Food for the Soul

As I stood with the cold wind in my face and the sun across my shoulders I pondered how I had come to be standing in a muddy early spring pasture eyeing a weedy, orange yearling filly with a pitiful wisp of a tail. I had traveled many well-swept barn aisles and patted many glossy and well-muscled shoulders, but had yet to lock eyes with my beloved.

I was shopping for my perfect horse. I had conjured images of a lovely smooth-bodied gelding. Bay would be nice, with a beautifully long glossy tail. I had traveled that day to look at a well-bred thoroughbred stallion and his superior progeny. On my drive I had envisioned these youngsters as the things that dreams are made of, they would be galloping across a sunlit green pasture, nostrils flared, their long silky hand-picked tails sailing like ribbons out behind them.

A cold blast pummeled me as the orange filly regarded me coolly before turning back to her hay rack. I snapped a photo of her with disdain and dismissed this trip from my mind.

A few months later I was shuffling through the pile that inevitably gathers on my desk. The photo of the filly slipped from the pile and floated to the floor. I propped it up on my desk and left it there. For a few weeks I warily eyed it. One day I picked it up and examined the close coupled back and the long cannon bones, the clean throat latch and the bright calm eyes and I wondered.

When a horse person begins to wonder, things begin to happen. Several years later I found myself trotting from the ring on my show horse. She was not a gelding, she was not a bay and my relationship with her tail was tenuous at best but we did have some blue ribbons and memories of very humbling show ring experiences as well. Cricket’s trainer was often quoted as saying: “When she’s good, she’s very, very good and when she’s bad, she’s awful.”

It was a cold and icy day. A newcomer to the paddock challenged Cricket’s previously established right to come in first. The studs on her steel shoes left deep gouges in the glittery ice as she fell, scrambled and fell again.

The stack of papers on my desk deepened with bills over the weeks that followed the accident. The parking spot reserved for the veterinarian was occupied almost daily. I had composited a veritable black book of medical professionals to treat my damaged horseflesh. I restlessly considered other horses; sound horses, as weekends of shows came and passed without us.

Summer turned to fall and one day I walked into Cricket’s stall. Somehow she had managed to deposit manure through the window’s bars and onto the sill; I considered her obvious talents. I weighed the current condition of my show horse. Cricket had somehow lost weight in spite of her inactivity. Her muscles were soft and unapparent, her coat and eyes were dull. She did not even acknowledge my presence. She slowly turned to me that day and her apathetic gaze fell upon mine. At that very moment, I became a better person.

I realized that I had a responsibility to restore Cricket to what she had been. Not the show horse I had honed her into, but the vibrant and strong soul that she had been on the inside, where what people wished her to be could not affect what she was.

I became inspired by a classic children’s book that I was reading to my daughter at the time. “The Secret Garden” is the story of a young girl that disregards the labels attached to a “delicate” and “sickly” young boy as he waits to die. The girl discards his medicines and wheels the boy from his dark miserable room into the garden. There his soul is nurtured by the songs of birds and the feel of the grass on his bare feet and the joy of companionship. The sun dappled through the tree branches and rested on him and he was healed.

”The Secret Garden” became my medical journal. I discontinued Cricket’s traditional medical treatments. Instead, I massaged her daily with therapeutic oils and sewed magnets into her stable sheet. I focused the power of my intent and I intended that this horse be restored.

Each day we would walk outside into the sun or the rain and wander for hours, stopping often to graze. Occasionally Cricket would pause as she stared off at whatever it is that horses see on the horizon that is beyond our recognition. I studied her wrench-shaped blaze as it thinned to a trickle and trailed off down the side of her muzzle and appeared to drip from her chin. I knew each hair of the silly little cowlick on her neck and that Cricket’s tail, in spite of my careful wrapping and bottles of conditioners steadfastly had refused to grow more than a few inches past the point of her hock. I knew each contour of her body and her soul.

We walked companionably each day that fall. The songs of the birds and the richness of the grass nurtured her. The sun dappled through the tree branches and fell upon her and she was healed.

I have moved Cricket to a barn just 10 minutes from my home and I am there almost daily. Sometimes I just sit in the frame of her open stall door and she anoints my head with alfalfa leaves. A ragged copy of “Lessons with Lendon” rests upon a ledge in the indoor arena; we have been working on dressage. Cricket seems to enjoy the interesting work and I am grasping the properties of a forward halt. We plan to do a few schooling shows this spring and shake them up a bit in the first level classes. I know we will never garner high marks in the gaits category but the beauty of dressage is that you don’t really have to compete with the other riders in your division. You compete with yourself and a good ride is its own reward.

Cricket and I now have a relationship that supersedes the highs and lows of the show world. I realize that I had so much invested financially, physically and emotionally in those 10 minutes in the ring that I couldn’t take joy in anything beyond the quality of our performance and the numbers on the judges' card. Other show horses may come and go for me, but Cricket will always be my orange filly. She will always have a good barn to live in, nice warm blankets in the winter and fly spray in the summer. We will continue to ride together and work on achieving our own goals in our own way, and when she is too old to ride I will take her for long walks and wonder what she sees when she pauses to stare off into the distance.

I will feed her hay and she will feed my soul.

Author

Food for the Soul
By Brenda Thoma

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