Tennessee Reunion

by Carolyn McSparren

  “With Grumpy?”

  “Depending on the size of that hernia repair,” Vince chimed in. “He ought to be less grumpy immediately. He needs handling badly. I doubt he’s ever worn a halter before.”

  “Probably not,” Victoria said. “Between us, Bunny Metcalf and I and the resident groom managed to get halters on the two I brought back with me and manhandled them into the trailer. One mare, one gelding. They don’t get along too well as yet either, although I’m sure they will. I didn’t tie them up on the trip, so that they could get away from one another. I decided they’d be marginally safer that way. I didn’t want to make the trip twice with only one horse each trip.”

  Victoria knew miniature horses much better than Anne did. The problem was that they didn’t need any more minis, period. This job looked less and less like a gift from heaven and more like a curse from another direction. She’d have to work harder to countermand its effects. She intended to make Victoria glad that she’d hired her.

  “Come on, people, let’s do this,” Vince said.

  Anne tossed him a couple of lead lines from the front seat of Victoria’s van.

  “We need to open the tailgate of the horse trailer only enough for Anne and one of the minis to come out at a time,” Victoria said.

  Anne gave her a why me? look. Victoria refused to meet her eyes.

  “I’ll go in the front escape door,” Anne said. “Keep the tailgate shut until I tell you to open it.”

  Oh, well, this was why she was getting the big bucks. As if. She took the lines from Vince, opened the access door in the front of the trailer and slipped in. She started crooning to the two lumps that peered at her from the shadowy rear of the trailer. One was a small gray ghost that stood stock still and studied her as though trying to figure out what she was and how she should be dealt with.

  Anne thought that the other horse was lying down. He wasn’t. He was the smallest horse she had ever seen. He stared at Anne a little longer, then ambled over to her with a massive sigh. He was drenched with sweat. Either the mare had been bullying him, or he’d been frightened by the ride. He apparently saw Anne as a refuge. He walked around to hide behind her, leaned against her leg and closed his eyes.

  Anne reached back and scratched between his ears. Another huge sigh. “Okay, little guy, let’s get you out of this dark old trailer.” She clipped one of the lead lines to his halter and walked forward. He refused to budge. “Little shy, are we? Let’s see if Big Mama will lead the way.”

  She reached across the intervening space and clipped the other lead line into the mare’s halter so quickly that it didn’t register with her. She remained staring at Anne, stiff-legged, ears wiggling, head lowered so that she could swing into fight-or-flight mode in an instant.

  “Don’t know where you’d run to, Mama.” Anne picked up her rope, slipped by her and called through the rear door, “Victoria, guard the door. Big Mama and I are coming out.” She turned to her other little companion, who still leaned against her leg. He stared up at her in perfect trust. “Whither thou goest, huh?”

  As the doors were pulled apart, a shaft of sunlight hit the mare. She reared straight up, shoved Anne out of the way like a bulldozer, jumped down the ramp and was off to the races.

  Anne kept her balance down the ramp, but as she reached the ground she caught the toe of her boot, stumbled forward and landed face-first in the mud.

  She grabbed the end of the rope with both hands for a better grip. The mare was desperately trying to race away to freedom—any freedom.

  “No, you don’t! Whoa, right there!” she sputtered. She tasted mud. Her eyes were blurry with it.

  A large hand reached down in front of her and grabbed the line from Anne. “Whoa!” Vince shouted.

  Anne rubbed her eyes with the sleeve of her shirt so she could see.

  Vince braced himself as the mare galloped away. When she reached the end and the line went taut, she reared straight up in the air and somersaulted backward into the mud. She started to roll to her feet, but Vince slammed his boot down on the line close to her halter.

  “Don’t you move, missy. You are well and truly got, so stay got.” He dropped to his knees and laid his free hand on her neck. “It’s all right, baby girl, nobody’s going to hurt you.”

  Anne thought she’d never heard a more reassuring voice. The little mare seemed to agree. She lay there unmoving while he petted her. Anne could see her muscles relax, her breathing slow, her eyes blink and her ears point forward as she listened to him.

  Anne pulled herself to a sitting position. What the heck, she was baptized in mud. Hardly mattered if her rear end got as wet as her front.

  She hadn’t given the tiny gelding behind her a single thought. He was loose somewhere with a lead line dragging behind him. She started to get up and felt something tickle her ear.

  “Hmhumhumhum,” came a soft whuffle. A moment later the little horse laid his head on her shoulder.

  She reached up and petted him. “Well, hello, little guy. You’re my little guy, aren’t you? Let the rest of these nuts misbehave. You’re mama’s angel, aren’t you?” He sighed and closed his eyes.

  “Are you all right?” Victoria asked.

  “I need a shower and some clean clothes is all.”

  “Hey,” came Vince’s voice. “Might as well stay dirty until we’ve finished with Grumpy’s hernia repair.” He reached a hand down to her. A clean hand.

  “Don’t touch me. I’m filthy.”

  “I noticed. Who’s your friend?” He leaned down to scratch behind the little horse’s ears.

  “His name is Tom Thumb,” Victoria said. “He’s actually a dwarf VSE.”

  “He’s a saint is what he is,” Anne said, and wrapped her arms around him. “And after today, he’s my saint.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  IN THE END, Molly came along with her son, Grumpy. He refused to move without her. Once Vince shot him with a tranquilizer, however, he lay down in the clean grass and went peacefully to sleep. Molly allowed herself to be led to the far side of the paddock fence, apparently convinced he was simply taking a nap.

  Gloved and gowned, Vince did his regular exam, took blood, knelt beside the horse and probed his belly gently. “What were the people that owned him doing? This hernia is as big as a baseball. Amazing it hasn’t strangulated, cut off the blood supply and killed him.”

  “You’re going to have to open him up?” Anne asked.

  “Ya think? Right now if not before.”

  The hernia repair looked much more difficult than it was. Repositioning the gut and stitching the belly took Vince less than twenty minutes. He finished by giving Grumpy a shot of antibiotics.

  “I’ll leave trimming his hooves and the rest of his exam until tomorrow,” Vince said. “Right now he needs to rest and recuperate.”

  Grumpy struggled to his feet and staggered off toward the manger full of hay under the trees in the big paddock.

  “He’s eating,” Vince said. “Good. One problem solved. Next.”

  “You want to go from worst to best or best to worst?” Anne asked.

  “Molly’s here. Let’s start with her while Grumpy’s out of the way. The last thing he needs is another kick.”

  While Anne held Molly, Vince did his preliminary check.

  Then he looked at her hooves and shook his head. “I don’t know how they are managing to walk with those overgrown hooves, much less gallop and sail over fences. People in the middle ages used to make the toes of their shoes so long they had to button them to their knees to keep from breaking their necks. These guys could use knee buttons on all four hooves. How did they get this long?”

  Victoria Martin leaned over the fence. “Didn’t Barbara tell you anything about their history?”

  “Ma’am, back at the clinic we haven’t had time to breathe since yesterday wh
en you called, and then we went different directions. I had an emergency waiting for me when I walked in this morning. All I have is a note that gives me your name, your address, and says you have rescued minis. No time to talk.”

  “Huh. If I know Barbara, she didn’t want to scare you off. So what do you do first?”

  “You mean while we’re still ambulatory and not in the ambulance yet?”

  From the look in her eye, Vince suspected Molly was planning how quickly she could make that happen. “I can feel her muscles bunching up, ready to explode. First off, I’m going to hit her with a little tranquilizer,” he said. “Not enough to knock her down like Grumpy, but maybe enough to mellow her out a tad.”

  As he popped the needle into the ridge of muscle beside her tail, she cow-kicked straight out to the side and missed Vince’s shin by centimeters. The syringe flew from his hand and landed in the dirt.

  “Shoot!” he snapped. “I think I got enough tranquilizer in her, but we’ll see. Give her a couple of seconds, then I can draw some blood.” He readied another syringe, then bent over her. “Come on, pretty baby, let Daddy have some of your nice red blood. You weren’t serious that they’ve never been wormed, were you?” he asked Anne. “I’ll have to start out with a low dose of wormer, otherwise they could be so stressed out they might colic. It’ll take time to get their guts back in working order. We’ll figure out the proper diet later.”

  He managed to feel Molly’s teeth without getting his fingers bitten off and found that hers, at least, didn’t need any points filed smooth.

  “Yes, indeed, she has ear mites. They must itch like crazy.” He dosed them. She flicked her head in irritation.

  He picked four fat ticks out of her mane. “She needs a flea bath and fly spray and her mane trimmed, not to mention trimming those hooves.”

  “One doesn’t trim a Very Small Equine’s mane,” Victoria said with a sniff. “They are supposed to flow—long and luxuriant.”

  “Uh-huh. Well, they’ve developed dreadlocks. I’d actually roach them—trim them completely off—then let them regrow. Just so long as I don’t have to try to comb them.”

  “Oh, very well,” Victoria said, obviously unhappy. “It’s not as though we’ll be showing them anytime soon.”

  He gaped at her. “No way you are showing until they’re healthy. I’ll start hoof trimming today, but they’re all going to require extensive farriery over the next few months. You have a patient blacksmith?”

  “Nobody’s that patient,” Anne said under her breath.

  Vince grinned at her. “I am definitely not.”

  “I have a farrier, but I’d feel better if you did the first couple of trims,” Victoria said.

  Without warning, Molly shook her head and humped her back.

  “She’s starting to come out of it,” Victoria said. She had stayed comfortably on the far side of the paddock fence where she was out of Molly’s line of fire.

  “We’ve about reached her limit today. I’ll start cutting on her hooves this afternoon.” He turned to Anne. “In the meantime, maybe you could attempt to teach her to walk on a lead line?” He made it into a question, but from the way Anne’s shoulders tightened, he suspected she’d taken it as another complaint.

  “Why don’t I just train her for third-level dressage and skip the small stuff,” Anne said.

  “I didn’t mean to imply...”

  “Right. If you intend to work on her this afternoon, shouldn’t we get her back in a stall?”

  “Yeah. Tom Thumb, too. Grumpy will not be happy, but he needs to learn to live without her. It’s almost as though he’s never been weaned.”

  “So, you want him back in a stall as well?” Anne rolled her eyes. “What fun.” She brought Tom over from the small area in front of the stable where he’d been waiting his turn without fussing. She didn’t bother to use a lead line. He ambled along behind her like a hound at heel. She caught Vince’s flash of annoyance.

  “Do you always walk strange horses without a lead line?” he asked.

  Another shot. Did he intend to question everything she did? “I wouldn’t try this with any of the others. Besides, if he wanders away I can always get him back. It’s not as though he can outrun me. You saw the way he reacted in the trailer. I do know what I’m doing, Doctor.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ONCE THEY WERE in the barn and getting ready to work on Tom Thumb, Anne did attach a lead line to his halter. Vince did not comment.

  Working over the little gelding was a piece of cake. Anne stood in front of him and scratched his face.

  He really was sweet and trusting. He responded to the pressure on his halter. He obediently opened his mouth to get his teeth checked for sharp points, and barely flicked his ears when Vince probed for mites. They were abundant. He didn’t wriggle while Vince cleaned his ears out and treated them.

  “Darn,” Vince said as he ran his fingers through Tom’s tangled mane. “You got some clippers?” he asked Anne. “Whatever you choose to do about the others, I absolutely have to shave Tom’s mane. I’m feeling scabs. Maybe bites from the other horses. Could be they’ve been picking on him.”

  Anne raced to the tack room and came back with the large electric clippers and some heavy shears to cut the mane first so that the clippers could cut it off.

  “He may freak at the whir,” Vince said. “Don’t get kicked.”

  “Let me,” Anne said. “He won’t kick.” She didn’t know why she knew that, but she did. She turned on the clippers. Tom moved uneasily, but didn’t buck, not even when she shaved the hair completely off.

  “Work around the bad places,” Vince said.

  “Yes, Doctor.” Anybody with half a brain knew not to tear off the scabs.

  “Can you bring me a bucket of warm water?” he asked. “I’m going to scrub his mane with antiseptic and hold off on antibiotics.”

  This would be fun, Anne thought. Antiseptic on Tom’s raw skin would cause a meltdown.

  It didn’t. Tom snorted and wriggled, but he seemed to understand that these creatures were trying to help him. That in itself was unusual. Animals almost never appreciated help offered by a human being. They had a point.

  After Tom, Anne was impressed at how carefully and quietly Vince worked over Grumpy and Molly. Tom had been easy. Vince seemed to have a Jekyll-and-Hyde personality—gentle with the horses, snappish with the humans. Anne wanted Victoria to recognize that she, too, knew her job. She’d worked with a couple of trainers who treated their staff and students like idiots. This new job would be no fun if she had to put up with a less than congenial work environment.

  “Okay,” he said. “That’s Tom, Molly and Grumpy at least partially done.”

  “Do we have to put Tom in a stall?” Anne asked.

  “He’s been with other minis,” Victoria said. “Even if they pick on him a bit, he’d be miserable by himself.”

  Vince nodded. “Just keep an eye on him in case they start to bully him.”

  The minis stood under the shade at the far side of the pasture. They didn’t exactly welcome Tom, but they made no attempt to run him off either.

  “Good,” Victoria said. “Hey, people, it’s already past noon. I’m hungry even if nobody else is. I’ll throw a pizza in the oven. We can go back to work after we eat.”

  “I can’t walk into your house until I’ve had a shower and put on clean clothes,” Anne said. “I put my stuff into the guest house when I got here, but I haven’t unpacked yet.”

  “Then, Vince, you mind helping with lunch?”

  “Sure.”

  The guest house Anne would be using had been built down the hill from the swimming pool beside the patio. Both the cottage’s main and second bedroom had en suite baths. It wasn’t palatial, but it had heat and air-conditioning, a kitchen and a big stone fireplace with an even bigger TV screen above
it.

  It was definitely a step up from her cramped apartment in the attic of her old home in Memphis.

  Victoria had hired Anne for a trial period of six months. Anne didn’t doubt her ability to manage a stable and train riders and horses. She’d started and run the program for special-needs riders at her previous job. It had been highly successful until they lost their grant because of budget constraints.

  When Victoria offered her a job, free board for her horse, Trust Fund, and a chance to train the minis, she’d jumped at it.

  That was before she heard the history of the crazy minis and found out what Victoria wanted to do with them. Anne knew how to train big horses, but had no hands-on experience training miniature horses to be helper animals for the disabled. That was what Victoria planned to do with them.

  She’d read everything she could find and talked to several people who were getting minis ready to be helpers, but that wasn’t the same as actually doing it from scratch.

  Jobs with horses—any sort—that paid a living wage weren’t that thick on the ground. She was lucky to find this position after the stable she worked for in Memphis closed down. Doubly lucky that her stepmother, Barbara, knew Victoria and recommended her.

  She had to make this work. She’d given up her part-time bartending job in Memphis and her apartment to come up here.

  She realized she had a great deal to learn about miniature horses. The point was that they were horses.

  The friends she’d graduated from college with had gone to law school or med school or married men who had. They all thought she was crazy to believe she could make a career with horses.

  She fell in love with horses the first time she saw a pony ride at the zoo. There was something about equines that called out to certain girls. Oddly, boys were seldom affected the same way. The infected girls, as her father referred to them, progressed from spending their allowances on horse models to pony rides at the zoo to riding lessons, and eventually, if they were lucky, to a horse of their own. Most of them moved on when they went off to college, started careers, married or when daddy stopped footing the bills. Some of them came back to riding when their own children fell under the equine spell, when they began to long once again for the feel of a foot in the stirrup and a rump in the saddle.