Ride on

During my dad’s last winter, I bought a horse. I didn’t tell him. I didn’t know how to. I worried he might be hurt and feel like I was off thinking about a time when we all knew he would be gone. Of course, it wasn’t that at all. I didn’t really know what I was doing when I bought that horse. I’m generally a careful person and not someone who makes snap decisions. It was just something that felt completely right when so much felt wrong.

Dad died soon after, not knowing what I had done. There was never a right time to tell him. He liked animals, though maybe not to the degree his daughters did. Henry, the beloved dog who went to work with him each day, and a Siamese cat (whose contrary nature he enjoyed immensely) were standouts in the family pet department. But horses, on the other hand, were a form of childhood recreation that his daughters were expected to outgrow – and didn’t.

Ironically, it’s the memory of a long-ago goodbye to a horse that still sticks with me when I think of my dad and horses. My old mare Shy suffered a ruptured uterine artery during foaling. Excellent vet care and unwavering maternal instinct kept her alive through adhesion colics, loss of appetite and energy until her colt, who grew big and strong despite it all, was ready to wean. Dad kindly offered to take sweet Shy to be euthanized, to spare me the sad duty. She left the farm that cold fall day, a rack of bones with a giant udder of milk. Dad returned a few hours later red-eyed with an empty trailer, and spent the next days off by himself quietly wiping his eyes and blowing his nose. The rest of us whispered and worried, wishing we’d gone instead, not accustomed to this sort of behaviour from Dad.

He and I talked about that long-ago October goodbye, one day near the end. Dad couldn’t explain why he was so profoundly moved by her death. He said there was something about the full udder – the quantity of milk Shy’s weak and failing body somehow kept producing. Everything she had she gave to her foal. He grew up on a farm where endings came often. It was not new territory for him, but he acknowledged the immense sadness he felt when she left us.

Reading Ceci Snow’s story in this issue about Princess Louise and her brave and committed caretakers (see page 20) brought back these memories. Nothing about most of our regular lives comes anywhere close to the trauma and horror of living through battle and war, but without a doubt the responsibility of caring for a horse can help us get through things. Sometimes it changes us. Sometimes it gives us reason to live.

I came to understand why I bought that young horse. I had made a promise to myself that I was at a place in my life where I could (and would) make time to really ride again. Something I loved. If I didn’t do it now, I probably never would. Buying Louie was a reminder to myself that life is short. Dad’s most meaningful advice to me in his final year was to not be timid. Maybe that’s the same as getting back in the saddle.