Horsekeeping

AT LAST. The December day for our own barn-warming carol sing dawned wintry and bright. The season prompted dewy memories of the Billingsly’s barn party, and though I doubted ours would measure up, I awoke eager to celebrate our venture with our long-suffering neighbors—all that whacking and whirring—and friends. Noreen, who lives down Weatogue Road concocting indoor and outdoor garden fantasies, contributed the just right touches: two enormous wreaths with red bows and white lights gave welcoming color and warmth to the front barn doors, and the icicle lights outlining the gazebo circled a whimsical halo in the lonely, dark fields.

Inside the barn, she wove garland through the loft railings and along the front twenty stall doors, beyond reach of dexterous lips and tongues. Every horse boasted at least one ornament hung on his or her gate as proof of their owner’s devotion. As the main attraction, a twenty-five-foot evergreen touched the rafters invisibly wired with red mackintosh apples. For weeks afterwards the horses and my kids feasted on the fruit. It tasted sweeter having been plucked from a fruit-bearing pine.

The sky covered itself with soymilk clouds, bluish gray and thin, as the guests arrived. Our indoor cheer buttressed the descending New England gloom as did human treats. Mike, The White Hart Inn chef, prepared tea sandwiches of watercress and chevre, egg salad and pumpernickel, cream cheese and date, and smoked salmon, along with bite-sized poached shrimp with cucumber, and marinated flank steak on bruschetta with salsa to savory us. Spirits and plenty of hot chocolate and mulled cider warmed us, and mini key lime tartlets, chocolate-dipped strawberries, and oatmeal and chocolate chip cookies sweetened us. The horses lounged photo-ready, occasionally kicking the walls and squealing to remind us chattering humans that they were the whole point.

In finale, several regulars from our local theatre company led us in caroling around the indoor riding ring. The shy crowd eventually joined into The Twelve Days of Christmas, singing in group rounds. Jane and Keira jingled sleigh bells and shouted Frosty the Snowman and We Wish you a Merry Christmas, while my son and his friends stormed the grounds, conquering the remaining piles of dirt. The supportive crowd expressed heartfelt congratulations and blessings, pleased to celebrate a rejuvenated farm and usher in our new venture. It didn’t quite live up to the Billingslys’ party, but that’s my penance for imitation.

So Scott sighed in resignation, and Bobbi and I split Willy’s cost and expenses. He settled right in, happy for all the attention. I quickly learned that “the pretty white horse,” as Jane referred to him, required separate sets of brushes to deal with all that old lady grey-white hair, especially in shedding season, and we quickly excised black polar fleece from our wardrobes. Light horses, like peroxide-haired women, require copious maintenance. But he proved exceptionally dependable, especially with children, and his homely face and general good manners endeared him to all. Elliot requested regularly to ride him with his comfy canter and willingness to jump.

Willy did freak out once: he jerked his head in wonder at miniature Hawk—what the heck is that?—snorted and bolted to the far end of his paddock. Hawk has that effect on some full-size horses: he’s not a deer, not quite a dog, not readily classifiable. He seems unnatural to the uninitiated, and I suppose he is, bred by human intervention. But Willy soon habituated to him, both alone and pulling his cart, though the Hawkster hitched to his work often stirred up the horses as he trotted along beating his staccato rhythm down the dirt road. As Bobbi explained, “The big horses want to know why we allow that horrible thing to chase that poor little horse.”

Bobbi always takes the horses’ points-of-view, and her willingness to interpret their thoughts—actually speak for them—though silly, endeared both her and the animals to Elliot, Jane and me. We not only learned horse behavior, but also, without embarrassment, easily fell into the fun pattern of anthropomorphic translation; that is, unless Scott was around, good-naturedly rolling his eyes.

Winter into spring brought a new girl, Brandy, to join the Weatogue team, working part-time until we got busier. An energetic twenty-three, she owned a raucous laugh and bonded with Bobbi’s horse Toby, riding him regularly. We concluded that Brandy favored him for his voluptuous, naturally wavy brown tail that echoed her own mane, in the way people choose pet dogs that resemble them. She won over Elliot and Jane with her Cousin It imitations: she would cascade her own long brown hair over her face, replace her wire rim glasses and squeak just like the hairball creature in The Addams Family. She worked hard and valued the riding: part of the Weatogue pay package is training under Bobbi, no small perk. She and Meghan learn from an expert on well-trained, -behaved and -tended, healthy horses without the expense of ownership.

Meghan brought over her horse “Q” (for Quixote), a large retired race horse with an overbite so egregious he couldn’t nibble carrots flat-handed: we would push them into his mouth end-to-end like you’d feed vegetables into a juicer. But hundreds of dollars later, the dentist maneuvered poor Q’s bite into line by about seventy percent. My Bandi hid quite a few oral problems, too. Equine dentistry is the stepchild of horse care, with only about five percent ever treated. According to dentist Cheryl, most can benefit, and even minimal treatment can transform behavior on the bit and significantly improve eating comfort and general demeanor. During World War I the cavalry dentist-to-horse ratio was one to ten, testimony to the importance of the well-tended horse mouth. Sharp points tend to grow on their teeth, often to the non-masticating sides which slice away at gums and cheeks. These can be either “floated” away by hand files or power-drilled down, neither a sight for the lily-livered. My knees weakened amid the protein powder that smoked the air the first time I watched, and cavity-free Scott beat a hasty retreat from the whining drills.

But considering that rider control of these animals is largely through a metal bit in their mouths, good oral hygiene makes sense. While Q’s transformation broadcast like a before and after make-over, Bandi’s improved teeth showed up in his performance. He chewed less furiously in the bridle and also yielded to the rein more, relaxing his neck into the soft curve, that holy grail of dressage riding known as “going on the bit.” Not that I can do it, maybe only occasionally by accident, but I have watched Bobbi on Angel maintain the perfect rein tension so horse and rider are weighted evenly and neither is pulling or giving too much. Bobbi managed it more handily with Bandi after his dental treatment. I guess we all feel like new when relieved of one, let alone multiple toothaches.

The dentistry seemed to settle Bandi some, but still he was not himself. Perhaps he isn’t a winter kind of guy. Heavy weather means more indoor work, and he is not enamored of the indoor ring. Or maybe the change of barns, the second in four months, set him questioning the reliability of family and home. Still leery of riding him, our nerves reinforced each other’s. On trail rides I was too edgy even to trot.

I decided against riding the kids’ pony again. It was undignified, and I determined to see things through with Bandi. A small voice in the back of my head whispered the possibility of getting yet another horse, ostensibly for Scott to ride and an easier mount for me: an heir and a spare in addition to Willy. Collecting horses is a horsekeeper’s devil-on-the-left-shoulder temptation. I tried to dampen the inclination, picturing a frowning Scott on my right shoulder, but new horses came through the barn now and then, and Bobbi is au courant to those for sale. We tried Big Merlot for a couple of days, but while he would fit Scott—we still hadn’t lost hope of getting him in a saddle—he was largish and too green on the flat work for most riders. He seemed mellow, but did shy once in the woods at something we didn’t perceive. I wanted that autopilot bomb-proof horse that required no work or tension from me, one that I could trust. But can a human ever fully trust a herd animal of prey? Can a horse give true and total allegiance to his owner? To love and protect her? To sacrifice his own hide and put her vulnerable, skinny neck first? To value and cherish her ‘til death (by natural cause, not horse accident) they do part? Scott would say, “It’s a horse, not a husband, you poor mutt.” It is also what led nineteenth-century propagandists for the horseless carriage to proclaim the horse “an untamable brute which man had cowed and beaten into partial subjection, but which bursts his bonds occasionally, carrying ruin and death through our streets.”

Okay, what then? Continue to live in fear, the only part of riding that I had mastered? Figure out how to keep my buns in the saddle during spooks, spins and bolts because they will happen, even to the “bomb-proof” loafer? Recognize that the automatic horse of my dreams is a fiction, except on a carousel? Learn how to fall? Drink more milk? Double up my disability insurance? Add more body armor—that hot, unflattering protective vest? Squat-thrust and crunch myself into thighs and abs of steel? And keep my kids at it?

At least the kids were progressing smoothly with no serious riding angst. Like animals, Elliot and Jane blissfully live in the moment and don’t project. And so far, Cleo had been a perfect lady, just the right side of lazy. “It’s easier to Go than Whoa” Bobbi always says. And Jane was going slow, policing herself by refusing to trot. “There’s no rush,” I repeated to Bobbi and Meghan. It was easy to forget Jane’s tender youth in the midst of this grown-up adventure. She mostly managed to keep up, but her stubby, albeit strong legs offered limited leverage at even a pony’s comparatively broad sides. We found her a proper saddle, one that didn’t require several looped riggings of the stirrup leathers, but her feet still barely reached pony belly. Every once in a while she would remind us she was only five.

Ah yes, only an amateur in this game show called life. But despite tears, rebukes and minor injuries, Jane still stoked fun at the farm. Meghan rescued another kitten, a steel grey with white paws. Janie love-mugged “Boots” on a regular basis in an effort to prove that, like herpes, a cat scratch scar on a cheek is forever, despite Mederma and youth’s miraculous healing powers. The bunnies remained a delight, and the kids fashioned old boxes into “Bunny Inns,” “condos” and “resorts” to keep these highly intelligent (or so I’m told) creatures entertained. Ever more elaborate, Elliot and Jane designed runs, windows, tunnels, lofts, doors, interior and exterior perches, pop-up holes and hideouts, and decorated all with drawings of bunnies and flowers, twine hung as beaded curtains, wallpaper patterns and directional signposts: they are sophisticated, tasteful bunnies, after all. Indeed, when Hera and Diana so trashed the first bunny inn that we removed it, the sisters went berserk. When the kids installed a replacement, we were instantly gratified witnessing the frenzied explorations. I could speak for the bunnies, but I won’t.

Then there was the mystery and intrigue of the hay loft, accessible only by way of a hazardous twelve-foot vertical wooden ladder that beckoned like Combat to a cockroach (or like flies to... well, you know, the brown stuff we’ve got plenty of). The cats scale it, both up and down, and so do my kids, except when Angel is in the barn: Bobbi’s skittish horse snorts, circles, kicks and emits an unearthly scream at the sound of Elliot and Jane thundering overhead. A thick rubber mat pads the concrete floor beneath the ladder providing me some peace of mind: my kids may mimic little monkeys already, but many of their friends need agility training. Like cats in trees, they would get stranded at the top. As I coaxed quaking visitors backwards and down into the eager hands of confident Elliot and Jane or watched my barn rats help their skeptical friends overcome their fears of bunnies, cats and horses and demonstrate how to handle them, I was reminded of how far we had come and why we bothered. The Weatogue enterprise was a language all its own, and Jane and Elliot were learning it, right down to its most obscure rules of grammar.

Hawk rose to barn mascot and supplied steady entertainment. Kindly patient with the kids, he also learned to live and let live with Bandi. Though separated in adjoining paddocks, squat Hawk still squeezed between the fence and the shared automatic waterer to visit Bandi. They’d squeal and romp and occasionally succumb to violence. Hawk’s strategy was to fit himself right underneath Bandi’s belly between his four legs—a veritable mini-Bandi. Once inserted, he’d kick out in all directions, clipping Bandi’s shins with his cutting hooves. After a few perplexed seconds Bandi uncovered the little monster who for payback, got kicked and knocked over in his rolling retreat to safety through the fence. He is a little stallion, with a Napoleon complex to boot, and fast, too; much to Meghan’s dismay, Hawk beat her racehorse Q at a run. Though Bobbi assured me that Bandi’s and Hawk’s “play” was harmless, we’d decided to geld Hawk to lower that testosterone for his own protection.

Elliot was riding well. He developed a relaxed grace in the saddle, and though he did not aspire to show, he was keen to canter and jump. When Cleo stumbled forward in a canter and Elliot barely held on, he continued unfazed. How I envy that body confidence that kids possess, that invincibility I still faintly remember having had myself. How galloping at great speed was the whole point on my few trail rides as a teenager in New Jersey, faster and faster the only thought in my fool head. Now a slow canter induces the heebie jeebies and I rein in, envisioning the woman at our local equestrian shop, an accomplished rider who fell, hit her head, and lay in an induced coma for weeks. Yes, she was wearing a helmet.

Deep within my child-body memory I dredged up the security I once owned climbing those old iron monkey bars atop the concrete playground—how ludicrous the idea that I’d lose my grip or misstep my footing. How annoying my parents’ warnings to take care. But now I watch Jane brazenly scale, flip and hang upside down, and the words “be careful” escape my pursed, old lady lips with each daring feat. I try to hold my tongue—the books specify that repeated warnings render children anxious and fearful—but shouldn’t they be cautious? How easy to lose concentration or simply slip. Those precious heads, those delicate spines.

So I aggressively maneuvered myself psychologically to a tolerable place with the riding and the playground and the loft ladder and the high swing in our yard’s willow. And then, just as I relaxed a little, a friend’s daughter broke her arm in three places falling from a playground contraption. What is a mother to do but be anxious and spout warnings? That line between necessary and unnecessary danger is a moving target. I’ve known parents who forbade their kids public sandboxes (germs) and playgrounds (falling). That certainly seemed the wrong side of cautious until one kid nearly lost an eye to an infection from sand that feral cats used nightly as a litter tray, not to mention the fractures that added up. Recently, I dined with a man who spent the last fifteen years in a wheelchair due to a skiing accident. I lifted his wineglass to his shaking lips and un-strapped the spoon from his less paralyzed hand. Spasms racked his body several times an hour. Should we not ski? I thought of those crowded slopes of reckless, hormone-dazed teen snowboarders grinding the flakes to dust, thundering locomotives on my quivering tail: is riding really any more potentially injurious? Should limber kids push the envelope and oldsters quit when bones dry out and spinal tissue ossifies? Insurance actuaries and hedge fund managers are weaklings when it comes to risk assessment: it is parents who do the heavy lifting—24/7.

Though it was gratifying to watch Elliot progress in the saddle, his swan dive into barn life was a less anxiety-producing benefit of the farm. He anticipated working there all summer, in lieu of all camp activities if I would allow it. We negotiated an employment contract of mornings, evenings and non-camp days for $2.00 an hour. Once he started pulling his weight, we’d raise him to $5.00. Pay for honest work thrilled him as I don’t believe in remuneration for household chores (the kids receive a small allowance as “sharers in the family resources,” in line with some parenting hokum I once read). He even devised a form to organize Bobbi’s daily riding schedule. I was pleased he embraced the physicality of mucking out stalls, lugging hay bales, scrubbing water buckets and cleaning tack, as well as extraneous tasks like making hot chocolate for everyone. The whole expensive, emotionally and psychologically stretching horse business “ride” paid off in spades when, out of the blue he announced, “Mom, this farm is the best thing that ever happened to our family.”

In addition to the ever-present risk analyses of danger and non-profitability, time was another problem. There was never enough. Now I understood that those people in the dirty riding pants I see racing through the grocery aisles are not pretentious, but simply late getting home from the barn. I undertook each ride with the time-devouring proper grooming, tacking and cleaning up and expected the same thoroughness from my kids, even though Bobbi always insisted: “The important thing is to ride. I know you want to do it all, but we can clean up, just get in the ride.” Because the forty-eight hours of a weekend flew by, and my husband awaited my often-late return, and the kids had other activities requiring parental accompaniment—“Mom! Where have you been?”—on occasion, I’d leave the dusty tack near the sink for the girls to clean and slink off. But I did master these tasks, and when time afforded, I enjoyed saddle-soaping the bridle, girth and saddle, scrubbing the horse saliva and chewed-treat encrusted bit, storing the clean bridle in a tidy figure-eight, hoisting my saddle to the rack, turning the saddle pad up to dry off and air out, all excuses to bask in the afterglow of the ride. This and the grooming—bathing, brushing, combing—rounded out the experience: giving back for the privilege, just being with my horse, meeting his needs, taking good care.

The barn activity induced a peace that I wanted to extend to my riding. I received B. K. S. Iyengar’s Light on Life, an autobiographical account the aged yogi who refined yoga for the working masses (those who can’t spend ten hours a day perfecting triangle pose), and brought his practice to the western world. I read it over several days, mounted safely on a steady, four-legged chair in the Butternut Mountain lodge while my kids careened down weekend-crowded, snowy slopes. Train the mind to live in the moment through the discipline of the body, Mr. Iyengar teaches, don’t anticipate the future or dwell in the past and time will slow and happiness will follow you all your days. Nice advice and a good gig if you can get it, but the practice is excruciatingly difficult, even for those few minutes of Shavasana, or corpse pose, that top off each yoga session. The mind churns busy, busy, perpetual motion. The egotistical brain refuses to shush and allow the body to sensate without its interference. I sipped my hot chocolate, closed my eyes, and vowed to be in the moment, live in the now when I ride because I realized that the thought of riding, the anticipation of all that could go wrong (that too-busy brain), wracks the nerves more than the actual riding, or watching my kids ride. It is in the black of night, away from the riding ring that the “what ifs,” those grisliest possible if not probable scenarios, sabotage the body’s best intentions of release and rest, and brush away any stale childhood crumbs of can-do attitude and ability.

Light on Life worked. My next ride included a walk, trot and canter in the ring on my own. When Bobbi joined me for a trail ride afterwards I felt lighter, buoyant. Out in the field and woods I endured two “spooks”: one when my Bandi picked a half-hearted fight with Toby, just because (who knows? perhaps Toby farted in Bandi’s general direction like the French Taunters in Monty Python and the Holy Grail), and another when Toby shied at a puddle and both horses jumped. But I handled them with calm if not quite grace and shut the door on panic. Briefly reverting to type I wondered why me: why does something always happen on my watch? but refocused on the pleasures of the day, satisfied to have kept my bum in contact with leather.