Pas de tout ou pas de deux?

Still our first day, September 3, 2012

Yesterday was one of those days when you wonder what you've done, and whether your horse will miss you when you find him a farm in the green pastures of the farthest, rainiest part of Normandy for the rest of his life without you, and how you could have thought you had a relationship at all, let alone a close one of particular understanding and intimacy.

I stepped from the car and into the wind under a sky the color of what's left of the braise from your barbecue after the chicken is burnt black beyond recognition, the lightest gray. The sort of sky that promises nothing but more of the same, and sends wetness that isn't rain and isn't mist to cover everything. I grabbed the halter and lead, and stuffed a bag of carrots and apples into a backpack with a towel and some antibacterial soap, just in case the fly bites were still runny, and opened the lock to the gate.

The path the owner had cut in the hay field leads along the edge of the field, where it borders the village water facility, probably once part of this property, shown a brighter green against the taller grass across which their new fence runs across the field Fibs now shares with Noble, Prune, in foal, and Ida, a palomino pony who takes refuge in Fibs, and possibly he in she. He is not a dominating sort. He prefers quiet, although he also seems attached to Unabelle, their young mare, and is capable of sending a message of annoyance with a rear foot. Usually Noble or Prune raises their head first, but yesterday it was Fibs. He watched me approach for a moment, and then lowered his nose to the grass again.

I opened the electric gate, closed it and crossed to where he stood, now on the far side, near Unabelle and the old pony, a mare, and the châtelaine des prés. He flattened his ears and pulled his head back. I thought I detected a curl of the lip.

"Fibs, mais, qu'est-ce que c'est ça?" What's this about? 

I reached a hand out, and touched the crusty spots on his flank, where fly bites had festered and were healing over and noticed that his coat was standing straight up. He was keeping warm. The wind blew around us. I raised the halter toward his head, and he pinned his ears, rolled his eyes around to fix me, and turned on his heel, lifting both front legs from the ground. He was one nerve away from kicking me. I moved around behind him when he turned away and appeared on the other side, back and forth. If nothing, I'd annoy him. Eventually, I'd win. Back and forth, we moved in little three-quarter circles, and his ears told me, "No."

My heart sunk. We were supposed to have ridden, but it was late. Later than I intended to be up there. The grass at home had already grown high again, and up past my ankles in the bottom garden, and it was wet every day, with rain constantly in sight. If I didn't mow it then, it might never be possible again until spring. I was cold and retreated across the field to the new shelter, turned to face a group of trees the bark of which he and his friends have made history. I pulled out my cell phone and tapped out a message to my trainer.

Well, maybe not. The wind seems to be making him nervous. It's blowing hard. His coat is puffed up. Not easy to get the halter on, not usual. 

An answer came: Don't worry. Lunge him and that will be good for today. It'll get him back on track.

Easier, I thought, standing there in their shelter, feeling the wind against my down vest, and feeling rejected and forlorn, said than done. But, maybe he'll wander in, wondering what I'm up to. 

Pas de tout, mais, pas de tout!

He wasn't thinking of me at all, and I was fighting the panic of losing the love I thought I had won. Horses are not for those lacking in self-esteem. I inventoried my own, and I went back out into his field, dismayed to see him ignore me diligently, and I danced a little more with him, and thought of Franklin Levinson and Monty Roberts. I would not give up. Instead, I walked away, indicating my lack of interest in him, and I paced the length and the width of their day pasture, to check my impression of its size. 3.25m between fence posts on the long side, and about 2.25m between them on the short sides times so many fence posts. I was right.

I walked back over to him, where Unabelle was making little noises in her throat and Gamine was fixing me with her authoritative eye. He looked at me. I decided it was too cold to hold out for a join-up, touched his flank and thought, You are going to accept your halter. I lowered it to the ground near his muzzle, and he pushed his muzzle deeper into the grass and moved it away to the right. But, just a little this time. I am going to put on your halter, I thought. He raised his head and swivelled his eyes to look back at me, standing at his left shoulder, and I slipped the halter on and buckled it. He dipped his cheek to my shoulder, "Hello."

"Well, hello, Fibs."

We went for a walk near his old home, in the woods where we took our first walks, and then we went and got the lunge line and headed to the riding ring. I concentrated and tried to call to mind the things the owners' daughter had taught me one afternoon, some months before, noticing that I perhaps didn't know enough about lunging a horse. I shook the lead line in my hand to push him off into a larger circle and kicked myself for not having watched more videos, and for not having lunged him more regularly. He moved in a circle around me.

"Trotter, Fibs." His eye flicked back toward me.

"Do I have to?"

"Fibs, trot." He shifted his pace, half-trotted, half-walked a few steps and then settled back into a walk. I really wished I'd prepared better for this. "Fibs, allez, trotter!" I moved the stick toward his hind quarters, and he reluctantly moved into a hesitant trot.

"FIBS, TROT."

He is not supposed to change pace until I tell him to, and I am not supposed to have to keep saying "Allez, trotter... trotter, Fibs... trotter!" to keep him going. I am supposed to cluck, with my tongue between my molars, that sucking thing in one's cheek, and he is supposed to understand that this means to put more peps into his movement. Somehow, I don't think they did this in his racing training. I cracked the "natural horsemanship training whip" back behind his hindquarters, and he picked up the pace.

20 minutes later, and we changed hands. I shook the lead line to push him off again away from me, and he trotted. I asked for the gallop, and he took off, digging into the sand, finding his traction there, leaning into the circle, mane flying, and my heart soared. Having 1000 lbs of thoroughbred power and energy at the end of one's lunge line accelerating in a circle only a few meter from one is an incredible thing. He kicked his heels out, farted, and he flew for a few more paces before he slowed.

"Allez, Fibs, au galop!" and off he went again, and again before I said, "Whoah, whoah, au trot, mon Fibs. Trot-ter." He snorted and blew, trotting around me in a circle.

"Au pas, Fibs. That's a good boy. Au pas," I said, looping the lunge line over and over my hand, drawing him close to me, and he leaned his head into my shoulder and blew.

This is when I unattach him, like the first time I took him out to the round pen, almost a year ago, and I realized that he was following me, step for step and thought to release him and see what he would do. Yesterday, like that day, he followed me, sometimes his head against my back, sometimes shoulder to shoulder, stopping with me, turning with me, walking with me, turning in tight little circles together, our little pas de deux.

Like Christiane Head-Maarek, Criquette, said the other evening after winning the 2013 Qatar Arc de Triomphe with Trêve, maybe the mare of the century, with Thierry Janet up, "c'est pourquoi qu'il faut perséverer et jamais arrêter en cours de route."

Always persevere.
....

Us and our shadows, March 2013

A place to start

Fibs finds freedom, September 3, 2012

For some reason, the veins standing out against the muscle on his hindquarters and legs, just under the deep copper coat, like tracery in Gothic church windows, make me think about his story and about how destiny works, and whether it exists. He was foaled in North Yorkshire, pretrained in North Yorkshire, and lived the first few years there, as well, before going to Newmarket, to Maisons-Laffitte and finally to "la boucle". He raced, and then he stopped racing. He knew people, and they knew him, but how well? Had he friends? Did he miss anyone, and did they miss him?

"He's grumpy," I was told, the implication was that others were not, or were less so, and possibly better prospects, but I was not prospecting. My name was already on his certificate of ownership. I was his owner. If I weren't, I wouldn't be propsecting.

Or, I would have been, since I wouldn't yet have learned my lesson, that I am decidedly not remotely close to prepared to be a race horse owner. Sadly. I would like to have the sort of disposable income that makes risk fun, exhilarating, and be able to take the losses and the setbacks in stride. Really. Fibs taught me that I do not by teaching me what racing is. Had it not been he who taught me that, it would nearly certainly have been another horse in his place, and the story would have been the story of me and another horse who was not Fibs, a less grumpy horse, perhaps.

In ordinary life, the one I led right up until I heard about Fibs and Flannel and thought breaking even was the worst that could happen to a hapless and unfortunate owner of a single race horse -- I apparently have an amazing ability to hear what suits me and a frightening lack of imagination, which was a surprise to me and has led me to consider the difference between concepts like "spontaneity", "romance", "determination", and "risky" --, I was not looking for a horse. I have a husband, who works, and a child and stepchildren, and we are the sort of people who do not have Great Means, and who see to their children before themselves. In that life, my stepdaughter was riding, at my behest and with my encouragement, and I was not. When she was 12, I took her to the big sports clothing and equipment store and purchased the essentials after her trial lesson at the pony club: helmet, boots, chaps, breeches, and a crop. She was ready to mount. One day, she brought a crop to the house for me.

"Tiens. Maintenant peut-être tu monteras avec moi," she said. Here, perhaps now you will ride with me.

"Ah, c'est gentil, mais non, ce n'est pas pour moi." It is not for me.

The crop sat in a corner, next to the backgammon and chess cases that had travelled from the States, getting a headstart on the thick accumulation of dust the crop would eventually attain. I dust too infrequently.

To be truthful, it was not for me, either, that we had wound up in a trainer's yard in Maisons-Laffitte. First lessons had led to three or four "galops" (like the snowflakes in ski lessons) acquired, and we had also become acquainted with the pricetag of a taste for riding and ambition in it along the way, and I was looking for ways people who cannot afford quite a number of thousands of euros a year can satisfy the desire to ride, bigger, better, faster.

I had noticed that my stepdaughter always smiled in competition and that speed did not seem to alarm her, and reading the racing blog in the New York Times around the Breeders' Cup, nearly two years ago, I came across the story of an American journalist in Paris, who had given up reporting to train race horses full time, Gina Rarick. I went to her website, read about the horses available, including a share in Satwa Sunrise, clicked on the links for the training center in Maisons-Laffitte and watched the France Galop video describing its wonders. The little girl who remembered the Walter Farley books joined me and imagined Alec and Henry and the great Black Stallion and Flame on those exercise tracks in the early morning Parisian mist.

I opened my email, typed a message of introduction and asked if we could visit. I had a young teenage girl who might find a future as a stable slave and exercise rider there.

Two weeks later, the answer came. In true Gina style, it was brief, cheerful and frank, "Sure!"

Instead, it was the little girl who had read The Black Stallion, and every other book about horses she could find, who found her future there, and the husband of her older self who would learn who he had married. I was an architect. A woman who earned her living and keep, from the earliest time in her life, who had provided for her son, and knew what $5 had to buy all the way through college, and who didn't forget later in life. Now, from considering a leg or two in Satwa Sunrise, to having two in Elbow Beach, 6 months later, I owned Fibs and Flannel, and another 4 months later, he was stepping off a van and into my immediate life. Cinderella had found her Prince Charming, and the Wellies he brought fit. Perfectly. He wasn't black, either, like my literary dream stallion; he was red, like Flame, his arch enemy, and he was a gelding. At least that much.

And, he was "grumpy".

So was my husband. And so, I would learn, and already suspected, would we all be. The wrong person in this story had the horse.

Also, he was a little skinny. Nothing some groceries and a little Phosphalugel to protect his tummy couldn't remedy.

I was learning already. The initiation begun at Gina's, where I listened to every word uttered by her, by her assistant, Agata, and by the vet, Jérôme, had just shifted gears. This concerned the horse in my direct care, boarded near my home. The vet was on the other end of the phone line with the owners of this private owners' stable, listening and asking questions. Fibs would need the Phosphalugel for a week, two would be good, unlimited access to hay, and a gradual increase in the grains as he adjusted to being fed regularly again and put weight back on. By my friend's eye, he had lost some 35kg in the 3 or 4 weeks since he had last raced in late July. I took the paper held out to me and headed off to the pharmacy for the bottle of thick, white liquid he, my horse, would be ingesting morning and evening to coat his tummy and protect against colic and ulcers.

I was full of hope, and a little worried: not about my horse, but about how we were going to work out everything around this horse, and what his presence in our lives meant. A former race horse  in a stable is, I suspected (rightly), a lot like an elephant in the room, the one everyone is avoiding discussing. Yes, that one. I suspected that we weren't all on the same page, because we had never been, because we were a "recomposed family" of ill-fitting and missing pieces in a difficult environment, and because just getting a dog a few years before had been "challenging" and nearly led us to divorce court, exposing the insecurities of certain ones with respect to the goodwill of others.

This would be the beginning of trying to hope, while taking things day by day and suspecting that things could go all wrong, beacuse of all the things left imagined and unsaid; of seeing and hearing without knowing what it all meant and why; of taking delight, while not feeling free to do so; for the simple fact reigned and governed everything: the wrong person had the horse.

If the garden had been the place where I could take refuge and reflect, make things happen and find some satisfaction and a little solace in the life and the stepfamily we had undertaken, my consolation prize for the professional life I had left behind, the horse would be the thing that cleaved and laid the bones of our situation bare.

This, I knew, is also a place to start. His story before, I also knew, was going to be nothing next to mine from here on out.
....

It's just a jump to the left