I put my hand on the pony’s neck, and he groaned. I pushed on his rump to see if I could coax him into getting up, but he wouldn’t budge. The wan look on his face said it all―colic. He rolled over onto his back, all four legs sticking up into the air. A rush of emotion overcame me, and I found myself whispering, please God, don’t let him die. I thought of my kids J. and C., who were at their dad’s house for the night, and knew they’d be crushed if anything happened to their old pony. Cell phone in hand, speed dialing Doc Callahan, I went to fetch a halter and a thermometer.

When Doc arrived, I explained that he pony’s food hadn’t changed. He has access to a full 300-gallon tank of fresh water every day. He’s wormed regularly. His teeth had been floated over the summer. I couldn’t remember when we’d last done Psyllium. However, Doc said that when the weather suddenly becomes this cold, many horses won’t drink water and the incidents of colic seem to rise.

Thor seemed much improved after a dose of mineral oil and some warm water. The Banamine eased his discomfort.

Armed with colic meds, my husband and I hunkered down for a cold night in the Sundowner with the little horse. (This is the type of night when you wish you had a fancy stable.) We woke up several times throughout the night to Thor’s bumping around. We peered at him over the flannel sleeping bags into the inky night, Matilda hunkered down in between us undisturbed, having intrepid blue heeler dreams no doubt. We took turns being brave enough to venture out of our warm nest to check on him. I drifted in and out to the munch munch munch of hay, and remember thinking dreamily that I wasn’t going to get much done today. The smell of fresh horse apples wafted across the straw. Given the situation, that was much better than any Eau De Parfum I might just have on my Christmas list.

Thor appeared to be in good shape by dawn. When the alarm went off, he was staring at me through the partition at his end of the stock trailer, his usual droll self, short ears locked on me like fuzzy antennae, that one blue eye shining beneath a fringe of white lashes. “Going to make it for one more summer up in the mountains, huh?” I asked him.

Dennis stirred in his sleeping bag. I decided to let the him sleep a few more minutes. He'd said he'd do the day watch, after all. Matilda and I straggled into the house to build a fire and make a pot of coffee to keep us all going today.

At the Santa Fe coffee shop this morning, everyone was complaining about the cold, and I was telling the barista about how I’d slept in the horse trailer with my kids’ colicky pony all night. (And my husband, and a blue-heeler dog.) The woman in line behind me, all dressed up in her running gear, probably for her 10-miles-at-dawn thing, smiled, shaking her head and said, “You horse people. Now you are the real frontier!”

Well, when we have to be…