Chosen by a Horse

by Susan Richards

  But this Christmas season something felt different. I would be there for the residents of the Manor House, of course, helping them to find the strength to make it through the holidays. But I also needed to do something more to help Lay Me Down, something more than wait and watch. Dr. Grice and I had talked all fall about the possibility of sending her to the veterinary hospital at Cornell. When to do it had never been clear. When she couldn’t shut the eye? If she seemed uncomfortable? When I asked, Dr. Grice had said I’d know when the time was right. If that was the only criterion, then the time had come.

  [ 13 ]

  A WEEK BEFORE Christmas, I finished morning barn chores and went back to the house and called Dr. Grice to ask for a referral to Cornell. An hour later, someone from Cornell called me back to tell me they could admit Lay Me Down the next day, which was a Sunday. I said we’d be there. I began calling around to find someone with a trailer willing to drive us. Allie couldn’t because she’d sold her old trailer and hadn’t gotten a new one yet. I called her anyway, and she gave me several names to try.

  It was hard finding someone to transport a horse six hours one way a week before Christmas, especially to Ithaca, New York, where there was a lot of snow and it was bitter cold. Everyone I called expressed sympathy for my situation, but it was the middle of the afternoon before I found someone willing to do it. His name was Stan, and he lived five minutes away. He told me he was retired from hauling horses but because I was a neighbor and my horse was so ill, he’d be willing to do it. His fee was two hundred dollars, half of anyone else’s. His kindness overwhelmed me as well as his compassion for a horse he didn’t even know. We’d leave for Ithaca at seven in the morning and he’d bring along his wife, Carol. I’d follow in my own car because I’d be spending the night in Ithaca, after Stan and Carol returned home.

  When I hung up, I realized I didn’t want to do this alone. Now that I’d committed to going to Cornell, I was filled with anxieties about what would happen to Lay Me Down once she was there. I knew Allie couldn’t come with me but I was too upset to think clearly about who could, so I got out my address book and started going through it. As soon as I came to Dorothy’s name I reached for the phone. She was the right friend for this trip. She didn’t know anything about horses, but she was kind and loving and strong. She was the only friend I had who was from the Midwest, and it showed. She was as sensible as a wool hat.

  “Sure,” she said without hesitating. “I’ll make corn bread.”

  When we hung up, I couldn’t get over the fact that I had a friend who would drop everything for me a week before Christmas to drive someplace as horrible as Ithaca in winter. And who would bring home-baked corn bread, too. Since there was nothing I had to do to get Lay Me Down ready for the trip, I decided to get thank-you gifts for Stan, his wife, and Dorothy.

  For Stan and Carol I filled a wicker basket with food from a gourmet shop in Woodstock called Maria’s: olive oil, stone ground mustard, chocolate truffles, sun-dried tomato paste, and a dozen of Maria’s assorted sugar cookies. Then I bought two thermoses from the hardware store across the street and went back to Maria’s to have them filled with ginger carrot soup.

  I got a couple of chicken salad sandwiches for Dorothy and me and some rice cakes. For a present, I’d take her to eat at the Moosewood Restaurant in Ithaca and buy her a copy of their latest cookbook.

  Later, I packed an overnight bag. We’d be arriving on a Sunday, but Lay Me Down wouldn’t see the vet, Dr. Rebhun, until Monday. Even then, they wouldn’t be able to tell me whether she was a candidate for surgery or chemo or radiation (or none of them) until they’d completed their tests and analyzed them. But I wanted to stay until Monday on the chance that I might meet Dr. Rebhun. I’d already been warned that this was unlikely, but I felt it was worth a try. In the back of mind there was another reason for staying, one I was much less willing to admit to myself: I didn’t know if I would ever see Lay Me Down again. If Dr. Rebhun determined she was sick enough, he might recommend euthanizing her right there at Cornell. I had no idea what to expect.

  I made arrangements for Hannah to do barn chores while I was gone and to take care of my cat and dog. By nine that night I couldn’t think of anything else to do so I put on my parka and went out to the barn.

  It was a clear cold night with bright stars and just a sliver of a moon. My footsteps sounded hollow on the snowless, frozen ground, and the arms of my parka swished against my sides as I walked across the pasture. Gray puffs of breath disappeared ahead of me into the darkness. In the distance a cone of white fell from the halogen light over the hayloft doors of my neighbor’s barn.

  I stopped for a minute to listen for the horses, to see if I could tell where they were—outside foraging or inside eating hay? At this hour, they wouldn’t expect to see me. I didn’t hear them. I started calling their names as I got closer to the barn so the sound of my footsteps in the pasture wouldn’t startle them.

  At the barn, I wasn’t surprised to see Georgia standing halfway out, studying the night with wild eyes, the only one brave enough to investigate the dark shape moving across the pasture. Her fear touched me, made me want to run my hands along her high round neck to erase the tension and reassure her. I said her name, using my most playful voice, trying to tease her out of her fright.

  I could hear Tempo, standing behind her in the aisle, nickering low in his throat the way he did when he was alarmed. I said his name, too, then Hotshot’s and Lay Me Down’s. I lingered in the entryway, chest to chest with Georgia, her head and neck arched above me while she snorted gray plumes over my shoulder into the frigid air. My arms hugged her sides, my giant horsechild. She had a low tolerance for the cloying demonstrations of affection of which I was occasionally guilty. She preferred a less saturated kind of love: grooming, treats, a good belly or neck scratch. She let me hold her for a few seconds and then shoved me aside to return to the business of eating hay.

  Inside the doorway, I felt around on the wall for the raised wooden box built around the light switch to prevent the horses from rubbing against it and turning on the lights or breaking off the switch. I flipped it on, and the barn was filled with a soft yellow illumination, bright enough to make the horses blink sleepy eyes at the sudden glare.

  Hotshot and Lay Me Down stood facing each other across the top of Lay Me Down’s stall door, their necks crossed like swords, the position horses stood in when they scratched each other’s backs with their teeth. But they couldn’t exchange back scratches now because Lay Me Down was completely covered by her New Zealand blanket. She also wore a separate neck warmer and an insulated hood with holes for her ears and eyes. She looked like a medieval horse dressed in padded armor ready for jousting.

  Even with the lights on, after the others had resumed eating hay, Tempo continued to stare at me with unabated fear. It wasn’t enough that he recognized me, he was waiting to see why I was there. It was one of those times I wished horses understood English. It’s OK, Tempo, I could have told him, it’s just a visit. I said it anyway, hoping my tone of voice conveyed the lightheartedness of the situation. To assuage Tempo’s nervousness I had to think the way Tempo thought, which wasn’t always typical of horse thinking in general. For instance, if I were to approach Tempo while he was afraid, he’d run away from me. He’d assume I was singling him out for something nasty, such as a dose of medication or a visit from the vet. Other horses were soothed by the combination of touch and verbal reassurances, but Tempo wasn’t, not right away. The best way to help Tempo calm down was to ignore him and give him time to observe me petting and talking to the others. I would let him come to his own conclusions about why I was there at such an odd hour. As I stood nearby, fussing over Lay Me Down and Hotshot, I could almost see Tempo thinking something like, Oh, she’s here for that.

  In a few minutes, I disappeared into the tack room and deliberately made a lot of noise, opening the bucket where the treats were kept. It was a sound they knew well, along with the crinkle of the pepp
ermint candy wrappers. When I came out of the tack room, all three were clumped together in front of the door, straining their heads forward into my clenched hand. The fear in Tempo’s eyes was gone, and Hotshot had abandoned Lay Me Down’s door. Oh, for the power of a peppermint. Lay Me Down leaned over her stall door and stared at us from the eye holes of her hood. As if I could have forgotten her, the reason for this visit.

  I unwrapped the peppermints quickly and handed them out before anyone—anyone named Georgia—had a chance to turn this into a competition. When I was done, I held out my empty hands, palms up, and let everyone have a sniff, applying the same principle with treats that I did with Tempo’s fear. Show them empty hands and let them draw their own conclusions. It worked pretty well, even with Georgia, who pushed at my hands once, as if to be sure nothing was hidden under my ring, and then turned away.

  On my way to Lay Me Down’s stall, I gave Tempo a hug, ruffled his mane, and when I was sure he was really his old self, kissed his nose. He only let me do this when he felt secure. Otherwise, it was impossible to get my face that close to his. He’d never completely recovered from being head shy, which was the result of being mishandled during his early years at a public riding stable.

  When I pulled the bolt on Lay Me Down’s door, she stepped back to give me room to come in. This small courtesy was very different from Georgia’s behavior. Georgia didn’t seem to realize I was three-dimensional and never allowed me more than a credit card’s width of space to maneuver in as I entered her stall.

  If Georgia was a bull in a china shop, then Lay Me Down was a geisha at a tea ceremony. Where Lay Me Down was deferential and patient, Georgia was bossy and demanding. Lay Me Down didn’t bump me or step on me or push at my pockets even when I knew she smelled a treat. Georgia did all that and worse. Like the time we came home after a long hot ride, and she walked right into the pond with the saddle, bridle, and me still on her, and lay down and rolled. It was so unexpected and so fast that I only just managed to jump off. Saving the saddle was out of the question. I knew other people with Morgans, and they had similar stories. If you looked up Morgans in a breeder’s guide, they were described with words like endurance, stamina, and independence. Each one was true. But you could have substituted one word to cover all three qualities: obstinacy. Not that I would have. My Morgan was a Peechums-weechums.

  Lay Me Down sighed me into her stall and stared at my hand. I gave her the peppermint and listened to her grind it into powder with her back teeth. I slipped my hand under her blanket to check for shivering and held it against her withers for a few seconds, then slid it down her back until I was resting it on her rump. She turned her head to watch me, exhaling big pepperminty sighs. She was warm and sleek under her blanket, without the thick undercoat the other three horses grew that made man-made coats unnecessary for them.

  I walked back toward her head, feeling under the neck warmer as I went and then under her hood, feeling around her ears. She stood still as I checked her, licking her teeth and finding the last bits of peppermint wherever they might have lodged in her mouth. It was impossible to visit her and not come face to face with the pink gelatinous mass quivering along the bottom lid of her eye. I couldn’t look at it without feeling queasy, and I wished I had more control over this reaction. But she was beginning to look like a special-effects horse in a horror film.

  And always there was the question of pain. The vet said as long as the tumor had someplace to grow—in this case, into the eye cavity, pushing out the eye as it got bigger—there would be pressure but no pain. I didn’t think I believed this anymore. My guess was that she was adjusting to whatever pain there was. She wasn’t a complainer so we might never know how uncomfortable she really was.

  I scratched her neck under her neck warmer, standing on her left side, well out of sight of the bad eye. Now that we were going to Cornell, I didn’t feel like I had to check it. I didn’t have to be the one to figure out if it was worse today, and if it was time to do something about it. I could just pet her and enjoy how cozy she looked buckled up in her winter blankets.

  I wished I could have told her about the next day, told her where we were going and why. Horses experience a lot of anxiety when their routines are changed, and nothing in Lay Me Down’s routine included getting in a horse trailer and riding for six hours. Animal communicators claim you can convey reassurance to an animal telepathically. In Lay Me Down’s case, I could reassure her by visualizing the journey to Cornell and then visualizing her safe return. I don’t think I really believed this, but I tried anyway. It was hard because I didn’t know what the vet hospital at Cornell looked like, and I didn’t know how long she’d be there or even if she was coming back. Did that mean I was lying when I visualized her return?

  Lay Me Down seemed unaffected by my mental efforts to soothe her, looking perfectly relaxed regardless of what was going on in my head. So often this was the way it was with us. I’d look at her eye and become distressed and then feel better the longer I spent in her calm, unworried presence. Right now she was living in the moment, savoring her peppermint and enjoying having her neck scratched. I tried to do the same.

  The next morning I woke up with butterflies in my stomach before I remembered why they were there. Then I rushed out of bed, fed the dog and cat, and went to the barn to do chores and to get Lay Me Down ready for her trip. I took her hood and neck warmer off but left her blanket on for the trailer trip. It was a cold morning, right around zero, and I assumed it would get colder the closer we got to Ithaca. Once we were at Cornell, she’d be in a heated stall so she wouldn’t need anything, including her blanket. I wrapped her legs in padded nylon shipping boots that covered her legs from hoof to knee and closed with Velcro straps. They’d protect her legs from bumps and bruises if she was jostled during the trailer ride.

  I kept the horses shut in their stalls and piled everything I’d need to bring to Cornell just inside the barn entrance. Hotshot whinnied his objection to being separated from Lay Me Down, and Tempo protested his confinement by pounding his stall door with his front hoof. Georgia bobbed her head over her stall door, trying to nip me every time I walked by. The pile at the entrance included two bales of hay, a fifty-pound bag of feed, a feed bucket with peppermints and alfalfa cubes, her halter, and a lead line. I wanted to keep Lay Me Down on the same diet, including the hay she was used to, in order to lessen the trauma of travel.

  At ten minutes to seven, I heard Dorothy’s car pull into my driveway, and a few minutes later, Stan’s truck and trailer drove slowly toward the barn. I waved him up to the entrance, studying his face through the windshield, recognizing right away that this was a thoroughly decent human being. Carol, too. They were both plump with gray hair and glasses, and appeared to be in their midsixties. They had open, friendly faces, and Carol waved at me before Stan turned off the engine.

  Carol stayed in the truck but Stan walked over to introduce himself. His hand felt thick and rough as we shook, and his grip was shy. He’d left his coat in the truck and wore a plaid wool shirt with a white T-shirt underneath, jeans, and work boots. He saw the supplies piled in the barn and suggested we put the hay in the space next to Lay Me Down and everything else in the small storage compartment in the very front of the trailer. I agreed, and we started loading. There was a hay net hanging in the front of the trailer on the side where we’d load Lay Me Down. I got some loose hay from the hayloft and filled it so she’d have something to eat during the trip.

  When everything was loaded it was time to get Lay Me Down. I went to her stall and put on her halter. My hands were shaking when I snapped shut her cheek latch. I wasn’t sure why I felt so nervous already. Maybe it was the idea that she’d be shut in a trailer for six hours. Or maybe sending her to Cornell signaled the end of whatever crazy hope I had that the growth on her eye would disappear overnight, like a pimple.

  She looked so pretty without her neck warmer and hood, so vulnerable, as though I were sending her off to joust without her armor
. However, leaving it on in the trailer would have made her too warm. I wasn’t even sure she needed the blanket. We’d stop along the way to check her.

  I hooked the lead line to her halter, and she followed me out of her stall with stiff, choppy steps. Her lameness was always worse after she’d been confined to her stall for any length of time. She also wasn’t used to wearing shipping boots, and I think it must have felt peculiar to have thick pads wrapped around her legs. The other three horses nickered as she passed their stalls, in the early stages of what would soon be full-throated calls of distress as they watched her walk up the ramp and disappear into the trailer.

  I led Lay Me Down as far forward in the trailer as we could go, and then I ducked under the padded breast bar that kept her from going any farther, into the small storage space. I clipped a shorter lead line to her halter and snapped the other end to a hook at the front of the trailer. This would allow her enough room to move her head to eat and look around, but not enough to enable her to lie down or walk backward. Stan’s trailer had a clear window in the front, which meant Lay Me Down could see the sky above the roof of the truck cab. It wasn’t much of a view, but it was better than the trailers that had opaque glass or no window at all.

  She seemed relaxed. She was already eating from the hay net hanging in front of her at nose level. I stood right next to the hay net, separated from her by the padded steel breast bar. She looked enormous, filling her side of the trailer with only inches to spare around her. If she hadn’t been on a short lead line, she could have reached up and licked the ceiling. It made me claustrophobic so I only stayed long enough to see if she was OK and to check that there was good padding all around her. Just before I left, I hugged her neck and kissed the cheek on the good side of her face. She sighed with a mouthful of hay, misting me with the sweet smell of alfalfa.