Running in Tall Heels

Saturday afternoon and I have a few hours at best to groom the weather from 4 horses. Wind twists their hair into ropes tight and thick enough to anchor ships, wind or witch knots they're called. It's clear and cold, our first true winter day after 50F of must and matted leaves. I start with Pete, a pig to be sure. He and Bella have been turned out together all week and have become an average color of grey-brown. Pete's had a grand time of rolling, smashing grime into his wind knots, black dreadlocks. Thanks buddy, I love picking through filthy, detangler greased ropes with freezing fingers. I begin by pulling his blanket and rubbing his coat down, freeing his legs, belly, face, and neck from mats of dirt. Then, I start in on what Pete's mane a week ago. I sigh, looking around at the other 3 horses I know I'll never get to today, eyeing Cinderella's set of witch woven braids and wondering if another week will leave them much worse.

Wind knots really are spun together like ropes. Soaked in detangler, you can slowly pull them apart with you fingers, unwinding and untangling. It's a tedious task but a long mane takes years to grow. I keep the Haflinger's double-coated hair braided during the winter or I pay for my lack of attention by performing this sticky, grimy ritual.

Untwisting Pete's first rope goes as expected, pulling strand under strand until the bunch unravels and I rake a brush through the lengths. Shifting my weight in preparation for concentrating on the next knot reminds me of how cold feet become standing still on frozen ground. I sigh again, Pete rolling his eyes at my white breath floating past. The next is far more stubborn and caked with ground in mud. I'm not sure I can get this one out but past experience says they look worse than they really are. At some point, I pause and look around, noticing our neighbor leaning on the far fence rail watching, I don't know for how long. They also have horses and even those who don't notice that many of our large guests come and go over time. I figure he's wondering about the dainty, black horse and the pile of rounds and dieing needles that was recently a Frasier Fir. My husband is moving about behind me, pulling branches deemed too small to be useful as firewood into a burn pile. I wave our neighbor.

Our neighbor, we'll call him Michael, and his wife life in an equally odd house next door to us with a driveway in between. They have a younger teenage son and two horses, a mare-ish deep dun Spanish Mustang and a tall, young black and white Paint. Michael and his son enjoy Scouts together and Michael rides mounted SCA events, among others. They prefer to keep their horses barefoot, something I generally support and prefer but have not always been able to manage in a practical sense. I don't feel strongly enough about the benefits to the exclusion of alternatives, like say, horse shoes, so I often resort to steel when bare feet aren't enough. Michael knows how to keep his own horses trimmed, saving great hassle and expensive I am sure, avoiding the every 6 to 9 week horse foot ritual, finished when I hand a well-earned check over to our Farrier.

Michael likes Pete, petting his neck gentle, blowing softly into his nose in horse greeting. I tell the story of Pete and the Fir tree, one starting a new life with us, the other at the end, decaying under wavy bunches of moss and splotchy lichen. We arrange with my husband to have Michael's son come over and help split the monstrous rounds into sections manageable with the hydraulic splitter I've promised to buy.

I ramble on and make my way back to Pete's life to date. Michael looks him over, smoothing his hands over joints and coat until Pete's feet bring him pause. There is something for all of us to dislike or despise about the people in Pete's story. For my sister, it was knowing he had never been a horse, watching him suck sweet fall leaves into his mouth for the first time made her cry. For me, it's the terrible lack of of interest or understanding regarding the behavior of young mammals that resulted in Pete being beaten. A day came when my sister watched him hide in the corner of his stall and shake in fear, having given way the entirety of even his 12' x 12' universe to avoid pain when a human opened his stall door. Michael said little while attending to my monologue, untwisting wind knots, until he started handling Pete's feet.

Michael stood up abruptly and asked if he could come trim Pete's feet in the morning, and his son would come with splitting maul to earn funds for a trip he wanted to take with classmates later in the school year. Pete had shoes on in front, why I did not know since he clearly would not need protection from rough ground in a stall. I acknowledged that his feet were indeed long and I was concerned about that along with their odd shape, happy to have the help shortening them with our farrier scheduled still more than a week out. Michael's intensity an insistence left me feeling a little uncomfortable but I have never known our neighbors to be anything less than good, kind people and I was grateful for the help.

I watched Michael turn down our driveway toward my husband to make arrangements for the rounds, the winter sun slanting at a shallow angle with the ground. My hands were stiff, the witches work and Pete's mud-rolling got the better of me, I was loosing light and the temperature was dropping by the minute. I crossed the yard with a stiff walk, returning to an anxious Pete tied to the fence. I raked the knots as close to the ends of his hair as I could and unceremoniously cut them free, leaving a chunk of mane gone. He'd given up his flag of tail trailing behind in that imagined show that would never come. Now, it'd also take until next year for him to grow back the hack I'd take from his mane. I rebraided him and tied them off with un-matching, white Haflinger rubber bands. "Well Mister," I thought, "that's what you get for all that rolling." Pete tossed his head, trying to free himself from the new braids.

The next morning, Michael and his son arrived promptly as planned. I dressed in layers awaiting the cold morning air. I read once that grooming a horse burns as many calories as a brisk tennis match. I have no idea if this is true but I can say that, generally speaking, equestrian activities tend to keep you warmed up after the first few minutes, unless you're holding horses for the vet or farrier. During those times, the cold soaks up through the soles of your boots and into your toes no matter how fancy the socks are. The chill creeps up your legs and into all your bones. It's hard to keep warm, standing still for hours at a time in the Pacific NW, outside of July through September, and even then, only if it isn't raining.

Michael had arrived with his gear and was ready to get to work. Pete was not at all comfortable having a stranger and a man handle his feet. Michael had prepared by eating sweet-smelling oatmeal for breakfast for Pete to notice when exchanging breath in greeting. They walked together while Michael stroked Pete's rumpled and dusty coat on his neck, speaking softly to the horse all the while. Pete settled but was still not happy about allowing his feet to be handled. All together, it took us 3 hours or so to get through trimming all four feet. Pete tried nipping, leaning, pulling, hopping, and finally rearing but he was never able to escape the inevitable clutch that trapped his foot. And yet, no one hit him. At first, he seemed to anticipate being hit, and then he tried to see if he could get us to. Later, the fear left him and then it was about control of his body and his space. Pete did not win and still, he had not been hurt. He had many tricks but only so much fight in him. Standing in a stall for 6 years did little to build strength and athleticism, especially while standing on three legs.

First, Pete's front shoes came off, one at a time. Then, Michael cut away excess hoof carefully until we could see the anatomy of what has going on underneath. As Michael had been unpacking his tools and sharpening his trimming knife, he was explaining what he had seen in Pete's feet the day before that had brought him back on a Sunday morning in the cold to trim feet for his neighbor's horse. Pete's feet were indeed long, but they were also very upright. The angles were such that all of the outside of his hoof was nearly straight up and down, as much so as a hoof can really be. The angle of the hoof should support the cannon bone (or pedal bone, used to move the hoof and shaped much like a small hoof inside the tough fingernail-like exterior) parallel to the ground. The tissue around the cannon bone is delicate and requires blood-flow to keep alive. Without that, the tissue and bone die quickly causing the cannon bone to eventually fall through the sole of the hoof, a disease referred to as, "founder" or laminitis. And, so the saying goes, if you loose the hoof, you loose the horse and you do. Pete's feet were so straight upright and his heels so tall that extreme pressure was being applied to his toes, crushing that delicate tissue and undoubtedly causing pain, if Pete could still feel his toes at all. Michael was anxious to bring relief to Pete and as soon as possible. Michael's uncomfortably strong drive to return as soon as he could and the intensity he had radiated to the point of uncomfortable for me the day before was now understandable. The part of Pete's story Michael instantly came to hate was his feet and his mood in this respect did not improve as we progressed through the history of Pete's neglect or, perhaps, the ignorance of his people who let him down.

Michael's trimming revealed a hoof with infectious, bruise-colored purple infection in large oblong welts around each nail hole caused by poor overall health, standing in a stall without air or movement or unsanitary conditions or some combination of factors. The external layer of his hoof wall was separated from the sole of his hoof, the initiation of laminitis. Where the hoof was still connected layers below the initial material, a wide stripe of stretched hoof wall was present, also a visible indicator of a hoof beginning to fail. Pete is young and he is exactly where he needs to be, turned out on uneven, soft ground with other horses and a quality diet. Michael was able to remove a good portion of the over-grown hoof and restore the exterior angles to the extent that the laminitis process would be less likely to continue. Taking his hoof back to a normal position in one go would have been very hard on Pete's legs and feet. With another 10 days or so before our farrier arrived, Pete should have the time he needed to recover and then go through the entire process again to bring him back to a healthy stance. Pete should be able to recover and maybe even fully after another two or three trimmings. If he had continued as he had, he may have been irretrievably lame in the same amount of time.

I asked Michael if there was a deliberate reason someone might choose to have a horses feet trimmed in that way. He had seen this done only with gaited horses such as Tennessee Walkers. The tall heels would throw the horse forward and require greater lift in the front legs to recover balance in their forward movement, exaggerating the appearance of their gait. Pete was from a family of Arabians expected to move in such an extreme way, a random genetic trait that Pete was not born with no matter what names appeared in his pedigree. His feet were trimmed for a show career he would never have. Pete was a cull but no one wanted to believe it and they carried on as though it was not true. Pete is a lovely horse who will make a nice mount for a smaller adult or young rider. He has what dressage riders like to see but he does not have the elastic, tall movement that can only be built of genetics, years of conditioning and training, or short-cuts to create the look of what the horse does not have naturally. The idea that someone had, out of ignorance or intent, created the shape of Pete's feet for him to flounder in tall heels, crept like the cold from the frozen turf into Michael. It seemed as though I could feel him grind his teeth from 3 ft away.

I watch Pete run across the turn-out pasture where I left everyone for the weekend while the rain has left us. Tomorrow, our farrier arrives and I will stand in the cold holding horses for hours and hope I make it to work in time for our staff meeting. There is something for all of us to hate about Pete's past but there is also something for each of us to love about his future, even if it is only watch enjoy being a horse for a while. The horses are happy to be out in the winter sun like the rest of us and Cinderella runs bucking across the pasture, shaggy like a golden yak. Pete slows and circles to look at me with his tail held high in his new winter blanket, nostrils flared and snorting into the air, breath like a frozen dragon.