An Old Farm Side

That I stumbled upon while reading emails from my late best friend...been missing her something awful lately even though it has been three years now. This column ran in 2011. We still have little Jack and he is still full of beans...

Jack and Tyler

Horses are surely not the focus at Northview. However it seems as if there have always been a couple stabled in the reinvented garage that serves as their barn. Some of them were ridden daily, adventuring around the land, chasing cows down from the field, exploring trails and woodlands, doing half passes at the trot and changing leads every stride like dancers.

Others were driven to cart and wagon. One harness pony often took me jogging with the dog of the day running alongside for miles and miles. I can’t tell you how much fun that was, with butterflies dancing and dandelions dazzling yellow all around, as we whirled down the farm roads. Selling that pony was a mistake. He ended up in a wonderful home, but he was quite a guy.

In recent years the horse du jour has been an almost-small-enough-to-be-a-mini dark bay pony named Jack. Jack was purchased as a pasture ornament and has served admirably in that capacity. He is handsome just standing still, with his hugely fluffy black mane puffing up between his little pricked ears and his sweeping tail behind him.

However, it is when he is in motion that his real decorative abilities come to the fore. Although not many hands high, he has a trot like a war horse in a medieval movie. He flings his feathered fetlocks out before him and then races to catch up. With tossing head and snapping black eyes, nostrils flared and snorting, he makes quite a picture when Becky takes him out for a jaunt in hand.

I am right fond of Jack and talk to him whenever I pass the stable. He always sticks his head out his stall door and nickers nicely back too.

He recently lost his best friend. It was a lesson for me in animal understanding that, although I have learned it a time or two before, always strikes me anew.

A couple of years ago Liz was given an older horse. He was a fine, tall fellow, kind of a pinky-gold and white paint named Tyler. She kept him at a boarding stable for a while, then in a pasture up near her home, then eventually brought him here to stay. He and Jack buddied up as horses usually do.

For some reason he never liked me. It is my habit, when the horses call to me, to toss them each a flake of hay or a handful of green grass, or a piece of apple from the tree positioned so handily right next to the door. Jack would always greet me like a long lost friend, chuckling and chortling deep in his throat. Ponies like to eat and he is surely all pony.

Ty would stand with his head over his door, but never took food from my hand, spooked if I tossed it in the stall with him, and snapped at me if I got too close.

 He loved Liz though.

Sadly, not too many months after he arrived he began to display odd symptoms. First he was lame in one foot, then another. Next he seemed to suffer from the cold more than is normal so she was forced to buy him a blanket. (The other day I took that blanket off the clothes line to fold it up and put it away and didn’t know how. Of all the horses that have shared my life since I bought Magnum when he was 2 and I was 21, none has ever needed a blanket.)

Then tall Ty, who turned out to be much older than he was originally represented to be, somewhere close to thirty, began to lose weight. Liz tried everything. Had his teeth checked several times. Horses’ teeth emerge slowly as they age and are worn down and sometimes get sharp edges from wear. When this happens chewing can become painful (you know how it feels to bite your cheek). Sometimes acute weight loss follows until the teeth are “floated” or filed so there are no edges to pinch and pain.

Tyler’s teeth were always fine.

She tried soft tender hay. Old horse grain with special ingredients. Green grass and lots of it. He would pick up and start to look better, filling everyone with hopeful optimism, then slide back into the slow decline.

Finally a few weeks ago one of our veterinarians came to the conclusion that he had cancer and just wasn’t going to get better. She told Liz, “You’ll know when it’s time.” Then she worked up a regimen of palliative care to keep him comfortable as long as possible.

The day came though. The old boy was miserable enough to not even want Liz to handle him.

She made the dreaded call, set up a time and on the morning of the day, took him out to his yard to graze one last time. It was sad. Even a few weeks ago, when she loosed him up there, he would trot that big boy trot of his back and forth up the fence, just floating along like a race horse and yelling for his pal, Jack.

This time he simply stood in one spot nibbling desultorily at the frozen grass.

Jack did plenty of hollering though. He has a piercing little whinny and he called and called. He couldn’t see Tyler and he didn’t like it one bit.

After a while our kind and compassionate veterinarian, who seemed to feel as bad as Liz did about the whole affair, did what was necessary. 

Jack yelled some more.

Right up until the second that his dear friend passed on. And then he stopped. He couldn’t see or hear, but somehow he just knew.

Every time a horse has ended its days here, the other ones always knew.

 Every single time.

It has always amazed and humbled me.

Every time.

Now Jack only whinnies when he sees me or Becky and is hoping for some spoiling. 

We make sure that he gets it.