For more than a few years, we’ve owned horses. Or in truth, they’ve owned us. Unlike some farms, we don’t trade around or sell our animals. When an animal walks into our barn, it’s for life. No matter how old they get, no matter how infirm, they give us joy and we return the favor by providing a bed and food bowl for as long as they choose to stay with us.
And that policy has dominoed into the need for an animal cemetery. For each animal we love and lose, we plant a rose bush. We have quite a few rose bushes now. Willy has the yellow rose, Duchess the crimson, Gus the coral, Buttons the miniature red, and on it goes. We’re running out of colors.
Our oldest cat has been with us for 13 years, supervising the other six and earning the title of foreman. And Fanny, the mare with attitude, is somewhere around 25 years old. In her former life, she competed as a show jumper, clearing just about any jump she was presented while keeping our youngest daughter aboard and safe. She shares quarters with Braveheart, the sawed-off quarter horse with no particular job except to eat and keep the others company. Blue, the roan looker, picked up Willy’s job of competing as a cutting horse. His actual occupation, though, seems to be to pull on or chew on anything within reach. And to poop in his water trough.
And they’re not cheap. Sort of like a home security system, they don’t cost much to buy but they’re heck to maintain. I can’t recall the last vet bill that wasn’t triple digit. And that’s when they’re well.
Fanny practically raised Alli, as we’ve owned her since Alli was 11. One thing I’ve learned is that there’s a world of difference between eventers and cowgirls. An eventer is a rider who prefers the long-legged thoroughbred type, including Friesians and Arabians, whereas cowgirls typically race around barrels or cut cows from the herd on Quarter horses.
Alli started out as an eventer. Or specifically a show jumper. I was especially pleased with that choice, as unlike cross country, those are the jumps that fall away when hit and that are arranged in a fenced arena. Cross country, on the other hand, is in an open field, with huge logs or stone fences or water ditches or SUVs to clear. Just the thing a mother lives to encourage.
So we bought Fanny, which led to the $1,000 saddle, which led to the $25,000 trailer, which led to the $50,000 pickup truck. Then throw in Ms. Mary’s riding lessons and the farrier bill and vet checkups. Give a mouse a cookie…
But I was told that owning a horse is the best way to teach all sorts of life skills, so we were all in. My daughter wouldn’t be hanging around the mall on Saturday night. No, she’d be at home shining her stirrups and mucking stalls and learning to identify hoof rot. It might not be the start of an incredible social life, but she would learn to appreciate hard work and caring for something besides herself. At least, that’s how Ms. Mary sold it.
And each June for several years, Ms. Mary’s barn family made the trip to the Kentucky Horse Park to compete at Rally, a Southeastern Pony Club competition that was spaced over several days. In the weeks leading up to Rally, we traveled many miles in our new horse trailer, ferrying Fanny and Alli to various locations to practice, practice, practice. Pony Club leaders take Rally competition very seriously. It’s the Southeastern Conference of the kids’ eventing world.
And there are RULES. I can’t even begin to outline them here as I’ve apparently forgotten most of them, but there are RULES. The one that I most remember is that the club tack trunk must be packed perfectly with absolutely NO expired liniment or rusty tools. And the trunk must be made of thousand-year-old red oak that weighs two tons. No Rubbermaid boxes for us.
With the well-packed trunk appropriately secured in some unlucky parent’s horse trailer, we caravanned to Lexington. Mothers were the primary supporting cast of Pony Club, which was a bit disconcerting given the general lack of varied trailering experience that we tended to have. Even with relatively small trailers, we still had Nashville to navigate.
Ms. Mary’s solution to that problem was to choose a lane, stay in it, and avoid all eye contact with other drivers. “They’ll move,” she assured us. “Just look confident and don’t give them a choice.” One of Pony Club’s cornerstones is confidence, best learned in Nashville rush hour.
Other drivers might have moved over for us, but the incredibly expensive white board fence at the Kentucky Horse Park didn’t dodge one mom’s too-short turn when she took out the corner of it. We couldn’t bear to stay for the subsequent negotiations with Horse Park staff so we left her to deal with her transgression alone.
To be fair, though, I’m also aware of a very well-seasoned cowboy who once removed much of the top half of an historic covered bridge in Blount County on his way to a trainer’s barn. Only when the sheriff showed up a while later did he notice the broken wood dangling from the corner of his trailer. I’m not sure how he settled that problem, but I’ll bet it was no easier than dealing with the Kentucky Horse Park management and probably just as costly.
And it wasn’t only moms in the fray during Rally days. Frank, a Pony Club dad who co-owned the local Coca Cola plant but didn’t own a pickup truck, volunteered one year to pull a loaded horse trailer behind his Lexus sedan to Kentucky. With his full cooler of Cokes beside him in the front seat and radio blaring, Frank blew past us at 80 mph along the Martha Layne Collins Parkway headed to Lexington, painfully oblivious to the fully loaded trailer of thousand pound animals he was pulling.
“Do you think I should have let Frank trailer Skip?” worried Skip’s owner Mandy as she watched the trailer zip past through blue smoke ahead of us. I didn’t have the heart to answer but I could see the doubt in her eyes. Pony Club parents aren’t always the most cautious or discerning. But Frank made it to Kentucky and Skip lived to compete another day.
I think we miss Pony Club more than Alli, who outgrew that competition several years ago. We parents bonded over folding chairs under the shade of Horse Park oaks or in pickup truck beds cradling paper cups of beer or ice-cold Cokes from Frank’s cooler. We cheered on our khaki-shorts-and-polo-shirted competitors during horse jog-outs and made sure they had lunches on time and equipment in place. It was for us as much an experience in caring for something besides yourself as we claimed we were giving our kids.
So, Fanny and our other horses and our seven cats and our three dogs all have a forever home with us. She’s retired now, but only after making a permanent mark in the history of our family and helping teach us all a few lessons. She’s ornery and opinionated and moody. And she’s the boss. And Alli still loves her and asks about her even though she’s now in Oklahoma and Fanny is on the farm in Alabama.
Loving and caring for something other than yourself—check.
