The Shibboleth

"The Crack" (Shibboleth)
Doris Salcedo, 2007
Tate Modern

To say that all stories contain many stories is true. There are stories that can be told in a blog, and others that must wait for the novel and the movie (I would like to be played by Frédéric Pignon). There is only so much truth one can reveal and remain a decent human being. To say that there is more than one truth in a story is a given. I try to tell as many as I see, honestly. To say that this horse was the shibboleth in our precariously sewn, even basted, patchwork family would be one truth shared by everyone in this story. Some might blame the horse. I blame the people. It could have been anything, and, at other times, it was other things. This time, it was a horse, and this time, it was a decisive yank that tore that faulty stitching out between the squares.

Horses are special. They are large, and they are hard to overlook. They require many things that cost a lot of money. They are a life-long responsibility (theirs), and their lives are long, if we care for them well, and if we are very fortunate. They inspire one of the most dearly held of human desires, to have one and to ride. They have, then, a special ability to catalyze the good and the very not good, to generate strong feelings and fericiously defended points of view. They can federate, or they can fracture, lay bare the cracks one can otherwise blame on them, with their heavy footfalls; it all depends on the story, and the humans involved in that play. Horses, and the having of horses, is about love, respect and wisdom, and it shows where the love, respect and wisdom lack.

The other truth was that Fibs was there, in a box at the boarding facility owned by a family who had left the neighboring pony club, and taken two of the girls along with them when they decided to go out and compete on their own, not necessarily with the knowledge and consent of all of the other parents. One of those girls was my husband's daughter. Another was a younger girl, of some talent, and possessed of a very big mouth and large voice, equalled only by her exhuberance and difficulty to manage, who had been shown the gate. As an owners' boarding facility, it implied one thing: owning a horse or pony. However, two stories were coming to their dénouement -- one that involved me, and one that involved my stepdaughter --, and they shared a common point of origin in the mutual desire to ride and have a horse, and my having set her on the bridle path. How convenient would it have been had I not shared that desire, and so kept myself off that intersecting bridle path in the web of them in the forest. How many collisions would have been avoided.

It was a tale that could have had the word "fairy" before it for its ending, but instead it did for the theme of a stepmother and a child. The opposing truths would clash around the assignment of the adjective "wicked". To be clear, I have not, and I never would, demand the hunstman to bring back her heart. I might, though, have asked him to lose her somewhere, not very far from another barn very far away. I might still be waiting, but I have no huntsman.

And, if there are multiple truths in every story, there are as many possible starting points. The farther back one begins, the easier it is to weigh the merit of the truths, but the harder it is to keep track of it all. This story will be said to have begun with a horse who needed to find a home, his owner, a young teenager who had manoeuvered to put herself in the position of needing a horse, and her father into that of concession. I will add, in fairness to myself, that I had long argued in vain for a half-board on a horse able to jump more than 50cm without hip pain for her. Refusing the smaller things will often set you in far deeper manure.

There are other characters: the instructor who left the pony club to work with these three girls and for the owners, the owners, a mother, another ex-instructor who preferred caring for horses to teaching others to ride them, and a Polish handyman, who by the looks of him was perfectly cast to play Prince Charming, or the wise fool, or, ideally, both at once, but in a story without a sleeping beauty.

This story began the day my husband said, "And, if we brought Fibs out here, and she [his daughter] could ride him?" It began with a sigh, and a warning.

"You do understand, don't you, that Fibs is only just being retired from racing, and he is not ready to do what she needs a horse to do?"

I don't recall if he nodded or even acknowledged that I had spoken. I nodded and went to get on Facebook and send a message to keep Fibs from going to someone else, filled with so much relief and misgiving that I felt neither. I had whispered to Fibs that I would look out for him, maybe come find him one day and take care of him; I knew my husband had been strong-armed by his daughter and a bunch of people he didn't know, and I knew this horse did not fit the bill; and, I knew that things being what they were, she and I did not make for the best of partners in a thoroughbred race horse, about to come off the track and into several different peoples' imaginations in several different manifestations. A tall order for a 16.1 HH chestnut gelding, even a great great grandson of Secretariat.

Before I sealed his fate in one direction, I called the instructor. She owned a retired race horse, who had served time in the riding club as a lesson horse. My wishful thinking was in overdrive. I wished that she had trained her mare, and that she would know how to work with my stepdaughter to do the same thing with him, while I knew she was 25 and suspected she had done no such thing herself. My husband wasn't the only one selling himself the Brooklyn Bridge, but what was the alternative? Watch Fibs go away and release the gray certificate from the Haras Nationaux that had my name and his on it? My first ownership papers. I told her about Fibs and my husband's idea for his daughter. I asked her if she would work with her and help her prepare Fibs. She said she would be delighted to do it, and that it was an honor to be asked.

I think I heard the distant ringing of an alarm bell. I chose to be thrilled. It was a disaster.

There was the gift on an expensive leather halter with an engraved nameplate, and I took photos of Fibs with my stepdaughter.

There was the waiting for the work to begin, and nothing happened. I had said that he was a bit thin and had not been fed well for three weeks,possibly, but he was fine. Active, alert, and strong. A period of acclimation had passed, and he was doing well. And more time passed. Time in which murmurings of a half-board on the instructor's mare began to fill the barn air and drift home. One day, the instructor took Fibs and I out to the outdoor and she lunged him, while I took video. He knew how to lunge, but he was judged to have a bit of stiffness on the right side. I called the osteopath recommended by the boarding facility owners, and she pronounced him a little stiff, but nothing full turn-out and work would not help him work out. I couldn't help but notice the resounding silence and lack of enthusiasm her professional judgement produced. On the one hand, that meant working him. On the other, it meant a lower boarding fee from us. He returned to his box, and I returned to waiting, less than patiently.

The September days all ripped off the calendar, successive October days tore off one after another like the falling leaves, and still nobody seemed interested in doing anything with Fibs. I was raised to be polite, and patience seemed like a nice way to be polite, so I worked at remaining patient. I was new to the barn, and I was new to horses. Surely, some sort of work would begin? I knew one paid for that, but we had spoken of work, and we would pay for it. Was nobody interested in that? It did not seem in any way to be the case, and the murmurings on the half-board on the instructor's mare had turned into demands of my husband, who never came up there and did not return calls, to make a decision about the half-board, while the smiles with which the formerly friendly instructor had greeted me when I arrived had turned to acting like I was not there, or staring daggers. The truths were multiplying dangerously. It was Alien 3, not Black Beauty.

I gathered my politeness and tried speaking to the instructor, who informed me, as though I were the dullest hay bale knife in the barn, that Fibs was an utterly inappropriate horse for my stepdaughter, what was I thinking? And, he had a back problem!

The veterinarian came to see Fibs. They would do a flexion test, watch him move at the walk and the trot, and a "girthiness" test. He passed the first two without incident, but chen the instructor pulled up on the cinch and smacked him into movement, he reacted.

"See? He's girthy." She shot me a look to kill. How, I wondered to myself, was the vet not feeling the lack of love?

The vet walked over, ran her hands along his back, and shrugged. He looked the picture of perfect health and happy movement. The instructor was preparing her next blow of the mace.

"He can't be ridden, can he? He's not appropriate for a 16-year-old, is he?"

"How much experience does she have? Has he been ridden? Has anyone put a saddle on him and tried?"

The instructor shook her head no and shot me another look, the mace drooped in her hands.

"Well, put a saddle on him and see," said the vet. I led Fibs out of the round pen, trailing behind the vet and the instructor. They had other horses to see. Fibs returned to his pasture, and I gazed at him.

"Well, Fibs, I guess it's pretty clear, isn't it? Nobody intends for anyone to ride you, or do anything at all with you. What are we going to do now?"

He might have raised his muzzle from the grass and pressed it to me, or I might have wished for that. I looked out over the fields dotted with horses and divided by fences, against the line of trees at the edge of the forest, and listened to the traffic on the highway. I might have felt like I was going to cry. The truths were becoming noisy and ugly. There was my husband's, and there was mine, and the intructor's and my stepdaughter's, and there was the owners'. I was the one forced to glimpse them all and see that nobody was going to be happy here. It was mid-October. The owner's wife called me.

My husband was demanding to know when Fibs would move to full turn-out, as it had been intended from the beginning. The owners, through the wife, at first, were demanding to know when he would make a decision about the half-board. His daughter and the instructor were demanding the half-board. I talked to her  like the sensible, mature woman I hoped she was and presented our point of view. There were good reasons for my husband to hesitate, and we had expected his daughter to work with Fibs, not take a half-board on still another horse, but this was not happening.

I heard about his back, which her equine osteopath and vet had declared a non-issue. I heard about the necessaity for him to have 6 months of doing nothing to get his mind off the track, and another 9 months at a very minimum to be retrained to do anything but race around a racetrack, never mind that he had been hacked out in training since he was a youngster. I heard about the dangers to which I was insisting on exposing him, in putting him in turn-out in November, a thoroughbred facing his first winter outside a barn in clement Normandy, not, I thought, Siberia. I heard an acknowledgement that the instructor was young and immature. I heard that my stepdaughter was expected to be in lessons with the other girls, on a suitable horse, and vanning to shows. So, it was clear, then.

Fibs and I were shoved to the margins of the farthest fields when November 1 came around, and the daggers turned to a shoulder attuned to the weather growing colder. We had no friends at our barn, outside another owner, and the handyman, who looked on with what I was sure was compassion, and could expect none. It was not any better at home. The truths were on the verge of a declaration of war, and what had we done wrong?

Well, I knew what I had done wrong. I had gotten involved with a race horse. But, what had I done wrong since this later beginning to the story? Edgar Allen Poe would have told me to listen to my beating heart and answer my own question. I had not wanted to share my horse, this was true, but had I refused? No, I had called the osteopath and the vet, and I had asked when work would begin. And, had I caused our banishment? No, I told Fibs as I brushed him, praying to be left alone in the barn and not speared with freshly sharpened daggers. I could not be said to have been overflowing with niceness, but I had not been the one to mislead.

Others might not agree, came the thought. Did you expressly say that you would not also get another horse for her to ride in lessons and in shows? No, you said that it was a question of finances, and you said that your husband would have to decide that. They were asking for that decision. Did he know that this was what had been intended? No, but did he ask? No. These were all assumptions. If wishes were horses, beggars would ride. His daughter done what she wanted, the opportunity presenting itself; he did not ask the questions he should have; the owners dealt with a minor and the minor's stepmother; and, you are all screwed seven ways to Sunday. 

Fibs might have raised his muzzle from the nap he was taking and pressed it to me, or I might have wished for that. I looked out along the aisle between the boxes to the big green doors, beyond which lay the fields dotted with horses and divided by fences in the night, on up to the highway where the headlights made beams in the dark, and listened to the horses chew their hay. I might have felt like I was going to cry. The truths were at war. All I knew was that I was still his human, and that he depended on me. If nobody else were going to work with him, then I would have to learn and do what little I could. The cracks were there and running all over the barn floors and walls, and adding to the ones that already made webs of our walls and ceilings at home.

I could let Fibs go, but he was mine. I loved him. I cared for him. I took him for walks in the forest along the bridle paths others rode, and between the trees in the spaces between, and even, sometimes, between the trunks of the trees that grew in two, and he followed me, better, for the most part, it never failed to occur to me, than my poorly leash-trained lab. I regretted everything that had happened since he arrived from Maisons-Laffitte and missed the easyness of the pony club, the comforts that would have been afforded by the obvious solution of a half-board at the pony club, but could I regret Fibs and my name on his certificate of ownership? How, I wondered, on those walks and during those long grooming sessions, all I knew how to do at all, could I ever reconcile that? And, Fibs might have raised his muzzle from the ferns and pressed it to me, or I might have wished for that, while I gazed into his eyes and sealed my fate.
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Fibs, November 11, 2012

This is a serialized story over an agonizingly long period (I get busy). For the earlier parts, you might like to read:

The Story I have not told, Fibs and I
A place to start
Pas de tout ou pas de deux?
Starting at the very beginning

If you enjoy the stories, and what you see here, please leave a comment and give us a g+1 and a Tweet. Thanks!

Starting at the very beginning

le Coty, November 2012

What do you do with a horse when you don't ride? This is the question that imposed itself nearly as soon as I  brought my horse "home". It was certainly imposed by my somewhat bitter and testy husband.

"What are you going to do with him? You don't ride," he asked.

See? It didn't sound like a nice question. In fact, it sounded a lot like Why do we have this added expense we cannot afford, when you do not ride and my daughter does -- and I was never in favor of it --, and she doesn't have a horse? How I am I supposed to explain that to her? I wondered if I could safely ignore the question. It didn't take long before the question became explicit, and impossible to ignore.

The question asked, and asked again and again, I thought about it. To say that it never occurred to me to think about it that way would be accurate. To say that it never occurred to me that to not think about it was out of the ordinary never occured to me, but it occurs to most others. Horses are to ride. That is all. So, what is the sense in having a horse if you don't ride it? Every day after Fibs' arrival at the écuries de propriétaires near our home, I drove up with a little bag containing my iPad, some carrots, and not much else. I would arrive in the late morning, park under a tree in the courtyard, and walk up the lanes to his day pasture. He was alone in the beginning, the time to become a familiar figure to the other horses, and for the staff to figure out with whom to turn him out. I might pass one of the two young women who worked there, or the Polish handyman, who looked like a healthy blond peasant stock version of Prince Charming, and stop to receive news and say hello.

What do you do with a horse if you don't ride him?, I asked myself, approaching him.

Yes, what do you do with a horse when you don't know what to do with them, and you you barely know them, and this one nearly as little as I knew horses in general, except what I learned from Gina in a few months around her yards, and from the shelves of books about horses and their people, like Alec Ramsey, I read over and over when I was little? I needed an answer.

I looked around at his paddock, his pile of hay, and him, grazing quietly, tail swishing at flies in the September sunshine, admiring the shine of his burnished chestnut coat againt the blue sky. I watched the white clouds scuttle past the tops of the trees in the forest on the other side of the little vally in which the former breeding farm was settled. In the middle of that forest was the riding club where I had taken my husband's daughter to sign her up for lessons just a few years before, but today I was here for Fibs, for my horse, a horse I barely knew, and I needed to answer my question.

I set my bag down against an electric fence post and slipped between the two bands, hoping not to find out just yet what the shock felt like. Fibs looked up and considered me, and then took a few steps in my direction before lowering his muzzle to the grass again. He was judged thin. I needed a story to explain why Fibs was here, to make any sense of it to myself, and Seb's recounting of what he had seen where I had leased him worked as well as any other. I had been told that he wasn't being fed, and everyone judged him thin. To be honest, I didn't find him that thin, but I had said it, and now it was fact: he had not been fed; one had to approach his care and feeding as one would approach that of any horse who had done without food.

My apprenticeship began with responding to orders. As soon as he stepped off the truck and was led into a paddock and then his box, I was directed to go directly to get a short list of essentials. My husband shifted into boy scout mode, making me instantly feel like a dawdler when I had not let an instant escape me, like someone had to care about this horse, and if I weren't going to do it, he would have to step in and take over. I chose to let it pass without remark; his work pays Fibs' board.

My work? Ah, we'll see. I'm sure I'll earn some money again one of these days. Meanwhile, I was not, shall we say, in a position of power. Thank goodness I went to a women's feminist college and got a professional degree. Lets me understand the full impact of my inadvertant and premature "retirement", into which I slid like the frog in hot water slips into his death, although I was aware of a generalized sense of panic and possessing a pretty clear notion of what depression feels like. I fought back with gardening, becoming a dog person, and now, I had acquired a horse. I was accomplishing Great Things: my childhood dream.

He drove while I Googled feedstores and dialed numbers. The feed suggested was not available. I called the stable, and they said we could do without it, but the Phosphalugel was essential to protect his stomach and help keep him from colicking. I knew what that was from stories told at my stepdaughter's club and Gina's yard. We headed to the pharmacy and returned with a case of the stuff. Enough for more than the week's supply requested, and Fibs' lips showed the traces of his morning's dose from where I contemplated him, my horse, Fibs and Flannel. My horse.

I stepped up to the plate and moved toward him. I had learned to be comforable going in and out of boxes, hot-walking horses, and had even tentatively groomed a few, but I knew there are ways to do these things, ways that muct be learned. I made a note to myself to look up interacting with a horse in turnout when I got home, and decided to wing it and watch his signals. I had enough sense to know that even the nicest horse can kill you in an instant, without even intending it, and I knew that Fibs was not the nicest horse; he was grumpy, and a bit suspicious and wary, and he very possibly hadn't eaten much in a few weeks.

And, still, I did things that would curl the hair of the majority of consciencious and high-priced trainers. To start with, to let Fibs know that I was not dangerous and posed him no threat, I sat near his feet in the middle of the field. This was either entirely misguided or just fine. If you ask Monty Roberts, Franklin Levinson and anyone else who works with horses according to a philosophy and with experience behind them, it was probably at least a tiny bit misguided. There are ways to do this, only I didn't know them. I did what came to mind, what seemed to make sense, and I was usually at least partly right. That day, sitting not far from him in the grass, he grazed his way closer to me, mouthful by mouthful, and then grazed around my cloth sneaker-clothed feet. I looked at them in their thin canvas shell and then at his teeth, clamping onto tufts of blades of grass that he then sheared away with a jerk of his powerful neck, his jaw working his chewing teeth even as he ripped new blades to send back to those terrible grinding surfaces.

And, I learned a first lesson: boots are a good idea, even when merely visiting with your horse. I tended to dress as though I were going out to dead-head my roses, in my canvas sneakers, linen roll-up trousers and a summer top and sunglasses. I saw everyone else wearing their work breeches, riding socks and paddock boots, and I thought I needed to earn the right to wear those outward manifestations of equestrian accomplishment and ease. I was beginning to understand that they are also practical and protective, but it was going to take a little time to dare to appropriate them for myself. Meanwhile, my toes would remain vulneravle to his teeth, and I would be fully conscious of this.

Grazing, now, to the left of my thigh, his the front end of his body casting a shadow over my entire body where I sat, I became aware of his choice to be near me and my awareness of his choice. I sat in silence, watching his jaw, his eyes and ears, any signs of a change in his awareness and attitude. It is not possible to sit just below and to the side of 500 kilos of horse flesh, those horn-covered feet so close to one's canvas-covered feet, and not sense that something very bad could happen at any second, but it does not take research and lessons to sense and understand fear and anxiety in another animal. I felt his energy. It was contented. Relaxed. Focused on the act of satisfying his drive to chew and swallow, tearing off blades of grass to satisfy the machine. The other horses, dotting the slopes of the neighboring pastures were dozing, their backs and legs locked, or similarly engaged. I did not specifically know from learning that they were all in the closest of communication over the distances that separated them, but I knew. They were telling one another, and me along with them, that we were safe. I remained where I was, and eventually his grazing took him farther away.

I moved to various points around the field, hoping for his interest in me to be piqued again. He was free, free to graze here or there, go to drink from his trough or to eat from his pile of hay, free to stop and rest or to notice me, or not. I had no objective. No need to slip a halter on him and take him somewhere to do something. He was taken out in the morning and brought back in the evening. He had everything he needed. I was peripheral to his existence as he understood it, while I was central to it as the signatory of his boarding contract and his listed owner, as I understood it. He depended on me for everything, while having not the slightest notion of this.

He did not need me to ride him. He had no need for me that he could understand. Watching him live his life that first morning, I understood this. It was up to me to become a human and a presence of interest in his life by meeting his needs, including, I hoped, entertainment. He had worked with humans nearly every day of his life for at least the past 3 1/2 years, and he was used to that. The owners and staff told me he needed at least 6 months to "just be a horse", but I was not convinced. If he learned he enjoyed my presence and what we would eventually do together, whatever it could be as the days went by, then why would he prefer to be left alone, although for the remainder of the time I spent in his field that morning, it seemed the latter might be the case, after all.

Later, I would understand that being present without interacting with him, I had aroused his curiosity, and his interest piqued, he had moved toward me to find out more about me. I had been quiet and observant, and he had determined that he could be near me and safe. Without knowing what it was called, but perfectly conscious that it was what I desired, I had achieved our first join-up. By knowing that I wanted to establish a relationship with him and understand him better, I had taken my first step in becoming a member of his herd and been accepted.

In the days that followed, I showed up and did the same thing. Eventually, I retrieved my bag from the fencepost where it sat, safe, carried it to where I would sit in the shade, and took the iPad out, thinking I would write about our time together. But, it was at precisely those moments that Fibs became the most interested in me. Like a small child whose mother is suddenly unavailable, engaged in some other engrossing activity other than paying attention to her child, Fibs was all about me. All that remained was to keep the iPad and my canvas-covered feet safe from his feet, and take selfies.

And, as usual, I had Fibs to thank for the idea because this one, which he suggested, made it known without a shadow of a doubt that we were becoming buds, and while it might not be the most flattering of photos of either of us -- I had been introduced to the fly mask and shown how to put one on him, and while he looked dignified enough in it when standing, he looked like an old lady in a rain bonnet (or shower cap) from below -- nothing is more precious and incresibly amazing than that.
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