Perhaps you'll indulge me for another horse story.
Before I was a barn manager, I rode at the same barn I later managed, under the same exceptional coach who was later my boss. She had some excellent school horses - and some less excellent - but nearly every one of them had a story.
One of the great pleasures of that barn was that every so often K would organize a long trail ride for the intermediate and advanced riders. These would last for 3 to 4 hours, often include a snack, and would cover areas of the preserve normally not seen by anyone except, occasionally, the park ranger (or other equestrians, typically those who owned the horses they boarded at that barn and had the time to go exploring.)
On one such ride I was mounted on Sam, a horse I'd never ridden before. Sam had a long, deep, puckered scar on the left side of his neck; though the overlying skin was fully haired and the scar was clearly a long-ago injury, the resulting trench in his otherwise-smoothly muscled neck was almost an inch deep. It was at the juncture of neck and shoulder, deepest at the front and growing more shallow as it proceeded toward the rear.
"Wow, that's quite a scar," I said to Kate. "What happened to him?
"Oh, Sam is an old timber wolf," she said. "He got it over a jump."
I raised an eyebrow at her. "What do you mean by 'a timber wolf''?" I asked.
"I mean he was a cross-country jump racer. Not steeplechase; those fences are usually a brush of birch twigs or something like that over a frame. I mean he did the big cross-country courses like for three-day eventing. Some of those jumps are solid, and he ran himself into one one time and lacerated himself pretty good."
"I'll say," I said. "Doesn't seem to bother him, though," I added, as Sam had not even twitched while I brushed him up.
K laughed. "That was probably twenty years ago. I think he's over it by now."
"Twenty years ago?" I said. "How old IS this horse?"
"Thirty-five," she said.
"Thirty-five?" I asked her askance, wondering if he was going to drop dead underneath me on a three-hour ride in the heat of activity and the humidity of an Eastern spring. K smiled, correctly divining that I was wondering why Sam wasn't retired, out whiling away lazy days in the pasture with K's retired eventer.
"He's already been retired twice, once in his late 20's and once at 33, but he just can't take to it. He runs the fence screaming all day long, every time he sees someone else going out. He just can't stand it. He quits eating and starts picking on the other horses until you put him back to work."
Okay, then. At least I know if Sam drops dead under me, he'll die happy.
As it happens, Sam does not drop dead under me. He's a fun ride, with a big reaching stride and a willing attitude; he seems even more eager for the trail than I am. At about 16 hands and with a big scopey shoulder, he has a nice long suspension between strides, and while he might not be absolutely the smoothest horse I've ever been on, he's got a comfortable gait. As an added bonus, the long pause between strides as he canters along makes me feel like I'm flying.
In the middle of his fourth decade, Sam has done and seen it all, it seems. He has a level head on him, knows how to collect himself and keep a pace with the other horses without crowding them or rushing them, and is not phased by the small wildlife that might pop out of the bushes at inopportune moments: the swift red flash of fox darting along a hedge, the startling whirl of wings as a pheasant takes to the air. If I allow him to flank up next to another horse I can feel him wanting to race a little, but if I check him even the slightest bit he relaxes, laying in alongside, as if he's actually IN a race and being asked to lay back, lay back just a little now, saving himself for a stretch run.
Sam is also wise to the ways of balance, a horse that you can ride downhill at a canter without him rushing or pulling you forward of your balance point. He shifts his weight back on his powerful haunches and paces himself down the slope, feeling for his rider's balance and setting himself underneath it. This is a lovely thing; at the time (in my estimation) an intermediate rider, I'd have enjoyed my ride less if I was having to bring a racy horse back to my seat and my center of gravity on the downhill lopes. Sam did not have to be asked; he just handed it over as if knowing that this was what I wanted.
After a lovely long canter through a meadow and some walk-trot-canter through the woods, we made our way down the declivity in which the river ran. We walked a while and cooled our mounts on the approach to the stream. Here we paused, letting our horses drink if they wished. Sam did not wish; he did, however, want a bit of a shower - or perhaps he felt I needed one - because he walked into the shallow edge of the stream til the water was about mid-cannon on him, and then proceeded on to stretching out his right fore and striking repeatedly at the water, splashing himself and me and everyone else within 6 feet of us.
This having garnered either laughter or exasperation from our companions, we continued on - slightly more damply. Me, I had this little smile on my face. Sam was showing me a really good time, and I was pretty happy if I was showing him one back.
There is a closeness sometimes about the woods in the humid east; even though it was relatively cool for an east coast day (due to the season), the humidity still hung that morning in the air, making it seem slightly muffled, wrapped close about us, the forest somehow more intimate than it would have been on a crisp, dry day. It wasn't quite misty, but not far from it, lending the quiet woods a sense of impendingness; a fey sort of morning, where you almost expect to see small wood sprites peeking out from behind the lush bracken ferns. The woods were full of the small quiet sounds that are almost like silence, though it is a silence composed of noise; the voice of the forest, muted and confiding.
After a time we came to the uphill slope that would take us back up out of the river bottom. Unlike our downhill trail, which had had a wide, smooth path, the uphill had a narrow winding one. No wider than one horse could manage abreast, we proceeded up it single file. Two or three horses head of me, out of my direct line of sight, K picked up the pace and we went up the hill at a slow canter. Apart from the hours I rode Happy - because any moment on Happy was an exercise in a kind of Nirvana - this might have been the most fun I ever had on horseback; more fun even than sprinting Georgie Girl down the straightaway, more fun than the most perfect jump course I've ever run, more fun than romantic morning rides with my boyfriend. I don't know why; maybe it was because Sam was in his element, maybe it was because I was in mine, in some way I'd never been before. Maybe it was because it was a perfect balance of thought and thoughtlessness, of physical and mental.
Whatever it was, the uphill ride was a rush. There were a lot of trees down across the trail - some not more than 6 inches in diameter, some over a foot, and all fallen at varying heights and angles from the ground and across the trail. The trees grew close to the trail, and some places the trail veered tight around one and then turned the opposite way to snake around another, equally close. There were places where branches hung low overhead, and others where a knobby boll might want to catch your knee or your stirrup, kicking your foot back and trying to pitch you over the shoulder of your mount. Some places a jump lay between two trees so close together that if you aimed off by six inches you'd unhorse yourself by ramming one leg or the other into a tree. The entire upward trail was a constant adjustment - jump this, duck under that, toe in tight here to keep off that boll, rein sharp to the other side to keep your knee from slamming into that tree, duck your head under that branch while your mount jumps that log, keep your forward seat for three downed trees in a row - and most places you could see no more than a horse length ahead of you, so you had no idea what came next. There was no preparing in advance, no planning: you just had to do the right thing when it came at you, and it came at you NOW.
Ahead of me I could see here and there the flash of color between the trees that was K's shirt, or that of another rider, generally seen off at an angle as the trail zigged and wove up the slope. But still you could not anticipate the trail; you knew only that eventually you would end up in that spot, but not how you might get there nor what hazards might lay across your path.
Sam, old hand that he was, cantered up this obstacle course with his ears pricked forward, taking my leg and my rein almost before I thought of them, as if he could read my mind, as if my thoughts somehow transmitted themselves instantly to his mind. He felt when I needed him to put in an extra stride before that big tree, and when I wanted him to stand back a little and take a longer jump. Despite his broad and well-sprung ribs, he threaded me through the serpentine trail without once knocking my knees or my toes, supple as water, graceful as a deer - and yet possessed of the springing muscular power of a jumper, driving us uphill and over jumps as if I weighed no more than sunlight on his back.
We came to the top of the slope at last, the trees opening out onto a meadow. K, reined around to make sure everyone made it out of the woods safely, gave me a grin as I drew up beside the other horses.
"Liked that, did you?" she asked.
I had no words to say how much. All I could say was, "Yes." But I said it emphatically, could feel my eyes shining and my face flushed with delight and excitement - and it must have been enough, because she laughed a little, a quiet little laugh at the back of her throat, but one that says: I could not have told you this, but now you know how it is.
I don't now recall much about the rest of the ride home - that it was a pretty morning, yes, and that the sun was starting to burn off the haze, sure - but that will stand forever as the Enchanted Forest Ride in my mind. I had many a wonderful ride on many a fine horse in those days, but that one was something special. There were so many delights in it that I cannot for the life of me say was it this thing or that that made it so perfect; but if I had to pick one thing, it would be that uphill ride, dancing over jumps and pirouetting through trees, feeling beneath my leg the powerful, joyous beat of the mighty heart of an old timber wolf.
Saturday, September 5, 2009
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Cappuchino Love
Author's note: So you know how this works: my brain works like a giant spider web. I remember some story, and tugging on that strand of the web moves all the others that cross it. So thinking about Georgie Girl has reminded me of other stories from that era of my life, and now you'll all have to suffer through them. You poor things.
Sometimes barns are full of love stories - not the play Equus kinds of love stories, but romances full of passion and beauty of a different sort entirely.
At the riding school we had a number of school horses of varying biddability and reliability. There was the elegantly beautiful palomino mare Goldie, who was also a sneaky wee bitch of a Saddlebred; she had the magical ability to escape capture by somehow causing the other horses to run interference for her, getting in the way of her would-be captor while she hied herself off to the most inaccessible part of the pasture. I missed a lesson on Goldie more than once this way, to my secret pleasure; Goldie had a very upright head carriage, which by consequence hollowed her back to the point where she was a very uncomfortable ride. Moreover, she had a mouth like a steel bucket, with no more flexibility or subtlety than that, and was inclined to cheat at everything, either to save herself some effort or just because. You constantly had to watch her on approaching a jump, because she was inclined to run out, dodging to the side to avoid the jump (and sometimes dump her rider at the same time), or occasionally she'd just stop, with much the same results. More than once my instructor - having gone to catch Goldie - would to my secret delight return red-faced and irritable, leading some other school horse, less elegant to look at but more honest of heart, and much more fun to ride.
There was Sailor, a sturdy Morgan gelding, who had the unfortunate (and for his breed, unusual) condition of being nearly strait in the pasterns. This rendered him a rough and choppy ride, but he was as cheerful as the day is long, and willing to go along with whatever you had in mind, and as he was otherwise well-built, he was strong enough to handle adults and honest enough to handle beginners, with the result that he was an oft-used lesson and trail-ride horse. This never seemed to trouble him; he was perfectly willing to have a go at whatever the task was.
You already know about Happy Face, a plain-looking little chestnut Anglo-Arab, the most honest horse I've ever ridden. He didn't like to get his feet wet and would jump over a puddle that was two feet across to avoid it - but he would also jump just about anything else you pointed him at. One time during a lesson I was riding him through a jump course. As the last combination in the series, there were a pair of jumps set up in a wide V, and the course set by my coach had me riding into the mouth of the V, jumping the left hand jump, and then taking a wide turn to the right, looping out enough to angle myself at the right-hand arm of the V from the outside, and then jumping the right hand arm of the V back into the center of it. I lost my left stirrup going over my first jump, so I was fishing for it with my outside foot as I cantered my turn toward the second jump. I couldn't pick it up and I hesitated just a hair - just the slightest indecision over whether I should take the jump with only one stirrup or pull him up. Happy felt my microsecond of indecision and he leaned back form his canter just the slightest bit, waiting for me to tell him go or stop. I felt him hesitate and I hesitated more. That told him all he needed to know. I wasn't ready, and he wouldn't take me into trouble. He broke to a trot and ran out on the jump, the only time he ever did so with me up.
Perched on the fence, my coach's mouth fell open and her eyes went wide with shock. Happy never ran out on jumps. Never. To her this must have looked like an act of gross rebellion, a dishonest move, a developing vice.
"Spank him for that!" she told me.
"I won't," I said. "It was my fault. I lost my stirrup and he could tell I wasn't ready. I hesitated. He could feel my seat come back and he did what my body told him, which was not to take the jump."
"Oh. Well then give him a pat and tell him he's a good horse," said my coach, grinning at me. So I did, reaching down to corral my errant stirrup with my hand. By habit I checked my girth. It was loose - like hanging an inch below his belly loose. Evidently Happy had developed a bad habit after all, that of holding his breath when cinched up so that the girth would be looser when he let his breath out. In Happy's case, I imagine this was a matter of comfort - some inexperienced riders will cinch a horse up too fast, pinching them with the girth, and some horses will hold their breath in self-defense. But had he wanted to, at any time during the jump course Happy could have had me off, sending me and the saddle slipping under his belly with just the slightest swerve on his part. It wasn't in his nature to try that, even though he must have known the girth wasn't even touching him under his chest. If it had been Goldie, I'd have gone under her flailing hooves at her first opportunity. As it was, I put my leg forward on his shoulder, tightened the girth, and went back and repeated the last combination, with both stirrups this time.
There were times, later on, when Happy - getting sour from overuse - would hold his breath and even eventually make biting motions when being cinched up. Once a riding instructor came to me, frustrated, asking if I could get him cinched up. Of course I could. I just went out and rubbed his belly, talking to him kindly, telling him what a good, good horse he was, leaning my forehead against the lovely curve of his neck and letting him feel with his body that I loved him, that I trusted him, that I would not hurt him. I tightened the girth one billet strap and one hole at a time, infinitely slow, rubbing and praising and taking my time like we had all week if we needed it. Happy dropped his head and rounded his neck and let his eye go soft. After a minute or two the tension went out of him and he let his breath out on a sigh. I got him cinched up properly - gently, gently - and then turned to the riding instructor. She was a newer one, capable enough, but one who had not known Happy for years, as I had.
"Thanks," she said.
"You're welcome," I told her, "but this is his last lesson today."
"But I have him scheduled for - "
"Use another horse," I said flatly, steel in my eye. "He's done after this one."
"But it's for beginners," she protested. "Happy's so push-button, how a I going to replace that?"
"Use Coffee. Use Cappuchino. Use Sailor. They won't get anyone into any trouble. But Happy's done for the day," I told her, fixing her hard with my eye so that she saw I meant it. I turned on my heel and marched into the barn office and called the owner of the riding school.
"Happy needs to go on vacation," I told her. "He's sour, and he's trying to bite people for cinching him up."
"Cancel the rest of his lessons for the week," she said without hesitation. "I'll trailer him out to the pasture Friday." That was what I loved about K. Had she been there coaching and not out on maternity leave, she'd have seen the problem developing and stopped it. But the minute it came to her attention, the horse came first, and the instructors - who all loved to use Happy, for his excellence as a school horse - would just have had to lump it.
K was an amazing coach. I remember the first time she told me to do a series of three bounces - jumps positioned so that there were no strides in between, so that the horse bounced over one, then two then three without any intervening strides. This was hard enough for me at the time - I had a tendency to get behind the horse on the first bounce, not ready for the second jump and even less ready for the third - but she told me to do it without either stirrups or reins, my arms held to the sides like airplane wings. I looked at the combination doubtfully.
"I don't think I can do that," I told her.
"Yes, you can. Now let's go," she told me in a confident voice, but one that brooked no demur. I trusted K, so I figured that if she said I could do it, she was right - and she was. It was scary, but I bounced three 2.5 foot jumps without stirrups and with my arms held out like wings, only my seat and my balance and the calf of my leg keeping me with the horse. Stirrups? We don't need no stinking stirrups.
It wasn't only riders K was good at judging. One time, when I was working in the barn, a dapper little man came wandering in. He had a sort of round, doughy, pallid face surmounted by an absolute Afro of frizzy middling brown hair. His face was saved from absolute ordinariness by deep, warm brown eyes and an undeniable sweetness of expression.
"Hello," he said to K. "Are you the riding school owner?"
"I am," she said. "What can I do for you?"
"Well, I'm an engineer and I've just retired," the man said, raising my eyebrows. He looked no more than 40, so he must have done well with his investments. "I've been taking lessons for a few years and now that I'm retired, I'd like to buy a horse - just for hacking in the woods, you know, nothing fancy. I'm not interested in horse shows or that kind of thing." K chatted with him for about 5 minutes, discussing his level of expertise and so on. I was listening with only half an ear, price-labelling hoof picks and sweat scrapers behind the counter. After a bit K looked at me.
"Go saddle Cappuchino up, will you?" she asked me.
"Sure," I said, trying not to goggle. Cappy was a draft-horse cross of indeterminate parentage, a likable horse but not exactly a live wire. She was broad and stocky and slightly sway-backed, with huge dinner-plate hooves, her fetlocks liberally decorated with long, cart-horse feathers. She was a palomino, but unlike the lovely but bitchy Goldie - whose coat was a sleek, rich, glistening gold - Cappy's was light and fine and cottony, a sort of pale yellow duck down. Her mane, though abundant, was similarly cottony, perched along her crest like a strip of fiber batting from the innards of a stuffed animal. When wet, as if bathed or sweaty, Cappy's coat became invisible, revealing that under its thin down she was pink-skinned with many large brown freckles scattered irregularly and unflatteringly over her hide. She had a large coarse cart-horse head, with a floppy, protuberant lower lip that tended to flap rhythmically with her gait.
She was undeniably a kind, honest horse, and on the trail was a pleasure to ride: she was square as a box, and no matter what tilt or pitch she was on it was impossible to feel unbalanced on her at any speed. On the trail she would occasionally pretend to be wild and excitable, with large, slow spooking jumps to the side (which, as far as spooking, shying horses went, were laughably charming and easily sat). Still, even on the trail she tended to be a laggard, trailing slowly behind the other horses and having to be asked constantly to keep up. In the arena, she invariably proceeded around with her eyes half shut, dragging her toes with the minimum of effort, barely heaving herself in slow-motion over jumps, dangling her feet and rubbing the top of nearly ever jump with her toes. The fronts of her hooves in fact had a slightly flattened spot on them from all her toe-dragging. She had a tendency to be hard-mouthed and was inclined to lean her head forward of the bit and let the rider do the work of holding her head up for her, as if it were just too much effort for her to manage on her own. It was true you could put a one-year-old child on her back and be assured she would bring him to no harm - partly because she would barely move unless cajoled incessantly - but she didn't seem to me to be the ideal choice for a gentleman looking for a hacking companion, unless he wanted to proceed at nothing faster than a toe-dragging walk. She was, for one thing, 22 years old at the time, and while that might mean she had another decade or more of good use in her, it also meant she wasn't likely to be the liveliest thing on four hooves. And while she was easy-going and willing enough, she was undeniably into maximum energy conservation, in the form of proceeding at the slowest possible pace, regardless of gait.
Still, I went out and caught her up, brushed her down and picked out her feet and tacked her up. The dapper gentleman came out to meet her, stroking her and letting her smell his hands, and then he mounted her up and rode her up to the arena. Bemused as I was by this unlikely choice, I had to watch, so I followed them up.
The arena was set up for a jump course, nothing over two feet, and of course there was plenty of room around and between jumps to ride. The fellow walked Cappy around the arena for a circuit, getting the feel of her mouth, of her gait. Cappy was looking odd... something strange was going on with her. After a moment I realised that she had her head not just up, but on the bit, her head perfectly perpendicular to the ground, neck beautifully arched. Her eye was bright and open, instead of half-closed, and - wonder of wonders - her lower lip was tucked into a normal position, instead of hanging so low you could see the pink lining of it as it flopped loosely. She was picking up her feet, stepping along briskly, a light in her eye.
The rider asked her for a trot, which she picked up smartly, then a canter. All of a sudden Cappuchino had a big, scopey, reaching stride, well-collected but driving with power. He pointed her at a jump and she popped it smartly, tucking her big feet neat and high under her chest, landing on a turn, already seeking the next jump her rider wanted. She sailed sweetly over that one too, turning on a dime, taking a flying lead change in the center of the arena to turn for the next jump. A flying lead change? CAPPY?
I gave K a narrow look. She just smiled.
The man criss-crossed her across the arena, making a giant figure eight of it, and Cappy took another flying lead change, as smooth and lovely as any dressage prospect, turning tightly for another jump, a light of joy in her eye. He brought her back to a trot and her big heavy feet reached out ahead of her in a beautifully extended trot, floating - those big, heavy cart-horse feet floating over the ground, seeming barely to touch it, snapping up smartly and reaching forward with grace and elegance and undeniable beauty.
The rider pulled Cappy to a walk and rode up to where K and I stood at the fence. I managed to remember at the last minute to clamp shut my hanging jaw and tried to look as if this was just what I had expected.
"I'll take her," he said. "How much?"
"Thirty-five hundred," K said, which was a fair expense in that time, especially for a 22-year-old mare... but Cappy was a valuable school horse, and would have to be replaced. Given that she was strong enough to carry a 250# man without strain, and gentle enough to take a 2-year-old around safely, she wasn't going to be the easiest prospect to replace.
"Will you take a check?" asked the dapper little man, without hesitation.
We returned to the barn, where I unsaddled Cappy and brushed her out for the last time. Her head was up, her gaze following the man into the barn, and she stood watching until he came back out, giving him a low nicker when he reappeared. We untied her and walked her around to where he had his vehicle, with a horse trailer already hitched up. He'd come prepared. I watched Cappy load up willingly, and then watched her go down the road in her new trailer - a good horse, and I'd miss her - but there was not the slightest heaviness in my heart. She met that man and she knew - knew right that minute, somehow, that he was The One for her. And all the grace and power and joy in her big heart, mostly sleeping all those years as a school horse, awakened at once and said: Take me. I am for you.
I went back into the office, smiling dreamily, thinking about Cappy's life to come. She would be spoiled and cosseted, loved for every inch of her being, brushed and polished and daily taken on the communion of a ride with another soul with whom she was in complete accord. With a life like that - who's to say she might not have decided to hang around for another ten years, another fifteen? I hoped fervently that it would be a long time, a long lovely life, a reward for the many years of her faithful service as a school horse, a repayment for the countless people she helped teach to ride.
I looked at K, an expression of utter bemusement on my face. "How did you know?" I asked her quietly. "How could you possibly have known that she was the one for him?"
K smiled and shrugged. "I just knew," she said, simply.
"Well. That was remarkable," I said with wonder. "Cappy didn't go three strides with him up before she knew she was in love. I never saw anything like that in my life."
"It's a good ending for her," K agreed. "She deserved it."
Things like this don't always happen in life. But it's nice to know that they DO happen sometimes; a little touchstone for when things seem grim. A little reminder of grace. So when I get discouraged, I try to remember things like this: like Cappuchino in love.
Sometimes barns are full of love stories - not the play Equus kinds of love stories, but romances full of passion and beauty of a different sort entirely.
At the riding school we had a number of school horses of varying biddability and reliability. There was the elegantly beautiful palomino mare Goldie, who was also a sneaky wee bitch of a Saddlebred; she had the magical ability to escape capture by somehow causing the other horses to run interference for her, getting in the way of her would-be captor while she hied herself off to the most inaccessible part of the pasture. I missed a lesson on Goldie more than once this way, to my secret pleasure; Goldie had a very upright head carriage, which by consequence hollowed her back to the point where she was a very uncomfortable ride. Moreover, she had a mouth like a steel bucket, with no more flexibility or subtlety than that, and was inclined to cheat at everything, either to save herself some effort or just because. You constantly had to watch her on approaching a jump, because she was inclined to run out, dodging to the side to avoid the jump (and sometimes dump her rider at the same time), or occasionally she'd just stop, with much the same results. More than once my instructor - having gone to catch Goldie - would to my secret delight return red-faced and irritable, leading some other school horse, less elegant to look at but more honest of heart, and much more fun to ride.
There was Sailor, a sturdy Morgan gelding, who had the unfortunate (and for his breed, unusual) condition of being nearly strait in the pasterns. This rendered him a rough and choppy ride, but he was as cheerful as the day is long, and willing to go along with whatever you had in mind, and as he was otherwise well-built, he was strong enough to handle adults and honest enough to handle beginners, with the result that he was an oft-used lesson and trail-ride horse. This never seemed to trouble him; he was perfectly willing to have a go at whatever the task was.
You already know about Happy Face, a plain-looking little chestnut Anglo-Arab, the most honest horse I've ever ridden. He didn't like to get his feet wet and would jump over a puddle that was two feet across to avoid it - but he would also jump just about anything else you pointed him at. One time during a lesson I was riding him through a jump course. As the last combination in the series, there were a pair of jumps set up in a wide V, and the course set by my coach had me riding into the mouth of the V, jumping the left hand jump, and then taking a wide turn to the right, looping out enough to angle myself at the right-hand arm of the V from the outside, and then jumping the right hand arm of the V back into the center of it. I lost my left stirrup going over my first jump, so I was fishing for it with my outside foot as I cantered my turn toward the second jump. I couldn't pick it up and I hesitated just a hair - just the slightest indecision over whether I should take the jump with only one stirrup or pull him up. Happy felt my microsecond of indecision and he leaned back form his canter just the slightest bit, waiting for me to tell him go or stop. I felt him hesitate and I hesitated more. That told him all he needed to know. I wasn't ready, and he wouldn't take me into trouble. He broke to a trot and ran out on the jump, the only time he ever did so with me up.
Perched on the fence, my coach's mouth fell open and her eyes went wide with shock. Happy never ran out on jumps. Never. To her this must have looked like an act of gross rebellion, a dishonest move, a developing vice.
"Spank him for that!" she told me.
"I won't," I said. "It was my fault. I lost my stirrup and he could tell I wasn't ready. I hesitated. He could feel my seat come back and he did what my body told him, which was not to take the jump."
"Oh. Well then give him a pat and tell him he's a good horse," said my coach, grinning at me. So I did, reaching down to corral my errant stirrup with my hand. By habit I checked my girth. It was loose - like hanging an inch below his belly loose. Evidently Happy had developed a bad habit after all, that of holding his breath when cinched up so that the girth would be looser when he let his breath out. In Happy's case, I imagine this was a matter of comfort - some inexperienced riders will cinch a horse up too fast, pinching them with the girth, and some horses will hold their breath in self-defense. But had he wanted to, at any time during the jump course Happy could have had me off, sending me and the saddle slipping under his belly with just the slightest swerve on his part. It wasn't in his nature to try that, even though he must have known the girth wasn't even touching him under his chest. If it had been Goldie, I'd have gone under her flailing hooves at her first opportunity. As it was, I put my leg forward on his shoulder, tightened the girth, and went back and repeated the last combination, with both stirrups this time.
There were times, later on, when Happy - getting sour from overuse - would hold his breath and even eventually make biting motions when being cinched up. Once a riding instructor came to me, frustrated, asking if I could get him cinched up. Of course I could. I just went out and rubbed his belly, talking to him kindly, telling him what a good, good horse he was, leaning my forehead against the lovely curve of his neck and letting him feel with his body that I loved him, that I trusted him, that I would not hurt him. I tightened the girth one billet strap and one hole at a time, infinitely slow, rubbing and praising and taking my time like we had all week if we needed it. Happy dropped his head and rounded his neck and let his eye go soft. After a minute or two the tension went out of him and he let his breath out on a sigh. I got him cinched up properly - gently, gently - and then turned to the riding instructor. She was a newer one, capable enough, but one who had not known Happy for years, as I had.
"Thanks," she said.
"You're welcome," I told her, "but this is his last lesson today."
"But I have him scheduled for - "
"Use another horse," I said flatly, steel in my eye. "He's done after this one."
"But it's for beginners," she protested. "Happy's so push-button, how a I going to replace that?"
"Use Coffee. Use Cappuchino. Use Sailor. They won't get anyone into any trouble. But Happy's done for the day," I told her, fixing her hard with my eye so that she saw I meant it. I turned on my heel and marched into the barn office and called the owner of the riding school.
"Happy needs to go on vacation," I told her. "He's sour, and he's trying to bite people for cinching him up."
"Cancel the rest of his lessons for the week," she said without hesitation. "I'll trailer him out to the pasture Friday." That was what I loved about K. Had she been there coaching and not out on maternity leave, she'd have seen the problem developing and stopped it. But the minute it came to her attention, the horse came first, and the instructors - who all loved to use Happy, for his excellence as a school horse - would just have had to lump it.
K was an amazing coach. I remember the first time she told me to do a series of three bounces - jumps positioned so that there were no strides in between, so that the horse bounced over one, then two then three without any intervening strides. This was hard enough for me at the time - I had a tendency to get behind the horse on the first bounce, not ready for the second jump and even less ready for the third - but she told me to do it without either stirrups or reins, my arms held to the sides like airplane wings. I looked at the combination doubtfully.
"I don't think I can do that," I told her.
"Yes, you can. Now let's go," she told me in a confident voice, but one that brooked no demur. I trusted K, so I figured that if she said I could do it, she was right - and she was. It was scary, but I bounced three 2.5 foot jumps without stirrups and with my arms held out like wings, only my seat and my balance and the calf of my leg keeping me with the horse. Stirrups? We don't need no stinking stirrups.
It wasn't only riders K was good at judging. One time, when I was working in the barn, a dapper little man came wandering in. He had a sort of round, doughy, pallid face surmounted by an absolute Afro of frizzy middling brown hair. His face was saved from absolute ordinariness by deep, warm brown eyes and an undeniable sweetness of expression.
"Hello," he said to K. "Are you the riding school owner?"
"I am," she said. "What can I do for you?"
"Well, I'm an engineer and I've just retired," the man said, raising my eyebrows. He looked no more than 40, so he must have done well with his investments. "I've been taking lessons for a few years and now that I'm retired, I'd like to buy a horse - just for hacking in the woods, you know, nothing fancy. I'm not interested in horse shows or that kind of thing." K chatted with him for about 5 minutes, discussing his level of expertise and so on. I was listening with only half an ear, price-labelling hoof picks and sweat scrapers behind the counter. After a bit K looked at me.
"Go saddle Cappuchino up, will you?" she asked me.
"Sure," I said, trying not to goggle. Cappy was a draft-horse cross of indeterminate parentage, a likable horse but not exactly a live wire. She was broad and stocky and slightly sway-backed, with huge dinner-plate hooves, her fetlocks liberally decorated with long, cart-horse feathers. She was a palomino, but unlike the lovely but bitchy Goldie - whose coat was a sleek, rich, glistening gold - Cappy's was light and fine and cottony, a sort of pale yellow duck down. Her mane, though abundant, was similarly cottony, perched along her crest like a strip of fiber batting from the innards of a stuffed animal. When wet, as if bathed or sweaty, Cappy's coat became invisible, revealing that under its thin down she was pink-skinned with many large brown freckles scattered irregularly and unflatteringly over her hide. She had a large coarse cart-horse head, with a floppy, protuberant lower lip that tended to flap rhythmically with her gait.
She was undeniably a kind, honest horse, and on the trail was a pleasure to ride: she was square as a box, and no matter what tilt or pitch she was on it was impossible to feel unbalanced on her at any speed. On the trail she would occasionally pretend to be wild and excitable, with large, slow spooking jumps to the side (which, as far as spooking, shying horses went, were laughably charming and easily sat). Still, even on the trail she tended to be a laggard, trailing slowly behind the other horses and having to be asked constantly to keep up. In the arena, she invariably proceeded around with her eyes half shut, dragging her toes with the minimum of effort, barely heaving herself in slow-motion over jumps, dangling her feet and rubbing the top of nearly ever jump with her toes. The fronts of her hooves in fact had a slightly flattened spot on them from all her toe-dragging. She had a tendency to be hard-mouthed and was inclined to lean her head forward of the bit and let the rider do the work of holding her head up for her, as if it were just too much effort for her to manage on her own. It was true you could put a one-year-old child on her back and be assured she would bring him to no harm - partly because she would barely move unless cajoled incessantly - but she didn't seem to me to be the ideal choice for a gentleman looking for a hacking companion, unless he wanted to proceed at nothing faster than a toe-dragging walk. She was, for one thing, 22 years old at the time, and while that might mean she had another decade or more of good use in her, it also meant she wasn't likely to be the liveliest thing on four hooves. And while she was easy-going and willing enough, she was undeniably into maximum energy conservation, in the form of proceeding at the slowest possible pace, regardless of gait.
Still, I went out and caught her up, brushed her down and picked out her feet and tacked her up. The dapper gentleman came out to meet her, stroking her and letting her smell his hands, and then he mounted her up and rode her up to the arena. Bemused as I was by this unlikely choice, I had to watch, so I followed them up.
The arena was set up for a jump course, nothing over two feet, and of course there was plenty of room around and between jumps to ride. The fellow walked Cappy around the arena for a circuit, getting the feel of her mouth, of her gait. Cappy was looking odd... something strange was going on with her. After a moment I realised that she had her head not just up, but on the bit, her head perfectly perpendicular to the ground, neck beautifully arched. Her eye was bright and open, instead of half-closed, and - wonder of wonders - her lower lip was tucked into a normal position, instead of hanging so low you could see the pink lining of it as it flopped loosely. She was picking up her feet, stepping along briskly, a light in her eye.
The rider asked her for a trot, which she picked up smartly, then a canter. All of a sudden Cappuchino had a big, scopey, reaching stride, well-collected but driving with power. He pointed her at a jump and she popped it smartly, tucking her big feet neat and high under her chest, landing on a turn, already seeking the next jump her rider wanted. She sailed sweetly over that one too, turning on a dime, taking a flying lead change in the center of the arena to turn for the next jump. A flying lead change? CAPPY?
I gave K a narrow look. She just smiled.
The man criss-crossed her across the arena, making a giant figure eight of it, and Cappy took another flying lead change, as smooth and lovely as any dressage prospect, turning tightly for another jump, a light of joy in her eye. He brought her back to a trot and her big heavy feet reached out ahead of her in a beautifully extended trot, floating - those big, heavy cart-horse feet floating over the ground, seeming barely to touch it, snapping up smartly and reaching forward with grace and elegance and undeniable beauty.
The rider pulled Cappy to a walk and rode up to where K and I stood at the fence. I managed to remember at the last minute to clamp shut my hanging jaw and tried to look as if this was just what I had expected.
"I'll take her," he said. "How much?"
"Thirty-five hundred," K said, which was a fair expense in that time, especially for a 22-year-old mare... but Cappy was a valuable school horse, and would have to be replaced. Given that she was strong enough to carry a 250# man without strain, and gentle enough to take a 2-year-old around safely, she wasn't going to be the easiest prospect to replace.
"Will you take a check?" asked the dapper little man, without hesitation.
We returned to the barn, where I unsaddled Cappy and brushed her out for the last time. Her head was up, her gaze following the man into the barn, and she stood watching until he came back out, giving him a low nicker when he reappeared. We untied her and walked her around to where he had his vehicle, with a horse trailer already hitched up. He'd come prepared. I watched Cappy load up willingly, and then watched her go down the road in her new trailer - a good horse, and I'd miss her - but there was not the slightest heaviness in my heart. She met that man and she knew - knew right that minute, somehow, that he was The One for her. And all the grace and power and joy in her big heart, mostly sleeping all those years as a school horse, awakened at once and said: Take me. I am for you.
I went back into the office, smiling dreamily, thinking about Cappy's life to come. She would be spoiled and cosseted, loved for every inch of her being, brushed and polished and daily taken on the communion of a ride with another soul with whom she was in complete accord. With a life like that - who's to say she might not have decided to hang around for another ten years, another fifteen? I hoped fervently that it would be a long time, a long lovely life, a reward for the many years of her faithful service as a school horse, a repayment for the countless people she helped teach to ride.
I looked at K, an expression of utter bemusement on my face. "How did you know?" I asked her quietly. "How could you possibly have known that she was the one for him?"
K smiled and shrugged. "I just knew," she said, simply.
"Well. That was remarkable," I said with wonder. "Cappy didn't go three strides with him up before she knew she was in love. I never saw anything like that in my life."
"It's a good ending for her," K agreed. "She deserved it."
Things like this don't always happen in life. But it's nice to know that they DO happen sometimes; a little touchstone for when things seem grim. A little reminder of grace. So when I get discouraged, I try to remember things like this: like Cappuchino in love.
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Hey There, Georgie Girl
Back in the day - not quite THAT far back in the day - after my stint in racing barns, I managed a hack barn. The owner of the riding school - my old riding coach (and here I must point out that by "old" I do NOT mean "elderly", I mean "former") was extremely pregnant and I arrived on the scene in need of a job at just the right time. Presto, I am now a barn manager. Well. That was easy.
It was a 15-stall barn, which I mucked out by myself (usually, although sometimes we had volunteer help). I fed up in the mornings, turned horses out and brought others in, bucked hay, scrubbed buckets, swept and spiffed the shed rows, and raked the saddling enclosure into pretty geometric patterns that would last anywhere up to 20, maybe 30 minutes.... until the first set of boarders, students, or the ubiquitous barn kids would show up on the scene. And sometimes, if I was lucky (and I was generally lucky this way at least 2 or 3 times a week) I'd get to use the tractor to mow some of the pastures.
The barn kids were all girls, all horse-crazy, and mostly either owned or leased a horse at the barn. Conveniently for their parents, they were generally dropped off in the morning (in the summer and on weekends) or after school (during the school year) and could be left until dinner time at the barn, where they would ride, chase each other shrieking and squealing through the orchard, brush horses (and often go catch and groom and tack up horses needed for lessons), pet the barn cats, congregate in the hay loft to giggle at God-knows-what antics of boys at school, and make themselves variously helpful, endearing or annoying according to their personality and mood. They varied in age and seriousness about the whole horse thing, but by and large they were decent riders and reasonable horsewomen (by which I mean they had some sense around horses and could in the main by relied upon not to fall into the horse troughs and drown themselves, nor get run over, nor let horses out accidentally, nor fall out of the hay loft and crack open their skulls, nor get bucked off, nor crash their mounts through a jump, nor any other foolish or dangerous thing that a teenager at a barn might decide to do.) Some of them were quite exceptional horsewomen despite their young ages, better (at half my then-age) than I will be by the time I die. They were typically good-hearted kids, and got in far less trouble at the barn than many of their peers might have done at the mall.
One of the perks of the job was that I could ride as much as I wanted - unless a given school horse was needed for more than three lessons on a given day, I had my pick. I tried always to pick horses that had less work; there were a few "push button" horses there that got way more than their share because they were honest and could be counted on to keep their students out of trouble and do as they were asked, without any sly moves or barn vices. My favorite amongst these was Happy Face - although that was a complete misnomer, because a more solemn and lugubrious face on a horse you'd be hard-pressed to find. He was, however, a good, true, honest little horse, and I for many years desperately wished I could afford to buy him. However, as a college student commuting seasonally between the Rocky Mountain west and the east coast, that was not a realistic option. I loved riding Happy - but because he got so much work, I would sometimes reserve his time for an hour and take him out and halter-graze him in the orchard, just to guarantee he had a break and a little leisure time, a little time to just be. I don't think I rode him once that whole season - but we had our little orchard trysts, and I think it brought him some peace. It certainly did me.... and I felt better about "buying" him an hour off than I would have about riding him for that hour, even out in the woods where he loved to go.
However, I DID ride a fair bit during my stint as barn manager. There was this one little quarter horse mare, Georgie Girl, who I took out usually at least twice a week. She was a sturdy, compact, pretty little bay mare, a bit more than a beginner could usually handle, so she didn't get as much work as some of the other horses. She had been half-leased by one of the barn kids for a while (a half-lease is one in which the horse is used on a light school lesson schedule, but the leaser has otherwise fairly free use of the horse.) For whatever reason - temperament, home difficulties, fears or anxieties of her own - the girl leasing Georgie was a bit on the dramatic side. She seemed always to be falling off, and the other kids said she sometimes didn't fall off but just said she had, and other times did it on purpose, though as I was never witness to these events - being otherwise occupied - I must in all fairness say I don't know if that was true. What was, however, perfectly clear was that the teen in question was slowly instilling in Georgie some vices. About 6 weeks into the lease, I discovered that George had started balking on the trail and turning for home, while the other girls with whom they rode continued on along the trail without incident. One of the best riders there - and earnest, elfin girl, beautiful and tiny and delicate to look at but a tremendous little rider, fearless and steady and very skilled - said that the girl had started by pulling Georgie up and pretending that she wouldn't go on, or pretending to fall off, or otherwise making some excuse to go back to the barn. This quickly progressed to Georgie stopping on her own at the usual spot and turning for the barn without any guidance at all, and eventually to actively resisting any feeble attempt to ask her to go on with the rest of the horses. This was a significant problem in A) a horse that might be taken out for trail riding by a member of the public and be expected to continue on as asked, and B) a horse that had previously had no vices whatsoever. Whatever else she might be, little Georgie Girl was smart as a whip and, like many mares, quick to press any advantage.
Seeing once too often that Georgie and her rider were coming home alone only 15 minutes after starting out, and hearing once too often that she "wouldn't go", I started to wonder what was up. Having also heard the rumors from the other girls at the barn - whispered furtively, as if they feared speaking ill of another barn kid, but at the same time knew something wasn't right and an adult should be told - I decided to take Georgie out for a little test drive one morning and see what was what.
For the most part I rode early in the morning, before it got too hot. I'd come in before 5 a.m. and feed, muck out about half the barn (which allowed the horses time to digest their breakfast), ride, cool and brush out my mount, and then finish the barn and whatever else needed doing. Having decided to check out the balking story, I quickly discovered Georgie's developing vice was more than a rumor. Having ridden her many times prior to the lease and never once having her balk on me, I was really expecting more that the rider was just a little too tentative with George and wasn't asking her to move along with adequate authority. To test my theory I took her hacking along the trail where she'd been balking. As usual, I rode early and alone (since I'd begin riding anywhere between 6:15 and 7:00, depending on barn chores.) It started as a lovely, peaceful ride in the woods, everything just as it ought to be, when suddenly George stopped in the trail. She showed no sign of alarm, no spooking or shying or tension or lameness. She just stopped. I asked her to go on and she did, so I thought perhaps my theory was correct and she just needed a slightly stronger or more confident rider.... until the next day, when I rode her again. She stopped in exactly the same spot, and this time when I asked her to go on, she didn't. I gave her a little more leg, with the same result. So I put my heel into her (which, as I was wearing leather cross-trainers, wasn't really much of an inducement) - but I did it firmly enough to indicate that I meant business, and she walked on.
The next day I rode her again, she stopped again at the same spot. This time I put my heel into her firmly the first time, to indicate that we were not going to be playing THIS little game every dang day in creation. George ignored me. I set her my heel again, as sharp and brisk as you can make it be in tennis shoes. Georgie flicked an ear, but otherwise ignored me completely.
"George. Walk on," I told her, and gave her my heel again. This time Georgie moved, all right, but she moved backwards up the trail, shuffling up the slight slope and backing into the surrounding trees, intent on making a three-point turn and heading home again. She backed me under a low branch - probably not by design, but just as an accidental consequence of the spot she'd chosen to make her turn.
All righty, then. That's enough of THAT little game, I thought, leaning flat on her neck to avoid the branch taking out my kidneys. Transferring both reins to my right hand, I reached back with my left and broke a twig off the branch. It was about 11 inches long, had about 9 leaves on it, and was about as bendy as a half-cooked piece of spaghetti. I stripped off all but three leaves (quickly, as George was fighting my rein and trying to turn her head toward home), and I took the twig into my left hand, laying it along her shoulder as I would a crop, had I been carrying one. It wasn't much of a weapon - after all, with three leaves on the end to break the speed and the extreme bendability of the twig, I couldn't have done more than tickle her with it, even had I been in deadly earnest - but laying it along her shoulder was a reminder that such things as riding crops did exist, and that if she earned herself a spanking, she was by-God going to get one before I was going to let her turn around and bolt for the barn. I gave her one anemic little tap along her left shoulder with my featherweight improvised crop.
"George. Walk on," I told her, in my best do-it-or-feel-my-wrath voice, giving her a little bit of leg at the same time.
Instant response: Her ears went flat back on her head, her eyes narrowed, and she pinched her lips and nostrils in an ill-tempered, snake-lipped, Oh-all-right grimace - and she went trotting out onto the trail in a stiff little pissed-off short-stepping gait, turning sharply left away from the barn, just where I'd asked her to go. She jolted down the trail for about 50 yards, stiff and choppy, neck rigid with irritation and completely unlike her usual smooth, fluid trot. I let her have her little tantrum - she was, after all, going where I'd asked her to, and doing it without me having to get off and lead her past her sticking point - and after that short stretch her eye softened again and her neck relaxed and she generally unclenched herself and started to enjoy her morning ride again - because Georgie really DID like to go off onto the trails, which was one of the reasons I so often chose her for my early morning jaunts and not one of the other less-used school horses.
We never had that conversation again - the next time I rode her she hesitated at that spot, but I legged her on and she picked up her stride again without argument, and she never even hesitated there again. I discussed this little episode with the school owner and the decision was made that Georgie was going to be "too busy" henceforth to be leased by the girl who'd allowed - or possibly encouraged - the vice to occur.
Thereafter, George was a delight in every way to ride. Steady of temperament, she was smart and level-headed and willing, and seemed quite cheerful to go on her solo morning rides with me. And I did offer her one thing that was almost irresistible to her: she loved to sprint.
Strictly speaking, we weren't supposed to go faster than a walk in the confines of the reserve wherein the riding school existed. This was because there were others using the park, and while it was ideal for lots of lovely long three-abreast canters and gallops - having a veritable maze of wide, well-groomed grassy trails edged by tall lush hedges - the idea was that we, ahorse, might run over and mangle walkers and runners on foot. There was a certain justification for this, although there were several places where you could have a long, strait, uninterrupted stretch, with perfect visibility and no place someone could suddenly pop out in your path - unless they were bushwhacking through 8 feet of Bre'er Rabbit brier hedges expressly in order to fall directly under your horse's pounding hooves. However, it's difficult to make and enforce different rules for one stretch of path than for another, so the ranger decided that walking was our top speed, and that was that.
Now, I'll have to ask you to keep this next part strictly between you and I.
Where the ranger's house was, there was a long, wide, perfectly level straightaway that went for about half a mile. To the right there was an impenetrable hedge. To the left there was an open, rolling, short-grass meadow, frequently mowed and dotted here and there with the occasional small tree. In short, it would be impossible to miss seeing any traffic larger than a squirrel, and hence impossible for there to be a collision of any kind unless you completely lost control of your faculties or your horse and went careening about like a drunken starlet. Moreover, as I generally reached this area somewhat before seven in the morning, there was never - not even once - another soul around. The ranger's house was nearly always dark and quiet at that time, he not yet having even bestirred himself for his first cup of coffee. I always rode sedately past his house, my mount's hooves thumping quietly on the thick turfy sod, her tail swishing quietly behind us.
And then.
As soon as I judged that the noise would not reach anyone stirring in the house, I turned Georgie's nose west and let her fly.
The first time I did this, she (not knowing what was in store) stepped off willingly from my heel into a pretty little canter. But I took the hand-gallop position: my upper body leaned over her neck, fists braced against the curving muscles of her neck, my weight balanced forward and carried mainly in the stirrups - and I told her "GO, baby." And go she did, letting her canter open in a matter or strides to a sweet, thundering gallop, flying down that straightaway like she was running for the roses. She was all bunching muscle and flex and speed and power - and me... I was laughing into the wind, feeling our speed push my breath back down my throat, letting her flying mane sting my face and whip tears from the corners of my eyes, feeling my heart thunder in time with the beat of her hooves.
It doesn't take long for a quarter horse to gallop half a mile - but let me tell you, it lasts forever. That's a rush that'll be with you til you die.
We did this every morning I could get away with it - whenever the ranger's house was dark and quiet, whenever I got through the barn early enough to saddle Georgie up and blow the dust out of her lungs and the cobwebs out of my brain. After the first time Georgie - a quick study if ever there was one - was ready for the gallop. After that first time all I had to do was lean forward and lighten my hand on the reins and she would sink onto her muscular haunches and launch herself like she was breaking from the gate, racing herself and all her ancestors to the end of the stretch, my hair lifting like a flag on the wind and my laughter left behind so quickly that even I barely heard it before we outran it.
The straightaway ended in a wide cul-de-sac bounded by high hedges. Here there was a scattering of trees, broadly spaced but constituting obstacles, so I always started to pull her up before we got there, taking back my balanced seat, letting my weight settle back into the saddle and my hands come off her neck, taking up my feel of the reins again. Typically George would have dropped back to her smooth sedate canter by then, breaking to a trot and then a walk before I'd let her go through the gap in the hedge that would take me back to the barn. I could not, after all, see what was on the other side of a twelve-foot hedge, so I took care never to go through that gap at anything other than a walk, just on the off chance that a deer or a fox or a stray morning jogger might be on the other side.
As the summer went on, George was more and more in love with her morning sprint, stronger and faster with practice, and she knew the drill. I let her sprint a little closer to the cul-de-sac, and a little closer yet, knowing she understood what we would be doing and that she wouldn't fight my rein when I pulled her up. One morning, though, we had a little confusion about which side of a tree we were going to pass on, me thinking left and her thinking right. We took three weaving strides strait at it, and at the last minute I gave her her head, rather than crash strait into its branches. My fault, that time; I'd pulled her up about 4 strides too close to the tree, and that was enough to confuse her as to our trajectory, at our speed. The result of this all being that, breaking to a trot, we still weren't slow enough in my judgement to go through the hedge gap, so I legged her past it, to her obvious confusion. After all, she KNEW that was where the path was, and I was pointing her where there was no path. But she broke to a walk as we passed the gap, obedient to my leg and rein, and I relaxed my cues the second she took her walk.
In that instant, Georgie demonstrated what it is that is bred into the Quarter Horse and executed, for the first time in her life and unasked, a perfect roll-back into the hedge gap: sitting back hard on her haunches and lifting both front feet off the turf, she pivoted around her flexed hocks to execute about a 120-degree turn in a single fluid movement, so smoothly that I - all unexpecting - had no more trouble sticking that than had she made a sedate walking circle back to the gap. Rising smoothly off her haunches, Georgie continued calmly through the hedge gap, walking on as if she - who had been trained to go English all her life - had spent the last five years as a working cow pony on a ranch in Montana.
Well. What do you know. Little Georgie has a few more tricks up her sleeve yet, lest we get complacent.
I miss those days sometimes, my solitary morning rides in the cathedral of the forest, the live and colorful tapestry of horses out in the pastures in the early mornings, the happy nickers and shrill excited whinnies as I arrived with my weelbarrow full of grain to distribute scoop by scoop. I miss the smell of a clean barn, all fresh straw and hay and the sweet, warm scent of horse. I miss filling the watering can with hot water and just that little touch of Pine Sol, and the ponderous sway of the can back and forth across the aisles as I sprinkled them down against the dust: my own private preisthood, the watering can my cencer as I proceeded down the aisles of the house of my own kind of worship; the sweet feed and the gratitude with which it was both given and recieved a simple sort of communion. There is something about being with horses that tends to connect me to the divine, in some way; maybe it is not so for everyone, but for me, they are a link between the physical and the metaphysical. Something about them is a metaphor for life, for me - both the life of the mundane physical, and the life of the soul. And if I ever get stuck - grinding along in the same rut, and finding no way out - a sure cure is to go for a ride. I never fail to gain some new perspective that way - whether it is because being up on horseback provides a literal change of perspective, and so triggers a metaphorical one, or whether it is due to some special magic of horses themselves, I don't know. But I don't have to know why it works: it is enough THAT it works.
And here's the other thing about horses, both actually and metaphorically: Once they get into your being, even if you never ride one again so long as you live, they are just like those early morning gallops: Always there, til the day you die, all the rush, all the warmth, all the sweet smells and sleek power and surging joy and kind, generous, liquid-eyed strength ready to be called to your service... always there. Waiting.
It was a 15-stall barn, which I mucked out by myself (usually, although sometimes we had volunteer help). I fed up in the mornings, turned horses out and brought others in, bucked hay, scrubbed buckets, swept and spiffed the shed rows, and raked the saddling enclosure into pretty geometric patterns that would last anywhere up to 20, maybe 30 minutes.... until the first set of boarders, students, or the ubiquitous barn kids would show up on the scene. And sometimes, if I was lucky (and I was generally lucky this way at least 2 or 3 times a week) I'd get to use the tractor to mow some of the pastures.
The barn kids were all girls, all horse-crazy, and mostly either owned or leased a horse at the barn. Conveniently for their parents, they were generally dropped off in the morning (in the summer and on weekends) or after school (during the school year) and could be left until dinner time at the barn, where they would ride, chase each other shrieking and squealing through the orchard, brush horses (and often go catch and groom and tack up horses needed for lessons), pet the barn cats, congregate in the hay loft to giggle at God-knows-what antics of boys at school, and make themselves variously helpful, endearing or annoying according to their personality and mood. They varied in age and seriousness about the whole horse thing, but by and large they were decent riders and reasonable horsewomen (by which I mean they had some sense around horses and could in the main by relied upon not to fall into the horse troughs and drown themselves, nor get run over, nor let horses out accidentally, nor fall out of the hay loft and crack open their skulls, nor get bucked off, nor crash their mounts through a jump, nor any other foolish or dangerous thing that a teenager at a barn might decide to do.) Some of them were quite exceptional horsewomen despite their young ages, better (at half my then-age) than I will be by the time I die. They were typically good-hearted kids, and got in far less trouble at the barn than many of their peers might have done at the mall.
One of the perks of the job was that I could ride as much as I wanted - unless a given school horse was needed for more than three lessons on a given day, I had my pick. I tried always to pick horses that had less work; there were a few "push button" horses there that got way more than their share because they were honest and could be counted on to keep their students out of trouble and do as they were asked, without any sly moves or barn vices. My favorite amongst these was Happy Face - although that was a complete misnomer, because a more solemn and lugubrious face on a horse you'd be hard-pressed to find. He was, however, a good, true, honest little horse, and I for many years desperately wished I could afford to buy him. However, as a college student commuting seasonally between the Rocky Mountain west and the east coast, that was not a realistic option. I loved riding Happy - but because he got so much work, I would sometimes reserve his time for an hour and take him out and halter-graze him in the orchard, just to guarantee he had a break and a little leisure time, a little time to just be. I don't think I rode him once that whole season - but we had our little orchard trysts, and I think it brought him some peace. It certainly did me.... and I felt better about "buying" him an hour off than I would have about riding him for that hour, even out in the woods where he loved to go.
However, I DID ride a fair bit during my stint as barn manager. There was this one little quarter horse mare, Georgie Girl, who I took out usually at least twice a week. She was a sturdy, compact, pretty little bay mare, a bit more than a beginner could usually handle, so she didn't get as much work as some of the other horses. She had been half-leased by one of the barn kids for a while (a half-lease is one in which the horse is used on a light school lesson schedule, but the leaser has otherwise fairly free use of the horse.) For whatever reason - temperament, home difficulties, fears or anxieties of her own - the girl leasing Georgie was a bit on the dramatic side. She seemed always to be falling off, and the other kids said she sometimes didn't fall off but just said she had, and other times did it on purpose, though as I was never witness to these events - being otherwise occupied - I must in all fairness say I don't know if that was true. What was, however, perfectly clear was that the teen in question was slowly instilling in Georgie some vices. About 6 weeks into the lease, I discovered that George had started balking on the trail and turning for home, while the other girls with whom they rode continued on along the trail without incident. One of the best riders there - and earnest, elfin girl, beautiful and tiny and delicate to look at but a tremendous little rider, fearless and steady and very skilled - said that the girl had started by pulling Georgie up and pretending that she wouldn't go on, or pretending to fall off, or otherwise making some excuse to go back to the barn. This quickly progressed to Georgie stopping on her own at the usual spot and turning for the barn without any guidance at all, and eventually to actively resisting any feeble attempt to ask her to go on with the rest of the horses. This was a significant problem in A) a horse that might be taken out for trail riding by a member of the public and be expected to continue on as asked, and B) a horse that had previously had no vices whatsoever. Whatever else she might be, little Georgie Girl was smart as a whip and, like many mares, quick to press any advantage.
Seeing once too often that Georgie and her rider were coming home alone only 15 minutes after starting out, and hearing once too often that she "wouldn't go", I started to wonder what was up. Having also heard the rumors from the other girls at the barn - whispered furtively, as if they feared speaking ill of another barn kid, but at the same time knew something wasn't right and an adult should be told - I decided to take Georgie out for a little test drive one morning and see what was what.
For the most part I rode early in the morning, before it got too hot. I'd come in before 5 a.m. and feed, muck out about half the barn (which allowed the horses time to digest their breakfast), ride, cool and brush out my mount, and then finish the barn and whatever else needed doing. Having decided to check out the balking story, I quickly discovered Georgie's developing vice was more than a rumor. Having ridden her many times prior to the lease and never once having her balk on me, I was really expecting more that the rider was just a little too tentative with George and wasn't asking her to move along with adequate authority. To test my theory I took her hacking along the trail where she'd been balking. As usual, I rode early and alone (since I'd begin riding anywhere between 6:15 and 7:00, depending on barn chores.) It started as a lovely, peaceful ride in the woods, everything just as it ought to be, when suddenly George stopped in the trail. She showed no sign of alarm, no spooking or shying or tension or lameness. She just stopped. I asked her to go on and she did, so I thought perhaps my theory was correct and she just needed a slightly stronger or more confident rider.... until the next day, when I rode her again. She stopped in exactly the same spot, and this time when I asked her to go on, she didn't. I gave her a little more leg, with the same result. So I put my heel into her (which, as I was wearing leather cross-trainers, wasn't really much of an inducement) - but I did it firmly enough to indicate that I meant business, and she walked on.
The next day I rode her again, she stopped again at the same spot. This time I put my heel into her firmly the first time, to indicate that we were not going to be playing THIS little game every dang day in creation. George ignored me. I set her my heel again, as sharp and brisk as you can make it be in tennis shoes. Georgie flicked an ear, but otherwise ignored me completely.
"George. Walk on," I told her, and gave her my heel again. This time Georgie moved, all right, but she moved backwards up the trail, shuffling up the slight slope and backing into the surrounding trees, intent on making a three-point turn and heading home again. She backed me under a low branch - probably not by design, but just as an accidental consequence of the spot she'd chosen to make her turn.
All righty, then. That's enough of THAT little game, I thought, leaning flat on her neck to avoid the branch taking out my kidneys. Transferring both reins to my right hand, I reached back with my left and broke a twig off the branch. It was about 11 inches long, had about 9 leaves on it, and was about as bendy as a half-cooked piece of spaghetti. I stripped off all but three leaves (quickly, as George was fighting my rein and trying to turn her head toward home), and I took the twig into my left hand, laying it along her shoulder as I would a crop, had I been carrying one. It wasn't much of a weapon - after all, with three leaves on the end to break the speed and the extreme bendability of the twig, I couldn't have done more than tickle her with it, even had I been in deadly earnest - but laying it along her shoulder was a reminder that such things as riding crops did exist, and that if she earned herself a spanking, she was by-God going to get one before I was going to let her turn around and bolt for the barn. I gave her one anemic little tap along her left shoulder with my featherweight improvised crop.
"George. Walk on," I told her, in my best do-it-or-feel-my-wrath voice, giving her a little bit of leg at the same time.
Instant response: Her ears went flat back on her head, her eyes narrowed, and she pinched her lips and nostrils in an ill-tempered, snake-lipped, Oh-all-right grimace - and she went trotting out onto the trail in a stiff little pissed-off short-stepping gait, turning sharply left away from the barn, just where I'd asked her to go. She jolted down the trail for about 50 yards, stiff and choppy, neck rigid with irritation and completely unlike her usual smooth, fluid trot. I let her have her little tantrum - she was, after all, going where I'd asked her to, and doing it without me having to get off and lead her past her sticking point - and after that short stretch her eye softened again and her neck relaxed and she generally unclenched herself and started to enjoy her morning ride again - because Georgie really DID like to go off onto the trails, which was one of the reasons I so often chose her for my early morning jaunts and not one of the other less-used school horses.
We never had that conversation again - the next time I rode her she hesitated at that spot, but I legged her on and she picked up her stride again without argument, and she never even hesitated there again. I discussed this little episode with the school owner and the decision was made that Georgie was going to be "too busy" henceforth to be leased by the girl who'd allowed - or possibly encouraged - the vice to occur.
Thereafter, George was a delight in every way to ride. Steady of temperament, she was smart and level-headed and willing, and seemed quite cheerful to go on her solo morning rides with me. And I did offer her one thing that was almost irresistible to her: she loved to sprint.
Strictly speaking, we weren't supposed to go faster than a walk in the confines of the reserve wherein the riding school existed. This was because there were others using the park, and while it was ideal for lots of lovely long three-abreast canters and gallops - having a veritable maze of wide, well-groomed grassy trails edged by tall lush hedges - the idea was that we, ahorse, might run over and mangle walkers and runners on foot. There was a certain justification for this, although there were several places where you could have a long, strait, uninterrupted stretch, with perfect visibility and no place someone could suddenly pop out in your path - unless they were bushwhacking through 8 feet of Bre'er Rabbit brier hedges expressly in order to fall directly under your horse's pounding hooves. However, it's difficult to make and enforce different rules for one stretch of path than for another, so the ranger decided that walking was our top speed, and that was that.
Now, I'll have to ask you to keep this next part strictly between you and I.
Where the ranger's house was, there was a long, wide, perfectly level straightaway that went for about half a mile. To the right there was an impenetrable hedge. To the left there was an open, rolling, short-grass meadow, frequently mowed and dotted here and there with the occasional small tree. In short, it would be impossible to miss seeing any traffic larger than a squirrel, and hence impossible for there to be a collision of any kind unless you completely lost control of your faculties or your horse and went careening about like a drunken starlet. Moreover, as I generally reached this area somewhat before seven in the morning, there was never - not even once - another soul around. The ranger's house was nearly always dark and quiet at that time, he not yet having even bestirred himself for his first cup of coffee. I always rode sedately past his house, my mount's hooves thumping quietly on the thick turfy sod, her tail swishing quietly behind us.
And then.
As soon as I judged that the noise would not reach anyone stirring in the house, I turned Georgie's nose west and let her fly.
The first time I did this, she (not knowing what was in store) stepped off willingly from my heel into a pretty little canter. But I took the hand-gallop position: my upper body leaned over her neck, fists braced against the curving muscles of her neck, my weight balanced forward and carried mainly in the stirrups - and I told her "GO, baby." And go she did, letting her canter open in a matter or strides to a sweet, thundering gallop, flying down that straightaway like she was running for the roses. She was all bunching muscle and flex and speed and power - and me... I was laughing into the wind, feeling our speed push my breath back down my throat, letting her flying mane sting my face and whip tears from the corners of my eyes, feeling my heart thunder in time with the beat of her hooves.
It doesn't take long for a quarter horse to gallop half a mile - but let me tell you, it lasts forever. That's a rush that'll be with you til you die.
We did this every morning I could get away with it - whenever the ranger's house was dark and quiet, whenever I got through the barn early enough to saddle Georgie up and blow the dust out of her lungs and the cobwebs out of my brain. After the first time Georgie - a quick study if ever there was one - was ready for the gallop. After that first time all I had to do was lean forward and lighten my hand on the reins and she would sink onto her muscular haunches and launch herself like she was breaking from the gate, racing herself and all her ancestors to the end of the stretch, my hair lifting like a flag on the wind and my laughter left behind so quickly that even I barely heard it before we outran it.
The straightaway ended in a wide cul-de-sac bounded by high hedges. Here there was a scattering of trees, broadly spaced but constituting obstacles, so I always started to pull her up before we got there, taking back my balanced seat, letting my weight settle back into the saddle and my hands come off her neck, taking up my feel of the reins again. Typically George would have dropped back to her smooth sedate canter by then, breaking to a trot and then a walk before I'd let her go through the gap in the hedge that would take me back to the barn. I could not, after all, see what was on the other side of a twelve-foot hedge, so I took care never to go through that gap at anything other than a walk, just on the off chance that a deer or a fox or a stray morning jogger might be on the other side.
As the summer went on, George was more and more in love with her morning sprint, stronger and faster with practice, and she knew the drill. I let her sprint a little closer to the cul-de-sac, and a little closer yet, knowing she understood what we would be doing and that she wouldn't fight my rein when I pulled her up. One morning, though, we had a little confusion about which side of a tree we were going to pass on, me thinking left and her thinking right. We took three weaving strides strait at it, and at the last minute I gave her her head, rather than crash strait into its branches. My fault, that time; I'd pulled her up about 4 strides too close to the tree, and that was enough to confuse her as to our trajectory, at our speed. The result of this all being that, breaking to a trot, we still weren't slow enough in my judgement to go through the hedge gap, so I legged her past it, to her obvious confusion. After all, she KNEW that was where the path was, and I was pointing her where there was no path. But she broke to a walk as we passed the gap, obedient to my leg and rein, and I relaxed my cues the second she took her walk.
In that instant, Georgie demonstrated what it is that is bred into the Quarter Horse and executed, for the first time in her life and unasked, a perfect roll-back into the hedge gap: sitting back hard on her haunches and lifting both front feet off the turf, she pivoted around her flexed hocks to execute about a 120-degree turn in a single fluid movement, so smoothly that I - all unexpecting - had no more trouble sticking that than had she made a sedate walking circle back to the gap. Rising smoothly off her haunches, Georgie continued calmly through the hedge gap, walking on as if she - who had been trained to go English all her life - had spent the last five years as a working cow pony on a ranch in Montana.
Well. What do you know. Little Georgie has a few more tricks up her sleeve yet, lest we get complacent.
I miss those days sometimes, my solitary morning rides in the cathedral of the forest, the live and colorful tapestry of horses out in the pastures in the early mornings, the happy nickers and shrill excited whinnies as I arrived with my weelbarrow full of grain to distribute scoop by scoop. I miss the smell of a clean barn, all fresh straw and hay and the sweet, warm scent of horse. I miss filling the watering can with hot water and just that little touch of Pine Sol, and the ponderous sway of the can back and forth across the aisles as I sprinkled them down against the dust: my own private preisthood, the watering can my cencer as I proceeded down the aisles of the house of my own kind of worship; the sweet feed and the gratitude with which it was both given and recieved a simple sort of communion. There is something about being with horses that tends to connect me to the divine, in some way; maybe it is not so for everyone, but for me, they are a link between the physical and the metaphysical. Something about them is a metaphor for life, for me - both the life of the mundane physical, and the life of the soul. And if I ever get stuck - grinding along in the same rut, and finding no way out - a sure cure is to go for a ride. I never fail to gain some new perspective that way - whether it is because being up on horseback provides a literal change of perspective, and so triggers a metaphorical one, or whether it is due to some special magic of horses themselves, I don't know. But I don't have to know why it works: it is enough THAT it works.
And here's the other thing about horses, both actually and metaphorically: Once they get into your being, even if you never ride one again so long as you live, they are just like those early morning gallops: Always there, til the day you die, all the rush, all the warmth, all the sweet smells and sleek power and surging joy and kind, generous, liquid-eyed strength ready to be called to your service... always there. Waiting.
Friday, August 28, 2009
Asses and Alligators
Author's note: this is a story from several years ago. I will preface this by saying that the Rottweilers herein represented are not what I would consider representative of a well-bred member of their breed. Rotties were originally working dogs, and well-bred, good-tempered and physically sound examples can certainly be found - but in my neck of the woods, there has in the past been, and to some degree still is, an unfortunate abundance of questionably-bred orthopedic disasters of foul and unstable temperament. These animals are NOT what the breed is intended to be, although fortunately their numbers are declining in favor of more judiciously-bred animals that are truer to the breed's intended characteristics.
So Friday morning I started the day out with the biggest ass of month. Always a good way to begin, I find... everyone else seems so reasonable by contrast.
First thing that morning, in comes a man who, I will faithfully report, is rather good-looking, in a media-pretty sort of way; he is, however, not nearly as good-looking as he appears to believe he is, based on his superior demeanor. But perhaps I'm being unfair; maybe he just wants the rest of us to admire how well-tanned he's managed to get the underside of his nose, and is demonstrating this by keeping it pointed up in the air at all times. At any rate, apart from his unnaturally-even tanning-bed tan, he is very buff, which he shows off by wearing sweatshirts with the sleeves torn off - which I will say makes him look like he's pretending to be a high school jock, in defiance of his actual age. This makes me think "pretty-boy", by which I mean a (thankfully uncommon) member of the male gender who believes he is God's gift to everything in the known Universe. Such people tend to walk as if they expect the air to part before them in deference to their magnificence. This is a class of men I tend to dislike, so I automatically try to compensate by being extra pleasant and cutting a big margin for some benefit of the doubt.
This client is dragging - quite literally - his puppy in on a leash. The dog is petrified; on entering the clinic he immediately sits down on his haunches, frozen in terror, and has locked all legs, absolutely rigid with panic. Rather than coax, encourage or support the dog in any way so that he can learn to move forward and cope with his fears, he guy just pulls on the leash and skids the dog along the floor. This in itself isn't the worst thing I can think of - but it does mean two things: One, that the puppy - a 40# Rottweiler mix - has not been taught to walk on a leash. And Two, that the owner has little concern for the dog's state of mind. This is a 16 week old pup, so he should both trust the owner and know how to walk on a leash by now... and if he doesn't, dragging him around by the leash is not the way to teach him either thing.
The guy hoiks him onto the table for his last set of puppy shots. The pup cowers on the table, head ducked and limbs trembling, clearly afraid of me but just as clearly uncertain of the owner, from whom he appears to be unsure of his welcome. I try to reassure the puppy, petting and talking nice, as I mention (quite mildly) to the man that he might consider puppy classes for this dog; he's clearly afraid, and puppy classes will increase his confidence and make the rest of his life much easier and less frightening for him.
"Nope," says the owner decisively. "This dog just stays home. I'm not doing any classes with him. I did that with my last dog and he died."
My eyebrows go up sharply. "He died in puppy class?" I ask in some astonishment. Having been through three puppy classes with two different instructors, I cannot imagine any scenario where a dog might die in puppy class. Puppies are generally not physically or psychologically capable of killing each other, even if an instructor or owner would allow it, and because of the nature of the class - i.e., it's likely to be full of PUPPIES - the rooms are, quite naturally, puppy-proofed.
"No, he didn't die in puppy class, but I put $1400 of training into him and then he was out tied in my yard and some kids came into the yard and shot him," he says.
"I'm awfully sorry to hear that," I say, "but that didn't have anything to do with the classes. I'm not suggesting training that extensive in this case - just a basic class to help his confidence and give him the basics."
"Thanks for you interest, but this dog is just going to stay home," the owner repeats, dismissively. I look at the puppy, who is now leaning toward me, not the owner, for comfort.
"This is a nice puppy, but he's scared," I try again, thinking that concern for the dog's well-being may sway the owner. "Because of his breed, he may be at risk for fear-biting. If he does that he could be destroyed. Puppy classes might help us avoid that."
"If he bites anyone, I'll kill him myself," the owner says. "We're not doing any training. People pay too much attention to their dogs anyway."
Say WHAT?
I feel my eyes go slitty and hard. I hesitate for a moment, ire surging - what the hell else do we HAVE dogs for, if not to either use them for work or have them as companions - or both? In either scenario, you have to PAY ATTENTION TO THEM. Completely apart from which - but possibly more importantly - dogs are social animals. They REQUIRE interaction, and in the absence of other dogs they must get this from their owners. How cruel is it to deliberately choose to get an animal that requires attention, and then refuse to give it? This dog could have had another home, where someone might love him and bother to teach him some basic skills - but this man bought him, thus eliminating all the other options for the puppy, and then refuses to provide him the care he deserves. I suddenly wonder if the dog's lack of confidence is more due to his treatment at home than his inborn temperament.
This all flashes through my head in an instant. I give the owner a narrow look, but he is busy brushing imaginary lint off of his leather bomber jacket, now draped over his arm - although if this man is a pilot I'll eat my mouse pad. He's a narcissistic prettyboy, one of my least favorite kinds of people. I open my mouth to ask him why he even has this dog - and then I stop. There is no point. The man has no room in his world for anything but himself and his mirror, and any accoutrements that might up his image. I vaccinate the dog - all I can really do to help him is to prevent any miserable painful viral diseases from getting on board, and I am way too near to stabbing this jerk with a trochar (perhaps THAT would puncture his self-importance, but he might go flying around the room like a deflating balloon, and I really don't want to have to clean up after THAT). I try not to entertain any unflattering speculations about any - erm - personal deficiencies his preening might be compensating for, vaccinate the dog (with an apologetic head rub - I did try, little one) and get this GOMER out of my clinic.
Well, I admit I went back to the treatment area and vented a bit. I called him a gomer so many times that I finally had to explain to the bewildered nurses that it's a medical abbreviation of sorts - it stands for Get Out of My Emergency Room. They thought that was sort of funny, and it did restore my good humor to a degree. I had several good clients after that, including a favorite cat-owner, so about 10:00 I was in a pretty good mood. Which was when JB came back and told me there was someone outside wanting 4 vaccines, to be given in the car. There are two Rotts and two Rott mixes. And two of the four were "Caution" dogs, which means that at some time (perhaps many times) they have indicated a willingness to bite, and may or may not have been successful in this attempt.
Oh joy.
JB tells me the owner assures her that she will hold the dogs. Dr. P's eyebrows are practically airborne with skepticism. Fortunately the owner has brought her husband as well, so we have backup. Based on the jaundiced expression with which Dr. P greets this assertion, I gather he is not especially optimistic regarding the success of this plan.
While I am drawing up vaccine, Dr. P (who is prepping for a surgery and thus exempt from Caution Dog duty) says, "Tell them we have a sniper stationed on the roof of the clinic. If any of the dogs bite, the sniper will shoot... the owner."
I snerk a bit about that, gather my vaccines, and mentally gird up my loins for another round in the Vet-vs.-Vicious-Dog Smackdown Championships.
Outside I find that the owners have brought two vehicles with 2 dogs each in them. This is a dang good idea, since all four dogs are enormous. We start with the Rotts, both large, robust and seriously overweight bitches. They get the first one out, who begins growling at me the minute her feet hit the pavement. The two owners manage to twist and shove until I am presented with a large expanse of black hide as my target. I get the vaccine in, they wrestle the dog back into the car, and it's on to round two. The second bitch is wagging her tail happily as the owners squeeze her into position, but the minute I approach, needle drawn and at the ready, she gives a twist of astonishing agility (in view of her impressive girth) and lunges, snapping, at my face. I - no fool - have positioned myself so that a quick skip back is right in my repertoire, and I dodge neatly out of the way while the owners smack the dog and yell at her. She shows every evidence of contrition until I make my second pass, when she lunges upward in their restraining grip like a breaching whale, whipping her head from side to side and gnashing her teeth like a shark in a feeding frenzy. Spit is flying from her jaws and her formidable teeth are snicking shut with loud, sinister clicks.
"Maybe we should get a muzzle; you're going to get bitten," I tell the owners, backing off.
"No we won't; just do it," grunts the husband, corralling the dog again and hauling her head into his grip. His wife holds the collar in a death grip. I make a third pass and the bitch gives a mighty heave and twist, fast and lethal as a hunting alligator, and there is a sudden flurry and scuffle.
"What the fuck is WRONG with you?!?" the owner yells, clouting the dog across the head (now I know he's mad - he's just said "fuck" in front of a doctor). Suddenly there is human blood on the scene, and guess what? It isn't mine. Well, I did warn them, and they refused the muzzle, so my liability is covered. It only took 2 seconds, but the bitch's razoring teeth have nicked both owners. Now the man is mad. He sits on the SUV's tailgate, hauls the dog's front end into his lap, and gets a headlock on her. The wife grabs the rolls of fat in what is normally the scruff, and I make a quick squat-and-stab move, getting the vaccine on board and popping up like a Jack-in-the-box to get out of the way as the dog makes another nearly-successful gator-lunge at me - this time avoiding further bloodshed, fortunately. Ironically, this dog does NOT have a caution on her chart. And this is the very worst kind of Rottweiler, the kind that wags happily and smiles at you, but will lunge at you in deadly earnest at the slightest provocation - without even the warning of a lifted lip or a growl, and will keep at it over and over, despite the owner's correction. There's something creepily reptilian about this, despite the fact that the dog physically resembles a small, fat and extremely ill-tempered black bear.
After that the other two dogs - one of which was another caution dog - are sweetness and light. Both are males, both are trim, both are mixes, and both are vaccinated in a matter of seconds.
I go inside with A Look on my face.
"Uh oh... what happened?" asks JB.
"Well, two people got bitten, but neither of them was me," I tell her. "You might want to put a caution on Maggie's chart," I add. "She's the one who did the biting."
I stroll on back to Treatment to dispose of my syringes. "How'd it go?" asks Dr. P (now scrubbed in and about to enter surgery).
"Could've used that sniper," I reply. Dr. P (who has himself been bitten without provocation by at least one Rottie) bursts out laughing. But since I am not covered in blood, he goes off chuckling into surgery.
Y'know, when I went to vet school, they didn't say anything about wanting us to have skills that would make us eligible for guest spots on "The Crocodile Hunter". But maybe they should have.
So Friday morning I started the day out with the biggest ass of month. Always a good way to begin, I find... everyone else seems so reasonable by contrast.
First thing that morning, in comes a man who, I will faithfully report, is rather good-looking, in a media-pretty sort of way; he is, however, not nearly as good-looking as he appears to believe he is, based on his superior demeanor. But perhaps I'm being unfair; maybe he just wants the rest of us to admire how well-tanned he's managed to get the underside of his nose, and is demonstrating this by keeping it pointed up in the air at all times. At any rate, apart from his unnaturally-even tanning-bed tan, he is very buff, which he shows off by wearing sweatshirts with the sleeves torn off - which I will say makes him look like he's pretending to be a high school jock, in defiance of his actual age. This makes me think "pretty-boy", by which I mean a (thankfully uncommon) member of the male gender who believes he is God's gift to everything in the known Universe. Such people tend to walk as if they expect the air to part before them in deference to their magnificence. This is a class of men I tend to dislike, so I automatically try to compensate by being extra pleasant and cutting a big margin for some benefit of the doubt.
This client is dragging - quite literally - his puppy in on a leash. The dog is petrified; on entering the clinic he immediately sits down on his haunches, frozen in terror, and has locked all legs, absolutely rigid with panic. Rather than coax, encourage or support the dog in any way so that he can learn to move forward and cope with his fears, he guy just pulls on the leash and skids the dog along the floor. This in itself isn't the worst thing I can think of - but it does mean two things: One, that the puppy - a 40# Rottweiler mix - has not been taught to walk on a leash. And Two, that the owner has little concern for the dog's state of mind. This is a 16 week old pup, so he should both trust the owner and know how to walk on a leash by now... and if he doesn't, dragging him around by the leash is not the way to teach him either thing.
The guy hoiks him onto the table for his last set of puppy shots. The pup cowers on the table, head ducked and limbs trembling, clearly afraid of me but just as clearly uncertain of the owner, from whom he appears to be unsure of his welcome. I try to reassure the puppy, petting and talking nice, as I mention (quite mildly) to the man that he might consider puppy classes for this dog; he's clearly afraid, and puppy classes will increase his confidence and make the rest of his life much easier and less frightening for him.
"Nope," says the owner decisively. "This dog just stays home. I'm not doing any classes with him. I did that with my last dog and he died."
My eyebrows go up sharply. "He died in puppy class?" I ask in some astonishment. Having been through three puppy classes with two different instructors, I cannot imagine any scenario where a dog might die in puppy class. Puppies are generally not physically or psychologically capable of killing each other, even if an instructor or owner would allow it, and because of the nature of the class - i.e., it's likely to be full of PUPPIES - the rooms are, quite naturally, puppy-proofed.
"No, he didn't die in puppy class, but I put $1400 of training into him and then he was out tied in my yard and some kids came into the yard and shot him," he says.
"I'm awfully sorry to hear that," I say, "but that didn't have anything to do with the classes. I'm not suggesting training that extensive in this case - just a basic class to help his confidence and give him the basics."
"Thanks for you interest, but this dog is just going to stay home," the owner repeats, dismissively. I look at the puppy, who is now leaning toward me, not the owner, for comfort.
"This is a nice puppy, but he's scared," I try again, thinking that concern for the dog's well-being may sway the owner. "Because of his breed, he may be at risk for fear-biting. If he does that he could be destroyed. Puppy classes might help us avoid that."
"If he bites anyone, I'll kill him myself," the owner says. "We're not doing any training. People pay too much attention to their dogs anyway."
Say WHAT?
I feel my eyes go slitty and hard. I hesitate for a moment, ire surging - what the hell else do we HAVE dogs for, if not to either use them for work or have them as companions - or both? In either scenario, you have to PAY ATTENTION TO THEM. Completely apart from which - but possibly more importantly - dogs are social animals. They REQUIRE interaction, and in the absence of other dogs they must get this from their owners. How cruel is it to deliberately choose to get an animal that requires attention, and then refuse to give it? This dog could have had another home, where someone might love him and bother to teach him some basic skills - but this man bought him, thus eliminating all the other options for the puppy, and then refuses to provide him the care he deserves. I suddenly wonder if the dog's lack of confidence is more due to his treatment at home than his inborn temperament.
This all flashes through my head in an instant. I give the owner a narrow look, but he is busy brushing imaginary lint off of his leather bomber jacket, now draped over his arm - although if this man is a pilot I'll eat my mouse pad. He's a narcissistic prettyboy, one of my least favorite kinds of people. I open my mouth to ask him why he even has this dog - and then I stop. There is no point. The man has no room in his world for anything but himself and his mirror, and any accoutrements that might up his image. I vaccinate the dog - all I can really do to help him is to prevent any miserable painful viral diseases from getting on board, and I am way too near to stabbing this jerk with a trochar (perhaps THAT would puncture his self-importance, but he might go flying around the room like a deflating balloon, and I really don't want to have to clean up after THAT). I try not to entertain any unflattering speculations about any - erm - personal deficiencies his preening might be compensating for, vaccinate the dog (with an apologetic head rub - I did try, little one) and get this GOMER out of my clinic.
Well, I admit I went back to the treatment area and vented a bit. I called him a gomer so many times that I finally had to explain to the bewildered nurses that it's a medical abbreviation of sorts - it stands for Get Out of My Emergency Room. They thought that was sort of funny, and it did restore my good humor to a degree. I had several good clients after that, including a favorite cat-owner, so about 10:00 I was in a pretty good mood. Which was when JB came back and told me there was someone outside wanting 4 vaccines, to be given in the car. There are two Rotts and two Rott mixes. And two of the four were "Caution" dogs, which means that at some time (perhaps many times) they have indicated a willingness to bite, and may or may not have been successful in this attempt.
Oh joy.
JB tells me the owner assures her that she will hold the dogs. Dr. P's eyebrows are practically airborne with skepticism. Fortunately the owner has brought her husband as well, so we have backup. Based on the jaundiced expression with which Dr. P greets this assertion, I gather he is not especially optimistic regarding the success of this plan.
While I am drawing up vaccine, Dr. P (who is prepping for a surgery and thus exempt from Caution Dog duty) says, "Tell them we have a sniper stationed on the roof of the clinic. If any of the dogs bite, the sniper will shoot... the owner."
I snerk a bit about that, gather my vaccines, and mentally gird up my loins for another round in the Vet-vs.-Vicious-Dog Smackdown Championships.
Outside I find that the owners have brought two vehicles with 2 dogs each in them. This is a dang good idea, since all four dogs are enormous. We start with the Rotts, both large, robust and seriously overweight bitches. They get the first one out, who begins growling at me the minute her feet hit the pavement. The two owners manage to twist and shove until I am presented with a large expanse of black hide as my target. I get the vaccine in, they wrestle the dog back into the car, and it's on to round two. The second bitch is wagging her tail happily as the owners squeeze her into position, but the minute I approach, needle drawn and at the ready, she gives a twist of astonishing agility (in view of her impressive girth) and lunges, snapping, at my face. I - no fool - have positioned myself so that a quick skip back is right in my repertoire, and I dodge neatly out of the way while the owners smack the dog and yell at her. She shows every evidence of contrition until I make my second pass, when she lunges upward in their restraining grip like a breaching whale, whipping her head from side to side and gnashing her teeth like a shark in a feeding frenzy. Spit is flying from her jaws and her formidable teeth are snicking shut with loud, sinister clicks.
"Maybe we should get a muzzle; you're going to get bitten," I tell the owners, backing off.
"No we won't; just do it," grunts the husband, corralling the dog again and hauling her head into his grip. His wife holds the collar in a death grip. I make a third pass and the bitch gives a mighty heave and twist, fast and lethal as a hunting alligator, and there is a sudden flurry and scuffle.
"What the fuck is WRONG with you?!?" the owner yells, clouting the dog across the head (now I know he's mad - he's just said "fuck" in front of a doctor). Suddenly there is human blood on the scene, and guess what? It isn't mine. Well, I did warn them, and they refused the muzzle, so my liability is covered. It only took 2 seconds, but the bitch's razoring teeth have nicked both owners. Now the man is mad. He sits on the SUV's tailgate, hauls the dog's front end into his lap, and gets a headlock on her. The wife grabs the rolls of fat in what is normally the scruff, and I make a quick squat-and-stab move, getting the vaccine on board and popping up like a Jack-in-the-box to get out of the way as the dog makes another nearly-successful gator-lunge at me - this time avoiding further bloodshed, fortunately. Ironically, this dog does NOT have a caution on her chart. And this is the very worst kind of Rottweiler, the kind that wags happily and smiles at you, but will lunge at you in deadly earnest at the slightest provocation - without even the warning of a lifted lip or a growl, and will keep at it over and over, despite the owner's correction. There's something creepily reptilian about this, despite the fact that the dog physically resembles a small, fat and extremely ill-tempered black bear.
After that the other two dogs - one of which was another caution dog - are sweetness and light. Both are males, both are trim, both are mixes, and both are vaccinated in a matter of seconds.
I go inside with A Look on my face.
"Uh oh... what happened?" asks JB.
"Well, two people got bitten, but neither of them was me," I tell her. "You might want to put a caution on Maggie's chart," I add. "She's the one who did the biting."
I stroll on back to Treatment to dispose of my syringes. "How'd it go?" asks Dr. P (now scrubbed in and about to enter surgery).
"Could've used that sniper," I reply. Dr. P (who has himself been bitten without provocation by at least one Rottie) bursts out laughing. But since I am not covered in blood, he goes off chuckling into surgery.
Y'know, when I went to vet school, they didn't say anything about wanting us to have skills that would make us eligible for guest spots on "The Crocodile Hunter". But maybe they should have.
Thursday, August 27, 2009
The Amazing Dr. B
Back in the day, I groomed racehorses for a living. This was an excellent job in many ways, not least of which being that I got paid decent money to be in fabulous shape. But I also learned my way around a wheelbarrow and developed a useful deftness at setting wraps on the highly valuable legs of my charges. I got so I could pitch manure accurately from the back of a stall into a wheelbarrow parked in the stall door, balance 7 bales of hay on a barrow and hop it over the sill of a barn door without dumping bales all over the shed row, pick out all four feet speedily and well without having to move from the left side of the horse, and any number of other useful things, such as how not to accidentally flip a rearing horse, how to carry two full five-gallon buckets of water rapidly down the barn aisle without spilling any, and (less usefully) how to comb pretty patterns into your horse's rump hair so she looks spiffy going to the post.
One of the useful things about being pretty handy with a pitchfork was that, during vet school, I made extra money mucking out the horse barns at the hospital. This was a different proposition in some ways than racehorse grooming - for one thing, there were a lot more stalls, and for another, there was no grooming involved. Moreover, mucking out happened in the afternoon and evening, rather than before the crack of dawn, and usually the horses were still in the stalls, rather than out breezing at the track. The pace was slower in that sense - I didn't have to get the stall mucked, the buckets hung, the next horse brushed and tacked, and the next stall started by the time the first horse came back from the track, steaming and blowing and needing a fast bath and a good cool-down. On the other hand, there were a lot more stalls to get through. Moreover, instead of pitching the stalls out into a wheelbarrow stationed in the doorway to the stall, the straw and manure had to be pitched over the top of the wall into a dumpster that was wheeled down the shed rows as we moved from stall to stall. It took a little while to develop speed and accuracy with this technique, but before long I found the rhythm of it.
This job lasted only during my junior year; in senior year there was really no time for that, as I often had rotations in the evening, or at night, or extremely early in the morning. However, I learned a little about the rhythm of medicine in the barn; we worked, of necessity, around senior vet students and clinicians doing treatments and taking in late cases. I, at least, got a sense of the clinicians; which ones were even-tempered, which were more fiery, which ones were so deeply intimidating that they scared the living crap out of the students.
Even though I tracked small animal - meaning I took the majority of my senior-year rotations in small animal medicine and surgery - I did do some equine rotations. This was always fun; equine ambulatory was like an all-day field trip, going from farm to farm, taking X-rays, stitching things up, drawing blood, treating colics, checking on delicate foals. I also did an equine anesthesia rotation (scary and exciting, but sometimes very sad), and an equine medicine rotation. This was run by Dr. B.
Dr. B amazed me at the very start of junior year. I was walking down the hall one day, minding my own business, and he happened to be ambling toward me down the hall. Dr. B looks like an old farm boy: Tall, loose-limbed but sturdy, grey hair buzzed down in a short crew cut, and possessed of twinkly grey eyes surrounded by lines earned through laughing and squinting into the sun, set in a square, good-natured face. All his visible skin was burned to a deep ruddy bronze, from the back of his neck to his broad, capable hands. He was of indeterminate age, but I assumed he was somewhere in his 50's at the time, and he looked - and was - entirely amiable. But on that day, his customary pleasant schoolboy grin was replaced for a moment with a frown of concentration. Seeing me (for the first time in my memory) from the end of the hall, he narrowed his eyes for a moment and then called me by name, startling me to a standstill.
"Did I get that right?" he asked.
"Well, yes," I said, wondering how. He merely smiled at me and continued on his way. It turns out that Dr. B took the trouble, every year, of memorising the faces and names of every member of each incoming junior class. He did this by means of our vet school student directory, which had microscopic thumbnail photos - in black and white - and our names and contact information, in case someone at the school (another student or a faculty member) should need to reach us. How he managed this without actually going blind from staring at the small, grainy pictures, I'm not exactly sure. Moreover, the pictures were taken on the first day of orientation Freshman year, and not changed throughout vet school to reflect different hairstyles, the acquisition of glasses or contact lenses, addition or subtraction of facial hair, or any other changes. In my own case, this gave me pause; a friend of mine pointed out - with more glee than strictly necessary, I assure you - that, me having worn a dark blue tank top that day, and having my long dark hair hanging over my shoulders covering up the shoulder straps of said tank top, it appeared in my photo that I might in fact be naked.
Oh, goody. JUST the impression I was hoping to make. Not.
At any rate, when I went on barn rotations in senior year, Dr. B turned out not to just be amazing at remembering faces and names. He was a good clinician, and a good teacher. He put students on the spot, sure; but he did it without criticizing or scaring them, and used the pressure to encourage learning and diligence. His manner around horses was always calm, direct and matter-of fact; I never saw him lose his temper with even the most fractious horse. This is a knack that not everyone has, and it's one I admired. He was also a cut-to-the-chase sort of person, making decisions and directing treatment with a minimum of fuss, and disinclined to take three steps where one step would do the job properly. To which end I one day saw him scoop up and carry, preacher's curl-style, a foal that had to weigh a hundred and fifty pounds or more. The foal's mobility was a problem, and rather than go twiddle about with a gurney - which foals are disinclined to view trustfully - he just scooped the horse up and carried him, without any evident strain, to a stall. No muss, no fuss. This was startling enough in its own right, but for some reason he'd removed both his clinic jacket and his shirt, doubtless due to inundation with some unsavory secretion. Dr. B had what we used to call a farmer's tan - one that ended at the limits of what would be covered by a T-shirt. That was no surprise, but it turned out that Dr. B's natural skin color was as fair and white as milk, a startling contrast to his otherwise red-brown hue. He looked like he'd been painted. While I was distracted by the blinding whiteness thus exposed, two (female) students behind me, likewise arrested, stopped and stared.
"Whoa, check out the arms on Dr. B," one of them said with marked approbation.
"Oh, yeah," said the other, and they giggled like schoolgirls with a crush on the football captain. I couldn't help thinking that it was a good thing Dr. B was out of earshot; he struck me as the type to be embarrassed by that kind of thing, and he was such a good-natured sort that you'd hate to see that happen, even if it was meant in a complimentary way. On the other hand, there was no faulting their observations. Dr. B was in shocking good form for a man half his age. Or his presumed age, since he had one of those kind of weather-beaten faces that seems always to be the same age, no matter what his actual years.
The other students regained their decorum completely by the time Dr. B returned (with a fresh clinic coat on), and we turned to our next case. This turned out to be a horse that needed to be hospitalised in the vet school's barn.
"Okay, we need to set up a stall," Dr. B told us, "which means you'll have to go get some straw - "
"I'll get it," I volunteered, well-acquainted as I was with the inner workings of the barn. Dr. B looked at me in surprise. "I know where the straw and the wheelbarrows are," I added by way of explanation.
"How do you know that?" he asked me.
"I used to muck out in the afternoons," I said.
"Oh, right," Dr. B said, his expression clearing. Then he frowned. "Now that you mention it, I remember seeing you at it. I wonder why I didn't recognize you from that?"
"Probably because I haven't got shit all over me," I said without thinking.
The entire rotation goggled at me. Dr. B's eyes popped open wide for a second. Suddenly he started laughing, but I couldn't help but notice that he was suddenly turning a dark beet red. Kind of like I am now, remembering it.
"Er... sorry," I added, abashed. Dr. B kept laughing for a long time as he walked back to the treatment area, but in a way that made me think I'd really rather embarrassed him. Not enough to keep him from finding it funny, mind you, but enough to make him lose his composure completely. I felt rather bad about that - it was impossible not to respect Dr. B for his skills and intelligence, nor to like him for his air of being an innocent, good-hearted farm boy, earnest and diligent and kind. He never tried to make anyone feel stupid, and if you were unprepared, you were more inclined to feel that you'd disappointed someone you wanted to please than you were to feel judged or scolded. It was a useful knack for a teacher to have, and probably made nearly every student work three times harder so as not to disappoint him. I would never in a million years have intentionally distressed Dr. B - so I can only hope that he's forgotten that incident entirely.
Wish I had.
One of the useful things about being pretty handy with a pitchfork was that, during vet school, I made extra money mucking out the horse barns at the hospital. This was a different proposition in some ways than racehorse grooming - for one thing, there were a lot more stalls, and for another, there was no grooming involved. Moreover, mucking out happened in the afternoon and evening, rather than before the crack of dawn, and usually the horses were still in the stalls, rather than out breezing at the track. The pace was slower in that sense - I didn't have to get the stall mucked, the buckets hung, the next horse brushed and tacked, and the next stall started by the time the first horse came back from the track, steaming and blowing and needing a fast bath and a good cool-down. On the other hand, there were a lot more stalls to get through. Moreover, instead of pitching the stalls out into a wheelbarrow stationed in the doorway to the stall, the straw and manure had to be pitched over the top of the wall into a dumpster that was wheeled down the shed rows as we moved from stall to stall. It took a little while to develop speed and accuracy with this technique, but before long I found the rhythm of it.
This job lasted only during my junior year; in senior year there was really no time for that, as I often had rotations in the evening, or at night, or extremely early in the morning. However, I learned a little about the rhythm of medicine in the barn; we worked, of necessity, around senior vet students and clinicians doing treatments and taking in late cases. I, at least, got a sense of the clinicians; which ones were even-tempered, which were more fiery, which ones were so deeply intimidating that they scared the living crap out of the students.
Even though I tracked small animal - meaning I took the majority of my senior-year rotations in small animal medicine and surgery - I did do some equine rotations. This was always fun; equine ambulatory was like an all-day field trip, going from farm to farm, taking X-rays, stitching things up, drawing blood, treating colics, checking on delicate foals. I also did an equine anesthesia rotation (scary and exciting, but sometimes very sad), and an equine medicine rotation. This was run by Dr. B.
Dr. B amazed me at the very start of junior year. I was walking down the hall one day, minding my own business, and he happened to be ambling toward me down the hall. Dr. B looks like an old farm boy: Tall, loose-limbed but sturdy, grey hair buzzed down in a short crew cut, and possessed of twinkly grey eyes surrounded by lines earned through laughing and squinting into the sun, set in a square, good-natured face. All his visible skin was burned to a deep ruddy bronze, from the back of his neck to his broad, capable hands. He was of indeterminate age, but I assumed he was somewhere in his 50's at the time, and he looked - and was - entirely amiable. But on that day, his customary pleasant schoolboy grin was replaced for a moment with a frown of concentration. Seeing me (for the first time in my memory) from the end of the hall, he narrowed his eyes for a moment and then called me by name, startling me to a standstill.
"Did I get that right?" he asked.
"Well, yes," I said, wondering how. He merely smiled at me and continued on his way. It turns out that Dr. B took the trouble, every year, of memorising the faces and names of every member of each incoming junior class. He did this by means of our vet school student directory, which had microscopic thumbnail photos - in black and white - and our names and contact information, in case someone at the school (another student or a faculty member) should need to reach us. How he managed this without actually going blind from staring at the small, grainy pictures, I'm not exactly sure. Moreover, the pictures were taken on the first day of orientation Freshman year, and not changed throughout vet school to reflect different hairstyles, the acquisition of glasses or contact lenses, addition or subtraction of facial hair, or any other changes. In my own case, this gave me pause; a friend of mine pointed out - with more glee than strictly necessary, I assure you - that, me having worn a dark blue tank top that day, and having my long dark hair hanging over my shoulders covering up the shoulder straps of said tank top, it appeared in my photo that I might in fact be naked.
Oh, goody. JUST the impression I was hoping to make. Not.
At any rate, when I went on barn rotations in senior year, Dr. B turned out not to just be amazing at remembering faces and names. He was a good clinician, and a good teacher. He put students on the spot, sure; but he did it without criticizing or scaring them, and used the pressure to encourage learning and diligence. His manner around horses was always calm, direct and matter-of fact; I never saw him lose his temper with even the most fractious horse. This is a knack that not everyone has, and it's one I admired. He was also a cut-to-the-chase sort of person, making decisions and directing treatment with a minimum of fuss, and disinclined to take three steps where one step would do the job properly. To which end I one day saw him scoop up and carry, preacher's curl-style, a foal that had to weigh a hundred and fifty pounds or more. The foal's mobility was a problem, and rather than go twiddle about with a gurney - which foals are disinclined to view trustfully - he just scooped the horse up and carried him, without any evident strain, to a stall. No muss, no fuss. This was startling enough in its own right, but for some reason he'd removed both his clinic jacket and his shirt, doubtless due to inundation with some unsavory secretion. Dr. B had what we used to call a farmer's tan - one that ended at the limits of what would be covered by a T-shirt. That was no surprise, but it turned out that Dr. B's natural skin color was as fair and white as milk, a startling contrast to his otherwise red-brown hue. He looked like he'd been painted. While I was distracted by the blinding whiteness thus exposed, two (female) students behind me, likewise arrested, stopped and stared.
"Whoa, check out the arms on Dr. B," one of them said with marked approbation.
"Oh, yeah," said the other, and they giggled like schoolgirls with a crush on the football captain. I couldn't help thinking that it was a good thing Dr. B was out of earshot; he struck me as the type to be embarrassed by that kind of thing, and he was such a good-natured sort that you'd hate to see that happen, even if it was meant in a complimentary way. On the other hand, there was no faulting their observations. Dr. B was in shocking good form for a man half his age. Or his presumed age, since he had one of those kind of weather-beaten faces that seems always to be the same age, no matter what his actual years.
The other students regained their decorum completely by the time Dr. B returned (with a fresh clinic coat on), and we turned to our next case. This turned out to be a horse that needed to be hospitalised in the vet school's barn.
"Okay, we need to set up a stall," Dr. B told us, "which means you'll have to go get some straw - "
"I'll get it," I volunteered, well-acquainted as I was with the inner workings of the barn. Dr. B looked at me in surprise. "I know where the straw and the wheelbarrows are," I added by way of explanation.
"How do you know that?" he asked me.
"I used to muck out in the afternoons," I said.
"Oh, right," Dr. B said, his expression clearing. Then he frowned. "Now that you mention it, I remember seeing you at it. I wonder why I didn't recognize you from that?"
"Probably because I haven't got shit all over me," I said without thinking.
The entire rotation goggled at me. Dr. B's eyes popped open wide for a second. Suddenly he started laughing, but I couldn't help but notice that he was suddenly turning a dark beet red. Kind of like I am now, remembering it.
"Er... sorry," I added, abashed. Dr. B kept laughing for a long time as he walked back to the treatment area, but in a way that made me think I'd really rather embarrassed him. Not enough to keep him from finding it funny, mind you, but enough to make him lose his composure completely. I felt rather bad about that - it was impossible not to respect Dr. B for his skills and intelligence, nor to like him for his air of being an innocent, good-hearted farm boy, earnest and diligent and kind. He never tried to make anyone feel stupid, and if you were unprepared, you were more inclined to feel that you'd disappointed someone you wanted to please than you were to feel judged or scolded. It was a useful knack for a teacher to have, and probably made nearly every student work three times harder so as not to disappoint him. I would never in a million years have intentionally distressed Dr. B - so I can only hope that he's forgotten that incident entirely.
Wish I had.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Shake and Bake
Well, you knew it had to happen. The little vacation I've been having in my head, writing about the San Juan, just came to a screeching halt, courtesy of being on call. Been doing a lot of that lately; one of the other local clinics - with whom we share our on-call duties - is having construction in front of their clinic. The access road is closed nightly from 7 p.m. to 5 a.m. Call me crazy, but that doesn't seem especially conducive to emergency calls. "Yes, the road is closed in front of the clinic, so park as near as you can - in a ditch somewhere if you have to - and carry your pet the last mile to the clinic. If it's a dog over 40#, you might want to bring a friend." I can't blame them for wanting to trade on-call days... but due to the unavailability of any of the other doctors at my clinic to take some of the overflow, it has meant that I've been on call three times in the last week. Nowadays that seems like a lot. It used to be (back in the dark ages) that I was on call a week at a time, every third week - and how I survived that, I'll never know, since that means essentially that you could end up working 24 hours a day, if you have a rough week on call. In real life, if something like that happened for more than 2 days, another doc would spell you so you could sleep at least one night... but it DID make for some pretty gruelling weeks. My worst stretch was when both my bosses were out of town for 12 days in a row, leaving ALL the on-call in my lap. For a few days we had a relief vet, but the one boss was stranded in Dutch Harbor - weathered in - and was many days overdue. The relief vet had another gig (and did no on-call in any case), so from then on I was flying solo, 24/7. I was pretty tired by the end of that. In light of that, three days in a week seems paltry - but it's more than I'm used to, any more.
Tonight I get a call from one of our own clients. She has a dog who has been pawing at and foaming at the mouth, and is holding her neck stiffly. She has puppies that are 4 weeks old, but they seem fine, and she's had diarrhea for the last 2 or 3 days.
Hm. Pawing at the mouth (and foaming) are sometimes signs of having a foreign body lodged between the teeth (although there are many other possible causes); has the owner looked in the dog's mouth? Nope, but she can do it right now.... no, nothing wedged between the teeth.
"Do you think she'd be all right til morning?" the owner asks me.
"I can't say," I tell her. "There are too many possible causes of her signs to guess. I'd have to have a look at her to know."
"Okay... we'll bring her in, then," the client decides, telling me she can be at the clinic in 40 minutes. I put on shoes and go out into the cool, rainy evening. As I drive to the clinic, I sift through the possibilities.... meningitis, toxins, rabies, chemical irritation, electrical cord bites - the list is extensive. Rabies is the least likely, since (apart from one recent imported case in Anchorage) there has not been a case of terrestrial rabies in South Central Alaska for over 35 years. I'm not sure how much over 35 years, but at least that long. The one Anchorage case was in a dog that was shipped (by a rescue group) to Anchorage from a village out in the bush. The dog came from a dog yard that had been afflicted with rabies. Now, I understand wanting to get a dog out of that situation, but really: Given that it came from a group of dogs in which rabies had already killed several dogs, doesn't it make sense to quarantine the dog and ascertain that it does not itself have rabies, before you decide to ship it to a highly populated city? Seven people were exposed and required treatment. Luckily there were no bite incidents - just contact events - and no other animals were exposed to this dog. But still... imagine the disaster that MIGHT have been, had they adopted the dog out - or had it broken with transmissible virus while in flight on a commercial airline. At any rate, while that is WAY too close for comfort, given the fatal nature of the disease, it is unlikely in this particular emergency case: the owner is a musher, and her dogs do not roam loose. Apart from that, they're all current on rabies vaccine, as required in order to race. Not only would she have to have had a vaccine break, but something rabid would also have to have come on her property to make that a possibility, and given the dearth of rabies in the area, I'm back-burnering that.
I beat the owner to the clinic, and wait for her to arrive. Meanwhile two more calls come in simultaneously; I am calling the first one back (a chicken with diarrhea) when the owner of the drooling dog comes in. Her husband, a strapping young man, is carrying the dog, who is unable to walk on her own. I motion him to deposit the dog on the treatment table, still telling the chicken owner what to do for nursing care (as I don't treat chickens, and can't see this one right now in any case, having a more pressing emergency right in front of me.) The dog is tremoring, her muscles bouncing and jittering in a fine, continuous fasiculation, something the owner did not mention on the phone. My suspicions immediately veer into a new channel. While detailing quarantine instructions to the chicken owner, phone pinched between ear and shoulder, I take the dog's temp: 105.9 F, and the dog is hot as a just-fired pistol under my hands.
"I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to see this emergency now," I tell the chicken owner.
"BUT - should I give coccidia medication?" she says, ignoring that.
"You certainly can, as the chicken's symptoms are consistent with that as a possible cause - and it's not going to do any harm. But I'd advise you see someone in the morning who DOES treat birds. I really have to go treat this dog now," I say again.
"Well, I wanted to ask more about the nursing care," says the owner.
"I'd be happy to call you back, but I need to go to this dog right now," I say. "She needs my help right this second, so I'm going to have to end this call. Shall I call you back when I'm done?"
"No... don't bother," says the chicken owner, evidently put out that I am more willing to focus on a dog who is at imminent risk of death and is right in front of me, than a chicken who I would not normally treat in any case, who I can't physically see, and who is not dying right this minute. Okay, then.
I snap the cell shut and say to the owner, "How many puppies does she have?"
"Twelve," the owner says.
Yikes. "Okay. She looks like she has eclampsia," I tell her. I'd love to check her calcium levels to be sure, but there isn't time; that will take over an hour and in that time the dog will have overheated to the point of permanent brain damage or fatality.
Eclampsia is a low-calcium state encountered primarily in lactating animals. The most usual causes are inadequate nutrition (not in this case, as the bitch has been on a growth and lactation diet for 2 months and is being given extra calcium supplements as well); short-legged dogs with smaller body-wide calcium stores, consequent to not really having any long bones to draw from; and excessive litter size. Left untreated, this is a fatal condition, and even with treatment there are risks: heat stroke, emboli, cardiac arrest, DIC. I see no reason to frighten the owner with all this, and in any case, time is of the essence here, so I cut to the chase. "We need to get some calcium into her, " I tell the owners. "Fastest route is IV, but since we need about 5 more hands than I have, I'll need you to help me." The owners nod, both of them squaring their shoulders and looking alert and focused, ready to leap into the fray in whatever manner I dictate. We get a body weight and I calculate her calcium dose: somewhere between 2400 and 3200 milligrams is our target range, although if we can control her tremors before that level, we'll stop at a lower dose. Too high is as dangerous as too low when it comes to calcium, especially if we're mainlining it IV.
Back in the treatment area the husband deposits our patient on the table, where she is unable even to recline on her chest, but lays flat out, shaking and panting. I hunt up our calcium. Well, crap. It's 5 milligrams per ml, which means I'll need.... way the hell more than I have. I have about half of a 100 ml bottle, which means I have maybe 300 milligrams.
Damn.
Well, some is better than none, so I set a butterfly catheter, tape it in and draw up 20 cc's. With one hand I push the meds, using the other to hold a stethoscope to the dog's quivering chest, trying to sort her heartbeat out of all the juddering noise of her twitching muscles. One owner is keeping the dog from shuddering herself over the edge of the table while the other is bathing the dog's feet with alcohol to bring her temperature down. I am racking my brains about where I might lay my hands on some more calcium; I have some at the farm, I recall; if worse comes to worst I can zoom out there, maybe, and get it back to the clinic in 35 minutes or so.... but first I should see if I need it. When I have to refill my syringe I have the dog-holding owner pinch off my butterfly line so that we neither exsanguinate the dog all over the table nor get air in the line, and I draw up more calcium, and more again. Well, that's the last of the bottle, and we're nowhere near done.
Luckily my boss is in the clinic, getting packed for Kotzebue (where he flies three or four times a year to do a remote clinic), and he knows where a secret stash of calcium gluconate is. Hallelujah. We're back in business.
I get an ice pack for the dog's belly (as we're still at 104.5 degrees from the intense, unremitting muscle contractions) and we keep on with the slow IV push. If I run the calcium too fast I'll stop her heart; if I run it too slow I risk hyperthermia and stress arrhythmias, strokes and DIC, a severe and life-threatening coagulation disorder. So I push it slow, and listen and push more. Suddenly her pounding heart takes a stuttering beat and I stop my push, my own heart leaping on the spur of adrenaline.
"I have to wait a minute," I tell the owner. "Her heart is reacting." We wait, using the interval to slide the dog toward the faucet on the treatment table and run cool water over her flanks and belly, inside her thighs where the big vessels run near the surface of the skin, on her feet. Inside my head I also take advantage of the pause to second-guess myself; the dog is tremoring as hard as ever and I've just caused an arrhythmia with my treatment; have I misdiagnosed her? I was sure of my diagnosis when I made it, but I'm not seeing any positive response, only side effects. If I keep going will I kill her? But the part of me that believes in my medical skill is stronger than the part that second-guesses. I can't make another disease make sense with her presentation - in another climate, snail-bait poisoning would be a real possibility, but no one up here has any need to have that around. If I chicken out I could kill her as well - and there still isn't time to take an hour to run blood work. I have to make a decision. I go with my well-educated gut which knows I am right, and says: push more calcium. I'll just slow it down, so that I can stop the second I hear anything I don't like.
This all whips through my brain in about 2 seconds, in the usual manner of adrenaline-driven thinking: from certainty to doubt and back in no time flat, spurred on by the pressing need to act now. I listen again; she's steady on now, her big strong sled dog heart rallying and picking up its rhythm once more. I fill another syringe and resume my push, slower now, because we're over 700 mg to the good and I don't want to overshoot. Then, a gift from my patient: I think it's my imagination at first, but no - the muscle fasiculations are decreasing now, and I can hear her heart more easily amongst the jumbled noises of her chest. I ease it off, pushing slower still.
Her heart takes and abrupt dive in rate, bradying down by a third in a matter of a few seconds and developing a marked irregularity. I stop my push, waiting her out; it's hot in the treatment area, and the surgery light is shining on my head, and I am sweating both actually and metaphorically. (This is not helped by the fact that my boss is standing at the head of the treatment table, silently watching.) But after a minute she picks up her rhythm again, and I breathe.
Gotta love those sled dog hearts.
Still, I'm done pushing this one. The rest will have to go intraperitoneal. Meanwhile I recheck her temp: 102.8. My own heart rate starts to level out now. I give a big injection into the abdomen (carefully palpating to be sure I'm not hitting her spleen when I go in). We wait a minute, two, five. The powerful muscles in her thighs are quiet now, and the fine tremors in her shoulders and face are smoothing out.
"Looks like you've got it under control; I'm going to go," says my boss.
"Okay - and thanks for finding the extra calcium stash," I tell him. "This would really have sucked if we didn't have the reserve bottle."
"Yeah - that's something that maybe should go on the ordering list," he agrees.
Our patient is starting to look around her now for the first time. I sponge her tongue - hanging out of the side of her panting mouth for the at least the last hour, and who knows how long before then - and she pulls it back between her teeth in surprise and sits up sternal. Well, alrighty, then. We are now on the winning team.
I pull up two further 20-cc syringes of calcium for the owners to take home, just in case she has a recurrence. I tell them that they need to wean the puppies - a little premature, but the bitch's life depends on it. Because she is a devoted mother, she will try to let them nurse again, so I advise them either separately penning the bitch from the pups, or completely covering her mammary chain so that the pups can't nurse, but can still socialize with her; some of their most important early training is gained from the mother's corrections and examples, so if they can provide the social time without the nursing time, the pups will benefit without harming the mother. I am explaining all of this to one owner, and I glance over at the other to include him in, and realize that my patient is now on her feet having a good look around and making a bid to come off the table.
Well. Isn't THAT a pretty sight. Just a few minutes ago she was trying to die, and now she wants to hop off the table and have a look around.
The owners thank me profusely for coming in. "I was afraid she wasn't even going to make it to the clinic," the wife tells me. "We thought she might die on the way in."
"Well, not to be scary," I tell her, "but that was a real risk - and if you hadn't been willing to bring her in tonight, she WOULD have died. So I'm glad you decided to let me have a look at her."
We detail after-care instructions - I tell the owner to keep the calcium supplementation going until after the bitch dries up, and to allow the litter to interact with, but not nurse off of, their mother. I instruct them on how and when (and whether) to give the other calcium injections, and tell her to call me back if she is in doubt. The owners, relieved, are bubbly and cheerful now. I thank them for being my extra hands and commend them on their good teamwork. They nod earnestly, solemn in the awareness that without all three of us taking appropriate action, the dog would most certainly be dead. I watch the dog trot out at their side, her easy, mile-eating gait restored - a different dog than the collapsing, quivering, overheated train wreck that was carried in an hour or so ago.
I love it when a plan comes together.
Tonight I get a call from one of our own clients. She has a dog who has been pawing at and foaming at the mouth, and is holding her neck stiffly. She has puppies that are 4 weeks old, but they seem fine, and she's had diarrhea for the last 2 or 3 days.
Hm. Pawing at the mouth (and foaming) are sometimes signs of having a foreign body lodged between the teeth (although there are many other possible causes); has the owner looked in the dog's mouth? Nope, but she can do it right now.... no, nothing wedged between the teeth.
"Do you think she'd be all right til morning?" the owner asks me.
"I can't say," I tell her. "There are too many possible causes of her signs to guess. I'd have to have a look at her to know."
"Okay... we'll bring her in, then," the client decides, telling me she can be at the clinic in 40 minutes. I put on shoes and go out into the cool, rainy evening. As I drive to the clinic, I sift through the possibilities.... meningitis, toxins, rabies, chemical irritation, electrical cord bites - the list is extensive. Rabies is the least likely, since (apart from one recent imported case in Anchorage) there has not been a case of terrestrial rabies in South Central Alaska for over 35 years. I'm not sure how much over 35 years, but at least that long. The one Anchorage case was in a dog that was shipped (by a rescue group) to Anchorage from a village out in the bush. The dog came from a dog yard that had been afflicted with rabies. Now, I understand wanting to get a dog out of that situation, but really: Given that it came from a group of dogs in which rabies had already killed several dogs, doesn't it make sense to quarantine the dog and ascertain that it does not itself have rabies, before you decide to ship it to a highly populated city? Seven people were exposed and required treatment. Luckily there were no bite incidents - just contact events - and no other animals were exposed to this dog. But still... imagine the disaster that MIGHT have been, had they adopted the dog out - or had it broken with transmissible virus while in flight on a commercial airline. At any rate, while that is WAY too close for comfort, given the fatal nature of the disease, it is unlikely in this particular emergency case: the owner is a musher, and her dogs do not roam loose. Apart from that, they're all current on rabies vaccine, as required in order to race. Not only would she have to have had a vaccine break, but something rabid would also have to have come on her property to make that a possibility, and given the dearth of rabies in the area, I'm back-burnering that.
I beat the owner to the clinic, and wait for her to arrive. Meanwhile two more calls come in simultaneously; I am calling the first one back (a chicken with diarrhea) when the owner of the drooling dog comes in. Her husband, a strapping young man, is carrying the dog, who is unable to walk on her own. I motion him to deposit the dog on the treatment table, still telling the chicken owner what to do for nursing care (as I don't treat chickens, and can't see this one right now in any case, having a more pressing emergency right in front of me.) The dog is tremoring, her muscles bouncing and jittering in a fine, continuous fasiculation, something the owner did not mention on the phone. My suspicions immediately veer into a new channel. While detailing quarantine instructions to the chicken owner, phone pinched between ear and shoulder, I take the dog's temp: 105.9 F, and the dog is hot as a just-fired pistol under my hands.
"I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to see this emergency now," I tell the chicken owner.
"BUT - should I give coccidia medication?" she says, ignoring that.
"You certainly can, as the chicken's symptoms are consistent with that as a possible cause - and it's not going to do any harm. But I'd advise you see someone in the morning who DOES treat birds. I really have to go treat this dog now," I say again.
"Well, I wanted to ask more about the nursing care," says the owner.
"I'd be happy to call you back, but I need to go to this dog right now," I say. "She needs my help right this second, so I'm going to have to end this call. Shall I call you back when I'm done?"
"No... don't bother," says the chicken owner, evidently put out that I am more willing to focus on a dog who is at imminent risk of death and is right in front of me, than a chicken who I would not normally treat in any case, who I can't physically see, and who is not dying right this minute. Okay, then.
I snap the cell shut and say to the owner, "How many puppies does she have?"
"Twelve," the owner says.
Yikes. "Okay. She looks like she has eclampsia," I tell her. I'd love to check her calcium levels to be sure, but there isn't time; that will take over an hour and in that time the dog will have overheated to the point of permanent brain damage or fatality.
Eclampsia is a low-calcium state encountered primarily in lactating animals. The most usual causes are inadequate nutrition (not in this case, as the bitch has been on a growth and lactation diet for 2 months and is being given extra calcium supplements as well); short-legged dogs with smaller body-wide calcium stores, consequent to not really having any long bones to draw from; and excessive litter size. Left untreated, this is a fatal condition, and even with treatment there are risks: heat stroke, emboli, cardiac arrest, DIC. I see no reason to frighten the owner with all this, and in any case, time is of the essence here, so I cut to the chase. "We need to get some calcium into her, " I tell the owners. "Fastest route is IV, but since we need about 5 more hands than I have, I'll need you to help me." The owners nod, both of them squaring their shoulders and looking alert and focused, ready to leap into the fray in whatever manner I dictate. We get a body weight and I calculate her calcium dose: somewhere between 2400 and 3200 milligrams is our target range, although if we can control her tremors before that level, we'll stop at a lower dose. Too high is as dangerous as too low when it comes to calcium, especially if we're mainlining it IV.
Back in the treatment area the husband deposits our patient on the table, where she is unable even to recline on her chest, but lays flat out, shaking and panting. I hunt up our calcium. Well, crap. It's 5 milligrams per ml, which means I'll need.... way the hell more than I have. I have about half of a 100 ml bottle, which means I have maybe 300 milligrams.
Damn.
Well, some is better than none, so I set a butterfly catheter, tape it in and draw up 20 cc's. With one hand I push the meds, using the other to hold a stethoscope to the dog's quivering chest, trying to sort her heartbeat out of all the juddering noise of her twitching muscles. One owner is keeping the dog from shuddering herself over the edge of the table while the other is bathing the dog's feet with alcohol to bring her temperature down. I am racking my brains about where I might lay my hands on some more calcium; I have some at the farm, I recall; if worse comes to worst I can zoom out there, maybe, and get it back to the clinic in 35 minutes or so.... but first I should see if I need it. When I have to refill my syringe I have the dog-holding owner pinch off my butterfly line so that we neither exsanguinate the dog all over the table nor get air in the line, and I draw up more calcium, and more again. Well, that's the last of the bottle, and we're nowhere near done.
Luckily my boss is in the clinic, getting packed for Kotzebue (where he flies three or four times a year to do a remote clinic), and he knows where a secret stash of calcium gluconate is. Hallelujah. We're back in business.
I get an ice pack for the dog's belly (as we're still at 104.5 degrees from the intense, unremitting muscle contractions) and we keep on with the slow IV push. If I run the calcium too fast I'll stop her heart; if I run it too slow I risk hyperthermia and stress arrhythmias, strokes and DIC, a severe and life-threatening coagulation disorder. So I push it slow, and listen and push more. Suddenly her pounding heart takes a stuttering beat and I stop my push, my own heart leaping on the spur of adrenaline.
"I have to wait a minute," I tell the owner. "Her heart is reacting." We wait, using the interval to slide the dog toward the faucet on the treatment table and run cool water over her flanks and belly, inside her thighs where the big vessels run near the surface of the skin, on her feet. Inside my head I also take advantage of the pause to second-guess myself; the dog is tremoring as hard as ever and I've just caused an arrhythmia with my treatment; have I misdiagnosed her? I was sure of my diagnosis when I made it, but I'm not seeing any positive response, only side effects. If I keep going will I kill her? But the part of me that believes in my medical skill is stronger than the part that second-guesses. I can't make another disease make sense with her presentation - in another climate, snail-bait poisoning would be a real possibility, but no one up here has any need to have that around. If I chicken out I could kill her as well - and there still isn't time to take an hour to run blood work. I have to make a decision. I go with my well-educated gut which knows I am right, and says: push more calcium. I'll just slow it down, so that I can stop the second I hear anything I don't like.
This all whips through my brain in about 2 seconds, in the usual manner of adrenaline-driven thinking: from certainty to doubt and back in no time flat, spurred on by the pressing need to act now. I listen again; she's steady on now, her big strong sled dog heart rallying and picking up its rhythm once more. I fill another syringe and resume my push, slower now, because we're over 700 mg to the good and I don't want to overshoot. Then, a gift from my patient: I think it's my imagination at first, but no - the muscle fasiculations are decreasing now, and I can hear her heart more easily amongst the jumbled noises of her chest. I ease it off, pushing slower still.
Her heart takes and abrupt dive in rate, bradying down by a third in a matter of a few seconds and developing a marked irregularity. I stop my push, waiting her out; it's hot in the treatment area, and the surgery light is shining on my head, and I am sweating both actually and metaphorically. (This is not helped by the fact that my boss is standing at the head of the treatment table, silently watching.) But after a minute she picks up her rhythm again, and I breathe.
Gotta love those sled dog hearts.
Still, I'm done pushing this one. The rest will have to go intraperitoneal. Meanwhile I recheck her temp: 102.8. My own heart rate starts to level out now. I give a big injection into the abdomen (carefully palpating to be sure I'm not hitting her spleen when I go in). We wait a minute, two, five. The powerful muscles in her thighs are quiet now, and the fine tremors in her shoulders and face are smoothing out.
"Looks like you've got it under control; I'm going to go," says my boss.
"Okay - and thanks for finding the extra calcium stash," I tell him. "This would really have sucked if we didn't have the reserve bottle."
"Yeah - that's something that maybe should go on the ordering list," he agrees.
Our patient is starting to look around her now for the first time. I sponge her tongue - hanging out of the side of her panting mouth for the at least the last hour, and who knows how long before then - and she pulls it back between her teeth in surprise and sits up sternal. Well, alrighty, then. We are now on the winning team.
I pull up two further 20-cc syringes of calcium for the owners to take home, just in case she has a recurrence. I tell them that they need to wean the puppies - a little premature, but the bitch's life depends on it. Because she is a devoted mother, she will try to let them nurse again, so I advise them either separately penning the bitch from the pups, or completely covering her mammary chain so that the pups can't nurse, but can still socialize with her; some of their most important early training is gained from the mother's corrections and examples, so if they can provide the social time without the nursing time, the pups will benefit without harming the mother. I am explaining all of this to one owner, and I glance over at the other to include him in, and realize that my patient is now on her feet having a good look around and making a bid to come off the table.
Well. Isn't THAT a pretty sight. Just a few minutes ago she was trying to die, and now she wants to hop off the table and have a look around.
The owners thank me profusely for coming in. "I was afraid she wasn't even going to make it to the clinic," the wife tells me. "We thought she might die on the way in."
"Well, not to be scary," I tell her, "but that was a real risk - and if you hadn't been willing to bring her in tonight, she WOULD have died. So I'm glad you decided to let me have a look at her."
We detail after-care instructions - I tell the owner to keep the calcium supplementation going until after the bitch dries up, and to allow the litter to interact with, but not nurse off of, their mother. I instruct them on how and when (and whether) to give the other calcium injections, and tell her to call me back if she is in doubt. The owners, relieved, are bubbly and cheerful now. I thank them for being my extra hands and commend them on their good teamwork. They nod earnestly, solemn in the awareness that without all three of us taking appropriate action, the dog would most certainly be dead. I watch the dog trot out at their side, her easy, mile-eating gait restored - a different dog than the collapsing, quivering, overheated train wreck that was carried in an hour or so ago.
I love it when a plan comes together.
Monday, July 27, 2009
Rafting the San Juan: River's End
The longer we went down the river, the deeper the canyon became. This was not an entirely uniform process; there were dips and rises at the surface of the land tabled above us. But gradually, the walls grew higher, and time less meaningful. We stopped when we were hungry, or if there was something interesting to see. MT and T had taken their data already, so there was nothing to do but be on the river. We drifted past the sandy crescents of tiny beaches, populated with tufty grasses, shrubs and small trees, and strait sheer walls of rock that dropped strait into the water. Here and there we encountered other rafters, but we had long stretches of the San Juan to ourselves.
Our last campsite was the one I loved the best. It was on a broad, sandy beach which rose in a gentle slope to the canyon wall. The bottom of the wall had been undercut eons ago by the previous course of the river, making a deep bench under the massive weight of the canyon wall. The bench was maybe 100 feet long and cut maybe 12 feet into the foot of the cliff, and was perhaps 6 feet high and floored with extremely fine sand. As MT and T-and-family pitched their tents in the sudden breeze that presaged a storm, I unrolled my Thermarest in this declivity, feeling cozy and snug there, holed up in the flank of the canyon.
As the rain started to patter down sporadically, MT came up and asked if I minded sharing my snug-hole with her.
"Nope," I said. "Pull up some sleeping bag." So we lounged there under the rock, watching the rain come. At first it fell lightly, but we could see the bellies of the clouds above the cliff-top, 80 feet above us, and they were dark and heavy with rain. Pretty soon it was pelting down hard, with stinging force. The water ran down the cliff face and dripped in a thin curtain at the edge of my snug, but we were dry and cozy, nestled into the amazingly soft sand, cushioned by Thermarest and sleeping bag. For some reason, we started laughing about something - I have not the slightest recollection what - and after that we could not stop. Everything we said was incredibly funny, to us at least, and for 40 minutes or more we giggled and howled and chortled as the storm pounded down around us. We lay there in the fresh sweet storm-washed air, listening to the thunder roll down the canyon, watching the rain pock the smooth surface of the river, and we laughed and laughed. We laughed until we cried, and still we did not stop.
After a while, the storm started to ease up, and with it our laughter, subsiding to chuckles and hiccups and silly grins. L and T and LS emerged from their tent.
"Well, you sounded like you were having fun; what was so funny?" L asked us. MT and I looked at each other.
"We don't know," we said, and started laughing again. Maybe it was the ozone from the storm, or the fresh clean air or some magic of canyon or river, but L and T started laughing with us.
The next day I woke early, watching the light creep across the sky from under my rocky outcrop. The cliff wall opposite me grew slowly lighter, revealing the varnish marks - a trailing patina of dark streaks strafed down the rock from mineral washing down over the centuries - and the contours of the rock itself. This was our last day on the river; a thought that I could barely make sense of. The rest of my life - school, my house, my responsibilities - all seemed so strangely distant, oddly two-dimensional, like something I'd seen in a movie. Even as we packed up our kitchen for the last time, as we loaded our boats, as MT unshipped her oars and I shoved off from the bank and hopped into the boat, I could not shake that sense: that the rest of life wasn't really real, that this was the only reality under the sun.
The San Juan feeds into Lake Powell, a man-made lake created by damming - although some would say damning - the Colorado River with the Glen Canyon dam. Unknown beauties are lost now under the water, drifted in with silt, buried and perhaps destroyed. I never saw it before the dam was built - that was before my time, begun years before I was born - but as we floated the last leg of our trip, I could not help but wonder what lay beneath us, lost forever to our view.
The river here develops more of a laminar flow, a deceptively slow-moving surface underlain by a powerful current. It also begins to broaden out, its muddy back starting to verge out into what will eventually be Lake Powell. Our take-out was before the lake itself; MT hung back, back-rowing to give T time to land his Avon. More experienced than she, he would be able to drive the boat into the shore hard and neatly enough that his wife could grab mooring and hold the boat while he hopped out and stood ready on the bank to help bring us in. I soon saw why this was necessary: as MT put her back into it, hauling hard on the oars, digging them deep and sharp into the water, I suddenly saw just how much faster we were moving now than we had been upstream. This was a common take-out site, and there were other parties lined up along perhaps a hundred yards of river bank, pulling out boats and unloading gear, backing up trailers and loading boats up - but all with half an eye to the river, lest someone need help. I had maybe three seconds to realize that should we miss our landing, there were other hands downstream to try to pull us in before we went entirely past our take-out; but then I saw T splashing quickly along the river's edge from his boat - nestled amongst some vegetation, to which L was holding fast - to a clear area where there was room for us to try to land our boat. It was MT's job to aim us in, and she did it well; it was mine to fling the coiled line to T, a task I'd never performed before. But somehow it went perfectly, the coiled loops of rope unfurling in a flat graceful spiral, right into T's strong hands. He planted his feet and hauled back hard against the river's pull, reeling us in as MT laid on the oars, the two of them pirouetting our Avon in a smooth parabola into the bank.
Then it was just a matter of doing as everyone else was, hauling our boat out of the water, loading things up, getting in the truck for the drive back to Moab. It's maybe a good thing we had the drive ahead of us; it allowed a little time to transition back to the present, something that might have been terribly jarring otherwise. But gradually as we drove I started to feel the mantle of my everyday life begin to settle, gently, upon my shoulders again. By the time we got to Moab and decided to end our trip with really excellent pizza in one of the local restaurants, I was almost back to the present. Almost... but not quite. The world seemed just a bit different now, in some way indefinable, but both subtle and profound. And I can feel that still, all these years later: that sense that I was different, now, that I fit into the world in a way not quite like I had, before the river. Looking back at it, through the filter of time, I wonder if I was aware, then, of that small half-step to the side, that change of perspective; I wonder if I knew, then, that it would live in me, ready to be called up at any time.
Really have to dig that journal out, one of these days.
Our last campsite was the one I loved the best. It was on a broad, sandy beach which rose in a gentle slope to the canyon wall. The bottom of the wall had been undercut eons ago by the previous course of the river, making a deep bench under the massive weight of the canyon wall. The bench was maybe 100 feet long and cut maybe 12 feet into the foot of the cliff, and was perhaps 6 feet high and floored with extremely fine sand. As MT and T-and-family pitched their tents in the sudden breeze that presaged a storm, I unrolled my Thermarest in this declivity, feeling cozy and snug there, holed up in the flank of the canyon.
As the rain started to patter down sporadically, MT came up and asked if I minded sharing my snug-hole with her.
"Nope," I said. "Pull up some sleeping bag." So we lounged there under the rock, watching the rain come. At first it fell lightly, but we could see the bellies of the clouds above the cliff-top, 80 feet above us, and they were dark and heavy with rain. Pretty soon it was pelting down hard, with stinging force. The water ran down the cliff face and dripped in a thin curtain at the edge of my snug, but we were dry and cozy, nestled into the amazingly soft sand, cushioned by Thermarest and sleeping bag. For some reason, we started laughing about something - I have not the slightest recollection what - and after that we could not stop. Everything we said was incredibly funny, to us at least, and for 40 minutes or more we giggled and howled and chortled as the storm pounded down around us. We lay there in the fresh sweet storm-washed air, listening to the thunder roll down the canyon, watching the rain pock the smooth surface of the river, and we laughed and laughed. We laughed until we cried, and still we did not stop.
After a while, the storm started to ease up, and with it our laughter, subsiding to chuckles and hiccups and silly grins. L and T and LS emerged from their tent.
"Well, you sounded like you were having fun; what was so funny?" L asked us. MT and I looked at each other.
"We don't know," we said, and started laughing again. Maybe it was the ozone from the storm, or the fresh clean air or some magic of canyon or river, but L and T started laughing with us.
The next day I woke early, watching the light creep across the sky from under my rocky outcrop. The cliff wall opposite me grew slowly lighter, revealing the varnish marks - a trailing patina of dark streaks strafed down the rock from mineral washing down over the centuries - and the contours of the rock itself. This was our last day on the river; a thought that I could barely make sense of. The rest of my life - school, my house, my responsibilities - all seemed so strangely distant, oddly two-dimensional, like something I'd seen in a movie. Even as we packed up our kitchen for the last time, as we loaded our boats, as MT unshipped her oars and I shoved off from the bank and hopped into the boat, I could not shake that sense: that the rest of life wasn't really real, that this was the only reality under the sun.
The San Juan feeds into Lake Powell, a man-made lake created by damming - although some would say damning - the Colorado River with the Glen Canyon dam. Unknown beauties are lost now under the water, drifted in with silt, buried and perhaps destroyed. I never saw it before the dam was built - that was before my time, begun years before I was born - but as we floated the last leg of our trip, I could not help but wonder what lay beneath us, lost forever to our view.
The river here develops more of a laminar flow, a deceptively slow-moving surface underlain by a powerful current. It also begins to broaden out, its muddy back starting to verge out into what will eventually be Lake Powell. Our take-out was before the lake itself; MT hung back, back-rowing to give T time to land his Avon. More experienced than she, he would be able to drive the boat into the shore hard and neatly enough that his wife could grab mooring and hold the boat while he hopped out and stood ready on the bank to help bring us in. I soon saw why this was necessary: as MT put her back into it, hauling hard on the oars, digging them deep and sharp into the water, I suddenly saw just how much faster we were moving now than we had been upstream. This was a common take-out site, and there were other parties lined up along perhaps a hundred yards of river bank, pulling out boats and unloading gear, backing up trailers and loading boats up - but all with half an eye to the river, lest someone need help. I had maybe three seconds to realize that should we miss our landing, there were other hands downstream to try to pull us in before we went entirely past our take-out; but then I saw T splashing quickly along the river's edge from his boat - nestled amongst some vegetation, to which L was holding fast - to a clear area where there was room for us to try to land our boat. It was MT's job to aim us in, and she did it well; it was mine to fling the coiled line to T, a task I'd never performed before. But somehow it went perfectly, the coiled loops of rope unfurling in a flat graceful spiral, right into T's strong hands. He planted his feet and hauled back hard against the river's pull, reeling us in as MT laid on the oars, the two of them pirouetting our Avon in a smooth parabola into the bank.
Then it was just a matter of doing as everyone else was, hauling our boat out of the water, loading things up, getting in the truck for the drive back to Moab. It's maybe a good thing we had the drive ahead of us; it allowed a little time to transition back to the present, something that might have been terribly jarring otherwise. But gradually as we drove I started to feel the mantle of my everyday life begin to settle, gently, upon my shoulders again. By the time we got to Moab and decided to end our trip with really excellent pizza in one of the local restaurants, I was almost back to the present. Almost... but not quite. The world seemed just a bit different now, in some way indefinable, but both subtle and profound. And I can feel that still, all these years later: that sense that I was different, now, that I fit into the world in a way not quite like I had, before the river. Looking back at it, through the filter of time, I wonder if I was aware, then, of that small half-step to the side, that change of perspective; I wonder if I knew, then, that it would live in me, ready to be called up at any time.
Really have to dig that journal out, one of these days.
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