Horsekeeping

by Roxanne Bok

  When it comes to toilet habits—like human, like horse. Some men pee all over the rim, splash a close wall and leave the seat up. Others you’d never know paid a visit. Same goes for women. Though better in people’s homes as a rule compared to men, women are just as bad in public. We hover, and splash, and leave the mess for the next victim, who hovers even higher and showers even more until you must hike the cuffs of your pant legs and teeter on one tiptoe to avoid contamination.

  Likewise, some horses are neat and their stalls a pleasure to pick out. Angel, Theo and Cleo for example, poop in a tidy pile toward the backs of their stalls so that one organized pass of the toothed shovel scoops mostly poop with minimal precious wood shavings ending up in the muck bucket. Some horses are pigs. Bobbi’s young horse Toby dumps in the middle of his stall and pirouettes the whole pieces into small bits that spread throughout his bedding—think chopped salad—and fall through even the smaller tines of the pitchfork. Not only is cleaning his stall harder, but his shavings must be replaced more often, and Bobbi gets to pick it out of his hooves during grooming, a triple whammy.

  “Is Toby worse than Chase?” I asked Meghan one day.

  “I would rather scrub Chase’s wall twice a week than clean Toby’s stall once.”

  This surprised me. As we spoke I glimpsed Chase’s stall in all its glory. Poop stains of old smeared the back wall from the window down to the floor bringing to mind a brown, black and tan Jackson Pollock. We admired Chase’s handiwork, and, as if he guessed our attentions, earlier he had deposited two manure nuggets, one large and one mini on the metal windowsill in between the bars, all artistically framed by the distant blue sky and lovely nearer scene of the fencing, grass and riding rings of our spring blossoming farm. A turd still life. I pictured him wedge-boosting his haunches to manage it, and we all shook our heads, marveling at his dexterity. I thought I heard him whinny his pride from a distant paddock—“Yep, that’s my Chaseroo special—pretty impressive, huh?”

  “At least it’s in one spot,” Meghan said, getting to work.

  “Cleo and Angel are the best,” Bobbi said. “They leave neat piles in one corner and never walk through it.”

  Women really are superior beings, I thought.

  “The girls are better on the whole,” Meghan said, echoing my thoughts. Our barn, run by females, is not above the occasional male-bashing.

  “Bandi’s not the neatest,” I quietly acknowledged, feeling responsible in the way a mother might of a four-year-old child that still wore a diaper and breast fed.

  “Oh Bandi’s pretty bad. He poops wherever and whenever he feels like it,” Meghan laughed.

  “He especially likes the expensive footing in the indoor ring,” I admitted. We’ve all cleaned up Bandi’s double releases during a single lesson.

  I ponder the germ warfare waging at our farm. My kids’ favorite nook in the barn is the snack cabinet that I stock with the highly processed, guilty pleasures prohibited at home—goldfish, cellophane-boxed stick pretzels, hot chocolate mix and vanilla-flavored milk, fruit leathers, gummy bears and cookies n’ cream granola bars—in an unimaginative but effective manipulation of cottoning them to barns and horses. Junk food and barn work go well together, and we all succumb. Disgracefully, I rarely remind the kids to wash their hands before digging in.

  “Hawk is the funniest though,” Meghan said. “He used to poop in the back of his stall, but when Chase moved in next door, he started pooping in the front right corner, as close as possible to Chase’s food bucket.”

  “Oh that’s rude,” I laughed. “The ultimate insult.”

  NOT ONLY MUST ALL THIS MANURE BE PICKED UP, it must be properly disposed of, too. Usually this amounts to a big pile along the back tree line out of sight, unless you cough up the big bucks to have it hauled away. Our farm is large enough to get a good compost heap going, but according to Chip, it is not enough to leave it to ferment itself. Good composting technique involves stirring, airing, rotating and even temperature taking with a long triple yardstick of a thermometer. So far, no one has risen to the challenge.

  Lucky for us our neighbor takes all the manure our horses can produce. Once a day, Bobbi rides the freshly loaded tractor across the street and up the narrow, graveled road, romantically labeled the “goat path,” though its reality hardly conjures that cheese heaven of the Dordogne, into Ed’s field. I rode with Bobbi once, excited about our new, authentically green and yellow John Deere tractor, fascinated that Bobbi could drive it. I crouched uncomfortably between the stick shift and the one seat, with a death grip on a small handle bar and my one buttock hanging ten, thinking tractor accident and wondering why I imagined riding sidecar would be fun. Bouncing eight feet off the ground with no seatbelt, I avoided Bobbi’s cranking arms and legs that maneuvered this unsophisticated piece of equipment over ruts and through soft dirt into field position.

  Rumor had it that Ed planted this field to lure deer. In hunting season, he and his buddies congregate on Ed’s front porch, comfy in their chairs with rifles at the ready to get themselves some venison, all without the hassle of traipsing through the woods or hanging out in trees. Maybe they can even keep a hold ‘a their beers. It’s easy to criticize his method, take the Jed Clampett cheap shot. But I have eaten feedlot cows my whole life and therefore have colluded in barbaric animal husbandry. And the deer have vastly overpopulated the area, only to starve in harsh winters and increasingly suffer roadside calamity. If Ed can finagle couch potato hunting, who am I to argue if the results are the same as from those who rove camouflaged? It is still meat on a plate; fairer game perhaps, without beef’s long, crowded trailer hauls to slaughter chutes of death. Ed probably appreciates the meal more than we supermarket hunters and wastes less after looking his kill in the eye and butchering it himself.

  As concerned carnivores, Bobbi and I split half a cow from John Bottass’s herd. I liked the idea of organic, free-range, antibiotic-free, well-treated even if short-lived protein. No doubt I have ridden past this fated cow by bike and car for all two-plus years of its life. I am confident it was “harvested” humanely. John respects his livestock, and Meghan accidentally witnessed its well-placed shot to the head and a bleeding neck slice right out back in a familiar field—no long truck transport, no tunnels of doom, no odor of blood or terrified moos of panicked, excreting, death-sensing cows. Processed and packaged by a meat locker in a neighboring town, I now have three freezers’ full, an astonishing 350 pounds of all cuts of meat, some rather bony and brontosaurus-sized that I haven’t a clue how to cook.

  Bobbi and I entered Ed’s deer patch, and she jostled that tractor into position. When I realized Ed’s practice of the on site kill was no worse than John’s for my half a beefer and considerably better mass production, I grew comfortable that Weatogue Stables continue to supply Ed with free deer-bait fertilizer. As we chugged along the slick, deeply creased field and Bobbi switched on the rotator blades of the tractor bed to literally spray the ground with finely chopped manure, I realized, with that sudden clarity of “ah-ha,” the origin for the saying “When the shit hits the fan.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  An Unsteady Trot

  AT LAST. The December day for our own barn-warming carol sing dawned wintry and bright. The season prompted dewy memories of the Billingsly’s barn party, and though I doubted ours would measure up, I awoke eager to celebrate our venture with our long-suffering neighbors—all that whacking and whirring—and friends. Noreen, who lives down Weatogue Road concocting indoor and outdoor garden fantasies, contributed the just right touches: two enormous wreaths with red bows and white lights gave welcoming color and warmth to the front barn doors, and the icicle lights outlining the gazebo circled a whimsical halo in the lonely, dark fields.

  Inside the barn, she wove garland through the loft railings and along the front twenty stall doors, beyond reach of dexterous lips and tongues. Every horse boasted at least one ornament hung on his or her gate as proof of their owner’s devotion.
As the main attraction, a twenty-five-foot evergreen touched the rafters invisibly wired with red mackintosh apples. For weeks afterwards the horses and my kids feasted on the fruit. It tasted sweeter having been plucked from a fruit-bearing pine.

  The sky covered itself with soymilk clouds, bluish gray and thin, as the guests arrived. Our indoor cheer buttressed the descending New England gloom as did human treats. Mike, The White Hart Inn chef, prepared tea sandwiches of watercress and chevre, egg salad and pumpernickel, cream cheese and date, and smoked salmon, along with bite-sized poached shrimp with cucumber, and marinated flank steak on bruschetta with salsa to savory us. Spirits and plenty of hot chocolate and mulled cider warmed us, and mini key lime tartlets, chocolate-dipped strawberries, and oatmeal and chocolate chip cookies sweetened us. The horses lounged photo-ready, occasionally kicking the walls and squealing to remind us chattering humans that they were the whole point.

  In finale, several regulars from our local theatre company led us in caroling around the indoor riding ring. The shy crowd eventually joined into The Twelve Days of Christmas, singing in group rounds. Jane and Keira jingled sleigh bells and shouted Frosty the Snowman and We Wish you a Merry Christmas, while my son and his friends stormed the grounds, conquering the remaining piles of dirt. The supportive crowd expressed heartfelt congratulations and blessings, pleased to celebrate a rejuvenated farm and usher in our new venture. It didn’t quite live up to the Billingslys’ party, but that’s my penance for imitation.

  WE RANG IN THE NEW YEAR WITH A HORSE. For several weeks, Bobbi had had her eye on Willy the appaloosa for Scott.

  “Bobbi wants you to sit on him to see if he fits.” I casually floated the idea to my husband.

  “Don’t get a horse just for me.” Suddenly looking crowded, Scott pushed out his elbows. “I’m really busy at work right now. And, anyway, do we really need another horse right away?”

  “Well, he’d make a good lesson horse and a spare for trail rides.”

  “I thought we didn’t want to get into the lesson business, only take on riders with their own horses?”

  Killjoy, I thought, picturing all our empty stalls.

  “Well, then a trail horse for when we have visitors. He’s really nice, and picture how striking he’ll look out in the field with all those brown ones.” I decided to tackle him with aesthetics. “He would be our accent horse: an exclamation point amongst all those periods.”

  So Scott sighed in resignation, and Bobbi and I split Willy’s cost and expenses. He settled right in, happy for all the attention. I quickly learned that “the pretty white horse,” as Jane referred to him, required separate sets of brushes to deal with all that old lady grey-white hair, especially in shedding season, and we quickly excised black polar fleece from our wardrobes. Light horses, like peroxide-haired women, require copious maintenance. But he proved exceptionally dependable, especially with children, and his homely face and general good manners endeared him to all. Elliot requested regularly to ride him with his comfy canter and willingness to jump.

  Willy did freak out once: he jerked his head in wonder at miniature Hawk—what the heck is that?—snorted and bolted to the far end of his paddock. Hawk has that effect on some full-size horses: he’s not a deer, not quite a dog, not readily classifiable. He seems unnatural to the uninitiated, and I suppose he is, bred by human intervention. But Willy soon habituated to him, both alone and pulling his cart, though the Hawkster hitched to his work often stirred up the horses as he trotted along beating his staccato rhythm down the dirt road. As Bobbi explained, “The big horses want to know why we allow that horrible thing to chase that poor little horse.”

  Bobbi always takes the horses’ points-of-view, and her willingness to interpret their thoughts—actually speak for them—though silly, endeared both her and the animals to Elliot, Jane and me. We not only learned horse behavior, but also, without embarrassment, easily fell into the fun pattern of anthropomorphic translation; that is, unless Scott was around, good-naturedly rolling his eyes.

  Winter into spring brought a new girl, Brandy, to join the Weatogue team, working part-time until we got busier. An energetic twenty-three, she owned a raucous laugh and bonded with Bobbi’s horse Toby, riding him regularly. We concluded that Brandy favored him for his voluptuous, naturally wavy brown tail that echoed her own mane, in the way people choose pet dogs that resemble them. She won over Elliot and Jane with her Cousin It imitations: she would cascade her own long brown hair over her face, replace her wire rim glasses and squeak just like the hairball creature in The Addams Family. She worked hard and valued the riding: part of the Weatogue pay package is training under Bobbi, no small perk. She and Meghan learn from an expert on well-trained, -behaved and -tended, healthy horses without the expense of ownership.

  Meghan brought over her horse “Q” (for Quixote), a large retired race horse with an overbite so egregious he couldn’t nibble carrots flat-handed: we would push them into his mouth end-to-end like you’d feed vegetables into a juicer. But hundreds of dollars later, the dentist maneuvered poor Q’s bite into line by about seventy percent. My Bandi hid quite a few oral problems, too. Equine dentistry is the stepchild of horse care, with only about five percent ever treated. According to dentist Cheryl, most can benefit, and even minimal treatment can transform behavior on the bit and significantly improve eating comfort and general demeanor. During World War I the cavalry dentist-to-horse ratio was one to ten, testimony to the importance of the well-tended horse mouth. Sharp points tend to grow on their teeth, often to the non-masticating sides which slice away at gums and cheeks. These can be either “floated” away by hand files or power-drilled down, neither a sight for the lily-livered. My knees weakened amid the protein powder that smoked the air the first time I watched, and cavity-free Scott beat a hasty retreat from the whining drills.

  But considering that rider control of these animals is largely through a metal bit in their mouths, good oral hygiene makes sense. While Q’s transformation broadcast like a before and after make-over, Bandi’s improved teeth showed up in his performance. He chewed less furiously in the bridle and also yielded to the rein more, relaxing his neck into the soft curve, that holy grail of dressage riding known as “going on the bit.” Not that I can do it, maybe only occasionally by accident, but I have watched Bobbi on Angel maintain the perfect rein tension so horse and rider are weighted evenly and neither is pulling or giving too much. Bobbi managed it more handily with Bandi after his dental treatment. I guess we all feel like new when relieved of one, let alone multiple toothaches.

  The dentistry seemed to settle Bandi some, but still he was not himself. Perhaps he isn’t a winter kind of guy. Heavy weather means more indoor work, and he is not enamored of the indoor ring. Or maybe the change of barns, the second in four months, set him questioning the reliability of family and home. Still leery of riding him, our nerves reinforced each other’s. On trail rides I was too edgy even to trot.

  “Don’t worry,” Bobbi soothed tactfully. “It’s such a treat for me to relax on a leisurely walk.”

  We plodded slowly along.

  I decided against riding the kids’ pony again. It was undignified, and I determined to see things through with Bandi. A small voice in the back of my head whispered the possibility of getting yet another horse, ostensibly for Scott to ride and an easier mount for me: an heir and a spare in addition to Willy. Collecting horses is a horsekeeper’s devil-on-the-left-shoulder temptation. I tried to dampen the inclination, picturing a frowning Scott on my right shoulder, but new horses came through the barn now and then, and Bobbi is au courant to those for sale. We tried Big Merlot for a couple of days, but while he would fit Scott—we still hadn’t lost hope of getting him in a saddle—he was largish and too green on the flat work for most riders. He seemed mellow, but did shy once in the woods at something we didn’t perceive. I wanted that autopilot bomb-proof horse that required no work or tension from me, one that I could trust. But can a human ever fully trust
a herd animal of prey? Can a horse give true and total allegiance to his owner? To love and protect her? To sacrifice his own hide and put her vulnerable, skinny neck first? To value and cherish her ‘til death (by natural cause, not horse accident) they do part? Scott would say, “It’s a horse, not a husband, you poor mutt.” It is also what led nineteenth-century propagandists for the horseless carriage to proclaim the horse “an untamable brute which man had cowed and beaten into partial subjection, but which bursts his bonds occasionally, carrying ruin and death through our streets.”

  Yet there are many such storied relationships between human and beast, and people swear to their authenticity. Have I seen too many romantic movies and owned too many overly domesticated dogs? Has anthropomorphism warped my brain? Will I die alone with too many cats?

  Reality check: horses are large, potentially dangerous animals. Tamed certainly, but not domesticated: still unpredictable, strong and not overly intelligent, at least in what humans consider intelligence.

  Hugh Parker, a long-time breeder/trainer who worked for many years at El-Arabia, warned me: “Never trust a horse.”

  Okay, what then? Continue to live in fear, the only part of riding that I had mastered? Figure out how to keep my buns in the saddle during spooks, spins and bolts because they will happen, even to the “bomb-proof” loafer? Recognize that the automatic horse of my dreams is a fiction, except on a carousel? Learn how to fall? Drink more milk? Double up my disability insurance? Add more body armor—that hot, unflattering protective vest? Squat-thrust and crunch myself into thighs and abs of steel? And keep my kids at it?