The official certificate arrived in the mail several weeks later. I framed it and nailed it to the wall above her dog crate in the family room, then stepped back to admire it.
It was better than an Olympic gold medal.
21
Been Rode on the Ranch
Far and away, the worst place to buy a horse is at an auction. You don’t know anything about the horse except what the seller says, and the seller can say anything he wants. You don’t know why a horse ended up at an auction rather than at a private sale.
Some horse trainers buy, train, and sell horses for a living. A few abhorrent auctions even sell horses destined for slaughter. Killers come to pick out horses for the ride to a Texas feedlot and that final destination in Mexico or Canada. I don’t think I could stand going to this type of auction and still call myself a human being.
But a good auction can be interesting and fun.
One fine day on the last Sunday in March, there was a horse auction at the Equine Center on the Foothills Campus of CSU. Earl and I thought we would go in the gorgeous weather and look at the beautiful horses. We had no intention of buying a horse. We were still dressed in running attire and had no money with us.
There were many horses, mules, and burros tied to fences. Each animal had a numbered sticker adhered to the base of its tail and was identified in a catalog.
One adorable burro with an attitude walked around freely as though he owned the place. I think he did. He definitely did not want to be approached. I tried to pet him, and when he went after me, I said, “Little fella, you sure are a cutie.”
I particularly admired an adult mule called Jennifer. She was a pretty sorrel color. Mules are very nice under saddle and are popular to ride. I thought Jennifer might make a nice buddy for Marcie. Then Jennifer opened her mouth and let out the loudest bray in the history of the world. “Eeeeee haw, eeeeeeh haw eh, eh, eh!” I could imagine our entire neighborhood calling animal control to complain about the noise reverberating down our residential street.
We continued strolling along, looking at the stock before the auction began. Earl came close to me, put his hands on my shoulders, turned me around, and said, “Mare, look at this one.”
I felt as though I’d been struck by lightning, just as Michael Corleone had been struck by the thunderbolt upon seeing the girl who would become his wife in The Godfather. Ahead was a gorgeous black-and-white paint, #10 on his sticker, shiny clean and impeccably groomed.
I looked at the catalog. Ten was a black-and-white registered APHA gelding, just coming three years old, with the registered name of Scootsritealong. What a cute name! I loved him instantly. Of course, we immediately called him Scooter.
We checked Scooter out medically, and other than a healed wire cut on his shoulder, he was a fine youngster in good physical shape. We petted him, hugged him, and put our hands all over him. We picked up his legs to see if he objected to us handling his feet. He was as cool as a cucumber. We talked to the owner’s wife about him. She was in love with him too, but buying and selling horses was her business. It was she who told us that the beautiful shape of Scoot’s head was called a baby doll head. It was an exquisite work of equine art.
I decided to bid on him. I didn’t think I’d get him, because he was so beautiful and well-mannered. So I first bid on an older, more experienced paint horse called Buddy, but the bidding got out of control, and I couldn’t spend that much. Buddy was trained to work and be ridden by hunters, and he sold for a large sum.
I told Earl that I didn’t think I’d get Scooter either. Earl thought I absolutely would get him. He said I had three things in my favor. One, Scoot was young. Two, he was short. Three, he was relatively untrained.
So I bid on him. During the bidding, his owner actually got up on Scooter’s rump and jumped up and down with his cowboy boots. The little guy didn’t even react.
There was only one other bidder.
I won!
Far from being cool and maintaining a poker face, as at an art or antique auction, I was jumping up and down. Definitely not cool.
But I’d won! And I had to go directly home—fast! We hadn’t brought any money because we’d only been going for a look. We had our car, not the truck and trailer. We didn’t have a cashier’s check or cash, which were the only ways to pay for a horse at this auction. Since Earl knew the auction secretary, she agreed to let us pay by personal check. I left him with her as collateral while I sped two miles home to get my checkbook and return with it, along with our rig. I remember taking time to call my sister and leave an out-of-breath voice message: “We’ve got a new baby! It’s a horse! Gotta go pay for him. Talk to you later.”
I raced back and paid for Scoot, and he was ours.
Then we had to get him home.
The auction catalog said that he had “been rode on the ranch.” It said nothing about getting into a horse trailer instead of a large stock trailer for a two-mile trip to his new home.
It was a rodeo gone bad. Scooter actually ended up with his front legs in the manger where the head goes, his hind hooves scrabbling as he tried to catch his balance. We drove back to the auction to ask the seller for help. The seller, Brent, came with us.
By then, Scooter had turned completely around in the divided trailer, with his head out the back and his lead rope broken. Brent actually stood outside the trailer on the back fender, holding Scooter’s head while we drove home very, very slowly. In our college town, of course, people tried to pass us because we were going too slowly. Somehow, they ignored the odd sight of a man balanced precariously on the fender of a horse trailer, holding a broken lead rope attached to a frantic young paint horse whose head was poking out of the wrong end of the trailer.
We managed to avert disaster, as well as the Fort Collins police department. We placed Scooter in Aria’s old pen across the street. He kept circling the small pen. I’m sure he was thinking in his equine brain, What’s going on? Where am I? What are those strange people going to do to me?
Scooter had some minor cuts and bruises from the wild trip home, so I treated his wounds and gave him some pain medicine and a low dose of steroids for the swelling. He was fine after that and inhaled his suppertime hay. To this day, I have only known one time when Scooter refused to eat, and that cost us over $10,000 in veterinary bills and included abdominal surgery for a large, highly infectious equine strangles abscess.
After a week in the small pen, with the horses neighing to each other across the street, we brought him to the corral at our house. He fit in well with Marcie the Barn Diva and Aria, his new best friends.
Earl’s dad, Bill, had come up to Fort Collins on one of his many visits from Texas to work around the house and yard. He and Earl were great builders. They were in the barn, sawing wood, driving nails, and generally having a good time preparing a stall for Scooter. Scooter was standing in the corral, placidly watching all the activity.
Remember how the auction catalog said Scooter had “been rode on the ranch”?
I decided to saddle him and see how he rode. I got him all tacked up. He was stunning. I took many pictures. He remained his quiet, relaxed self, so I buckled on my helmet (after getting bucked off Marcie that one time, I never rode without a helmet again) and mounted up.
I gave him the cue to go—and nothing happened. He just stood there like a rock. It was clear that he didn’t know how to go with a rider on board. Earl, Bill, and I laughed hysterically about being “rode on the ranch.” What, exactly, was that supposed to mean?
Later in the summer, Steve Bowers, who with his twin, Mike, had trained Franny and Marcie, trained Scooter. He became a wonderful horse without any bad habits or mean behaviors.
The first time I rode him alone was close to home in a natural area with a small lake. People liked to fish there. I got Scoot tacked up and was ready to go, whereupon he spotted a man fishing in the water.
I have never seen a horse raise his head so high in fright. The man had waders on and was
fishing in deep water. What Scooter saw in his small equine brain was half a man.
Scoot struggled to get away from this monster man, even though we were nowhere near him. Scooter backed up, jumped in the air, and fell down on his side. I panicked because I thought he had broken a leg, but he was okay except for road rash all over his right side. I got on him to ride a few yards or so, just to let him know he was there for a ride, then took his saddle off and drove him home for wound treatment. Oy. So much for riding alone on a young horse.
Scooter is truly gorgeous in any kind of tack—English, Western, or Australian—and draws audible gasps from onlookers. He’s such a ham that if someone tells him how handsome he is, he puts on his “Mr. Smooth” act. Kids love to come over and pet him when we are on the trail. We always tell the parents it’s okay. He loves to be the first horse a frightened little child gets to ride. I’ve had eighteen-month-old toddlers on his back. He’s also a sucker for a pretty girl, and he’s good for geography lessons because he has a perfect map of South America on his left shoulder.
One young woman I know developed Hodgkin’s lymphoma as a sophomore in high school. Thanks to working at a stable and riding the horse of her dreams, she sailed through chemotherapy. Eventually, her parents bought her the horse of her dreams, which she rode and took everywhere, including to college, where she graduated in three years with honors, cancer-free. Her horseback experience had begun years earlier, on Scooter—I still have a picture of her riding him when she was seven years old.
I know that Scoot would protect me if anyone tried to hurt me on the trail. One time on a ride in an open-space area, a dog was running off leash—strictly verboten in this area. I turned Scoot toward the dog and said, “Get him!” As the dog moved, so did Scooter. The dog made a hasty retreat. I have no doubt that Scoot would protect me if someone were to jump out of a bush and grab the reins to pull me down.
Scooter does enjoy the little pleasures in life. We train our horses to be unafraid of water. There is a nearby lake where we take the horses to splash. Franny and Marcie were dedicated splashers.
I was riding Scoot and Earl was riding Marcie at the same lake where Scoot saw the monster man. I decided to let Scoot go in the water. He stood there watching Marcie splash until Earl was soaked and giggling. Finally, Scooter started splashing too. Then he decided that the cool water felt so good after a hot ride that he would lie down in the lake. He didn’t bother to think about the fact that I was still sitting on his back. I bailed out with a splash and ended up standing in the shallow lake with water filling up my cowboy boots. I was soaking wet and laughing so hard that I had to bend over and put my hands on my knees to catch my breath.
Earl was concerned that Scoot would run off and told me to go get him. I said I couldn’t—I was laughing too hard; he’d be fine. Eventually, I walked over to get him. After all, there was food where he was. He wasn’t going anywhere.
In June, shortly after school was out for the summer, I was part of a weeklong committee to review new biology textbooks. Sunday, the day before the review began, we went riding at the lake. I decided to let Scooter try splashing again, but I would be more vigilant because of what had happened last time.
Bam! He did it again, and down we went.
When horses get up from being down, especially in water, they paddle their hind limbs. Scoot whacked me right across both shins. Ouch! I think maybe that happened because my boot got caught in the stirrup and I was hanging upside down.
I remember Earl shouting my name in fright. Earl was usually a very laid-back man, particularly around horses, but the sight of his wife hanging upside down was enough to scare the daylights out of him. My foot released just in time for Scooter’s horseshoes to whack against my shinbones. With only badly bruised shins and some scrapes on my hands from hitting the shoreline, I got back on, we rode home, and I treated my wounds.
The next day at the meeting, I wasn’t feeling too well. Before I’d left home, I had taken my temperature and confirmed that I was running a fever from the inflammation caused by Scoot whacking my shins. My doctor’s nurse was always after me about how rarely I came in for a checkup, so I called the office. The doctor was trying to get out of the office to visit France with his wife, so I was given an appointment with the physician’s assistant. She told me to elevate my legs and keep ice packs on them. I went home for the remainder of the day.
I returned to the meeting the next day and stretched out with my legs elevated and covered with ice packs. The nurse’s husband, a math teacher, was also at a textbook review meeting in the same building, so I showed him my wounds of many colors, along with my bandaged elbow, and asked him to tell his wife what they looked like. He said they came under the heading of “unbelievable.”
So much for letting Scoot in the water to splash. We did continue to go into water when we rode, but we no longer stopped to let Scoot splash and risk having him lie down on me.
After Earl died and I moved away from the farmhouse, I boarded Scoot at a stable. Every time I tried to ride him, we got into some kind of wreck, such as a five o’clock near ride that turned into a race to his pen for supper, leaving me behind holding a broken lead rope.
I gave Scooter to the woman who owns the stable. Scooter is the type of horse that is unhappy standing around a corral. He loves being ridden, groomed, trained—anything, really, that involves interaction with people. Scooter has a new life giving riding and jumping lessons to students too intimidated to ride huge off-the-track thoroughbreds. He is what is called an “honest jumper.” He jumps in business mode only, with no equine chicanery.
Many paints live a long time. Scootsritealong is past twenty now and is still a delight to all who know him and train on him. It is my greatest pleasure to smooch his muzzle when I go out to visit him.
I love this auction horse with my entire being. When Scoot retires from his teaching career, I’ll get him back, as arranged with the woman who owns the stable, to have him as a trail horse. He is my equine friend, and even though he is not mine right now, I still consider him my son, Scootsritealong. Someday, we will be riding together, since he really has been “rode on the ranch.”
22
Lost and Found
Our best beloved pets can save us—and make us crazy—sometimes at the same time.
In October 2003, Earl and I went to Denton, Texas, to be with his family. Earl’s dad was dying.
We had suspected something was wrong when Bill and his wife, Bev, had visited us in July, just after my niece’s June wedding. He’d been portly all the years I’d known him, but that July, he was much thinner. I remember noticing how his watch hung from his wrist. He hadn’t had his usual enthusiasm for working with Earl on the house and yard.
In early August, he was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. “Stage IV” means that the cancer has metastasized, or spread, from the lungs to other organs or parts of the body. In Bill’s case, the cancer had spread everywhere, even into his bones.
It was a rapid form of cancer with a grave prognosis; his doctor recommended chemotherapy. Bill had one dose, but his health was failing so fast that the family chose to halt the chemo after that first treatment. Chemo wasn’t going to work fast enough to save him, and they wanted to avoid his suffering from noxious side effects as he took the journey to his passing. As far as I know, no one in the family told Bill why his treatment didn’t continue, but I believe Bill would have agreed with the decision.
Earl and I planned to alternate months going down to Texas to help out; I’d go one month, Earl the next. But that never happened.
Dr. William D. Carlson—Bill—was an internationally known veterinarian as well as a wonderful father-in-law. He’d developed the field of veterinary radiology in the late 1950s by transposing techniques from human radiology. He wrote the first textbook on that specialty after being a resident in radiology at the human hospital and earning a PhD in radiology from the University of Colorado School of Medicine. CSU’s College of Vete
rinary Medicine then launched their radiology department, complete with professors trained by Wild Bill.
Bill also started a colony of beagles, housed at the Foothills Campus of CSU, to study the long-term effects of radiation on animals. The colony was active for fifty years. I am sure that his research caused his cancer—today’s careful precautions against radiation exposure didn’t exist back in the 1950s and ’60s.
In addition to his work as a professor, researcher, and administrator at CSU, Bill was president of the University of Wyoming for eleven years; was head of St. John’s Medical Center (a human, not veterinary, hospital) in Jackson, Wyoming, where he initiated a therapy dog program for the nursing home associated with the hospital; and, as his final job before retirement, served with the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) in Washington, DC, as the administrator of federal dollars given to land grant colleges. If you were a land grant college (such as CSU) seeking federal research money, you had to go through Bill. His work with the USDA took him on many travels—wherever there was USDA research. He told me of trips as far flung as Micronesia and as close to home as Louisiana. Louisiana was one of his favorites; he visited humid Avery Island, which is owned by the McIlhenny family, the manufacturers of Tabasco sauce. The sauce, Bill said, sat in barrels on that island for three years to age to gastronomic perfection.
Not bad for a vet whose first boss after graduation told him he’d never amount to much in veterinary medicine.
Bill was the kind of father I wished I’d had. He actively enjoyed his kids and was willing to turn the smallest outing into a great adventure.
He and Bev still lived in Arlington, Virginia, when I graduated from vet school. I knew I needed intense cat clinic experience if I wanted to open my own feline-exclusive clinic, so I joined a feline-exclusive practice in nearby Falls Church, Virginia. Bev was a real estate agent, and thanks to her, I was able to buy a studio apartment sight unseen across the street from where she and Bill lived. It was a great little apartment in a nice building; I counted the surgeon general, many members of Congress, and Larry King among my neighbors.
Drinking from the Trough Page 19