Time Not to Write

When living in a fever dream like the one that caught me on Thursday. Then I went to sleep for some 24 hours and woke up mired in a muddy, viscous molasses of weariness, my head hovering high above me on a spiderweb string. Throat closed, ears ringing, inertia, chills and sticky sweat. Sick days are days of nothing to me. I hate the sensation of hours evaporating, free time I didn't earn and haven't the energy to use. I've taken this flu badly, worn myself further by fighting it, not fighting it, fighting it some more.

I read horse blogs much of Saturday, if only to be up out of bed. So many words and ways given to trying to understand them, given to trying to know them. The varied accounts spooled into a stream of consciousness, into one pulse, heavier than mine, quicker than mine: the horse, the horse, the horse. I'd give up a lot to know that any horse understood me, never mind that I thought I understood any of them.

I tried to spend some time studying the anatomy of the hoof. I have research to do for Saxony, another farrier to find. Feel bruised thinking that when it was my turn to find a new farrier, I brought in one that ended up doing on hack jobs on our horses. Learning what's not the right thing doesn't point the way to what is the right thing. How can I ask Do you know what you are doing? when I don't know what they are doing? Trying to learn what they are doing becomes impossible when words and images wave and ripple before me on the screen, like cramming for a calculus test at the eleventh hour when I don't even know basic math.

I watched two of my favorite football teams make it to the Super Bowl, but it happened in a haze, barely breaking through the indifference that illness sometimes brings.

I have an awareness of the cats during this confinement. They claim me, sleep on me, surround me, carry on with their lives. I like them all, like how they assume I am there to suit their needs. Sleeping dully beneath their weight, I feel glad they are getting something useful out of me.

I can see through the windows it's a lovely day, my kind of January day. The grey flanks of the winter sky lay soft, enclosing, sheltering, windless against the snow. I want to be out, like a horse.

White Horse on the Hill

Watching the UK Telegraph's live video of the preparations to rescue the 33 Chilean miners trapped deep in the earth for 69 days , I saw the camera pan across the scene, over the family camp, past heavy cranes and sea containers, slowly pulling focus to the immense structure erected over the half-mile-deep rescue shaft.

Families and press alike watch the TV monitors. Helicopters circle low in the approaching dusk; dignitaries disembark. In that arid, desert mountain place, the soil looks dull brown, relieved only by rough bits of scrub.

But there, high on a slope, beneath a Chilean flag, sat an officer astride a white horse. The Telegraph's camera rested on that image for a long moment. I'm glad it did.

Sidebar

One month ago today, Scout had her surgery. She's been bandage free for a week. Other than Dr. B having to dig a bit to remove a couple of ingrown stitches, the leg has healed well. On Monday we'll have post-surgery X-rays done to get a look at how the internal healing has gone. I want to talk with Dr. B about Scout's next step, turnout in a confined space. Right now, I'm not sure putting her in a 12 by 12 pen will work. I'm worried that she'll try to thrash her way out if something happens with the other horses that she wants to be in the middle of. I'm wondering whether it's better to keep her in until she can really go out.

Without the twice-daily dose of sedatives, though, my pony would have lost her mind. It's not that she's dying to get outside, not really. She's cool with munching from the hay net hanging beside her window; it's like watching TV all day without feeling an ounce of guilt. She loves the carrots, the cookies, the apples, the cookies, the cookies, the cookies. But she hates, hates being separated from the other horses, especially those she considers to be her personal crew: Keely monster, tiny Gambler, and steadfast JR. This morning, those three were turned out in zero-degree air to stretch in the huge, frozen pasture, far from Scout's window. Sedation, ha! She put up a classic spazz attack, screaming, spinning, bucking and rushing in her stall. E had to move her across the aisle to Dar's double wide stall so she could finish cleaning Scout's. "It's like I wasn't there," E told me on the phone. I knew exactly what she meant. That's Scout forgetting everything and everybody except herself and her emotions. Wish I'd been there, because I could use a reminder. It's easy to romanticize my feelings about Scout when I experience them through this frame of injury, recovery and rehabilitation. One day that will all be done, though, and Scout will be standing there in front of me. How can I be ready, and ready for what?

4 of 4, A Language All Their Own - Scout Comes Home

We've all kept close to Scout this week, those of us who love her, those who provide care to her, even some who have never met her. But are any of us as close to Scout as these two are? No. We can't be, because we don't speak the same language. At best, we are middle men. Between what they are and what we want them to be, between what they do and what we want them to do. As a human being, I was on the outside of this reunion, exactly where I should have been. But it was a privileged place to be.

Wait! I know this place! She was full of excitement. Scout had been at another barn for one month, but this small farm had been her home for two years. Half a second was all she needed to recognize where she was.













They knew her, too. The air was electric with chill and the first light winter snow.













Someone told me once, years ago, "Oh, your mare is a killer. She should never be turned out with other mares." Tell it to Keely, who missed Scout terribly. What happened? Where were you? Why are you in there? Come outside. (But those are just my words; they have nothing to do with what was going on between them.)















They crowded around Scout's window. But poor little Gambler couldn't see her.














Scout soon realized something had changed. Everybody was out in the paddocks. There was someone new out there, too. I think she started to feel it in her gut. It was one thing to be on stall rest at a strange barn and then at the clinic. It might be too hard at home.













Keely agreed. Together, they began to work at the window.














When Keely finally drifted back to her hay, Gam got his chance. Scout wasn't terribly interested in visitors by then. The reality of her dilemma was becoming clear to her.















Bringing her home was the fourth of the hurdles I worried how we'd cross. Now I see, though, that every day that Scout must stay in her stall will be another hurdle. She can't change her nature, I only hope that she can change how she relates to it.

What? I Have to Stay in For How Long?