Day of the Exploding Horses

By the title, I don't mean flatulence. Though, if you're every around a horse with that issue, duck, because the concussion might deafen you and/or cause brain damage.

No, this morning I was lulled into that peaceful, dreamy state I sometimes get on Sundays, just because of the quiet at the track. You see, the Police played a concert at Churchill Downs last night, so the track itself was closed for training yesterday and today. That meant no one was riding horses up to the track, there was no hollering back and forth of "good mornings" between riders and barn workers, there was no yelling jokes over the roar of the fans running in the barns to help keep the heat (and bugs) away. Just the sort of morning that can be pretty rare at a racetrack, unless it's closing for the winter. A nice, quiet day.

Until we started walking horses. Since they couldn't go to the track, each of our Thoroughbreds was walked around the shedrow - doing that gets a little leg stretching in them, just a bit of exercise while the grooms clean up the stalls and prepare them for the rest of the day.

I never know why this happens but, occassionally, it seems like more horses than normal act up - it's like monkey see, monkey do, or quite possibly a collective reaction to being pent up for a couple of days.

Whatever the reason, there was an adventure or two. I gotta tell you about Donkey. That's our nickname for Kettle Hill, a four year son of Pleasent Tap who is huge, sweet and not so bright, I'm afraid. Or, rather, he's afraid - he has a pretty high instinct for self preservation which means, essentially, that if a situation worries him, he generally thinks it's a good idea to leave, and leave quickly, without a whole lot of regard for who's around him or who wishes he would stay where he is.

To give you an idea of the scope of this animal, Donkey is probably somewhere around 18 hands, a hand being 4 inches, 18 of them being about six feet, but that's six feet from the ground to the base of Donkey's whithers or, more or less, his neck. There's a lot more of Donkey above that, though there's no so much of Donkey between his ears.

So, I'm holding Donkey for his bath today and he has this device called a Stabilizer on - a Stabilizer is this wonderful invention - it's a sort of pully-type deal that wraps behind the horse's ears and then runs down the face into the mouth, where it sits between the gums and the teeth. I'm talking to a groom from the barn across from ours about what a Stabilizer does, how it puts pressure on this gland behind the ears and releases endorphins (or other happiness chemicals) and helps keep the horse calm.

We're finishing up the bath and I'm finishing up my explanation, walking Donkey away and back into the barn when Donkey explodes, just moves as fast as he can, backing up, backing up. Now, the first rule when a horse does this is not to pull on them - you let them go back a little and then they stop, you pause, let them get their bearings and then you can start walking again. Unless of course your name is Donkey. Back he goes, stop, no pulling, wait, but back he goes, and on and on until we've gone probably 150 feet. Don't pull, right?, but that's kind of hard not to do when you've more or less run out of lead to hold on to.

Eventually, only through some kindness on the part of God or some rational part of Donkey's psyche (doubtful), he did stop, calm down and I was able to walk him around the barn in peace (after my heart slowed).

Every time this happens (which, thankfully, really isn't very often), I try to puzzle out why. And, you can't. Some things with horses just are. Frustrating, I guess, but you learn to accept the animals and the situations for what they are.

I even asked a good friend of mine this morning if there's anything you can do to calm them down more quickly and he said, "Find a wall for them to bump into". Sigh.

Similar deal with our sweet baby two year old grey filly, Lenawee. Calm, calm, especially for a "baby", as we call two year old horses. Today, though, we needed to squeal and buck a couple of times during our walk.

Same deal with Deep Canyon, a gorgeous black recently gelded horse who's one of my all time favorites. Even he was throwing his head up in the air and jumping about.

The best of the bunch - None other than Street, who is maybe the best walker I've ever had - he doesn't spook, doesn't act up, doesn't mess around, just walks. It's like he knows motion is a good thing for a horse, it's what they do.

I think of Jane Smiley's novel "Horse Heaven" a lot when I think about Street or am around him. In the book, there's a horse who ends up going on to win one of Europe's most prestigious races, Le Prix de L'Arc de Triomphe. There's a great scene in which Smiley writes that this horse has a kind of genius, in that he is obsessive about one particular thing and he does that one thing better than any other horse. The horse likes being in a horse trailer travelling around, he's doing a thing he enjoys, a thing he thrives on.

The thing is motion - horses depend on it, they live because of it, they love it and, some of them, like Smiley's animal character and Street, have made some kind of connection between motion and being the fastest and the best. And so, for the gifted ones, maybe motion in any kind of form makes them happy.