Horse Sense

by Bonnie Bryant

  Cautiously, the two of them entered Delilah’s stall. The horse eyed her visitors uncertainly. Carole grasped the mare’s halter gently and began rubbing her nose and forehead. The familiar affectionate motion seemed to calm the horse.

  “There, there, girl. We’ll take care of you,” Carole said soothingly.

  “I never wrapped a tail before,” Stevie said from the horse’s rear. “But my mother says I’m the best in the house at Christmas presents. My biggest challenge was an umbrella. Did you ever try to wrap something so it didn’t look like what’s actually in the package?”

  “I don’t think Delilah’s going to mind if her tail actually looks like a tail,” Carole teased.

  “No problem,” Stevie said cheerfully, rolling the gauze carefully around the folded tail. “It’s still going to look like a tail, just a well-wrapped one. There, I think that will do it. Scissors please, Lisa.”

  Lisa passed the scissors over. Stevie finished up her task with a flourish. “Ta-da!” she said.

  Carole had to admit she’d never seen a more nicely wrapped tail, nor one with a prettier bow on it! “I’m sure Delilah will appreciate that,” Carole said. “Okay, next, she needs to be cleansed with a disinfectant. Your turn, Lisa.”

  Following Carole’s instructions, Lisa used the cleansing soap and disinfectant on Delilah’s hindquarters. With Carole continuing her sweet talk to Delilah, the horse seemed to be almost unaware of what Lisa was doing.

  “Finished,” Lisa announced. “She’s as clean as I can make her.”

  “That’s great. Now come on out of the stall. I’m going to follow you. We should move carefully so as not to upset Delilah, okay?”

  Smoothly and quietly the girls left Delilah alone in her stall. Carole slid the door closed and latched it.

  “Well, look at Delilah,” Stevie teased. “She’s all squeaky clean and purtied up. What comes next?”

  “We wait,” Carole said. “And that’s probably all we can do—that is if Delilah does what she’s supposed to do.…”

  “And where do we wait?”

  “We wait where she can’t see us. Judy says that mares don’t like to be watched—”

  “We can’t watch? I thought that was what we’ve been waiting to do,” Stevie complained.

  “Oh, we can watch, all right. I wouldn’t miss it for the world. We just can’t watch where she can see us, or at least not where she’s aware of us. We can hide right here in the next stall. We need to be pretty quiet, but we can see everything right through the knotholes.”

  “Don’t tell me Delilah doesn’t know we’re here,” Lisa said as they made their way into the empty stall.

  “Oh, if she thought about it, she would,” Carole said. “But Delilah’s got other things on her mind right now. As long as we stay pretty much out of sight, we’ll be out of mind.”

  “How long is this going to take?” Lisa asked.

  “Psst! Delilah’s lying down!” Stevie said, looking through the hole.

  “What does that mean?” Lisa asked.

  “It means she’s tired,” Carole explained.

  “She’s standing up again!” Stevie reported.

  “What does that mean?” Lisa asked.

  “It means she’s had enough rest,” Carole told her.

  “She’s pawing at the straw again,” Stevie said.

  “What does that mean?” Lisa asked.

  “It means she’s trying to build a sand castle, right, Carole?” Stevie joked.

  “Whatever you say, Stevie,” Carole said, laughing.

  “I’m hungry,” Stevie said a moment later.

  “Well, I’ve got some good things to eat here,” Carole said. “I put my cot and all my snacks in this stall so I could stay here while I waited for Delilah to foal. Now it sort of looks like I won’t need all that food, because something tells me Delilah isn’t going to take all that long. Here.” Carole reached for a large backpack. She unzipped it and began producing the goodies she’d expected to eat alone.

  “I never saw such a lot of nourishing food all at once,” Stevie joked, looking over the array of cupcakes, cookies, candy bars, and chips.

  “Food from all the major food groups, I see,” Lisa quipped.

  “Yeah, the cupcake-and-cookie group, the peanut-and-popcorn group, the chips-and-crackers group, the—”

  “You want it or don’t you?” Carole asked.

  “You bet I want it,” Stevie said.

  “Me too,” Lisa agreed, reaching for the bag of cookies. “I usually have a snack when I get home in the afternoon and I’m usually home much earlier than this. No wonder I’m so hungry—yeah, what time is it, anyway?”

  Stevie glanced at her watch. “Five-fifteen! My mother’s going to be worried. I’d better give her a call.”

  “We all better call home,” Lisa agreed.

  Temporarily abandoning their snack, the girls headed for the phone and hurriedly made their calls. Stevie’s mother agreed to pick up all of them when they were ready to leave. Another round of calls resolved that, and the girls returned to the empty stall next to Delilah’s.

  “Something’s different,” Stevie reported from her vantage point at the largest knothole.

  “What do you mean?” Carole asked.

  “Well, for one thing, Delilah’s lying down, but not on her stomach. She’s lying on her side, and her legs are sticking straight out. She looks weird and uncomfortable. Is she okay?” Carole was upset by the worry in Stevie’s voice.

  “Let me see!” Carole got onto her knees and peered through the hole. There was Delilah, just like Stevie said, lying on her side. But Stevie had forgotten to mention a few things. “She isn’t just lying there—she’s having contractions! See her muscles rippling? And unless I miss my guess by a mile, I can see the foal’s feet! The baby’s coming and it’s coming now!”

  All three girls got to their feet and climbed up on the horizontal slats that separated the two stalls. About six feet up, the wood stopped and there was only a screen. They could see more clearly there because they could see the whole stall at once.

  “Look, there it is, don’t you see? The little feet, now there are two of them. The foal is still in the sack—that’s the white part—but you can see the outline of its pointy little hooves, and now—look, the foal’s nose!”

  All three girls gasped in awe at the foal’s emergence. Nothing that had ever happened to any of them before could prepare them for the event that was taking place then.

  “You know, I always knew in a sort of textbook way that there was a foal inside that mare, but to see it, to actually see it. That’s not like a textbook at all. I mean—that’s real,” Lisa said. “And it’s incredible.”

  “You got that right,” Stevie agreed.

  “Come on, girls,” Carole said. “Delilah needs our help now. Where’s the birthing kit?”

  “Right here,” Lisa announced. “What do you need?”

  “I need the scissors. Judy told me how to do this when the other foal was born. I’m pretty sure I know what to do. See, we need to cut the sack—”

  Just then, Delilah had another contraction and more of the foal emerged, and before Carole could enter the stall and cut the sack, there was a final contraction and the foal was completely born. Then the sack broke open by itself. The little baby lifted its head and looked at the world around it, sniffing tentatively. Delilah looked warily at her foal, then nudged the baby with her nose, sniffing, too.

  “They’re getting acquainted,” Carole explained. “Aren’t they adorable?”

  Lisa and Stevie nodded, not wanting to take their eyes off the foal.

  “What color is it?” Stevie asked.

  “Hard to tell when it’s so wet,” Lisa added.

  “It’s black,” Carole said in a daze. “Coal-black, just like its father—just like I knew it would be.”

  “Look!” Lisa said. “It’s trying to stand up.”

  The foal moved its front legs forward, awkwardly push
ing from the rear. It didn’t work, though. As soon as its rear legs began to straighten, its front legs collapsed, sending the newborn sprawling into the straw bedding.

  The girls burst into laughter.

  Delilah, having rested for a few minutes, stood up and regarded her baby, sniffing it all over, looking at it from all directions. Apparently satisfied, she nudged it with her nose.

  The baby looked up at its mother, its eyes focusing for the first time in its short life on its mother’s face. Delilah nudged the baby again impatiently. Then she began licking it gently, until the foal renewed its efforts to rise. Once again, the foal’s front legs stretched forward and its hind legs began scrambling. It stumbled, but its back legs were straight. Slowly, one at a time, the baby straightened out its forelegs, and then brought them to an upright position.

  “It’s standing!” Carole gasped. “Cobalt’s foal is standing—and what a beauty!”

  The newborn was perhaps three and a half feet tall, almost all of which appeared to be legs. The foal’s small body was precariously balanced atop the spindly legs; the only parts of the baby that moved with any assurance were the ears and the tail, all flicking this way and that experimentally. The newborn lifted a foreleg and then put it back down again. The performance was repeated in turn with each leg. It seemed that once the baby was certain each of its legs worked, it was ready to try them out together. While Delilah waited patiently, licking her baby occasionally, the foal got itself turned around and, just the way it was supposed to, it began nuzzling under its mother’s belly.

  “It’s nursing!” Carole gasped. “Can you believe it? That baby is less than fifteen minutes old and it’s nursing already.”

  They watched in silence for a while as the foal nursed and Delilah finished licking her baby’s wet coat dry. After just a few minutes, the foal and Delilah both lay down in the straw and, within seconds, both were asleep.

  Just then, the girls heard the familiar sound of Judy’s truck pulling up to the stable, followed almost immediately by the vet’s hurried footsteps.

  “How’s she doing, Carole? Is she almost ready to deliver?” Judy called ahead.

  “Not for at least another year,” Carole said.

  Stunned, Judy came to a halt by the stall and then put down her bag quietly so as not to disturb the mare and foal. “Oh,” she whispered, startled. And then she stood with the girls, circling them with her arms, enjoying the moment. Her eyes sparkled with pleasure. “I’ve watched scenes like this hundreds of times, you know. It’s always the same and it’s always absolutely wonderful. Tell me about it,” she said excitedly. “Did you actually see the birth?”

  “Oh, yes,” Stevie piped up. “We watched almost everything, and it was incredible.”

  Quickly, but including all the details they could recall, the girls filled the vet in on Delilah’s delivery. “You were great!” Judy told the girls. “You did everything just right. You didn’t need me at all.”

  “Actually, Judy,” Lisa said, “it seemed to me that Delilah did most of the work.”

  “That’s why they call it labor, Lisa. Now, I think I’ll check our patients.”

  While the girls cleaned up the birthing kit and threw away the papers and wrappers from their snack, Judy finished up with Delilah and the foal. By the time they were all done, Max had returned from his trail ride.

  “I had no idea she was so close to delivery, Judy,” he said, somewhat embarrassed. “I never would have left her unattended.”

  “It appears to me, Max, that she was very well attended indeed.”

  “Yes, I think you’re right, Judy. These girls did a fine job and I bet Delilah was pleased they were here. How else would she ever have gotten such a nice bow on her tail wrap?”

  Stevie, Lisa, and Carole all giggled. Max and Judy joined in the laughter.

  “Well, what’s our foal, girls, a filly or a colt?”

  Carole felt her face flush. “I—I don’t know.”

  “Didn’t you look?” Max asked.

  “I completely forgot to,” Carole said. “I guess I was just too excited that it was a foal at all—you know?”

  “I know,” Max said, smiling. “Well, Judy, what is it?”

  “It’s a colt,” she told them. “Cobalt sired a son, Carole. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

  “More than anything in the world,” she said.

  “You want to name him?” Max asked. “You can have a couple of days to think about it if you’d like.”

  Carole didn’t have to think about that at all. She’d known for months what the son of Cobalt and Delilah would be called. “His name’s Samson,” she said. Her friends, Max, and Judy all burst into laughter. After all, Samson was a perfect name for Delilah’s son.

  And Carole knew that Samson would be the finest, strongest, most wonderful horse she’d ever ride.

  “DID YOU SEE how his little tail twitched?” Stevie asked excitedly while the three girls shared a soda in the tack room, waiting for Mrs. Lake to come for them.

  “Oh, yeah,” Lisa said, grinning in recollection. “And he’s so cute when he nuzzles Delilah for some milk. It’s almost impossible to believe that only an hour ago he wasn’t there at all. I mean—well, that was fantastic. And you were fantastic, Carole. You really knew what to do!”

  Stevie glanced at Carole. The look on her friend’s face was total joy. Stevie and Lisa were excited about Delilah’s foal, but to Carole, it was really the final success of Cobalt’s life. The little black colt was almost a rebirth, for Cobalt and for Carole.

  “I may have known some of the things to do, like wrapping her tail and cleaning her up, but I couldn’t have done it single-handed. You guys were the ones who did all the work.”

  “We helped,” Lisa said. “But sometimes doing it isn’t as important as knowing what has to be done, you know?”

  “Let’s face it,” Stevie said. “We’re a team.” She raised her hand victoriously. Carole and Lisa both slapped it.

  “What is it when three people give ‘high fives’ at once?” Carole asked. “A high fifteen?”

  “Sounds good to me,” Stevie said, grinning. “And the really important thing here is that The Saddle Club is working together again. Look what we can accomplish when we team up—a foal! Gee, if that’s what three of us can do, imagine what would happen if there were more. Why—”

  Stevie abruptly stopped talking because she noticed that very suddenly, Lisa was looking decidedly uncomfortable.

  “What’s up, Lisa? What’s the matter?”

  Lisa put the soda can on the bench and stared at the floor. Stevie started to feel nervous. It wasn’t at all like Lisa to be so awkward.

  Finally, Lisa spoke. “I guess I should tell you that there are more than three members of The Saddle Club now.”

  “I just see the three of us,” Carole said. “Who else is here?”

  “Well, she’s not here now,” Lisa explained, “but she is in the club.”

  “Who is?” Stevie asked.

  “Estelle,” Lisa said. “She was voted in as a member at the last meeting.”

  One look at Carole, and Stevie knew that was news to her as well. “What last meeting?” Stevie asked.

  “The one Friday night,” Lisa said quickly. “The one neither of you came to. That was the meeting that followed the one at TD’s that neither of you came to either. At that meeting, all the rules I wrote got passed.”

  “I don’t believe this!” Stevie said, stunned. How could one of her best friends be so disloyal? “How could you do something like that without us?”

  “Well, you were each so busy doing your thing without me—” Lisa began.

  “Hold it,” Carole said. Both Stevie and Lisa turned to her. Carole was usually the voice of reason. “I have the feeling that we all learned a lesson this afternoon. We’d all totally forgotten that the real purpose of The Saddle Club is to help each other. I mean, that’s the way we started and that’s the way it’s got to be. There’s no
way I could have helped Delilah by myself. I needed the two of you. Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve all been so busy worrying about our own projects that we haven’t been helping each other at all. So, I guess I’m not really surprised that you passed those rules without us, Lisa, and Stevie shouldn’t be either. She’s been so busy with Nickel and the gymkhana that, well, like I said, I think we all learned a lesson.”

  “Thanks for understanding, Carole,” Lisa said.

  “Wait a second, there,” Stevie interrupted. “I can understand that too, but there’s still a small problem remaining and her name is Estelle Duval.”

  “What’s the problem?” Lisa said defensively. “Isn’t she good enough for you?”

  “The problem is that the girl has got no horse sense. She doesn’t know the front end from the back or the first thing about riding.”

  “But she’s been riding since she was very little!”

  “If that’s the case, she hasn’t learned much in all those years,” Stevie said.

  “She has her own horse. She told me he’s a white horse named Napoleon.”

  “Like I said: She hasn’t learned much,” Stevie repeated.

  “What do you mean?” Lisa demanded.

  “There’s no such thing as a white horse, Lisa,” Carole explained. Lisa stared at her, confused. “See, all white horses are actually gray. Most of them start out dark-colored and just turn white with age. It’s actually a sign of a real beginner when they call horses white.”

  “But she’s not a beginner. For goodness sake, she even told me something that happened when she was about six!”

  “What happened?” Stevie asked.

  “Well, she was standing up in the saddle, trying to get her balance and tugging at her horse’s mane. The mare got angry and kicked at her.”

  “Lisa,” Carole began, “horses don’t have any feeling in their manes. There are no nerves there at all. There’s no way that would make a horse ‘angry.’ Besides that, horses just plain don’t try to kick their riders when they’re on their backs. A lot of times they’ll buck, sometimes they’ll try to nip a rider with their teeth, every once in a while they’ll rear, or just plain run away, but they only kick at something or someone on the ground.”