Just two years ago, when we’d been looking around for my first horse, we’d nearly been duped into buying one that was chronically unsound.
The owner, another work acquaintance of my dad’s, had the gray mare so drugged up with phenylbutazone during my test ride that we never knew. That mare rode as smooth as silk on top of all that bute, and I fell head over heels in love with her on the spot. Having been plunged into the alien territory where many parents with expendable income and a horse-crazed daughter often find themselves, my mom and dad—who had trouble enough with our neurotic dachshund—had decided to forego a pre-purchase exam by a vet.
Can a horse save your life? Can you be rescued by an equine? Yes, yes. From ill-tempered ex-husbands who enjoyed throwing their weight around and lots of other, actually, much scarier and ultimately more threatening things. Our letters, like the one in the gnostic Hymn of the Pearl, show up in the most surprising shapes and sizes. Mine came to me not on kingfisher's wings, but on four hooves ...
The Andalusian mare who er ... "belonged" ... to me for years and who began to claim my daughter for her own a while ago. Eventually, I made that inevitable outcome official and "gave" Caprichosa to J.
Is there a story in being rescued by the Horse of Kings? And how does one tell it without sounding like a whining, puny victim? Which one of course, is not. This is, after all, a story of galloping on.
Well, I'd better stop procrastinating here on my blog, which is easy to do--you see it's much simpler to write little snippets right off of the top of my head and post them here then try to put together something coherent and meaningful that anyone else would really like to read and possibly want to add to their library--and go find out.
Has a horse rescued you? Does horsemanship help you to stay more awake when there's so much around that's trying to lull us to sleep? What special things have you learned from your horse(s)? What kinds of horse stories interest you?
I've been thinking about the dark horses recently as I work on my book. The shadows. The ones that taught me something about myself that I wasn't quite ready to know. This memory of one of my dark horses is from an autumn 30 years ago. An autumn afternoon very much like this one. We were looking for a move up for me from my little quarterhorse gelding, and one of my dad's friends had a racehorse he wanted to sell to us greenhorns.
Doodles Donovan gazes over his shoulder at me with one white-rimmed eye as I pick up the reins. Under the western saddle that previously belonged to my chunky quarter horse—a veteran babysitter with one bad eye and an equally bad attitude—the lanky thoroughbred looks like a prepubescent boy in a size 42 suit. He is named Doodles, Mr. Fix, his owner, explains to us, because the only non-midnight-black part of the gelding is the white mark on his forehead. A backwards question mark, Mr. Fix says. The young horse lets me trace it softly with my index finger when we meet.
A frisson of excitement unfurls down the gelding's spine as I grab the saddle horn and find the stirrup with my foot, careful not to poke the unschooled youngster in the ribs and send him careening off across the ocean of grass that’s lapping up against us in emerald waves, reaching nearly to his belly. Doodles presses his lips together tight. He is not tempted to sneak one bite.
The edge of a jet nostril flicks in my direction. Doodles holds his head aloft, so high I think he might actually tip over off of those long stilts that are his legs. He’s sniffing for clues about this sixteen-year-old girl who seems to think she’s going to take him for a ride out here in this 60-acre pasture beneath all this autumn sky, exactly the kind of day that tempts most young horses to gallop for miles just for the sheer joy of it.
The fact that the full breadth of Doodle’s experience has been on an Ohio racetrack doesn’t escape me, even though I'm almost as green as he is, as I've owned one horse so far in my lifetime. And the knowledge that the horse's brief racing career was a failure doesn’t give me much comfort either as I exhale and swing into the saddle, gently.
Disclaimer of Liability: igallopon.com shall have neither liability nor responsibility to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damage caused directly or indirectly by the information contained on this web site. While igallopon.com is as accurate as igallopon.com can make it, there may be errors, omissions, and inaccuracies.
