 |
|
|
|
|
 |
 |
|
||
 |
 |
|
||
|
||||
 |
|
|||
|
||||
|
||||
EmmaSeptember 09, 2005 Emma, Emma Lou, Emma Looney passed this bright September morning. Emma, a bay Thoroughbred mare, was Allie's stablemate for nearly two years. Emma was 30, which is very old for a horse, but her age won't tell you how when she was turned out in the back pasture, she'd canter big figure-eights around her much younger pasturemates -- Dolci, 15, and Allie, 9 -- who would have long since gotten down to the serious business of grazing. Emma had been retired for several years, but not because she was old: she was too "hot" for any but an experienced rider, and then only if she was ridden regularly. Emma was named for the radical theorist and organizer Emma Goldman. The other day I was wearing my Emma Goldman T-shirt, the one that says "If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution." I think Emma and Emma had quite a bit in common. As well as running, Emma liked to roll -- in grass, thank you, not on bare dirt. After she finished her laps, she'd get down for a good roll, whereupon Rhodry (who believes that any horse lying down or rolling is in distress and it's his job to help them up) would circle round, barking. Emma would heave herself up and take a front-hoof swat at the impudent dog at the same time. Hay, they may say, is for horses, but Emma expected more from mealtime. Put supper hay out and all the horses would be chowing down -- all but Emma. Emma would be gazing at you balefully, over the stall guard if she was inside, over the top fence rail if she was in her paddock: Where's the grain? She didn't paw the ground, she didn't knock her bucket around; she just stared until you came across with the main course. When she finished her grain, only then would she deign to eat her hay. She ate with such gusto that she usually spilled a little, so Rhodry and his yellow Lab friend Chamois could often be found cleaning up under Emma's bucket. Emma's legs and feet weren't the best and required careful management: shoes with pads crafted to reduce strain on her legs; restricted intake of spring grass, because she'd foundered a couple of times in the past and could do so again. Until late this spring, it seemed she might outlive every other horse in the barn, and all but the youngest people too. Then she got worse: her right fore could barely bear weight and sometimes seemed about to collapse under her. X-rays showed an irreversible and progressive deterioration of the coffin bone in that hoof. Corrective shoeing and occasional painkillers made it better, but not as good as it had been in the spring. What would happen come winter, if we get as much snow and ice as we've had in recent years? Emma's owner decided it was time to let her go. Last night the horses slurped up bran mash with apples and carrots; the people toasted Emma's life with champagne. When I drove to the barn just after noon to do midday chores, I knew Emma wouldn't be in her paddock; just how weird would it be? Dolci, Emma's long-time best buddy, was in Emma's paddock, and Dolci looked a little lost. Yes, people do tend to project their own feelings and motives onto horses, dogs, and cats, and often the self-delusion is so transparent that it's a wonder we can believe the words that come out of our mouths. But I'm here to tell you: Dolci looked a little lost. Ignoring the considerable remains of her morning hay, she was walking slowly around the paddock, nose to bare ground that had nothing edible on it. Looking for traces of Emma, I thought; wondering where Emma went. OK, that's projecting: the reasonably factual observation is that I've never seen Dolci act like that, and that the only obvious difference between today and yesterday is that Emma is dead. Emma is buried in the corner of the front pasture that shares a fence line with her old paddock. After I doled out lunch hay and filled water troughs, I got a Sam Adams from the fridge, opened it with the weed-whacking kitchen knife, and went out to have a beer with Emma. Rhodry came with me. I sat down crosslegged on the dirt, which had already been sprinkled with grass seed and mulched with a little hay. Rhodry lay down in grass under a big shady oak. I left the small gate open between paddock and pasture. I told Emma a bunch of stuff: how I missed her already, and I wished I'd known her when she was younger and sounder, and how glad I was that Allie had been able to hang with her for almost 22 months; I hoped Allie, alias Little Miss Alpha, hadn't been too big a pain in the butt. Every time I looked up, Dolci was watching me. Dolci only pays attention to me when I'm bringing food, so I figured it wasn't me she was watching, it was where I was sitting. Behind her, two fences away, Allie was watching me too, ignoring her pile of hay. After a few minutes Dolci ambled through the gate, turned left, and made a slow clockwise circle around the edge of Emma's grave, her nose to the ground, her hooves sinking a couple of inches into the freshly turned earth. She circled around behind me, returned to the paddock, and took up her former position, watching. I finished my beer, sat a while longer, then got up and followed.
|
|
|||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
 |
|
|||
 |
|
|||
Home - Writing - Editing - About Susanna - Bloggery - Articles - Poems - Contact Copyright ©
Susanna J. Sturgis. All rights reserved. |
||||