body. I rolled and bounced once flat on my back, and all the air went out of my lungs at the same time.

I knew the instant I touched down that I wasn't seriously hurt, and that if I could just get some air into my lungs, I'd be fine. But boy, was I mad. I lay on the ground and looked up at the sky for a few minutes to clear my head and catch my breath. I sat up, counted fingers and toes, and then went to look for my horse.

Poor little guy. He was really upset. Tez had trotted about 50 feet away toward the pasture fence and was standing there shaking and blowing. He was very surprised to see me on the ground. I guess he didn't know that could happen to us. I think he also anticipated a beating, or at least some serious yelling from me. But, he didn't get it. I knew that it was my fault for riding out of control.

So, I got right back on, and we walked the mile around the pasture to cool him out a little and get him calmed down again. We walked up to the "snake stick" so he could get a good look and smell of it. Then, we did another mile at the walk trot. This time, I pointed him exactly as he had been when I fell. Once again, he reacted the "snake stick." This time I laid into him verbally and forbade him to react to it. Over and over again. Until he understood.

Oh, there are more blivets to tell about. And probably a few more blivets yet to come, hopefully not bad or sad catastrophe's. Learning the curve is necessary, even if it means taking a few lumps in the process. We all really do try not to be careless or forgetful around the horses.

This weekend, Katie is away at a horse show in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, with her new employers at Bar Gee Farms. A good outfit, great hunter-jumpers, nice facilities, and kind owners. An improvement, we think, from her disastrous and brief internship under David Flynn at State College.

You have pressed me to tell of this. I know that I have mentioned Big Red in my writings, but the trauma of his accidental death and the meaning of his long life plague my conscience. This is, I know, self-serving. This pain have I buried far away in a desolate place.

But, let me tell you about the horse.

Big Red was an American Saddlebred Horse, and yes, he was truly solid sorrel red, with a flaxen gold mane and tail. It will be well worth your time to find a picture in a book or a magazine, of a Saddlebred. They are the sylphs of the horse world. And Red, even at the age of 35, when I met him, was exceptional. Saddlebred horses are gaited horses, and they carry their tails straight up in the air in performance, and occasionally in the pasture, too.

Now old Red was a retired professional, but not from the show ring. No, Red was a jumper. He had an actual career as a winning steeple chaser out at Meadowcroft in Western Pennsylvania. Imagine our good old Big Red horse galloping pell-mell across a grass course, taking fences and hedgerows in his mighty stride. We made no such demands on Big Red.

Red retired from racing to the dubious existence of an amateur level competitive jumping horse. His former owner is a local woman. She tired of him at one point, and she gave him to John Lenzner with the explanation that the horse was ill and would probably die soon, so would it be okay just to leave him in your pasture? Orphan a sick, old horse. Red was 25 years old then, and he did not die soon.

So, Red had lived here at the farm for over a decade before I arrived. I'm not sure what he lived off of - love for Miss Mare, possibly. There is plenty of pasture grass during the months of warm weather, and John provided the horses hay during the winter, but no grain, and no shelter. They must have been long, interesting years.

I did not get to know Red or the Mare very well for the first year while I lived here. Of course, that was before Tez came, after which I got to know all three of them very, very well. I used to call them to the fence whenever I had a half box of stale breakfast cereal. I remember the first time I ever did that for Red. His facial expression blossomed in to real interest in cereal boxes after that ("Like, oh boy! Real Food!") Yes, I thought about buying feed for Red and the Mare, but they weren't may horses - then. And once you start feeding them, watch out. You can't stop. And, they lived on John's side of the fence, for the most part.

After I brought Tez to the farm, John moved both Miss Mare and Big Red over to our side, a matter of convenience to him since his herd of Sementhal cattle was increasing. We enjoy our neighbor's calves when they come in the Spring. They are such goofy little souls, but watch out when they grow up. Swiss Sementhal cattle are really large and mean. The cows weight in at a ton, and bulls weigh in at 3,000 pounds. I fear them respectfully. Over the years, John has repeatedly cautioned me not to cross his fence line and walk his pastures, and one day I found out why.

On one of our muckier, rainy days, I was leaving Kate's house on foot with Reilly O'Dog, and we elected to take a short cut home across John's front pasture. There was only one six month old heifer in the pasture, and she acted peaceable. This, I am sure, was a ruse to lure unsuspecting tourists to her lair.

Reilly and I had hiked about half way across the soaked, muddy pasture - full of really deep cow-made pot holes, real ankle breakers, when the heifer charged. Charged at me, that is. She lowered her head and bellowed at me and then she began to run across the muddy broken ground at about 30 miles per hour. Unbelievably fast. Now, I know what you are supposed to do when an angry wild animal, such as an Alaskan Brown Bear or a six month old Swiss heifer, charges at you. You make yourself larger and louder than they are. You raise your arms and jump up and down and make threatening, growling and snarling noises. Which I did. Imagine a five foot tall, middle aged woman attempting to imitate a Sherman tank in your cow pasture, and you will understand that I simply became an even more attractive, and to this point stationary, target for the heifer.

Fortunately for me, Reilly O'Dog stepped in to save the day. When the heifer charged, he headed straight at me, running parallel and in the same direction as the cow. Before she reached me, she veered off and headed straight for Reilly. Guess my Sherman tank act must have had an effect on her. I just knew that Reilly O'Dog was doomed, they were so close together. Reilly managed to double back and give her the slip, leading the heifer away from me, and he did make it safely to the fence. He took the long way home across the road. I have clocked Reilly O'Dog over flat ground with my truck. Twenty-five miles per hour is no big sweat for this dog. And the heifer was gaining on him in the pasture. Needless to say, I did not hang around long. I headed rapidly for the nearest V-gate, and the safe side of the fence.

Now all the neighborhood purchases its lean ground beef out of our neighbor's refrigerator. The cute little single-pound packages are labeled "Tootsie 6/97"or "Fancy / August" and such. I just love eating John's mean old cows!

I've digressed from horses to cows, when I should have been telling about Red's eating habits. Big Red lived to eat, and his very favorite food was 12% sweet feed. You have to be careful about not overfeeding concentrated feeds to a horse because too much feed can cause serious digestive problems, or so we've been told by the vet. Red knew otherwise. It was his great joy to discover that the man-door to the barn had been left ever so slightly ajar. He would walk into the forbidden area of the barn (the people side) and knock the lid off of the feed bin, and then he would gorge on sweet feed. He did this twice during one year, and managed to consume close to 25 pounds of sweet feed in one sitting. No, he didn't colic, though he certainly should have. Once, he opened a bag of sweet feed with his teeth and scattered it all over the barn floor. It was my last bag of feed. So, we did without for a couple of days. It's a long trip out to the Ag-Way feed store in Mars, Pennsylvania.

My buddy, Red. We all have such doting memories of this horse, especially his love of naps. Most people think that horses only sleep standing up, but that's not true. Your average horse needs about 7 hours of sleep each day, and they do it in two ways. When I see the horses standing very still in the pasture with their head lowered to chest level, I know that they are in "slow-wave" sleep, which they do about 5 hours each day. "Paradoxical sleep" is what we know as rapid-eye-movement sleep, and it is the deep sleep of a lying-down horse. Horses really enjoy sleeping. Tezzeray is a master at lying-down sleep, and I am sure that he far exceeds the text books for just plain passed-out sound sleep. Red also loved to sleep, stretched flat out on the ground in warm sun shine. And I loved seeing him asleep because I knew that this was the only time when Red's arthritis didn't bother him.

Whenever Joe and I were in the kitchen together, and we would see Red sleeping out in the pasture, we would speculate on whether he was really asleep, or just playing dead. After an hour, we would generally go out and call his name - just to be sure.

Big Red was invariably a kind, polite horse. If he accidentally caused a problem - like stepping on your foot in the barn, Red would act embarrassed. And it never ceases to surprise me as horses reveal how intelligent they really are, and what great memories they have.

One winter morning, on a weekend, Joseph and I were out cleaning the barn. It was a miserable morning, and we had not mucked out the barn in nearly a week. We had three horses at the time, each one producing upwards of twenty-five pounds of fresh manure daily. So, after five days of neglect, Joe estimated that we had moved close to 800 pounds of manure and wet, soiled straw, bedding and hay out of the barn that morning.

As we sweated and swore over our chores, a spotless new minivan slithered through the muddy paddock and pulled up to the barn bay door. Two women were in the van. The driver opened her door and stepped out into the mud. She was attractive, and seemed just delighted to see us.

She introduced herself as Patty, Big Red's former owner from his post-track days, and the woman who had given Red to John Lenzner. Patty had just stopped by out of the blue to check and see if her old horse was still around. I was really surprised, since we had never heard of her in the two years we had been at the farm. Big Red was not far away from the barn. I called to him and he shambled up to us.

Now, some people have told me that horses cannot see well from a distance of 12 feet. I beg to differ. Red was probably 60 feet from Patty when he recognized her. It was at this point that everything about this horse changed for me.

Horses' faces are almost all bone-covered skin with little muscle. They have thick jaw muscles, and wiggly, muscled lips and noses. But, the rest of it is all pretty immovable. So, when a horse pulls an observable facial expression, it gets my attention. Horses can speak volumes with their ears and their eyes.

Big Red recognized Patty instantly. To say that he was glad to see her again is a major understatement. He was genuinely thrilled. His normally dull expression pricked with interest, and he hurried to see her at the fence. It was obvious that Red was still bonded to Patty, and I thought to myself that, even after 12 years at the farm, what Red would really like is to finish out his days living with Patty.

I was jealous and hurt, and I was surprised to know that I felt that way. It is the way we feel when we invest our attentions in someone's physical needs on a daily basis without thanks or consideration, only to find that their heart belongs to someone else. I was also sort of angry with Patty. How could she just leave this old horse, who obviously needed her, alone like that without coming to see him once a week? And what about springing for a couple of bags of feed now and then? And what about having your own personal farrier stop by to do his feet, to file down his teeth? And what about his yearly shots? Tubes of wormer? It is what I did for Red, along with brushing him, cleaning his feet, medicating his injuries, keeping him from freezing to death, and picking up his shit. But Red did not love me. Red loved Patty, and this broke my heart on that day.

Before she left, Patty told Joe and I (between fork-fulls of manure) about her latest equine project. She had acquired for free a jumping horse: half Thoroughbred, half Belgian. The horse had been disabled by a joint problem. Patty's vet provided injections of some steroid preparation which relieved the horse of its pain. And now he jumps just fine! Great, I thought, your next victim. Some people will do anything to go over the rails.

If we had only had Red by himself, our lives would have been pretty uneventful. But, since we had Red and Miss Mare and Tezzeray all together, we experienced a daily routine of minor mishaps including kicks and bites, and minor horse-on-horse misdemeanors. Once morning when I let Tez out of his "condo," he ran at Red and knocked him down in the small stall. Nobody got hurt, and Red got up okay. It was then that I realized that the old horse had become physically inflexible and he could not maneuver quickly in small places. After that, I made sure to keep Red out of Tez's way in the barn, or to keep Tez on a halter line until Red was out of the way. Red knew the drill. He just needed a few more minutes than the other guys to get organized. Old people are like that. Most mornings, a hand gesture and "come on, Red, outside!" was enough.

There are always little incidents that bring one back down to earth - to the realization that these animals are horses, not people. And, under physical or emotional stress, they react like horses, not people. Bitterly cold winter nights tend to reinforce that realization, and vigilant respect for the horses' physical size and strength promotes the survival of their human care givers.

Red's demeanor was largely passive and tolerant towards horses, people, and dogs. He loved cats particularly, and if Hobbes put in an appearance in the barn, Red would riffle his lips through her fur with a look on his face like "mmmmm...you're so soft."

Anyway, we used to make the horses sleep in the barn on very cold nights, mostly because of Red. The two younger horses would have been just fine merely being able to come into the barn if they got cold, but due to the dominance hierarchy, they would make Red stand outside the barn door in six inches of freezing slush and mud. So, we enforced a curfew at dark during the winter.

On a very nasty night, we brought Red and Miss Mare into the larger condo area, and closed Tez into the small stall. Each horse had their own separate feed bucket, and all three of them were face-down in their grain, filling their bellies and warming up.

As we were leaving the barn, I walked up to Red to pat him on the neck and say good night. Well, he must not have recognized me in his peripheral vision, or he thought that I was another horse, or something strange in the dim night light of the barn, because he made a lightning grab for me with his mouth. His teeth closed firmly over my upper right arm and he effortlessly tossed me across the barn! Boy, were we both surprised! Red was really embarrassed when he realized that it was me he had grabbed, and we both acknowledged that this was completely out of character for this old man to physically abuse the barn help. Fortunately, I was wearing my old down barn jacket which is very thick, and it probably saved me from a broken arm. This was the only aggressive act I can recall of the old horse.

I cherish the memory of Red's reminder that horse owners frequently labor under the illusion that their pets are safe or benign or gentle. These are qualities we assign to them. We observe their behaviors and interpret them in terms of our own human nature. I feel very comfortable handling my horses casually. I frequently pick up their feet and groom them without putting a halter or a lead rope on them. But my trust in them is limited to my ability to move rapidly away from their big bodies, and I school myself to keep my body weight balanced and prepared to step (or leap) to safety.

Reading the body language of the horse is a meditation for me. Watching their silent statements is the only way for me to discern their needs and to amend their care as responsively as possible. I am not always successful, and I do make mistakes. My interpretation of Tez's sore back ankle was that he had "torqued" it running in the pasture; it was an abscessed hoof instead, and one that fortunately took care of itself. I still have not figured out old Beau's sensitivity to having his back touched. He will tirelessly carry a rider without complaint; yet, if you place your hand on his rib cage, he lays back his ears and says very seriously "Don't Do That!"

We used to let the horses out of the pasture during the day so they could graze on the landing strip. The strip is normally where Katie and I ride, and the horses know it well. If there is good grass on the strip, they are content to stay there. If the grass is burned by frost or by drought, they will sneak onto the lawn to nibble the fescue which stays green almost all year-round. They love lawn grass. We have an agreement about the lawn grass. If they sneak on to the lawn, and I see them, then I go outside with the lunge whip and I tell them to leave. They see me coming with the whip, and they put on a mock stampede: asses and elbows in flight back over to the strip. We only let them out of the pastures when we are home, so we can keep an eye on them. This has created a few minor problems. Once Tez came up on to the back porch and ate all of the poisonous red berries off of my grape vine Christmas wreath. He did not get sick. Now, having read about poisonous plants and horses in my new veterinary medical reference, I was horrified to discover that every single variety of decorative shrub and tree which surrounds my house is lethally poisonous to horses: rhododendron, yew hedges, red maples, wild cherry trees. But we have watched them eat these plants on several occasions without ill effect. Not anymore.

My favorite memories of Big Red are watching him gallop across the pasture with the younger horses. It was kind of a big deal for Red to wind his body up into a gallop. In his superannuated state, the muscles were good, but the joints are kind of slow to respond. So, Red almost always brought up the vanguard of our little herd, but he did it with great panache. He made a point of sticking his head up much higher than the other horses, and he picked his knees up as high as they would go. That marvelous yellow-haired tail carried straight up in the air as only a Saddlebred can do, streaming out behind him like a victory banner.

During the spring and summer of 1996, we managed to make some head way on improving Red's condition. Since he had not been treated for parasites in quite a while, he had become quite gaunt and lackluster. But eventually the effects of protein-rich feed, lots of hay, dental treatment, and regular foot care paid off. He gained a lot of weight, and eventually we stopped counting the bars across his rib cage. We gave him baths with real horse shampoo and conditioner so that his coat gleamed like a new copper penny in the sunlight. Red loved attention. He would stand absolutely still for hours to be brushed. Eventually he began to resemble the champion he had been in years past. It must have been difficult for him to be raised, trained, and conditioned to the best standards of care, and then to be abandoned and neglected. But time is the great enemy of all horses, and during the record cold winter of early 1997, we knew that Big Red's strength was slowly beginning to fail.

On the afternoon of January 21, 1997, we let the horses out to graze on the strip. Joe and I needed to run a quick errand - the 15 minute sort, so we thought we would just leave the horses out and close our front gate. While we were gone, we stopped to buy gas for the truck. When I went to start the truck, the battery had gone out. Since the service station did not carry what we needed, we had to tow the truck down the street and purchase a new one at a local garage. Our 15 minute errand had just become a major two-hour headache. When we got home, I walked around looking for the guys. Tez and Miss Mare had sneaked around the back of the house next to the pasture fence to graze on the lawn grass. Then I saw that Big Red was down and it looked serious.

Red was lying on his left side and he was semi-conscious. His head and neck were covered with mud from struggling. We could not immediately see why he was unable to get to his feet until he tried to rise.

There is an old septic field behind the house. The tank cover, round concrete cap about 18 inches in diameter, had been dislodged by frost heaving. The wet ground freezes and expands, forcing the solid concrete well-cap up from the rim of the opening. Red had apparently set foot on the edge of the well cap which had flipped up like a coin. One of his rear legs had slipped down vertically into the septic tank and the well cap had flipped back down, trapping the leg. He did not have the physical strength or flexibility to get up and out. I am not sure that any horse would have been able to get out of this leg trap without injury.

Our efforts to rescue Red spanned many long, panic filled hours. We called the police and fire departments. They had no solution for us; no winches; no way to help. John Lenzner, our neighbor, stopped by briefly on his way to catch a flight out of town. He informed me tersely that Red was his horse and he was ordering the animal euthanized immediately. Then, I called Shawn.

True heroes are shaped by adversity. They are people who respond to impossible challenges with their whole being. My farrier and friend, Shawn T. Keith, is a heroic person. I was unable to locate a veterinarian who would come out and help us. Sometimes this happens. Joe stayed with Red while I dialed and dialed and dialed without any success. Finally, after 15 or 20 minutes, I called Shawn's mom and told her to find him at any cost. Almost immediately, Shawn called me back on his mobile phone. He was right around the corner, on his way home from work, and he would come immediately. He also called his friend Dave to meet him at our house.

Shawn and Joe and Dave manned shovels and hoes. They managed to move the heavy concrete well cap out from under Red's body. They set about enlarging the opening around Red's leg. Somehow, they made enough room to free Red's trapped leg from the septic tank hole, and to roll his body over away from it. When they got Red's leg out, the horse was in shock and too exhausted to move. So the three men grabbed his tail and his head and legs and just rolled him over.

We covered Red with all of the sleeping bags and blankets we could find. The men stayed with the horse. I went back inside to find a goddammed veterinarian. It was extremely cold that night, below freezing, real snow falling, and with enough wind to push the ambient temperature below zero. I knew that it was too cold for these men to be outside, and I had no idea how we would keep an injured horse alive.

In between trips inside to the phone, and outside to the wreckage, Dave asked me to bring a bucket of warm water mixed with a little salt and sugar. The men helped Red to sit up somewhat - to at least get his front legs folded under his chest. So, Red was able to drink, and he was very thirsty. We also fed him hay and a little grain.

Finally, sometime in the dark of the night, a veterinarian arrived. Rob Kissick, a newly minted DVM from Colorado State University who had contracted with Tom Walrond out of Butler. He simply looked too young to help us, and I thought, well if this isn't the blind leading the blind through a mine field.

The young man drove his truck around the back of my house right up to the horse. He hopped out and unloaded several large plastic boxes of medical equipment and supplies. He stopped to assess Red's condition for about 15 seconds, and immediately rigged an intravenous catheter into his neck. My instructions to the vet were to (1) stabilize the horse to prevent him from slipping into terminal shock, (2) assess for broken bones and find out why the horse could not rise, and (3) render a prognosis. I told him that we would stop any therapy on my say-so only.

Rob's hope was that Red was suffering from exhaustion, since neither of his rear legs appeared to be broken, nor were his forelegs broken. While Rob was resuscitating the horse with fluids and injections of pain medication, he instructed us to go to the barn and haul out as many bales of hay as it would take to build a barrier against the wooden split rail fence. Red was lying on a slope - upslope is the house; downslope is the pasture fence. When the horse is stronger, it will try to get up by itself, and if it falls again, you want it to fall or roll against a soft barrier.

Red did try. Perhaps 10 times, each one a failed struggle against gravity and the slippery, snow-covered ground. Finally, Red lay on his side, unable to rise. Rob donned elbow-length exam gloves and palpated the horse's pelvis internally. Red groaned deeply in pain several times during the exam, but he did not try to kick or struggle. Rob said that there appeared to be swelling and a large hematoma at the apex of the horses pelvis which was probably broken. Also, the trapped rear leg had sustained enough nerve damage from the horse's own weight on it for hours, nerve damage that was probably permanent.

He can't get up. He might freeze to death overnight, or he might linger on for several days, and when he dies he will die in this spot. He is thirty-seven years old.

Rob drew two large syringes of sodium pentothal. It is pink and viscous as corn syrup. I asked Rob to give Red an injection of a sedative to make him sleepy, which he did. Red was still struggling to get up, and since I had no hope of saving him, and all of my helpers were exhausted and freezing to death themselves, I just wanted them all to go home. They were, to a man, sitting on various parts of Red's body to keep him down on the ground, and to keep the blankets and the hay packed around him. Not one of the six men and women who came to help Red and I, nearly all of whom had far greater experience with horses and horse-related disasters, ever had it in their hearts to call it quits. No one said, look let's just get this over with. They waited for me to make the call, and I had to wait for Red to tell me when to end it.

I sat in the snow and I held Red's long, slender head in my lap. I told him that I loved him, and I apologized to the horse for killing him. I told him that he, of all of the horses, deserved an easier and more dignified death. I told him that I knew that he was too old to live much longer, and we knew that we were watching him daily draw closer to death from old age. But I wanted him to have the gift of just one more warm, soft spring following such a brutal, awful winter, and, because I thought that this spring might be his last.

It took four full syringes to sodium pentothal to stop Red's heart. I was surprised each time the vet had to draw off a new vial of the mercy drug. He said that sometimes their systems are so strong, you just have to keep pumping it into them. What we left there in the snow that night was not Big Red.

Black MackApril: 1998

John Lenzner has bought another horse. He purchased a registered Quarter Horse named Mack. Mack is 11 years old, and for all his life he has served as a hunter-jumper school horse and amateur competition horse. Mack is coal-black with a tiny white star on his forehead. He is an excellent fellow. Well, we'll see what unfolds.

Mack was sold away from his luxury stable because he no longer desires to haul the local rich kids over the jumps. Mack has become stubborn and willful, a sure sign that he is tired of his job. He's refusing his rails if a kid is on his back, although I know that he can and will jump over anything in his way if it suits his purpose. He also has a reputation for dumping his rider on the trail, and turning his heels for the barn, which means Mack ain't trail broke, and he's barn-sour. For all this, he is a sociable, amiable fellow. However, John Lenzner is not much of a rider, and it will take a strong rider to stay on Mack's back if the horse's heart is not in it.

Mack lives on John's side of the fence. Wonder how long that will last. Any bets?

--sww.

He crested the steep rise at a slow, pulling canter. Thrusting his shoulders up the rocky incline, hooves clattering over loose stones, slipping briefly on the floor of autumn foliage, the horse reached out for the final stride that would pull them over the top of the hollow, and down, down to the road - and home.

The narrow trail plunged abruptly downward, but the horse did not brace himself with his hips and rear hooves to slow his descent. Instead he used the gentle mounded peak to push off into space, into increasingly longer, faster strides. The great, roaring gallop of a race horse, neck stretched flat, ears forward, oblivious to its rider, conscious only of his own overwhelming need to run.

The rider atop, technically in charge, ignored by her sprinting steed, realized within ten strides that she had erred seriously by letting him go for the instant it took to exit the hollow for the path back down the mountain. A dangerous mistake that might cost her life. Too late, she tried futilely to gain the horse's attention, standing in the stirrups, legs clenched tightly around the barrel of his ribs, and pushing forward against the saddle blocks. She hauled mightily at the reins until she was certain her hands and arms would break. Nothing. Horse in charge, and in full flight home.

This mountain road had tired the horse on the way up, his sides heaving in an effort to maintain a steady training pace across the face of the mile long hill. But the trail had ended in a rocky outcrop littered with "No Trespassing" signs in front of one of the local summer residences. So, she had turned him back. It was too late in the day to continue into uncharted territory anyway, and she did not relish the prospect of attempting to control her increasingly nervous horse as the shadows drew rapidly toward dusk.

And, in turning him back, she had miscalculated completely the effects of letting the horse get just a little bit out of hand, to put his nose into the wind, and his mind toward home. Now there was no way to slow him or to stop him without risking her own neck. The narrow chip-and-tar jeep trail was confined by impenetrable brush, timber, and barbed wire on the uphill side, and by a sheer drop off the downhill side.

The primitive track was covered in loose gravel, chipped stone and a thick layer of brilliant gold and orange leaves. The violence of the last rain storm left deeply eroded scars at random intervals, ruts deepened by the passage of a four-wheel-drive jeep or truck; now hidden hazards littered with the glorious remnants of autumn's tracery.

As they raced the mile down the trail, she had only time to think, and little else to occupy her time. The horse certainly was of no mind to yield to her hands, and to make matters worse, her mongrel dog leapt and danced just ahead of the racing horse, just out of range of its hooves, mouth open, grinning a wolfy laugh for the excitement of a race through the woods.

Her thoughts were as blurred as the landscape which slipped across her peripheral vision. God damn you, horse. A hairpin curve - their first. She thought it strange that she had absolutely no memory of this particular turn. Having loafed mentally on the way up, she regretted not paying closer attention to the contours of the trail. Now, she felt a panic coming on - the anticipation of not knowing how tight the next turn would be, or what would be required of her to stay with the flight.

She did not think about dying in this place, but concentrated only on keeping the inner line of her legs and butt glued to her saddle as the horse's feet skittered across the leaves. Hunched fetally over his withers, she dropped the reins and buried her hands in the horse's mane. She was determined that they would not die together in this remote place, and for the longest three minutes in the history of the modern world, or at least her forty years on watch, their lives became a fleeting, precarious and precious union.

Finally it ended. A small flat spot, the intersection of farm roads, and a hard-right hand turn down hill on to the oiled gravel farm road. The horse was still running hard, and sweating, stinking with exhaustion. Another fifty yards down the road, and she found an earthen bank to put him into. Then he did stop, having been run to earth quite literally, sides matted with dust and sweat, lungs straining and heaving to pull in every ounce of air in the valley.

She screamed her rage and frustration at the exhausted horse who could not hear her voice for his own ragged breathing, and the blood racing through his body. The noise meant nothing to him at all, for he had completely tuned out her existence and her presence in their equation.

Her fury unabated, she raised her right hand and lashed his head, neck and shoulder with a short nylon crop intending to draw blood and succeeding in scoring his hide through his thick winter hair coat. She stopped quite suddenly after a half-dozen blows, when the sharp, white hot fire shot from her right hand into the wrist, through her elbow up into her shoulder and neck. She dropped the crop, unable to flex her fingers further, and she realized that the ring finger on her right hand was broken, a stress fracture from pulling so hard against the racing horse's head.

The horse, still attempting to recover its wind, turned his head away from the whip strokes, rolling his eyes in fear at the sound of the whip against his own skin, and rounding his back against the blows.

In pain, out of patience, numb with cold and shock, she legged the horse to a shaky walk down the farm road to their home, silently defying him to attempt to flee her anger, and praying that he would not for she knew that she would be unable to control him at all with only one working hand. The dog trailed them home, its tail between its legs, head hung low. The dog feared only two things in its existence: the sound of its human's voice in anger, and the whip. Secretly, the dog thanked the horse for taking on the whip and voice, and silently cheered for its own good fortune in winning the race, or so it thought.

My Dearest Clark:

Writing to you from beautiful downtown Syria,Virginia under the wintry majesty of the Blue Ridge. This is a fiction.

I picked up the orange tee shirt from atop the clothes dryer. I shook it out, wondering if I should run it through the dryer again to get out the wrinkles. The shirt had sat unfolded for so long; since the day you left us. My mother gave me that shirt. You have probably seen me wearing it long ago. It is the one with the Navajo pottery appliques, festooned with turquoise and terra cotta pots. I was finally able to fold up the tee shirt; and, with it a substantial amount of other clean and dried laundry which had lain fallow and neglected for these two weeks now.

It is unlike me to leave the laundry unfolded.

And the mail unopened.

And the phone unanswered.

Clark, we have a watershed here. An event. It began the day you left.

You will remember. We were tired. You arrived, and we laughed non-stop for two full days, did we not? Or so it seemed to me. The only time we were not laughing was when we were trying to be serious for Ralph in the Brumidi Galleries. Or so it seemed to me.

So, the day you left, I thought well, now, I am tired. Perhaps I should just take the day off and sit back and relax. The laundry can wait to be folded just one more day, yes?

Tired deepened into lassitude, and I went to bed early that night. On Sunday morning, I awakened to complete blackness. No, not pre-dawn darkness, but an unfathomable emotional vacuum. I could hear it coming inside of me. The bear walking down the path. Sometime during my sleep, after your leaving, the bear swallowed me whole, and I awoke dead in his stomach.

Sunday, all day. I wondered how long will this last, and how bad will it be? The emptiness of the house echoed back to me the answer. Long. Bad. You are in the stomach of the bear, and now he lives here, too.

Monday morning, and the unfathomable black vacuum of the bear's stomach ruptured into full-blown agony. The blackest sort of bereavement. I tried to work, but my one phone conversation that morning, a call to my business partner, deteriorated into an anxiety attack complete with uncontrollable sobbing, me hyperventilating, trying to hang on and let go in the same instant.

I knew in my head, as all this was going on, that it was completely inappropriate. No one close to me had passed away, the fabric of my life had not suddenly parted. There was no real, tangible loss to link to this anguish. The old bear was simply there, and it was ripping me to shreds before my very eyes.

Two local women put me back together. One on Monday. The other a few days later. Monday's woman looked me squarely in the eyes and told me that I would be alright soon enough, and if I could only find the causal factor, I could probably understand sooner, and be away from the bear completely. The other woman looked into my heart and told me that yes, it was pretty banged up, but it was still beating quite strongly, and she also told me that I would be alright soon enough.

A week passed, and the bear's shadow began to evaporate. As his shadow became lighter and lighter, he tired of having me in his stomach, and he has gone for a walk in the woods to look for other, more palatable prey.

On this past Monday afternoon, and once again capable to the task, I set out to reconnoiter the surrounding environs. This was the usual supplies run to Charlottesville. I needed the new light fixtures for the stove room and the foyer. You will recall that they were left uncovered after the electrician first came to install the rheostat switches for the overhead lights.

Since I had not eaten in several days, I stopped at Taco Bell for fast food and a cold drink. My belly full, I set out on Route 29 for the usual long cruise into C'ville. This is where the trigger was finally revealed to me, as Monday Woman said it might be. On my various trips into C'ville, I normally use the cruising time to let my mind run out into the sky. The black ribbon of the highway is my device for cooking up a little creative thinking.

In 1987, I met my cousin, Suzanne McBride. We were reacquainted, not having seen each other since my Grandmother Helen's funeral in 1974. Suzanne is the daughter of my Grandmother's brother. So, I suppose that would make her my second cousin.

Suzanne McBride came into my life during a year of heart break, the year I learned from my husband that our marriage was not going to work out in quite the manner we had originally planned. Slowly over time, as Suzanne and I became close friends, I replaced that which was missing from my most important personal relationship - emotional intimacy - with the pleasure of her company.

Suzanne reintroduced me to the horse, and in doing so she gave me my freedom. She took me in hand one day, in her Mustang convertible, for a drive out to Bastrop Farms to meet Judy Connolly and Judy's daughter Carol Bandy. Soon, I became a fixture at this horse farm. I would ride every weekend, and spend all of my time with the horses caring for them. Judy and Carol taught me about their Arabian show horses. I learned to ride again. I competed in horse shows in Western and English equitation classes. My heart was restored by horses, and the friendships and attachments which came with them.

Suzanne married the man of her dreams and moved to Victoria, Texas. I spent every available weekend I could squeeze from my schedule with Suzanne and Tommy. Close your eyes for a moment and imagine a summer day spent in the deep woods of south Texas. Centuries-old live oak trees, dressed in the flowing lace of Spanish Moss, spread their arms across meadows of bunch grass. Texas Mountain Laurel trees blossomed their grape scented umbels in the spring. We spent many an afternoon walking in the woods across several seasons through a semi-tropical sand-floored forest where the gnarled mauve roots of Ungnadia speciosa broke ground and snaked to catch our feet. We collected the fruits of Turk's Cap to make jelly. Above the sandy banks of the muddy, brown Guadalupe River, we looked down into the eddying waters and marveled at huge alligator gar and catfish. She taught me the difference between Crow's Foot (false garlic) and wild onions, and named the illusive bird song of the deep woods as that of the White Crowned sparrow. We were a family.

Suzanne McBride was highly educated, and she was a gifted naturalist. Worlds unfolded for me from the gifts of her keen intellect, and practical approach to life. She taught me the trees and birds of Texas. She taught me about Victorian architecture. She taught me the history of Texas politics. And, she shared her love for her family with me. We were a family.

In return, I loved Suzanne without reservation. I made a point of telling her how deeply I cared about her, and how much it meant to me to share in her life. She accepted my love for her as the love of a daughter or a sister, without condition or question. This is, by my observation, an aspect of human relationships which is unique to women, or at least uncommon to men: the deeply held and greatly treasured lyric of platonic friendship. Suzanne and I could spend long hours together looking through the photographs in her old family albums, or just sitting together on the couch with her husband Tommy, listening to her favorite opera recordings, and holding hands together. We were a family.

The physical resemblance between Suzanne McBride and me was commented on everywhere we went. Together, dressed up, going out. We were two pretty Texas women. Even with the 16 years between us, people always asked if we were sisters. We were sisters in our own way.

December, 1991. She was taken from me without warning. She was 49 years old.

I was completing my course work at St. Edwards only days before I was required to drive from Austin to Pittsburgh to join my husband who had accepted a faculty post at Carnegie Mellon University. The call from Suzanne's daughter-in-law Carla came at 1:15 in the afternoon on Thursday. Suzanne had suffered a brain hemorrhage for no apparent reason. No, not an aneurysm. She had no high blood pressure or indication of ill health.

She was nearly completely paralyzed, and helpless. The brain surgeon who cleaned out her skull had no explanation. They put her in rehab where she began partial recovery of her arms and legs. Then, days later they discovered that she had fully metastasized cancer. The cancer had created a colony in her brain. What blew was the vascularization created by the tumor. She died a matter of weeks later, having lingered in coma for ten days.

My grief over the next year was terrible. The first anniversary of her death was very difficult. For a number of years after her death, I made a point of setting time aside during February to remember her life and to love her again, to assuage the loss of her presence in all of our lives.

Over the years, I began to forget her. I would forget about the event of her death, but February months never stopped being difficult. Even though she had mostly faded from my memory, I would still experience a residuum of sadness each February. Eventually, I stopped marking the memory of her death entirely.

Priscilla Ziegler, a newly acquainted friend and Syria horse woman, died at about the same time this February. I went to her funeral. I did not know her well enough to permit myself to be wounded by her death. I grieved more for Priscilla's suffering during her last year of treatment for liver cancer, than for her passing. Priscilla's funeral was a non-event for me. Vaguely sad, and providing some closure for her family and friends. Honestly, it did not occur to me that this was all taking place over the same time frame.

Priscilla's death and funeral where I tried to close-off my heart to the inevitable.

Suzanne's death anniversary, so long forgotten but never truly forgiven.

Clark's arrival and departure.

It was you, Clark. The bear followed you into my camp, and he hid in the shadows and waited until you left, and I slept, before he swallowed me.

You, Clark. You with the laughter, you who again (like Suzanne) gave me back the connection with the horse through our shared pursuit. You, my mentor, long lost cousin, and companion in mischief.

You brought such joy and entertainment into my house. You brought filial friendship, courage, and trust. You loaned your husband to me so that I could once again experience the simple joy of fishing in a stream. You loaned me your horse, and we flew through the trees like herons across the marsh.

Very simply, Clark, you opened the door to a room in my heart where I kept some of the most cherished, the finest memories of my life with Suzanne in Texas. She was a woman who was too good to stay with me for very long. She was needed elsewhere more desperately than I needed her here.

You went back home, across the mountains. I forgot to close the door, and the bear went for a walk in my head. And now it is February, and I am required to grieve for Suzanne one more time, having neglected to do so for these several years.

I cannot abide sissies. So, it is with much embarrassment that I find myself behaving in such a weak and womanish way. Banish the bear, great dark lurking beast with his stinking stomach!

On to other matters, Clark. I am exceedingly proud of your new employment! This calls for celebration. I can easily picture my friend Clark, that tall, strong, slender woman in the jog cart behind the trotters, ten miles per horse round-and-round the track. Freezing her ass off and feeling the nerves in her shoulders go numb from trying to hold back the go'ers. Dip Lucy did this with King, you will remember. They won. Frequently. An Arab pulling a racing cart, dominating a world populated by Standardbreds. Dip lost King this past summer, the victim of very old horse age. Never a lame step though.

I am a little concerned about the damage your work may be doing to your heart, though. I know what the effin rats mean to you, and how badly their lives must be affecting your own. I know, too, that you are a small salvation to them. Each one of the effin rats is a perfect poem, not a commodity to succeed or fail with. Those who fail to excel are doomed to the killer buyers at auction. Those who perform well are doomed to an early lameness, or to be an object for reproduction of more effin rats.

Clark, please come back. You are my extraordinary friend. Kiss your old husband for me, and kiss the posse and the pack, too.

I am over it. The bear stalks other prey, not in my woods.

And the laundry is folded.

I wish for you peace, good cheer and God's speed in your endeavors.

YOUR HUMBLE AND OBEDIENT SERVANT,

Captain Lewis

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