by Lisa Wysocky
I’d discovered these stalls a few years ago and requested them whenever we showed at this venue. The absence of strange horses and another stable’s activity on the opposite side of the aisle provided a peaceful, quiet setting during competitions. Plus, this aisle was wider than the others, which gave both horses and humans a little more breathing room.
In addition, these stalls were not occupied very much throughout the year. Because of that, the dirt floor was more level––horses had not had much opportunity to paw or dig in these stalls because they were usually unoccupied. Some trainers brought mats to put in their stalls, but I always thought that if God wanted horses to sleep on mats then our wild horses would be running on acres of rubber rather than on fields covered in prairie grass. So unless I knew a venue had stalls with cement floors, I left my mats at home.
While I loved the location, there were two main drawbacks. One, because there were horse showers across from us, the aisle could get wet if a horse was being bathed. Sometimes the dampness served to cool the area, but other times it made the aisle muggy. Two, and this is where my green chairs finally come back in, some trainers led their dripping wet animals past our tack room instead of using the walkway on the outside of the barn. For some reason, even though the horses had been scraped mostly dry, as soon as they walked past our tack room, seems like every horse would stop and shake off the rest of the water. It was like a thousand pound dog doing a big wet shake, and sprays of water invariably ended up on our tack, tack trunks, chairs, horses––and on any people who were in the aisle.
The chairs provided the perfect solution, as they called a friendly welcome to human visitors and, at the same time said “stay out” to wet horses. Besides, it was very easy for trainers to lead their horses on the walkway or down the other end of the aisle, and it didn’t matter so much if part of our aisle or one of our stall fronts occasionally got a little damp.
I gave Jon the responsibility of hiring an unarmed security service, and told him I didn’t care what the cost was as long as the firm guaranteed continuous twenty-four-hour protection. I’d call the owners about the expense later in the morning. It would have been nice to have armed protection, I thought, but Noah had said that due to state law, that would be impossible.
After a glance at my watch, I threw a saddle on Hillbilly Bob, an aged gelding I hoped not to embarrass myself on in the Sr. Western Pleasure class a few days hence, and headed for the coliseum. Classes were scheduled to begin at eight this morning and, knowing Noah, even with all the chaos the show would start on time. But it was now just six-thirty, which by my figuring, gave me a good forty-five minutes in which to familiarize Bob with the arena before show staff closed it to drag the surface smooth. I always made a point to find a relaxed time to acquaint each horse with the arena they would compete in and thought this was as good a time as any.
Bob and I rode slowly into the hushed coolness of the coliseum, and joined a dozen or so other competitors who were in various stages of workouts. Traditionally, the center of the arena was left either to the reining horses––so they could practice their dashes, spins, and spectacular sliding stops––or to the jumpers. During practice sessions like these, even if you worked quietly on the rail you had to keep a perpetual eye open for the stray jumper or slider. Bob and I took the rail counterclockwise and eased into a slow jog.
I loved these early morning sessions. Sometimes, on the rare occasion I didn’t have a horse to ride, I’d come down, sit in the stands, watch the competition, and evaluate the workouts. It was always quiet in the morning, and the acoustics of the huge coliseum deadened normal conversation so even if there were others around I got the impression of solitude.
When I rode, I always put everything I had into the horse. I knew the exact position of each leg and whether it was coming down hard or soft, the meaning of every flick of an ear, and whether the latest snort was a sign of relaxation or boredom. I created our own little world when I rode, tuning out all outside stimuli. Some people thought I was stuck up when I didn’t answer their greetings in the arena, but the truth was I didn’t hear them, and unless they posed a physical threat to our private little party, I didn’t see them either.
That’s why I totally missed seeing Mike Lansing fall, even though I was less than thirty feet away.
6
BOB AND I HAD LOOSENED up into an easy canter. Bob had recently developed a habit of tilting his nose to the outside of the ring, a position that left him slightly off balance. It could have been a soreness issue and I had Richard Valdez, a well-known equine massage therapist, coming out later in the day to evaluate Bob. In the meantime, we were working circles of medium size off the rail to stretch Bob’s muscles and bring his nose around when I spied a man lying on the ground directly in front of me.
I pulled Bob up in a neat slide any reiner would be proud of and hopped off, keeping Bob’s left rein tight in my hand. My concentration broken, I saw it wasn’t just a man, but a group of people hovering around a man who lay in a tumbled heap.
“Boy what a spill, huh?” I turned to see Zach Avery standing next to me, an older gelding at his side. Zach looked as if he’d spent most of the night awake, as I’m sure he must have. Temptation was his baby. An ambulance is never far away at horse shows of this size and I looked up to see one lumbering across the arena toward us. Zach and I moved to make way.
“What happened?” I asked, concerned for the man I now saw to be Mike Lansing, the trainer who occupied the stalls behind the Zinners. “I was loping along and all of a sudden there he was.”
“Don’t see how you could have missed it,” said Zach as he watched two female EMTs lift Mike onto a stretcher. “It was one of the worst spills I’ve ever seen.”
Mike, Zach explained, had been working with his senior (in the horse show world any horse over the age of four) reining horse, Rabbit’s Foot, when the front cinch on the saddle broke during a fast run. It looked, Zach said, like Mike tried to slow Rabbit down, but the former national champ took it as a cue to slide, and slide he did.
“Mike flew off right over the front and Rabbit bumped into him on the way down. Rabbit tripped, of course, after running over Mike and then fell on top of him. Crikey, it was awful.”
We watched silently as one of Mike’s older youth protégés came to collect a trembling Rabbit, and the ambulance, the youth kid, and the horse slowly left the ring together.
“You’d think Mike would have checked his equipment before he saddled up this morning, wouldn’t you?” I asked Zach as he gave me a leg up on the ever-patient Bob. “Mike doesn’t strike me as the type to be careless.”
In fact, I thought Mike Lansing was very possibly the most thoroughly organized man I’d ever known. He was the type of guy who could wear a white long-sleeved shirt, give a horse a bath, and not get a drop of water or speck of dirt on him. The rest of us mortals usually looked like we’d been dragged through a mud pit after we finished bathing our four legged friends. Ultra cleanliness aside, Mike ran a tight ship, never forgot anything, had horses and students well prepped, and he used the best equipment available. The chance of him taking such a horrible fall due to broken tack was extremely low. Even so, I sighed, stranger things have happened.
“Hey, Zach,” I called after his departing figure. He stopped and turned as Bob and I jogged up. “I was sorry to hear about Temptation.”
Zach’s dark eyes welled. “Thanks. He’s really special,” was all he managed to say before he turned and left the arena.
Inside our tack room I found a note from Jon saying he had taken Gigi for another round with the longe line and, in my cleverly blocked aisle, I found a large moon faced security guard who introduced himself as Ambrose. I tidied Bob up and wrote Jon an answering note that asked him not to forget to give Darcy a wake-up call at nine.
While we all had cell phones and texted back and forth a lot, I insisted that, unless it was an emergency, we work off of old fashioned notes when we were working with the horses.
I had seen too many horses who had learned that when a cell phone rang or an incoming text dinged, their human would become distracted. Depending on the horse, he or she then either began to misbehave, or came to a screeching halt. Our tack room always had a dry erase board so we could post messages to each other. We had another on the outside of the door for messages to others, or for general reminders.
After I finished writing the note to Jon, I saluted Ambrose, who had the good grace to salute back, and I headed back to the coliseum to watch the beginning of the gelding halter classes. At most horse shows only one breed of horse is represented. At this event, all breeds the same age and sex competed against each other. Think of the major dog shows that air on Animal Planet. Same thing. Is this Paint horse a better representative of his breed than the Saddlebred is of his?
Armed with a couple of chocolate doughnuts and a thermos of iced hot chocolate, heavy on the ice, I settled myself halfway along the length of the arena and watched as the weanling geldings were led in.
In most halter, or conformation, classes, horses are led oneby-one straight to the judge at a walk, then away at a trot. It’s important to travel straight to and away from the judge as the horse at this point is being evaluated on leg motion. Do the legs travel directly forward and back from the body, or is there some sideways movement in the swinging of the limbs?
If the horse is led in a curving path, or worse, a zigzag approach, the judge cannot correctly evaluate the horse. Some judges will not give the handler a second chance at approach and the horse is scored low, which effectively knocks it out of the competition.
Here, three judges were to judge each class and scores were averaged. Each judge was also an expert in a different breed type, so as to prevent bias toward a specific breed. It was a fair system of judging, but lengthy. Each horse now had to walk to a judge and trot away, then stop and wait for the next judge to turn around from viewing the previous horse’s trotting motion.
The process was repeated until all three judges had seen each horse walk and trot. The horses were then lined up either head to tail around the perimeter of the arena, or side-by-side down the center for individual attention on body conformation. With sometimes upwards of thirty horses per class, even with computers sorting and tabulating each judge’s scores, some classes took what seemed like forever.
Halter classes were the backbone of any breed exhibition. The winners set the standard for coming breeding seasons and the types of horses bred were directly attributable to the winners of classes at national and world championship competitions. Halter classes were not, however, very exciting to anyone outside the immediate industry––to spectators, for example. So halter classes were usually scheduled in the morning, which left evening classes for the final eliminations of the more visually stimulating reining, driving, and jumping classes. Preliminary rounds of western and English pleasure, trail, and timed events such as barrel racing filled most afternoons.
“I think Tony’s black weanling has it hands down, don’t you?” said a voice in my left ear. I chose to ignore both the comment and the voice. The voice, unfortunately wouldn’t allow itself to go unacknowledged and moved into the seat next to me.
“Well,” said Cam, “what do you think?”
“The black,” I agreed. “It’s by far the best entry out there.”
Most breeders waited until the yearling or even two-year-old year to geld their colts, hoping their little beloveds would mature into the next super stud. Consequently, the current year gelding class was always small, as was this class of nine. I risked a sideways glance at Cam and noticed he was dressed for competition. Western cut tan dress slacks, crisp tan shirt, spotless tan Ariat boots, the obligatory leather belt fastened with a shiny sterling silver buckle, tailored tan vest and newly-blocked straw cowboy hat. For competition throughout this ten-day event, human competitors were to dress according to the rulebook of the breed of horse or discipline they were showing.
“What’ve you got today,” I asked, “the two-year-old palomino?” Cam was well known for color coordinating his show attire with his horses. It was his signature style, and one that easily identified him from a distance to even the most obtuse of judges.
He nodded and casually leaned back snaking his right arm along the back of my seat. I edged away, but his hand caught my shoulder and pulled me to him.
“Shhh,” he whispered. “I have something to tell you.”
“I don’t want to hear it.”
“No, listen.” The intensity in his voice was arresting. “I heard Mike Lansing’s fall was not an accident. Someone cut part of his cinch.”
I gaped at him in horror. “How do you know?”
“I overheard security talking outside the show office. They don’t want anyone to know just yet, until show management can figure out if this ties in with the colic of the two colts. So don’t say a word.”
“But why would someone do a thing like that?” Harming others was something I’d never understood.
In response, Cam just shook his head and removed his arm to clap for Tony’s black colt, the winner of the class.
Cat’s Horse Tip #1
“Rubbing a bit of corn starch into a horse’s white sock makes it sparkle.”
7
I WAS HALF WAY BACK to our stalls when a bubbly older woman with short, spiky, electric-blue hair shrieked my name and came running down the main aisle of the barn that came before ours.
“Cat, darling!” she cried an instant before she enveloped me in a strong hug that flopped me from one side to the other.
It was Agnes, of course, Sally Blue’s owner. I felt the sharp edge of Agnes’s blue-tinted glasses poke me in my left shoulder, so I carefully extricated myself. The color of Agnes’s hair and glasses were in honor of Sally. “What have I told you about running and yelling anywhere there are horses?” I asked.
“Why the same thing Lars told me,” Agnes replied. “Don’t. Run. Don’t. Shriek. But I was excited to see you and forgot.”
Before I could ask who Lars was, a huge dark hand extended itself from behind Agnes. I looked up, and up, to see a gigantic man with skin the color of chocolate leather. It wasn’t just that he was tall or big, this guy was so fit you could see every bit of his massive bone structure. From his dress pants and cowboy boots to his matching vest he was dressed all in black. Only his teeth showed some color. Gold. The image, along with his tall, structured crew cut almost made me miss the fact that he wasn’t wearing a shirt underneath his vest.
“Lars,” said the man in a booming voice as he picked up my hand to shake it.
Lars, it turned out, was Agnes’s new driver and bodyguard. In theory, she didn’t need either. Well, there was that little incident last spring when Agnes rolled her car over the foot of an off-duty police officer in the parking lot of a Baskin Robbins. But even the officer agreed that anyone would have gotten excited about the two for one sale they had going on. He decided not to press charges after Agnes bought him two-dozen donuts and visited him in the hospital. Twice.
And the bodyguard thing was not to guard Agnes from danger, but to guard other people from Agnes. She tended to act first and think later. You’d think after seventy years on earth that she would have settled down some, but then again, maybe she had.
Lars and Agnes had driven in from Louisville, Kentucky, where Agnes lived. They’d made the nearly four-hour trip in record time partly by following an ambulance that was traveling close to ninety miles an hour.
“All of the other cars and trucks cleared right out of our way,” said Agnes. “They probably thought we were with the ambulance.”
Agnes had some experience with ambulances, as she’d been widowed by all three of her husbands. Not sure what that said about Agnes’s choice in men––or her former spouses’ ability to deal with her––but she now lovingly carried vials of all three of her dead husband’s ashes around with her in her purse. She also talked regularly to the ashes, which wasn’t so bad except that sh
e recently told me that the ashes now spoke back to her.
All that aside, Agnes was one of my most loyal owners and in addition to Sally Blue, had a tall, elegant, chestnut mare with a lacy white blanket of white over her hips named Redgirl’s Moon in my barn. “Reddi” excelled in English events and the six-year-old mare and I had recently placed second in Saddle Seat Pleasure at the Appaloosa nationals.
Saddle Seat was a class for horses with big trots and collected rocking chair canters. The seat was ridden in a flat English saddle and the rider wore an outfit similar to an old-fashioned formal man’s business suit. It was the perfect class for Reddi, and she would have won it at the nationals if she hadn’t been a hair too excited. Reddi’s personality was a lot like her owner’s.
On our way back to our stalls we veered off to visit Annie and Tony, to congratulate them on Tony’s win that morning with his little black gelding. Annie, however, was the only human we found there. Hank, who was apparently visiting, dropped the latest in the series of never-ending sticks that he carried in his mouth and started in on a growling tug-of-war game with the Zinners’ terrier, Mickey, and a barn towel. Over the din, Annie told us that Debra Dudley and Tony had just left to go to Tennessee Equine Hospital to check on Starmaker and Temptation.
“One of the veterinarians there told us Star was holding his own, but won’t be out of the woods for a number of days yet,” Annie said. “Dr. Carruthers has been great, too. She’s not even a member of that practice, but she has answered a lot of Tony’s and my questions about what to expect as Star recovers.”
The worried look on Annie’s face told me that while she was concerned about Star, she also wondered how in the world they would pay the vet bill, which was sure to be humungous. Just as with a human hospital, the longer a patient stayed, the higher the bill. I squeezed Annie’s arm, called Hank away from Mickey and the towel, which was now in shreds, and Agnes, Lars, Hank, Hank’s stick, and I walked the few aisles over to our stalls.