horses, horses, horses

horses make a fine audience. that is, if you're not looking for cheers and clapping. on the other hand, they will never jeer at your performance. the hayloft, 8 feet off the ground, was my stage and the wood pole end of a hayfork my microphone. i'd bellow "i'm the greatest star!" from Funny Girl from a pyramid of hay bales with the crunch of horse's jaws as back-up. the performance usually began after i'd flung them each a generous slice of hay, a square frisbee smelling of summer fields. my goal the center of each 15 foot square stall. sometimes i missed and the grass frisbee landed on a horse's back, and that was OK because eventually it would fall off into the sandy stall soil. or else the hay might hit a beam and fall, two slices in one horse's stall. annoying, because that meant i had to scramble down the ladder and correct the mistake because there was a hungry, hayless horse waiting in he next stall over. i would often make my exit from the hayloft into an olympic act, taking a couple steps down while facing out at the aisle, then leaping. leaping from the platform of the hayloft itself was always so tempting, but always too dangerous. that could result in broken legs and there was no telling how long i might lay out there like a snapped scarecrow if that happened. i was, after all, usually out there alone with my radio or tape player blaring, and the house just far enough away that no one would hear my screams. sometimes, if i was mad in that teenage i'll get them' way, i imagined doing just that. leap and break my legs. they'd all be nice to me after that, wouldn't they? but i was never quite that demented or self-destructive. so I impersonated Barbra Streisand or sang along with the Top Twenty of the late 70's, happy in the barn because it smelled good and the horses were warm and comforting.

they could be far out in the pasture, grazing mindlessly, until i bellowed "DINNER!" at the top of my lungs. my voice carried well, i could have made it on Broadway. the horses would gallop in, following a silly wormtrail they'd cut into the grass. no wonder the mall pet store called that plastic hamster house a HabiTrail. apparently animals are creatures of habit. hence the saying. the horses wouldn't stray from their trail even with an acre wide expanse of grass to gallop through. single file, dust billowing from their hooves. once in a great while only Chipper would gallop in. fat pony was always hungry. so i'd mount his broad back and run him back out to get his pasture-mates. we'd play cowboy herding cattle, he'd cut circles around the other horses and i'd war-whoop and wave my arms in a show of menace, driving them all in to the barn. i think Chipper enjoyed this go-get-em status. he was raised out west, after all, a descendant of the war ponies plains indians once rode. he was not only a pinto but also an appaloosa and somewhere in his lineage had to have been a draft horse or two. he was as tall as a pony can be and still be a pony, and not at all graceful with those big draft horse fetlocks and wide boat of a back. he was, however, very clever and agile and i could ride him with no bridle and saddle and he understood the squeeze of my knees or a hand waved at the side of his neck. turn left, turn right. he had it down. i could easily pretend i was Cheyenne.

chipper's flexible nature made him my choice for horse tricks. in the winter i would lay a ladder across the 15 foot wide barn aisle and start him with a kick at the barn door. we'd jump the ladder, turn around, and do it over and over again. i wasn't a Cheyenne during this practice. i was a great steeplechase rider. OK, well maybe a combination of the two because eventually i taught myself to take the jump no hands, then arms extended, flying like a plane through the air. it was almost impossible to fall off Chipper's barrel back. still, i considered it quite an achievement. in the summer, outside, Chip would dutifully stand with this ass facing a giant tractor tire laying on the ground. i could count on him never wandering off. my trick was to run, jump on the big rubber tire like a trampoline, and vault onto his back. in retrospect, i am lucky he never kicked me in the teeth. he had ample opportunity. but, like i said, this was a horse with a noble wild west heritage (or so i imagined) and so he did as his Elders would have had him do. which was stand there patiently. at some point in my Indian fetish i asked for and received a plastic bow and arrow, but i could never manage to hit a hay bale from a standstill much less from a horse at a gallop.

Arabess was "my" horse, a three-quarter Arab who'd come to us from North Dakota. only later did we find out she was pregnant with a bonus filly. she and Chipper were our originals. she was much more of an elegant horse, chestnut with a saffron mane, and taller for sure. but she was not the nicest horse and didn't bend to my will like Chip. in other words, she threw me almost every single day i rode her for years. arabs are spooky, so i blamed it on that. cat jumped off a chair, Bess would freak and throw me. it got so i could land on my feet in front of her, still holding the reins. no small feat in and of itself. i liked to ride her because i could ride english hunt seat with my velvet hardhat and satisfy that steeplechase side of me. Chipper just looked silly with an english saddle. like dressing a 300 pound woman in a silky negligee and stilettos. it didn't quite work. he was meant to be western. i rode him english in a 4-H horse show and i'm pretty sure we looked idiotic. side by side, though, he was the better horse. Arabess might have been pretty with the glamour of the Egyptian background, but Chip was a horse you could count on.

you could count on him getting into trouble too. because he was so smart, he figured out how to unlatch his stall with his teeth and somehow breaking into the Tack Room where we kept all the horse grain. he got in there and gorged himself, sometimes bringing the littler pony Misty along for the fun. to avoid colic i'd have to walk and walk him for hours and then he wasn't my best horse. he also opened the pasture gate and took all his cohorts for a walk. we once got a call from Hatfield Beef claiming that if we didn't get our horses out of their yard they'd be horsemeat. eventually an electric fence and it's electric gate cured the jailbreaks although i hated going electric because it seemed i always got shocked. the fence never cured Misty of his jailbreaks though. he was just short enough to scoot under the electric wire and would go off in search of a mare in need of his stallion attributes. poor thing, though. too short to get anywhere near the average local mare's tail. like me, he was lucky he was never kicked in the teeth.

(to be continued shortly!)