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The problem with raising horses is that you cannot keep them all.
Normally we try to sell our babies when they are ready to be weaned from their mother, at about 7 to 8 months old. You don’t get as much money for them, but then again – you don’t really put a lot of work into them either.
And, you don’t get attached.
Jakes was different. Is different.
He was our first boy from The Golden Stallion – a chunky, beautiful baby colt. He wasn’t as trusting as his older brother in the beginning and actually gave us hell in the beginning. But, he changed. We started working with him in the time that I was still a waitress so I had quite a lot of time to put into him.
I worked with him, I saw his potential and I liked him. At that stage of course, I knew that we would sell him so I managed to keep my distance emotionally. But, time passed and it began clear that people weren’t really interested. I started hatching a plan, an idea.
I’d keep Jakes for myself. I’d only be able to ride him properly in four years, roughly in the time that I would have to start thinking of retiring Basjan.
The timing was perfect and it felt like fate because we couldn’t find an owner for him.
But then one crawled out of the woodwork and my riding companion (and the actual owner of the horse) insisted that we sell him.
I argued. And pleaded. And begged but it was to be as she had her heart set on selling him. And, it was a good sale. The truth is that I’m quite proud of Jakes. Perhaps because of all the time that we had put into him, he had become an amazing horse. We have a quiet way of working with our animals. We insist on obedience naturally. But, we never shout, never hit. Never pull on them or do anything hard.
I like to think of the ones that we rear as pure. The one that we trained last year was so tame that we literally just put a saddle on him and started riding him (with work naturally). He never protested. Never reared or bucked or showed any signs of fear.
He was unspoiled, just as Jakes is.
They came to load him today and bitterness of it is that we didn’t even have trouble boxing him. He trusted us so much that he did this without protest, even though he had never done it before. He trusted us, and we let him go and that hurts.
His new owner is great. And, she has a lot of time and a lot of money to invest into him. More than we do.
But, it still hurts, because in my heart I had already seen him as mine.
There is a price to horseback riding. More than the price of their stabling, more than the price of their feed, their maintenance and their upkeep. More than all the gold in the world.
It’s a small price at first. A wish here, a dream there. The need to touch a horse. Then, without warning, like an aggressive, malignant cancer it spreads and consumes you. Your soul, your being, your life suddenly belongs to them. To their rhythm, to their touch and their strange, quiet love which they give you in return for your heart.
I saw a piece of my friend die today. Her stallion, the golden stallion, died from a terrible disease called African Horse Sickness. It is a virus that kills horses here in Africa. You can vaccinate and pray but, inevitably, it will strike and you will be left to the mercy of fate. Your horse will die or your horse will live.
If he lives, you know you’re safe for another year but if he dies, you die and the world ends. For second, for a minute and in a sense for the lifetime that you were with him.
I lost my first horse years ago, and carry that sorrow with me to this day, like parcel of pain, wrapped up to try and conceal the impact of it. I was aware of it tonight, as I listened to my friend sob in a way nobody else could understand. It’s what it sounds like when someone has lost a part of themselves which they will never get back. A heart beat, a spark of love, a piece of soul – forever gone.
I seem to remember bouncing as a child, falling down and just getting back up again. I’d fall off of a horse, dust myself off and get back on again, storming ahead with more vigour than I did before.
Now… Not so much.
Gravity and a horse decided to conspire against me yesterday when I was pulled mercilessly from the beast’s back and deposited right in the middle of a busy tar road. I fell so hard that I felt my hip bounce off of the tar and strike it again. Unlike in my pre-adult youth, I didn’t just get back up again. No, I was still dragged around as the horse struggled to get away as well (with me clinging to the reins like an idiot…). I should add at this point that I didn’t fall from my own steed. He has more manners than the gelding I rode on Tuesday. I ride this horse as a favour for a friend. He’s… considerably wilder than Basjan. More full of boisterous youth and certainly youthful manners (read none).
And he’s bigger.
And he bucks.
I should’ve known that it was going to happen at some point or another. Let me rephrase, I knew that it was going to happen at some point or another. It was inevitable. I haven’t fallen from a horse in more than 18 months. I have a pretty firm seat in general and it takes quite a lot to get me unseated.
Of course, yesterday it only took a couple of seconds of dropping my guard.
The accident happened like this. We were trying to get over a busy road (my friend on her stallion and I on this gelding). I should’ve gone in front, but the gelding was fussing so I made a small circle. Meanwhile a gap in traffic opened up and my friend decided to push her horse over the road. He didn’t like it and stopped dead. Seeing a potential problem, I pushed my own horse forward, kicked him perhaps a bit too hard and was rewarded by a wonderfully high rodeo like buck. I sat the first one (sort of) but then there was the second. The horse jumped into the air again and spun around in a tight circle. I lost my balance, fell over his shoulder, got my foot caught in the stirrup so that I was wrenched around in the air so that I fell on my right side even though I was tipped off on the left. Sometimes I don’t remember falling, but this time hitting the tar road was unforgettable. My hip exploded in pain and my arm was almost wrenched out of my shoulder socket as the horse tried to run home. The only good this did was drag me out of the tar road. I got up as quickly as I could, my ego bruised and mentally tallying all the witnesses and my friend dutifully grabbed my horse as I took stock of my limbs. I could tell immediately that my ankle was going to be a problem. Although I doubt I broke it or tore the ligaments, it’s most definitively sprained. It’s swollen enough to be. And, although it’s not very blue – my hip (the initial contact point) certainly makes up for it in colour.
I got back on again, and we completed a 5 mile ride, but towards the end of it, I told my friend that we had to slow down. I was in agony. Years ago, I’d have stepped away from this fall without a scratch. Now, I could hardly move, let alone drive back home when we finally reached the stables.
They say that gravity is a constant, that it affects all of us in roughly the same way, but I would like to disagree with that. The moment your DNA’s telomeres start shortening past the prime mark, you’re done for. Your body composition alters and… Where you are left at the mercy of the force that Newton discovered at the hand of an apple.
I might bounce on tar, but light be, I don’t do it gracefully.
I have a horse, which is all I have to say to explain this post.
This is for Aheila’s Drabble Day Challenge.
Here is how the drabble challenge works!
Read the prompt and find your angle.
Write a drabble (100 words story, give or take five words).
Post a direct link to your drabble in the comments (or, if you don’t have a blog, just go ahead and post your drabble in the comments).
Drabble – Freedom.
I feel you move beneath me, every tug on the reins, every step, every slight toss of your head. I know what you look at, what you feel, what you fear.
You are me, and I am you because we are one.
When I ask, you give. Speed. Power. Loyalty.
You gave up your freedom for me, and through that you give me mine.
Freedom to fly, to feel the wind as you feel it. Freedom to feel my heart beat with yours as we race on God’s given earth.
Because you are me, and I am you.
And quite suddenly, a year had passed. 
Exactly a year.
365 days ago, I had left my home early in the morning to go and collect my horse. The scruffy horse who had cowered away in a corner whenever anybody tried to get near him. The horse who would not let me catch him and used to run away from me for hours. The horse whose coat was dry and his skin flaky. The horse whose feet were in a mess.
The horse, who became mine and changed my life.
A lot has changed in the past year. It had been an interesting time for me, adjusting from a life abroad where I worked as a professional in my profession to a life here, in this country with all its politics, where I worked as a waitress for twelve months. It had had its ups and its incredible downs but one thing had remained in place, had settled me and anchored my soul.
Basjan.
My horse had changed as much as my life has in the past few weeks. Gone was the frightened animal that I had gone to collect from his previous owner and in its place was a steady horse, with a quick grasp on matters, a strange sense of humour and a gentleness that was so fragile, yet so precious. He wasn’t scared of me anymore, didn’t shy away when I went to him. When I got Basjan, he was tired and thin, with a series of bad habits I thought I would never get out of him. I made my mistakes and he made his and at some point, when I had shattered his comfort zone by accident, I found myself wondering if I had made the right decision to buy him, whether I was doing more harm than good.
But, we learned together and I believe that we triumphed at the end.
Basjan was now an energetic, stocky horse who was incredibly quick on his feet and absolutely loved running. I had discovered that both he and I liked using voice commands a lot more than we did the physical aids of hands and heels. I trained him to stand on command (and stand he will until I ‘unstood’ him). It had proved invaluable when I had to go and catch him in the field, where one (or sometimes two) clear ‘stand’ commands would get him to patiently wait for me to mount. I could ride him without a saddle and a bridle, guiding him with my voice and touch alone.
He had learned that I won’t hurt him and in turn I had learned that his fear would always be something to consider. Whatever had been done to him in the past would never leave him and that sometimes, we will have bad days but that they were no reflection of his trust in me, only of his trust in people. And I had learned that I could trust him, that he would never do something intentionally to hurt me.
He wasn’t the horse which I had seen myself buying, but he was the horse that I needed. When my Other Half met him, it was remarked that I couldn’t have found a horse that was more like me if I had put out an add. As it turned out, Basjan and I were very much alike, our moods, our emotions, our perception of other people and I think that in the end, that was what had made me willing to work with him and able to for that matter. I treated him as I wanted to be treated. I respected him as I wanted to be respected.
You see, when I was younger, I mused that horse riding was build on three corners. Trust, Love and Respect. I’ve seen a lot of things in the 15 years that I have been riding and I have realized that very few people realize that, that you cannot be a good horsewoman or man if you didn’t respect the animals that you worked with. In turn then, they wouldn’t trust you and if they could not trust you, they could not love you and, that – that defeated the whole object of the exercise.
I have never seen myself as a horse’s master, but his equal and his other part. These strong beasts allow us to ride them, to work with them and they put their trust in us to ride them in places where they won’t be in danger. In turn they ask a tiny bit of our soul, which is why for those who truly understand what I’m talking of, it is so hard to be apart from them, why you’ll always find a bit of yourself yearning to be where they are.
Basjan holds my soul. Not all of it of course, but a tiny part, a precious part which I cannot live without and in a strange way, he’s not mine – but I am his.
