The Disease

“It’s a disease!” claimed my husband (a decidedly non-horse person) at the end of one of those discussions . . . the kind husbands and wives must occasionally have. His words hit home, and all I could answer was “Well, if it is, then I’m infected.” But of course, that wasn’t the end of it. The exchange bothered me and made me wonder if I was, indeed, the victim of some terrible illness, and so I decided to examine the issue. The results were interesting.

A disease often shows symptoms long before it is full blown, and I must admit that I have exhibited symptoms for years. The earliest was seen nearly 50 years ago when I spent a summer or two pretending to be a horse. When other kids ran, I galloped . . . envisioning myself as Trigger, with a flowing white mane and tail, helping the Lone Ranger to catch up with the bad guys. When my friends jogged along casually, I cantered, as only a biped can, with one leg leading and the other shuffling behind in what I thought resembled a horse, but what was surely more reminiscent of a severely injured human. I was also known to neigh and paw on occasions.

Another indicator of impeding disease was my penchant for Westerns. My mom usually dropped my sister and me off at the theatre for the Saturday matinee. My favorites: Audie Murphy starring in a cowboy movie. Now I didn’t love cowboys that much, but I loved the horses they rode. During this time, there was an indication that perhaps I could overcome this lurking ilness. While many children of my generation still played cowboys and Indians, a natural choice for someone with developing horse disease, my friends and I played World War II. I was considered the luckiest kid on the block because my dad allowed me to play with his fully disabled war souvenir, a German machine gun. I suppose that if someone nurtured that war games inclination, I might have avoided horse disease. But there would have been risk for another disease. As luck would have it, my husband has that infection. Gun disease is an illness that makes him drool over fancy rifles and suppress all urges to walk away from a great deal if it involves anything firearms related. He really doesn’t have much room to complain.

But despite the possibility of gun disease as exhibited by playing war in the back yards of our neighborhood, I was still drawn to everything horse. An avid reader even as a child, I sought out books about horses every time I went to the library. I read every Black Stallion book our library stocked. One summer, I started the Black Stallion Fan Club, which really meant sitting at the picnic table with my friends and talking about horses. We ended that summer with a fan club trail ride at a local stable. I also fervently saved my pennies so that my dad would take me on more trail rides.

When the teenage years came along, it looked as if I might have fought off that dreaded infection. I suddenly wanted to be cool . . . to be a hippie . . . to hang around with boys. Yet I remained silently prone to horse disease. I was drawn to pet any horse I came near. I always wanted to go on trail rides when on vacation. As a young adult, and an avid skydiver, I continued to like horses, and I continued go on trail rides when on vacation. The sure sign that horse disease still lurked in the background was my insistence on buying and boarding a horse for my eldest daughter when she became symptomatic. Yet, I managed to suppress illness until my late forties.

I am convinced now that it is a disease because like so many other diseases, I succumbed when my immune system was weakened. There I was, an adult with grown and near grown children, looking for something meaningful and fun to do for myself. I had extra income. I lived in the country on an old farm site. I still watched cowboy movies because I liked the horses. And then one day, horse just lit up in my brain. That’s when it hit me, full blown. I bought a nice little mare and started trail riding. I took lessons to help me be a better rider (which has since turned into “training”). Horse disease tends to overshadow all that I do. It influences my choices, my friends, my time. Even when the indicators suggest that I should move on, I can’t. Stiff and sore in the mornings . . . who cares . . . I still want to ride my horse. Money is a little tight . . . well, I still have to buy hay and grain . . . cut back somewhere else. Have the urge to write . . . write a blog about horses! But please, whatever you do, don’t call the doctor. I revel in my chronic condition. And I don’t want to be cured.

Warm At Last

Warm at last, warm at last, thank God Almighty, it’s warm at last. Okay, you’ll have to excuse my exuberance, but it was a long, cold, wet winter in Illinois—hardly the kind of weather to encourage riding (even for the most die-hard equestrian). Winter started early and hung on well into April. The previous winter was pretty lousy too, but I can’t remember another winter that so consistently restricted my riding to a handful of days each month. It’s no wonder that I’m celebrating the return of warm weather. Of course, riding is the icing on your hay when you have horses on your property, and so regardless of weather, when you care for horses, you go to the barn at least twice a day.

Like so many of my friends, I like the icing and so I headed out through the snow to saddle up, or trekked through the mud to halter my horse, or even bundled up against freezing temperatures, all for that wonderful fix. Sometimes, the ride was so perfect that the adversity was quickly forgotten. At other times, the ride was good, but not great. Occasionally, my horse protested or I was stiff and uncoordinated and the ride was far less than perfect, but it was a ride. Of course, the five or more-rides-a-week schedule was gone with the last of the fall leaves, and some weeks I felt lucky if I rode once. And then, there was that dreadful spell from late December into early February when going to the barn often meant working in the middle of a snowstorm. Riding? That was just a memory, even with my own indoor a few steps away from the barn. In the dead of winter, it’s hard to be an equestrian in northern Illinois.

But at long last, Illinois weather has moderated. There is still more rain than normal, and the wind is always a factor, but the temperature has become tolerable, if not nearly perfect. Over the last few days, I’ve ridden outside under puffy white clouds with light and variable winds, and marvelous seventy degree temperatures—by my standards, the perfect day. My horse is happy to work outside, and seems even happier to work more regularly.

Over the weekend, I hauled to my trainer’s place. Everyone was riding outside…the indoor was just a dark, deserted waste land. It was pure joy to be pushed past my comfort zone (my trainer’s favorite thing to do). And as I found my way to a new comfort zone, I also found that Zen place with Jude. And all of this happened while I was warm and riding in short sleeves. Illinois can have some pretty nice weather, after all.