Happy Birthday

What a gorgeous sunny day for Falconer's 32nd birthday, and after such a long winter. He's done great this winter, but I can't wait to have him on GRASS.

Another Year

Interesting that it is almost a year to the day since I first posted. I almost lost Falconer twice this year to choke. The first time was on the coldest night of last winter, a long, long ordeal. The next time I was out in California in mid April. The torture of being on the wrong side of the country, with calls to and from the person taking care of him, my horse landlady, the vet (who is my oldest friend's brother and is one of the few people who have ever ridden him and loved him), my sister, my best friend Becca. I was sure I was going to lose him. And then Christina talked to her brother the vet and conveyed to me that he said I should definitely put him down in the fall. I returned to a very run down and skinny horse. I found out that he had seizured during treatment, lying on his side in a spitting sleet storm, legs going at a full gallop. At least my sister was there to witness it, with the knowledge that Falconer going out at full gallop would be RIGHT.

But he didn't go out. Spring came early with rich, rich grass. He bounced back and got fat. He moved to Massachusetts with me into a barn where he is in every night, and gets plenty of time to eat without competing (yes, I was remiss last year - not getting that he needed special attention, GUILT!). He has a new younger girlfriend who, even though she snakes her dragon head at him over the stall partition, does not harass him out in the field, and even protects him from my new QH Stud Muffin. My boarder's owner, Meagan, loves him and gets it that he is deserving of all sorts of special attention and privileges. Life is good.

I just wish I could fly with him over the amazing fields that are across the road from my new barn. Just once. Maybe this spring we will go out for a jig, not a jog, a jig. He will be UP.

Yesterday I drove through South Deerfield, where years ago I took him on a formal fox hunt (a drag hunt, no foxes were in danger, only a marathon runner). The sight of those fields, and the memories the evoked, just moved me to tears. I can't imagine ever having the balls to do that with another horse. Christina's horse was a bronco. Fal was just UP, VERY Up. It amazes me the grief that wells up in me when I remember moments like these. I will have other horses in my life, but will I ever have this?

He taught me to drive. I was a complete novice and he was just so educated. We had the best fun - picnic drives with friends, drives through Marge Jone's woods where I pretended that I was in a combined driving event, navigatin obstacles at full speed. The drive to my wedding reception with Geoff fairly drunk beside me, and thunderstorms chasing me - "Shut Up Geoff!", "I Love You Fal!". No wonder the marriage ended and the relationship with Fal thrived. You would watch his feet and at times they were all airborne.

This is at Janet's house. She is a friend who lived down the road from me for years and Falconer just LOVED going down her drive, something about the sandiness through the pine trees.  One of my best memories is taking her on a birthday drive, with a bouquet of flowers and chilled wine and laughter, laughter, laughter.

Then there is the time I dressed us up in Christmas Togs - garland and bells around his neck, bearing gifts to Janet. We were our own Wassail parade through Westminster West. And we were FAST.

Moonlight rides bareback down the quiet roads... We saw a fox one night. The only time he has ever been truly calm. Something about being alone out there.

We had our Competitive Trail stint - training for the Woodstock, Vt Mud Ride. This meant conditioning in the WORST Spring weather - rain, snow, snain, sleet. had to get our miles in. And we get to the ride and the first check point is in the DRIVEWAY of the people from whom I bought Falconer. So he's just bombing up the road, going HOME! Then the halfway checkpoint is at the stable where he lived for years in training. He was just, can we say, forward, the whole ride. I was totally exhausted at the end. Swearing never to do another competitive trail competition. But then we won our division. So we had a repeat the next year. All about winning! But look at him, have you ever seen a more eager horse? Feeling that under you is just indescribable.

Lest you think this was just about athletics.... the consummate parade horse. The best was when we were representing the Windham County Sheriff's Department at the Saxtons River Parade, while under the influence of a certain locally grown "herb". The only thing that ever scared him, EVER, was Morris Dancers. He just went flying backwards at their bells and weird little baton twirly things. Don't blame him!

The best part of THIS day was the breakneck gallop up the dirt roads on the way home. Our own private parade. People on Old Athens Road had to get used to the fact that they would have a horse coming at them at a dead gallop. We could mover over to the side, but we couldn't stop!

Oh Yeah, Baby! This is from the first year that I taught at the Putney School Summer Horse Camp. For some reason we were all into "Priscilla Queen of the Desert" that year so that's what we did our end of year drill team performance to. Fal and I were the leaders, cause he could do all that fancy lateral movement shit, having been tortured with years of dressage lessons.












I wish I had a video of us. I wish I could somehow capture what it felt like to be at a full gallop, cresting a hill and be able to collect him back under me to hand gallop down the hill and then surge up the next rise. I wish I could just one more time experience the thrill of our "slalom run" thru Marty Collin's sugar bush, hair pin turns around trees, ducking under sap lines, and then that final crest of the rise and belly-flipping dip down...

Our relationship is very different now. I exist only to serve him. He does not suffer any burdens (no more trying to stomp my feet as I tighten the girth!). His grain is soaked. He gets his time to eat. He Snoozes in the sun. I wonder if he ever misses the old days.

Some Background - the beginning

Falconer has been in my life for 22 years this Summer. He was 11 when I met him and I wasn't looking for a new horse. I had my childhood pony, Jay, and a kind of psycho Anglo Arab who liked to pitch bucking fits on ledges in the woods. My friend Lyndsey was working on the Morgan farm where Fal had been bred and her employer had sold him with a buy-back option. They went to see him, but he was too small for Jeanne. Lyndsey loved him and told me I had to meet him. I knew several of his relatives who were still on the farm and my sister was writing a book about a girl who was horse-hunting and needed some background info, so it seemed like a fun jaunt to go pretend to be interested in him.

Fal was the weekend driving horse for the husband of a Woodstock Vermont Dressage Queen. Gorgeous even in his obesity, ridden in a double twisted wire snaffle which he HATED. I had a fantastic, if somewhat "forward" ride with him in the lovely, immaculately groomed, dressage ring. But what made me completely fall for him was when he got even more forward with Jessie, jumping in and out over the railing while poor Jessie could not see a thing due to her over sized helmet. Ahh... the power of sibling rivalry! I was in love. You can read about this from her point of view in "A Horse Like Barney", by Jessie Haas. The book did happen, and it had a dedication to Fal.

Unbelievably, these people who did not know me at all let me buy him over the course of the year. I took him to Austin Farm (where he was born and lived until he was 4) for a week's trial first, but the decision was made the first afternoon when I went to visit with him in his stall and he came over to me, hooked his head over my shoulder, and pulled me into his chest in a "hug". I now know him to not be a physically affectionate horse and this moment seems even more powerful in retrospect than it did at the time. He was mine, or I was his.

I called the woman who I was leasing the Anglo Arab from and told her that I felt like I really didn't have time for him (which was true cause he scared the shit out of me), and found out that she had really been wanting "Jim" back. Fal came home and the very first night ran through the fence and vanished to gallop up and down the road, much to my dismay and hysteria, but he came home. I soon found myself riding twice a day and training him to run away with me at a gallop instead of a driving horse road trot.

That's when my wings first started to sprout. I had grown up with this crazy and beautiful little Welsh Pony, and had had a couple of horses as an adult but often found myself nervous. On Falconer I knew no fear, even in the beginning. It was just right.

More to follow. There's more background than I thought.

Blast from the past

I was asked to feed horses at my old barn this weekend. The first wave of sadness hit me last night. A realization of how much time I spent in that barn and how many horses passed through my life while I was there. Even the familiar issue of the doors being frozen shut was nostalgic.

This morning it was magnified a hundredfold for some reason. It's driving up that road that I flew over countless times on Fal. Made worse by being a passenger, so I could totally lose myself in the memory of negotiating turns and holding him back to watch for traffic coming down the hill. That most awesome feeling ever of letting loose all that power and riding the surge. Dropping the reins on his neck as we galloped the long straight stretch, arms out wide and yelling at the top of my lungs

I do not think I will ever trust a horse again to that extent and I miss the wildness and craziness and freedom and just pure kickass fun. My goal for this year is to bring some of that back into my life.