Lame

Well, the blog has been slow to start in 2014 because there’s not much to write about when your horse is lame. That’s right – Ransom is taking an extended Christmas vacation. After a particularly frisky day in turnout, he’s been lame in his right hind leg. I don’t realize how much I take having a healthy horse for granted until he’s not sound.

My first course of action, as always, was to wait and see. With no apparent heat, swelling, or injury to his lower leg, I could only assume that his injury was in his hip or stifle. The way he hiked up his hip and short strided seemed to confirm that. However, after three weeks with no change, I took advantage of the chiropractor’s scheduled barn visit.

“He has a medial fixation of the right stifle and he’s out in his left hip,” she said as she adjusted him.

Great! That will be the answer and the fix. Alas, the following week he was no better. Now, we’re hovering in the rest-and-anti-inflammatory stage while we wait for the next vet visit.

Got Lucky

Soon I will be submitting a story I wrote about Ransom to an anthology of horse stories. It’s about my childhood dreams of having my own horse and how Ransom fulfilled them. As I wrote about the experience of buying my first horse, I realized that on the surface, it looks like I did a lot of things wrong.

Here’s my confession: I bought the one and only horse I went to look at. I didn’t ride him. I didn’t vet check him. One of my horse friends says, “You got lucky he worked out.” In my defense: I knew what I wanted. He was barely broke and there was no riding area. I wasn’t buying an expensive performance horse.

Still, I can see how it would look foolish and risky to others. At the time it was a leap for me too. But I wasn’t a novice. And I just knew.

I did the same thing with each car I’ve purchased. I decided on a make/model based on consumer reliability ratings, researched the value, and then watched Craigslist everyday – waiting for the right deal. That usually took a couple months. But when the right one showed up, I was ready to seize it.

The story doesn’t always reflect how much planning I put into big decisions, especially when finances are involved.  Buying the first thing you see sounds spur of the moment. Ransom was anything but. I had a checklist: breed, age, training, disposition, location, and price. It took me a week to even convince myself to go see him. During that time I arranged for the company of a knowledgeable friend, a trailer if I needed one, and took a hard look at my finances to see if this was feasible long term.

Perhaps my desire to do it right the first time is driven by a fear of failure. Or maybe it’s just to save the hassle of the search process. Either way, I did get lucky.

The Instigator

I pulled my scarf tighter around my neck as Ransom walked beside me, puffing frosty breaths into the frozen morning. He’d been cooped up in his stall over the weekend and his eyes gleamed with the anticipation of joining the herd of geldings I had turned out together in the field. As I closed the gate and buckled my now empty halter on the fence, “the boys” went through their ritual greeting – a sniff and a squeal.

Ransom pranced around trying to get a reaction, like a mischievous child who misbehaves to get attention. He tossed his head and stuck his tail straight up in the air. Play with me! But the older horses weren’t interested in the antics of this obnoxious youngster. He pushed his way through the group, nipping playfully at Noble’s belly.

Noble ignored him.

Nip, nip, nip.

Noble pinned his ears, irritated.

Nip, nip, nip.

Finally, Noble lifted a hind leg, gave Ransom the tail, and walked away. Undeterred, Ransom took off after him, bucking with exuberance. Zone the paint lifted his head to watch him frolic past, then went back to scouring the hard ground for something to eat.

With no playmates willing to tear around the field or engage in mock battle, Ransom eventually settled into the boring, mature task of grazing. For now.

Sunbathing

Windy the miniature horse trotted alongside me as I led her back to her paddock, which was adjacent to the large field where I turned Ransom out during the day. He often socialized with the pint-sized equines at the corner gate. He had hung a friendly face over the fence when I came to get Windy out, but now he lay in the dirt – a prone hunk of spots.

There is something disconcerting about a horse flat-out on the ground, bulging disproportionately in that unnatural position. My first reaction was to watch for the rise and fall of Ransom’s giant belly. As usual, he was just napping. Perhaps I’d worn him out with our morning ride.

After putting Windy away, I climbed through the fence to sit on the bars and watch him. He rolled up to look at me as I approached, but soon returned to his dusty bed. The warm noon sun cast my shadow over his legs, which stretched out so I could see the bottom of his hooves. As we soaked in the sun together, I marveled at the ingenuity of whoever first thought of using water as a metaphor for light. I could picture liquid light streaming around us. It made me feel sleepy, too.

My stomach growled, reminding me that I hadn’t eaten lunch yet and shaking me from my sun-drenched stupor. I inched out of the rails and snuck away, leaving Ransom to his sunbathing.

Halloween Horse

I haven’t dressed up for Halloween in years. Until now. Yesterday Ransom and I participated in my barn’s costume parade as “paintballers,” despite the fact that I’ve never actually played paintball. I had plenty of opportunities to at camp, but I had no desire to share in the glory of displaying one’s welts. Still, how could I resist the clever play on spots?

First up was a trip to the fabric store to make camouflage leg wraps for Ransom. Being the penny pincher I am, I pulled out the old sewing machine and made them myself. I sewed a lot when I was a kid, but it’s been a while since the days of making blankets for my model horses.

The clear vinyl mask was a bit trickier. I had a brand new package of black bias tape for the edging – except it was my grandmother’s and about 50 years old. It practically disintegrated as I worked with it.

The son of a friend of mine happened to have gear I could borrow (a stroke of luck – somehow I don’t think a watergun or chemistry goggles would have had quite the same effect!). Ransom flinched at first as I applied the sticky paint, but took it like a gentleman.

We faced worthy competition as we paraded around the arena together with a gothic sorceress, princess ballerina, rodeo queen gone bad, hula dancer, horse fly, Charles impersonator, and dark angel. Ransom observed the pink tutu and jiggling halo with curious interest. In the end we prevailed, taking home the award for “Most Creative” costume.

Showtime

It’d been four years since my last horse show, and for the first time, Ransom and I ventured into the discipline of cowboy dressage.

Our show weekend started with hat shopping on Friday. For as many years as I’ve ridden, and for as much time as I’ve spent riding Western, I’ve never owned a cowboy hat. On Saturday, I test rode my new head apparel and practiced my patterns for a final time. Ransom submitted to the spa afterwards, emerging clean, soft, and sweet-smelling. I don’t think about how big his blanket pattern is until I have to wash all that white!

We arrived at the show grounds at the crack of dawn Sunday. The horses finished breakfast while Jamie and I scouted the area. The arena lay nestled in the sequoias of the regional park. This was the perfect environment for Ransom’s first show – small and relaxed with only a few friendly competitors. Despite the low-key atmosphere, the morning brought a host of my insecurities to the surface. For starters, I’m a recovering perfectionist. Because of previous successes, I felt burdened by the pressure of higher expectations. My self-esteem is too dependent on comparing myself to others, and the whole point of a horse show is judging and critique. Not to mention how awkward it is to be compared to friends.

Ransom, fortunately, did not add to my nerves. Though he was a bit of a looky-lou, he was calm and collected, taking everything in stride. We rode our two tests and I appreciated his honesty – he was the same horse there that he was at the barn. For that I was proud of him. We came home with a lot to work on, but I could say the show was a success. Didn’t hurt to have a red ribbon, either.

The Science of Spots

One of the things I love about Ransom, and appaloosas in general, is the fascinating variation in coat patterns. I’m a bit of a nerd when it comes to genetics; that was one of my favorite classes in college. I did my final project on lethal white syndrome in paint horses with overo patterning. These days, I let others do the heavy science for me, and I just read up on their research. My favorite blog on the subject is Lesli Kathman’s The Equine Tapestry.

Ransom displays every classic Appaloosa characteristic: mottled skin, striped hooves, a sparse mane and tail, and the white ring around the eye known as the sclera.  The gene responsible for these, the leopard complex (lp), also modifies his base color (bay) to produce a varnish roan coloring. Ransom is heterozygous for leopard complex (one copy = spots), and the lp gene interacts with a major pattern gene (PATN2) to create his blanket pattern. At least that's the abbreviated version. There are a host of other pattern genes which alter the pattern in subtle ways, all to create one perfect phenotype.