Horse Blogger :: Enter Stage Right
A horsewoman rides during the opening ceremony of the International Horse Show in Seville November 23, 2005.
Our horse blogger enters with slightly less ceremony—
The cold burns in my throat and lungs as I head down to the barn, my blue heeler, Matilda, at my heels. At 5:15 AM, she’s all business. This is what she lives for—horse chores at dawn.
By the time we reach the gate, my pajamas are crumpling and bunching beneath my Carhartts. "Layering is not for the half awake", I tell the patchwork cattle dog, who draws her lips back in a smile. I pull my nine-year-old daughter’s hat down further over my ears and clap my hands together in my husband’s welding gloves.
The gate’s frozen shut, so I clamber over. Matilda squeezes underneath, haunches nearly sticking.
“Good morning, good morning, good morning,” I say to the five hungry horses crowding around me. I rub their shaggy necks. They are all bright eyes, twitching tails, and whiskery muzzles. A good 7,000 lbs of equines. I have to show my greedy Percheron, Toby, that I don’t have any goodies in my hands. Once he’s convinced I’m not holding out on him, I head into the barn.
Matilda bump bump bumps my legs with her nose as I’m hauling what suddenly seem like 200-lb bales of hay to the horse feeder. They are surprisingly heavier in the bitter cold. The heeler is reminding me that she's ready to protect me from the bear or lion that might slink off the mountain at any moment. Job security, she must think.
I’m sweating now under the Carhartts and curse the flannel PJs I have on underneath. I stop to catch my breath in the thin desert air as the sun peeks over the Pecos Mountains and turns the whole valley red. “Rojo,” I say to no one in particular, rolling the rrrrrrrrrr like the professionals do it. Enjoying the feel of the romance language on my tongue. My Andalusian mare, Caprichosa, looks up from her feed, unimpressed with my Spanish.
The entire world is covered in a fine snowy powder this morning, like God got out his giant flour sifter and went to town. From where I stand on my frozen piece of New Mexico earth, the pale crescent moon hangs from a black ceiling that suddenly lights up to cornflower blue. The stars fade with the exception of the one sparkling planet I can’t name for the life of me. It winks at me from its place above the mesa. And I know it is a planet, because it’s brighter than all of the other lights in the sky, and is the very last to be extinguished with each and every dawn.
I’ve just turned 44. I’m standing in a frozen field in Carhartts and pajamas.
My hungry horses are chomping their hay.
Matilda is on guard.
And, in Spain, the International Horse Show in Seville has just drawn to a close.
