[RC] Good friends - in our hearts forever - Laura Hayes
Daily for almost 19 years I gazed out my window the
first thing each morning to see her. I have a cherished picture of her
taken many years ago - Freckles completely white and ghostlike, and her
baby daughter in the mist by the pond - standing at attention, gazing off
in the distance.
We laid her beside that pond on Sunday - her great
heart still, her powerful floating trot and deep dark eyes only a memory
now.
Before she slipped quietly away from me, with
the help of modern medicine, I sat with her and we remembered all the
years together. It started at the horse auction, a grey arab
type mare standing on her hind legs, the look of defiance in her eyes.
$400 outbid the meat buyers in 1985, and she was mine, or I was hers - we never
really established that - but we were in each other's keeping for almost two
decades.
We did several hundred miles of endurance in her
late teens - she was almost always in the top five and won many BCs with me
and other riders, until a chronic lung problem from an old illness forced
her retirement. The races were always fun, but with Freckles the
training was the high point. She met me at the gate every day, eager to
go, happy to explore over the next hill. Unlike any other horse I have
conditioned, Freckles and I went further and longer, never wanting to come
home. The company was always so pleasurable and comfortable - just she and
I.
She ferried my then small son around ride
camps after rides, careful to not unseat her little charge sitting proudly on
top of the big rangy mare - the competitive endurance horse who
galloped to the finish took baby steps with her precious cargo
and patiently went here and there at his whim.
We chased cows through my son's team penning days -
the only arab type horse in the contest, and she did the breed proud-
beating the cow horses to the end of the arena and cutting cattle like she had
done it all her life. Maybe she had - her history was unknown- her
breeding, though obviously arab, could have also been some TB or
QH. Her training had been extensive at some point, but she never told, and
I found out in serendipitous moments when she would perform some graceful move
at the shifting of my weight or some unintentional cue. Her age was a
mystery also, though she was fully an adult the day I outbid the meat
buyers.
Our last ride together was two years ago. I
took Freckles, or 'Mama' as I called her in later years, to a 'girls
weekend' with several friends. I rode her bareback on the trails those two
days and wondered why I ever rode any other horse - she was so sure footed and
smooth and we fit together like an old married couple.
She wandered the pasture since then. I took
her down to the home farm on the lake this summer where she had raised her
daughter 10 years before, to enjoy the lush pasture there. She grew
thinner and her teeth were almost gone - the NY winter would be difficult
for her. On Sunday she was uncomfortable, and stretched out in
the late fall sun - her gums white and tacky and a look of pain in her
beautiful arab-mare eyes. I knew it was time.
I hope she enjoyed the life I shared with
her. I know I did, and I'll never forget - she'll be in my heart
forever.
