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Food for the soul…
01/04/05

Food for the soul…

As I stood with the cold wind in my face and the sun across my shoulders I pondered how I had come to be standing in a muddy early spring pasture eyeing a weedy, orange, scruffy yearling filly with a pitiful wisp of a tail. I had traveled many well-swept barn aisles and patted many glossy and well-muscled shoulders, but had yet to lock eyes with my beloved. I was shopping for my perfect horse. I had conjured up images of a lovely smooth-bodied gelding. Bay would be nice, and he would have a beautifully long glossy tail. He would have gentlemanly stable manners and a workmanlike attitude and move effortlessly around the course. Now I had traveled to the home of a small breeder to look at her well-bred thoroughbred stallion, available for a reasonable price, and his superior progeny. On my drive I had envisioned these youngsters as the things that dreams are made of, they would be galloping (in slow motion) across a sunlit green pasture, nostrils flared, their long silky hand-picked tails sailing like ribbons out behind them.

Again, a cold blast pummeled me as the filly regarded me coolly before turning back to her hay rack. I snapped a photo of her with disdain, clicked a few snapshots of the stallion and his other get and climbed into my vehicle. I dismissed this trip from my mind and considered looking out of state for my next sporthorse.

A few months later I was shuffling through the pile that inevitably gathers on my desk. The photo of the filly slipped from the pile and floated to the floor. I propped it up on my desk and left it there. For a few weeks I warily eyed it. One day I picked it up and examined the nice short back and the very long cannon bones, the clean throat latch and the bright calm eyes and I wondered. When a horse person begins to wonder, things begin to happen. Several years later I found myself trotting from the ring on my show horse. She was not a gelding, she was not a bay and my relationship with her tail was tenuous at best but we did have some blue ribbons on the wall and memories of some very humbling rides. The orange filly had grown to be an interesting liver chestnut color. She was somewhat too big for my small frame and she had varying and distinct opinions on everything from her position in the trailer (last in, first out please) to if she really wanted to perform a flying change today or not.

We did some jumping but after a little ringbone scare that discipline was sacrificed in lieu of flat classes. Cricket (aka RBP Tanqueray) was a bold mover and had an outstanding way of going. She also had a nasty way of swapping leads, and by our third or fourth trip into the ring at any given show she had an even nastier way of throwing in an occasional and unsolicited buck. Had she been a green horse it would have been almost forgivable but she was coming six now and I kept hoping that she would put her shoulder to the harness and become at least predictable, if steady was too much to ask. My trainer was often quoted as saying: “When Cricket is good, she is very, very good and when she is bad, she is awful.”

Cricket was boarded at a show facility about 45 minutes from my home. She was well cared for and schooled regularly by my trainer and I was able to get to the barn for lessons two or three times a week. One day the caller ID on my phone listed the stable name and a breeze of foreboding crossed my mind as I let the phone ring one more time before tentatively lifting it to my ear. Cricket had taken a fall on the ice as she jockeyed for position at the gate to come if first from her daily turnout.

The stack of papers on my desk now deepened with bills from the various professionals called upon to bring my horse back to soundness. After the university vet and her thermographic imagery had pronounced that Cricket had a deep hamstring tear and had shifted her pelvis, I composited a veritable black book of individuals that were called upon at various times to treat my damaged horseflesh. I arranged for the massage therapist to come after the deep sonar treatments and the chiropractic work to come after her sacrum was injected. I restlessly considered other younger, more healthful and less buck-prone horses as weekends of shows came and passed without us.

Summer turned to fall and one day I walked into Cricket’s stall and stood by the window. Somehow she had managed to deposit manure through the window’s bars and onto the sill; I considered her obvious talents as I weighed the current condition of my show horse. Cricket had somehow lost weight in spite of her lack of activity. Her muscles were soft and unapparent, her coat dull. She did not even acknowledge my presence. She slowly turned and her apathetic gaze fell upon mine and at that very moment, I became a better person. Suddenly I realized I had a responsibility to restore her to what she had been, not the show horse I had honed her into, but the vibrant and strong soul that she had been on the inside, where what people wished her to be could not affect what she was.

I became inspired by a classic children’s book that I was reading to my daughter at the time. “The Secret Garden” is the story of a pampered boy, denied the typical joys of a boy’s life because of his delicate health. His young cousin dismisses his condition and treatments and instead, she wheels the boy’s chair each day to the garden. There his soul is nurtured by the songs of birds and the feel of the grass on his bare feet and the joy of companionship. The sun dappled through the tree branches and rested on him and he was healed.

The Secret Garden became my medical journal. I discontinued Cricket’s traditional medical treatments. Instead I massaged her daily, with my own hands, which I believe carried the energy of intent, for I intended her spirit to be restored. I bought her a pretty new halter with her name on the cheekpiece and every day I would walk her down the concrete aisle and out into the light. We would walk outside into the sun or the rain and wander for hours, stopping to graze where the grass was particularly tasty looking. As she chewed, freezing her jaw occasionally as she suddenly paused to stare off at whatever it is that horses seem to see on the horizon that is beyond our recognition, I studied her. I knew how her wrench-shaped blaze thinned to a trickle and trailed off down the side of her muzzle so that it seemed to have dripped from her chin. She had that silly little cowlick on her neck, for no apparent reason her coat, too, had wanted to express itself by arranging for a few of the hairs to grow against the grain. She has an interesting little trail of chestnut colored spots dotting down her tall white stocking on that injured leg. And her tail, in spite of my careful wrapping and bottles of conditioners, steadfastly refused to grow more than a few inches past the point of her hock. We walked companionably each day that fall. The songs of the birds and the taste of the grass nurtured her and the sun angled across her withers and she too, was healed.

I have moved Cricket to a barn just 10 minutes from my home and I am there almost daily. Sometimes I just sit in her open stall door and watch the other horses in the arena as she anoints my head with alfalfa leaves. A ragged copy of “Lessons with Lendon” rests upon a ledge in the indoor arena; we have been working on dressage. Cricket enjoys the new challenges and I enjoy trying to grasp the properties of an energetic and forward halt. We plan to do a few schooling shows this spring and shake them up a bit in the first level classes. I know we will never garner high numbers in the gaits category but the beauty of dressage is that you don’t really have to compete with the other riders in your division. You can compete with yourself and a good ride is its own reward.

Cricket and I now have a relationship that supersedes the highs and lows of the open show world. I realize now that I had so much invested financially, physically and emotionally in those 10 minutes in the ring that I couldn’t take joy in anything beyond the quality of our performance and the numbers on the judges' card. Other show horses may come and go, but Cricket will always be my orange filly. She will always have a good barn to live in, nice warm blankets in the winter and fly spray in the summer. We will continue to ride together and work on achieving our own goals in our own way, and when she is too old to ride I will take her for long walks and wonder what she sees when she pauses to stare off into the distance.

I will feed her hay and she will feed my soul.

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