Sep
29
2009
Time and Patience
Author: Sara MuellerThis is the story of two horses from my parents’ breeding who deserved exactly what they’ve gotten. Indulge me, if you will, in a bit of back story.
My parents raise Arabian horses, and now and then my father would look at some highly bred, dainty animal acting like a hummingbird on a halter and his comment was always the same. “Well it’s pretty… but I wouldn’t want that in my tent.” Because we’d read somewhere that Bedouin would bring their horses into their large living tents. They breed performance horses, not hummingbirds.
The first horse is a laconic, quietly stubborn animal named Panther. He put out an eye in a stall accident. We really don’t know what happened except that he bashed the upper rim of his eye socket down through his eyeball. Did I want to save him, the vet asked, or put him down? My parents were out of town. It was my call. “He probably won’t ever be the same,” they warned me. “Horses don’t recover from pain very well, and his looks are ruined.” I’d loaded him in the trailer, bleeding and in pain and scared half to death. He’d walked up the ramp on sheer trust… and I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t do it.
The other horse is Rocket. She was talented, athletic… and too tightly strung in the nerves. Sometimes it happens to the best of breeders. A horse that’s just the right genetic ‘knick’, but with a side order of too much. A whisper of a leg and Rocket would GO. There wasn’t ever enough MORE for Rocket. She wanted to please you so badly she’d hurt herself if you let her. And some damn fool let her. She came home from a series of trainers and owners so damaged that if you took her into an arena she broke out in hives and foam. Not even an exaggeration. My parents thought she was probably ruined for riding.
They were horses I’d ridden, loved and adored. Two ruined horses, now. Except that there was nothing really wrong with them that time and patience wouldn’t cure. The problem is that professional trainers don’t have time. It’s worth money and they need to move horses along. So. Panther (now gelded) and Rocket were living a life of early retirement.
In addition to these two horses, my parents had stumbled onto two of my friends. Diane’s the calmest person I ever met. Even upset, there’s a kind of stillness in her bones. She’s solid. Grounded. Being one of the more glorious examples of ‘female’ I’ve ever met in my life is a side note. She used to come down to my parents’ house on college breaks and groom and ride horses. Rocket seemed to me to be her own personal Mt. Everest. The one you couldn’t climb. She spent a lot of hours with Rocket. Some days she just hung out in the pasture with a brush, I think. I’m not really sure how she did it, because I had a new baby and I didn’t have either Time or Patience. Eventually she started to ride Rocket. With a bit and a saddle. In the arena eventually. And slowly, Rocket stopped breaking out in hives and sweating. Diane had had what professionals don’t have. Time. Patience.
Alex once told me that Diane was the first woman who hadn’t had the idiot notion to ask him what was more important – her or his boat. Alex is a sailor. He grew up sailing in Maine. His sailboat is a wooden Friendship Sloop style little creature called ‘Bucephalus’. He liked horses just fine. Not like there was salt water to indulge in around northern Nevada. He liked horses largely because Diane liked them, but he’d never ridden one until he came to visit my parents. New England Yankee that he is, he promptly proved to have a taste for difficult, cantankerous creatures including the one-eyed, ‘oh yeah, you and whose army’ Panther who very much liked his retirement thank-you-very-damn-much. Alex, however, apparently isn’t very good at ‘no’, and he’s down-right mulish about ‘oh hell no’. And Alex had carrots. And a brush. And… say it with me, people… TIME. And PATIENCE.
Diane, as happens in Real Life, got a great chance to go to grad school in Washington. Being she’s a sensible woman, she took it. Being not-so-sensible, she burst into tears one day because she realized she’d be leaving Rocket. So they sucked up their seriously limited budgets and went to talk to my parents. They sucked up their budget some more and found a place where they could keep the horses.
My mother called me and asked me very carefully if it was okay if she sold Rocket and Panther to Alex and Diane. I had to think about that one pretty seriously. Two of my babies. Going off to live with Alex and Diane. I thought about it seriously for a second and a half. Rocket and Panther went off to Washington State.
I’ve seen Alex, Diane, Panther and Rocket once since then, heard from them more often than that. There have been happy stories and sad ones, gleeful ones and frustrated ones. The way it goes with horses. Tonight I got this email, and I grinned from ear to ear.
“Dear John, Anne, and Sara,
Since you already know we’re crazy, I had to give you the latest story: Saturday we set up our guest bed out in the pasture and spent the night with the horses, just to see what would happen. We’d have just camped out with pads and sleeping bags, but figured we’d be a more easily avoidable obstacle in the bed, should something spook the horses.
The horses’ reactions were actually exactly the opposite of what I’d expected. Rocket was by far the more bold of the two; once she learned there might be carrot bits to be had, I wondered if we might have her in bed with us. Panther never really trusted the bed; he’d get ju-ust close enough to reach the carrot bits I’d hold at the edge of the mattress, but that was about it. On the other hand, once Diane and I rolled over to try and get some sleep, that was the last we saw of Rocket, while Panther kept orbitting back past us every couple of hours –probably because he knew I’d wake up enough to slip him another piece of carrot, but I like to think it was also because, as alpha, it was his job to keep track of Strange Things.
However, judging from the placement of manure piles, when I mucked the next morning, it really disrupted their nocturnal patterns, and whenever they trotted up from the lower section of the pasture they’d shy from the bed. So we slept inside last night. Still, it was a fun experiment.
And there isn’t much that’s more endearing than Rocket, reaching over the top of the headboard, pushing her nose down into the blankets I’ve pulled over my head and wiggling her nose against my ear to try and persuade me she ought to have more carrot bits.
One of you three was the first to point out to me that early on, among the Bedouin, Arabians were brought into the tents at night. I like to think of this as our small homage to that tradition.
It’s autumn in earnest, tonight, but come spring, we might have to try it again.
All the best,
Alex”
Sometimes even ‘ruined’ horses get what they deserve. Time. Patience. Yeah.
[edited to correct the boat type, because, while I'm not a boat person, I *do* like my facts straight]