The Horse Chronicles
A journal from Pennsylvania
Page 2

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Enter Katie...

One miserable February winter weekend, shortly after Red's accident, Babe's owner arrived unannounced. His Land Rover bounced down the icy drive to the barn. He got out accompanied by two other people. Relatives, I thought, or special visitors. Showing off his horse to strangers when he never even comes over to visit her himself.

After a half hour or so, the Land Rover came jouncing back down the drive, stopping at the kitchen entrance. Babe's owner bustled up to the door and motioned me to come outside. He introduced me to a couple of kids - late teens, I guessed. Katie and her boyfriend Aaron. Katie will come to ride the mare. She is a waitress, or something - they met over dinner. Okay, this is interesting. This fresh faced, doe-eyed girl child will come out to my house, use my barn, and ride his neurotic, stupid horse on an unsupervised basis. Right. Wear body armor and a helmet, kid. I kept it to myself.

We chatted briefly on my back porch in the cold. I enthusiastically recanted the mare's many fine qualities. Yes, yes, her owner chimed in. She's a purebred King Ranch Quarter Horse. I told her owner that I had brought his good Western saddle in from the barn to store it in a cool, dry place. I would brush it off and have it ready for Katie whenever she showed up. I said I had a small selection of bits and a couple of bridles. We might need to use another bridle, snaffle bits were better than a curb, and on and on. We exchanged phone numbers. They left. I could have packaged my relief.

Well now, this is interesting. We rarely have company of the local sort here at the farm, and never horsy folk. Our friends usually drive in from Erie or Washington County, or Moon Township, and none of them have ever been interested in riding the crazy mare. I mulled it over all day Saturday.

Sunday arrived, another cold, gray, snowy February day. My mind and my hands were idle and uneasy, needing some task to occupy them. I felt irresistibly compelled to haul saddles, bridles, and bits and pieces of leather accouterments from the cold, dusty barn where they had lain brittle and unused for months, into my kitchen table.

Soon, I had a fine mess going. Breaking down bridles, soaking corroded metal bits in ammonia to loosen their patina of age and disuse. Soaping and dressing old leather. Looking for tears, and hoping not to find anything that would require costly repairs or even more expensive replacement. And there was a prize.

There was a very old English bridle which may have belonged to Big Red's previous owner. If so, this bridle had been unused and left to rot in the cold and dirt of my barn for over a decade. Throw it out, I thought. Maybe the bit can be saved. I worked on this piece of garbage for well over an hour, and just look what emerged. Medium port stainless steel Kimberwicke bit, made in England, with a double-flat brass curb chain. Two trips through an ammonia bath and much scrubbing to remove the years of grime and neglect. The English bridle leather began to respond to various treatments, and this turned out to be only the most exclusive catalogue item with its triple-stitched head band, brass hook-stud closures, and a leather keeper for every end.

The very best part of my new treasure is the reins. Hand woven, laced Courbette reins with a single buckle closure to knit them together. There is one bad tear in the left rein, but this is close enough to the end of the reins so that it can be successfully patched by the shoe repair shop. As I worked a life and utility back into the old bridle, I wondered if some major success, some win had ever happened through this tool of leather and steel. And, if some failure of a horse or a rider had torn the reins.

Now, my tack is all cleaned and conditioned. If it ever warms up, I'll be ready to ride. Hopefully, I will have the courage and the physical ability to tackle the half ton of adolescent attitude which has been furloughed for the winter in my pasture.

Monday morning, President's Day. I have the day off because of the holiday. There is some sun shine through thin winter ice clouds, and the weather man promises that we will be above freezing today for the first time in many days. Midmorning, the phone rings. It is Katie. She has the day off and will be coming out to ride Babe in the afternoon. No "may I" about, just "I'll be there." Great, I say. Looking forward to it. We'll leave the front gate open for you.

I try to ignore this new event, going on about my chores, catching up on some domestic drudgery. But I itch, and not in a place I can scratch. This itch is an admission, a disruption. Somehow, mysteriously, my barn has been transformed from a place of dust and disorder into magical organization. My tack bench is neatly dusted off. All the boxes of stuff for feet, for grooming, for fussing, present themselves in a new light of readiness. We are ready for Katie. Even the horses seem ready. They stand quietly side by side looking over the fence at me, looks of questioning anticipation on their faces. What's going on, Mom?

About twenty after three, later than I thought would be, a small white car slithers down the drive and stops at a cock-eyed angle. There is a driver, no passenger. But she doesn't get out immediately. I go back to my bathroom cleaning and laundry chores, waiting to know if she will go straight out to the barn, or if she will do the civilized thing and come up to the house first. Many minutes pass. So many minutes that I cannot help myself. I have to look out the window. She's still in the car. A door is open and arms and legs and things are flying around the car. Oh, God, she's changing her clothes in her car - in the freezing cold. A few more minutes and she knocks at my kitchen door.

I invite her in and we begin sizing each other up. Katie is impeccably turned out in spotless (not for long) nu-buck lacers, clean, tight stone-washed jeans, and what looks like a brand new red duster. Improbably, she has a full face of make-up and diamond earrings. She explains that she just came from a job interview. I chide her for changing clothes in her car. Should she take her boots off before walking on my living room carpet? No, I say, we routinely track a variety of organic materials into our house.

The wind is numbingly cold outside - do you have a hat? No? Well, here, we have lots of spare hats. I offer her my prize wool felt roll-up cap. Nothing's too good for company. You'll want to lose those earrings - they'll conduct that thirty degree air temperature right into your head and freeze those plump, girlish ear lobes.
Did I say she is tall? From my perspective, she appeared to be just under six feet tall. Maybe my head comes up to her shoulder. That's okay. She may be young and beautiful and strong, but I am older by twenty years, and cunning. We proceed to the barn, the horses, her objective, and my agenda.

I show her a few things in the barn: the light switch, the problems, dangers and inconveniences. No, we don't have a place to tie the mare up in the barn. Babe is excitable and strong, could easily pull down anything in here, especially the fragile old stall walls. We always work the mare with two people. See what she did to the back stall wall? Stove it in with kicks. See that loft overhang? Can't tie up there. I have cross ties for Tez, but I would work the mare into cross ties carefully.

I give Katie my opinions about the mare. The mare lives in a place of fear in her head. Through disuse she has become mentally lazy, though she is physically very energetic. Does she respond to the leg? Oh, quite. You won't have any trouble getting her to move. My information about the mare meets with Katie's comment phrased in a third-person prediction that Babe will tell Katie all about her problems in her own good time. Ooo-kay.

I manned the business end of the mare while Katie tended to the equipment. First she groomed the mare. This horse loves physical attention. The mare is head shy, I warn Katie. The mare promptly lowers her head into Katie's stomach and Katie's arms go around it, stroking her ears and poll and her eyes, areas normally off limits to me. Hmphf.

Katie cinches up the mare who immediately begins to prance and wheel in the barn, laying back her ears and champing her teeth together. Aha. You see.

The bridle is on, no problems there. She has selected my newest, best bridle. Tez's bridle. That's okay. I know that this arrangement is safest for this mare. And I want them to be safe.

I ask Katie if it is okay if Tez and I ride along, or would she prefer to ride Babe alone? No, she'd love the company. I explain that I have not ridden Tez for a month, so he will be a handful today.

Katie mounts up, and before I can suggest that she warm the mare up close to the barn, they are gone. The mare is taken completely by surprise. They move away reluctantly, jerkily forward at a trot. The mare balks and Katie corrects her. Completely. I am amazed. This is a different mare.

Now, I have my hands full with Tez who is an excited, inexperienced teenager. Tezzeray believes that life is a full court press, particularly when it comes to catching up with the mare. I have him in his old original training bridle - an O-ring snaffle, nothing on the chin, no caveson. Today, he has jet fuel in his veins and his muscles. We barely avoid embarrassing ourselves as we follow Katie and Babe up the fence line.

Katie and Babe lead us around the landing strip - actually an FAA certified small craft landing area, and the ideal place to work a horse. It is over a mile in circumference with a moderate upward slope, good for conditioning.

Up at the top of the strip, there is an edge, a precipitous drop off to the valley below. We pause for a moment to look around and I ask her how the mare feels. She tells me that this horse has some serious training under her. She can feel it.

Katie works Babe confidently up close to the imagined hazards, a copse of skeletal black locust trees where there lurks a passel of mountain lions and other boogers; the fire pit, the deck which overhangs the drop off; the electric wire cattle fence; and, slippery, icy footing under the crust of snow. This girl is all leg, and she has the mare irrevocably contained between leg and hand. Katie willed the mare to face her fears and to just get on with it. At the beginning of their ride, the mare's neck is locked in an arch, ears rigidly forward, white side-wall eyes, hooves never touching the ground, and tail firmly clamped between her legs. Nearly an hour later, Katie and the mare are cantering easily up the far fence line, relaxed and collected, balanced, tail streaming out. It was a wonderful performance, and I think it made Babe happy.

Katie called it quits first, due to the cold. After, feeding and putting away, Katie told me about herself. Katie is from Maine. She has been riding and showing Western pleasure since the age of five. She worked at a quarter horse breeding and training farm as a breaker. There is no equine behavior problem which she has not encountered. There is no horse which she is afraid to ride. In fact, fear is not in her mental vocabulary. Yet, I countered silently.

This simple recitation was not offered in any spirit of youthful arrogance. It was her description of where she lives in her head. The physical demonstration of her successful first encounter with Babe was tangible evidence of her own personal equity. She misses her horses which are in Maine, and she experiences painful emotional withdrawal symptoms if she cannot ride quarter horses under a Western saddle. She has friends who live in Evans City, but they only do dressage, and it is a long drive back and forth. Katie does not enjoy dressage, nor does she find this discipline necessary for self-improvement. She has paid her opening dues to the horse world on the show circuit and in the training ring. Her need to work with Babe is essential, like food, water and air. And Katie has come into Babe's life at the most critical time when the mare needs a friend and a boss to replace Big Red.

As I began, what I thought I knew about the mare was correct only to the extent of my experiences with her, only to the extent of my being able to understand and react to her, and vice-versa.

Today was Katie's twenty-first birthday. Katie will come back soon, and we are waiting for her.