Monday, August 3, 2009

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We've moved and we're making a fresh start at our new location! Be sure to bookmark: http://www.theequineexpert.blogspot.com/
See you there!

Monday, March 9, 2009

Tugboat

I went to watch Ceara ride Tugboat in a dressage show yesterday. I have never seen him look so happy, more fit, more relaxed or so loved in his life. He is one lucky pony! And to think on top of that he will someday be a movie star!!!!

After I get the 35mm film developed I will upload a ton more photos, these are what I had on the digital.

One of the things I wanted to point out, which you will be able to see on the other photos to come, is that Ceara and her trainer, Carolyn, have worked very hard on getting Tugboat to be able to let his neck go long and low in a free walk across the diagonal. Tugs has such a muscled neck, I remember when Paige rode him at Jr. Young Riders and there was NO free walk what so ever! Ceara is a dedicated equestrian and has done a fabulous job with him.



Like I said, what a lucky pony!



Well deserved smiles after their first test, which brought them a first place! Congratulations Ceara and Tugboat!!!!

Saturday, March 7, 2009

Horse Girls Part II

Today I went to a friend's baby shower. This is a friend whom I have known for about 15 years, since she was a little teenager running around the barn where I got back into the horse business. My friend who I make my trips to Wyoming with, whose mother was my mentor when I went to manage CHC. I used to sit in the barn office in the evenings and talk to her while she did her homework and my younger son, James, was learning to post on Chocolate Chip. Now she is getting ready to have a baby of her own ~ a boy.

Kate runs a farm like I did when I had Parker, my first son. I gave her the same gift someone gave me which allowed me to continue to work in the barn while Parker was snuggled up right against my chest in his carrier.

Most of the people at the shower were "barn people." Horse girls, all of us. Some of us in our 70's and still riding (Tammy's sister Jackie, for one). Nany of us middle age, not riding as much as we used to if at all. Then there were the younger girls who wear ankle bracelets and dangly earrings and flip their hair the way horse girls do. One of them, an adorable teenager named Michaela, was a toddler when I first met her. She ran around the barn after her mother in her diapers and boots, and rode an old pony named Watergate. I was stunned to realize she was who she was because in my mind, she should only be about 10 years old. She's close to graduating from high school now, I guess.

I realized something while I was there. The job I have now, at the florist, I try to create bonding outings or get togethers with the girls who work for me. It is important to a team, I think. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. But when I managed the horse farms, I didn't have to create anything. I never had to worry about one of the girls getting sassy with me or copping an attitude when I asked them to do something. So completely different. But the thing is, the common bond we all share is that we are all horse girls. We are there because we want to be there, not because we have to be there.

It is all the same, I can see. It hasn't changed. Horse girls are horse girls are horse girls. Tomorrow I will write about one of my ancesters who read Black Beauty, then saw a horse being mistreated and stood up for the horse in court. That was back in the 1800's, so apparently horse girls were the same back then.

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

The Magic Shirt

This may look like an ordinary, run of the mill red polo shirt to someone else, but this shirt has magic powers for me. Horse people tend to have superstitions with clothes, or tack, or colors, and this is mine.

This is my writing shirt, and amazing things happen when I put it on. It was my father's shirt, and I get some of my best writing done when I wear it. It's like magic ~ I sit down at the computer and the words just flow from my heart and soul and spill out onto the paper looking like a seasoned writer's polished novel. I am so happy with everything that I write when I wear it, I almost feel like I am testing the Gods of writing when I don't.

It's my lucky shirt, my creative muse, my happy place and comfort food all rolled up into one. I think I'll wear it to the Princeton conference the end of this month.See how the editors I will meet like it.

Monday, March 2, 2009

Arabian Foals

I was very happy because I thought I was going to get to go see Dallas over the weekend. But then the snow storm came, so I took the time to get some old photos out and organized. I came across this photo of an ancestor of Dallas. The gray mare's name was Ra Leila. The foal with her would have been a half sibling to Dallas's great-grandmother, Sar Ramora, through their sire, Sar Farafic. My brother Jamie took this photo.

There is something so photogenic about an Arabian. Especially an Arabian foal.

The photo on the right is Dallas, who is now 6 years old. I need to see her soon.

Sunday, February 8, 2009

On Friendships and Horses - and Marianne


I had news of my old friend the other day, news that brought Marianne back to the forefront of my mind. I have not been able to shake the image of her since.

I moved to Houston when I was 13, leaving behind my first boyfriend and my first pony. It was an awkward time in my life. For health related reasons I couldn’t go to school for the entire year I should have been in 7th grade. I was already different, a Yankee from Connecticut, but to have a weird thing like that hanging over me … well, just imagine how hungry I was for friends.

The first time I saw Marianne she was riding bareback on her horse across our front lawn. Marianne kept her roan gelding at her house at the end of our road. My horse, Lori Lye, was boarded at Mr. Garrison’s stable about a mile away. I don’t remember exactly what was said that first day, but I do have a clear memory of watching her canter away, and the feeling deep in my body that something magnificent was about to happen in my life.

Almost everyday after that Marianne and I rode together. She would show up at my house shortly after school and reach her hand down to help me swing my youthful limbs up behind her on Sandy. And off we would go.

Riding with Marianne wasn’t like riding with my barn friends. We didn’t practice our perfect Western Pleasure lope for horse shows, and we didn’t time ourselves racing around barrels in the arena. We rode bareback, preferring the security of gripping our horses’ bodies with our legs, rather than being burdened by the constraints of a saddle. But what we did do, what we did learn when we rode together, was the art of friendship.

I was so in awe of her. She was spirited and generous; haunted and lovely. I followed her everywhere. We meandered down the dirt paths along the bayou near our homes, under the canopy of oak trees dripping with beards of Spanish moss, not aware of the heat and humidity that plague me now.

We were heroines. We were going to save the planet ~ or at least our tiny corner of it. When builders began the work of clearing the woods where we rode, we galloped along the dusty paths on the far side of the bayou, pulling up wooden construction markers by their brilliant orange ribbons. We truly believed we could keep the new housing development from being built; concrete, bricks and pavement that would take away our favorite riding places. Cantering along, we would reach down, trusting our horses to carry us honorably, as we grabbed the orange ribbons and tossed the stakes into the swirling waters of the bayou as we galloped away.

In the dark of night, the sound of pebbles hitting my window pane told me Marianne was waiting for me outside by the magnolia tree. I’d tip-toe past my parent’s bedroom, climb up behind her on Sandy, and together we rode across the lawns of our neighbors, guided only by the moonlight. In this way we traveled through our adolescence with the blissful ignorance of Peter Pan.

Coming from a family of six I was accustomed to older brothers who hid from me, who didn’t want me interfering with their lives and their friendships. But I learned a good lesson about the strength of family from Marianne in the way she loved her little sister.

Sister had a fat little pony named Ajax with hair as white as her own. Often Marianne and I would be trotting down the road only to hear little hooves galloping behind us, and Sister’s voice calling out, “Wait for me! Wait for me!” as she struggled to catch up. Where my own brothers would have run faster to get away, Marianne always pulled up and waited.

When Sister was with us there were places we wouldn’t go because Marianne thought it might be too dangerous for her. There was an unspoken blanket of protection around her, and I don’t know if Sister knew it, or felt it, but it was there. No one was more important to Marianne.

On weekends we rode our horses to Town and Country Shopping Center and tied them to the bushes outside the stores. We’d ride through the Jack-in-the Box to get our lunch, and once we had our picture on the front page of the Houston Chronicle. There was no where we couldn’t go, nothing we couldn’t do when we rode our horses together.

There was a point in time when Marianne and I took different paths. If I could go back and change it and tell her to follow me, things might have worked out differently. But something tormented her. To this day I don’t know what it was, except that it drove her in the wrong direction toward the wrong people who damaged her life.

By the time I buried my beloved Lori Lye I had lost track of her. The family had moved away from the neighborhood and I only heard bits and pieces of news from time to time. None of it was ever any good, and with each sad story my heart sank a little deeper for my free-spirited friend who was shackled by something intangible, something she couldn’t canter away from anymore.

But I never stopped loving her. She had accepted me, the odd new girl from Connecticut, when others stayed away. It was Marianne who gave me some sense of normalcy in the midst of my very crazy world. Her friendship offered the same approval and unconditional love that I now get from my two beautiful golden retrievers. The kind of love that is rare between humans.

Eventually it became too painful to think of her, to know of her life the way it had turned out. The Marianne I heard about was only a shadow of the girl who offered me friendship and the shotgun seat behind her on Sandy. So I stopped thinking about her. When memories would rise to the surface, I stuffed them away with the idea that I would re-examine them later, at another point in my life. Maybe later I could face the fact that I knew she had turned a corner, had chosen the wrong path, and I hadn’t reached my own hand out to save her. I had turned and walked away. It is not what she would have done for me.

I stopped thinking of her until I heard from her sister. This time, the news was good. Marianne seemed to have found solid footing. Her first boyfriend, the older one who intimidated me, had found her after 30 years and had taken her to live with him. The email from Sister said he loves and cherishes her, treats her well and is making her healthy again. But the best part of her email to me, the part that let me know Marianne really would be okay, was the last line when she wrote, “And he even bought her a horse.”

Since then I have thought of nothing but Marianne. I’ve seen photos of her grown children. I search their faces to see pieces of the girl I knew, and I am happy. I will call Marianne today, and I will ask how her horse is. Then she will know who I am.

Sunday, January 25, 2009

Tugboat, Charlotte's Web and Black Beauty

Really now, who will be able to resist a spirited pony named Tugboat, who has a personality like Wilbur the pig, and can tell a story like Black Beauty?

Thursday, January 1, 2009

Happy New Year!

Inspiration for writing can come from many places. Here is a perfect example. The seed for this story was planted when I found a poster of a pony mare and her foal in a store in Jackson, WY last summer. I knew when I bought it I would write something about it someday, just had to wait for "the right time."


The right time happened one October morning when I returned from a visit with my parents. I had spent four days taking my father to his treatments at Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, and thinking about the huge void I knew would come someday when he was gone. The following story is what came from these two, completely separate experiences working together in concert in my head. Enjoy.




SILENT NIGHTS

By Nanci Turner Steveson


With three great heaves the filly was born, slipping silently onto the snow. The mare lay on her side, half hearted whinnies stuck in her throat. She knew the foal had been born too soon, and would be weak. But she also knew she should move quickly if they were going to find shelter before the next snowstorm raged across the sagebrush flats.


The mare lifted her head and looked back. The filly’s wet neck bobbled as she tried to muster the strength to hold her head up. A white diamond, perfectly centered on her forehead, danced in the moonlight. She coughed once, took two sharp breaths and squeaked out a whinny.


Satisfied the foal was alive, the mare gave herself a few moments to rest before pushing her body up, leaving a red and white form packed into the snow. It was hard to move with only three good legs. The fourth, her front right, dangled uselessly beneath her. Fresh blood dripped from just below her shoulder and turned the snow the color of a holly berry. Jumping on three legs, the mare turned and began licking the filly’s warm, wet body. She had no idea where the rest of her herd was, but she could smell the fury of a storm that had stalled just beyond the mountains, and heard the cry of the wolves following the scent of her blood.


Inside a lodgepole pine cabin, an old man lay alone in his bed. Thick blue blankets were pulled up to his chin, his eyes turned toward the window. The other side of his bed lay undisturbed, the pillow fluffed, blankets and sheets still tucked neatly into the side. Sleep eluded him again, so Clayton did what he always did on sleepless nights. He stared at the stars out the window and began to count. It didn’t help him sleep; in fact it didn’t even make him feel any better. It just passed the time until the rooster crowed and he could get up and start another silent day.


The mare pushed the filly along in front of her, stopping every few yards to rest and allow her to nurse. The foal’s curly tail flipped from side to side as she bumped her nose against the bottom of her mother’s belly and found the swollen teats. Steam rose from her tiny, damp back and disappeared into the frigid night air as she drank ferociously, until her mother began to hobble forward again.


Clayton kicked the covers off and sat up on the edge of his bed. It would be hours before the rooster crowed, but he couldn’t lay still one minute more. Grabbing a red and green quilt from the chair, he paused briefly when his fingertips touched the soft fabric. Every stitch had been sewn by the hands of his beloved wife as she lay dying in their bed. It was her last gift to him.


Clayton shuffled to the easy chair in front of the fireplace, wrapping the Christmas quilt around his shoulders. The embers glowed bright orange under the grate, but there wasn’t enough fire to generate any heat. Hoping for sleep, he let it die out instead of going outside for more wood. He would do that tomorrow. There was another storm coming and he would want firewood stacked inside. It was the only thing he did differently since Maggie had passed.


Looking at the scrawny evergreen he had cut still laying on its side by the door, he knew he wouldn’t put it in the stand before Christmas. He had intended to, he had even retrieved the box of ornaments from the attic. But it sat, unopened, on the table next to the tree. Christmas had come too soon after Maggie’s death. Pulling the quilt tighter around his body, he leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes, only the sound of the grandfather clock ticking in the corner behind him.


The smell of sage and clean snow filled their nostrils as mare and foal made their way slowly across the flats toward a stand of trees, leaving a trail of blood behind them. The mare heard the wolves and knew they were following. The filly hugged her mother’s side as they started down a slight hill, the moonlight fading in and out as storm clouds moved across the sky.


Hours later Clayton heard three chimes of the clock and opened his eyes. His breath floated before him like a vision. Shaking his head, he got up, dropping the quilt on the chair. Opening the front door, a rush of icy air slapped him in the face.


“Damn!” he said, slamming the door closed. “Why the hell didn’t I bring the wood up earlier?”


No wood on the porch meant he’d have to go to the shed behind the barn. And it was so damn cold! Before putting on his jacket, he stopped in the kitchen and measured out three scoops of coffee. No sense trying to sleep. He’d get a hot fire going and try to figure out how to wrap a present. His son would be bringing the grandchildren in three days, and children expected Christmas to go on no matter who died.


The mare leaned her body against a cold, wooden post. The loss of blood left her disoriented and weak. She could feel the filly’s tiny head pushing under her belly in search of food, just as her body started to slip. The foal pushed harder and stamped her tiny hooves on the snow.


Clayton’s boots crunched as he made his way across the yard to the shed. The light from the house didn’t shine far enough, but he had walked the path a million times over the fifty years he and Maggie had owned this ranch. Coming around the back side of the shed, his feet slipped from underneath him and he fell, breaking the fall with his hands. His leather gloves came up sticky and red. Putting his hand to his nose he smelled blood; he had slipped on blood. Even in the dark he could see a figure at the base of the fence. A dead pony mare lay silently in the snow.


“Holy shit….” he mumbled. Crawling on his hands and knees toward the mare, he could see the leg cut open just below the shoulder. Damn near cut in half! She must have bled to death. The eerie sound of wolves howling floated across the prairie. Better pull her into the shed, Clayton thought. She was small enough; he figured he could manage alone. He didn’t want a pack of wolves hanging around. He’d have to get rid of the pony’s body before his grandchildren came, anyway. They were city kids, although damned if he knew how that had happened.


After dragging the pony into the shed and locking the door, Clayton went back for the wood, stepping carefully around the bloody snow. Reaching down for a log, he came face to face with the little bay filly who lay upright behind the wood pile, looking at him as if she’d known all along Clayton would be coming for her.


“Whoa, look at you, little one.” He saw the stub of the filly’s umbilical cord, still attached to her belly. “You can’t be more than a few hours old.” The filly shivered, too young to know to be frightened. Clayton took off his jacket and lay it over her body, looking around for some way to carry her.


“Stay here, don’t move,” he said, holding his hand out in front of her face.


Jogging gingerly across the yard, he laughed to himself and repeated the words again. “Don’t move? Ha! Clayton just where do you think she’d be going?” Once inside he grabbed the Christmas quilt Maggie had sewn for him and ran back out the door.


“Here you go, little girl, let’s get you fixed up,” he said, crouching in front of the filly. Clayton hesitated, holding the quilt up close to his face. Maggie’s gentle perfume still clung to the fibers. It was the last thing he had that made him feel he could still touch her. The newborn foal’s scent would take that from him forever.


The filly nickered, her head bobbing on her neck, large dark eyes looking at Clayton with both innocence and confidence at the same time. It was the same way Maggie had looked at him everyday for the last fifty-two years. Unfolding the quilt, Clayton wrapped it around the tiny body like a sling, then carried her across the yard to the house.


By the time the rooster crowed hours later, snow had started to fall. A fire snapped in the fireplace, and the filly slept on a braided rug, still wrapped in the quilt. The only sound she made was soft sighs of contentment. Clayton had spoon fed her warm goats milk before she fell asleep. It was all he had to offer. Now he sat in the chair watching the fire, his own cheeks red from the heat.


When the rooster broke the silence, Clayton looked over at the forgotten tree by the door, and the box of ornaments on the table. Raising himself up, he lifted the stand from the box and, grabbing the tree by the top, began to slide the dried trunk in between the rings that would hold it upright when he set it in front of the window. Maggie had always insisted they string hundreds of white lights on their tree, and place it in front of the window, “Just in case someone’s lost their way in the dark.”