Haltered, he turned with difficulty in response to light tugs on the lead rope. He had wedged himself in the stall sideways, trying--as he had become accustomed to do--to pin Rosie in the back near the manger. Dante was a horse with attachment issues, and Rosie his current object of attachment. He fairly panicked when she was out of his sight, and he could rest assured that wouldn't happen if he blocked her exit from the stall.
But this time, he was blocking his own exit. His legs--the fronts rigid from ringbone and the hinds limp from stretched ligaments--were failing him. Standing was painful, and he shifted from one hind leg to the other, allowing his now torqued front feet to absorb most of his weight. Walking had become slow and awkward since his last shoeing a week earlier, and turning was now an ordeal. You could almost see his walnut-sized brain using every available synapse to plan which feet he should move where, and in what order. By the time he was facing me, he seemed too tired to take the first steps forward. Or in too much pain.
The vet was waiting at the bottom of the hill, near the house. We had only to get him down the incline, which he hadn't tried since walking down to see the farrier the week before. His ligaments had been weakening for over two years now, and we had kept him going on a cox-2 inhibitor and stable rest for the greater part of those two years. He had been happy, as had Rose, the old mare we got to replace the other old mare we had gotten to keep him company a few years after he had lost his first old mare, Megan. He didn't lose his mares easily. He cried for weeks when Megan died. When I say cried, I mean whinnied in his childlike, high-pitched way, day after day, for hours at a time. And then he whinnied back at the echo of his whinny from across the canyon. When he finally gave up whinnying, he seemed more than resigned; he seemed depressed. I spent a lot of time with him back then, sitting on his back and reading a book as he wandered around the property eating grass, taking him for walks and letting him follow me back when I returned to the house, going on short trail rides until he had one of his crazy spells, then either letting him go to run back on his own, or facing the challenge of riding a four-legged pogo stick along the narrow trails to the house.
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| Dante and Megan |
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| Grazing at the pond |
His ringbone started causing problems for him around the time we bought Jessie--a thin but well-trained old mare--to be his stablemate and my stable steed. It turned out she had some eating problems as well as Pigeon Fever, and after six months we had to have her put down because of severe, painful colic and twisted intestines, probably caused by hard, calcified formations in the intestines called mesoliths. Dante was once again in emotional agony, and called out for her for days. By a stroke of good connections, we were able to replace her with another old mare--this time a stocky, healthy quarter horse--owned by the farrier who shoed the horses owned by the man who had buried both Jessie and Megan. Dante had only about a week to grieve. When I rode Rose up the driveway bareback, with only a halter and braided cotton rope to guide her, Dante whinnied an elated greeting and was happily partnered for his remaining five years. But during that time, perhaps from excitedly running up and down the pasture hill after hale and hardy Rosie, the ligaments in his hind legs started loosening up until his fetlocks sank almost to the ground as he walked, then as he stood. But still, he was happy to be with Rose, and seemed content to be our aging colt, our over-sized puppy, our oppositional, distracted, unpredictable, developmentally challenged, yet endearing horse.
It was twenty-one years to the day since we had bought him, then a spunky 2 1/2 year old gelding. He never lost his spirit or his personality.
On the way down the driveway from the stable to the waiting vet, he moved carefully, stopping every second step or so. I had insisted on bringing Rose down with him, because he was becoming nervous as soon as we had them both haltered up and the vet had come up to administer Rose's yearly shots. He wouldn't take his eyes off her, and as Marc urged him to descend, he nervously glanced back to make sure Rose was with him. She was only behind him by a neck, and their bodies were almost touching. Still, he stopped and waited until he could see her. Then, as I held her back slightly to let him negotiate the final decline and turn, he whinnied, turned his head, and waited. I pulled her ahead a little, and he picked up his pace slightly, not quite andante, to follow.
As soon as he was sedated, his head drooping almost to the ground yet managing to keep his balance, I walked Rose slowly away to take her back up the hill. He seemed not to notice, yet Marc says he could tell he was trying to follow her with his eyes, turning his head slightly in her direction. Dante worried about losing her. He had no way of knowing he was losing himself.
It was only later in the evening that Rose whinnied--once, then again--to see if he would answer. She had heard Marc walking on the gravel, and thought perhaps Dante had returned from wherever he had gone. Unlike Dante, Rose has probably seen it all. Horses who don't come back, her own foals disappearing, perhaps even sniffing the reality of death. She didn't seem to sniff or cry for Dante, and called for him only once more, during the night. He had gone nowhere; was lying on the gravel below her, outside her line of sight, waiting for a truck to pick him up and take him away.
Rose seems to have learned to accept whatever fate the humans dealt her. Dante always had something else in mind--he was a horse of his own making, self-willed and full of folly. We did our best to make him ours, and he did his best to set his own terms.
"Come on Dante," we'd cajole.
"Commandante," was what he heard.
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| Dante and Rose |
