It’s a done deal! I handed over a money order and Dodger’s registration papers were signed and delivered to me. A boarding contract has been initiated, and now starts the slew of new terms and horse-related things to learn and consider. Should I join the APHA and keep the horse registered even though he’s a gelding? Where do I buy bags of LMF Super G supplement? What’s a Coggins test, and should I have had one done? I delay the decision on the APHA membership, call around for the supplement and call the vet about the Coggins test. Apparently Coggins is a non-issue in Washington. The fact that I’m now banking on it doesn’t show up in my happy news column, but oh well.
Dodger and I spend some time together while I groom him. We discuss our new relationship. He stands very still, hangs on my every word and nuzzles me gently. I spray some horse goop on his rain rot but he doesn’t flinch. He’s being a very sweet horse. I feel very lucky.
I get enough horse schmutz on me to smell up a room, but I drive home amazed that I actually pulled off my dream about getting this horse into a better life. I just didn’t realize it would be my life. I’m half ecstatic, half petrified. It’s like I just got willed someone’s child. I feel that responsible.
While I visited Dodger, the plan was discussed with Tom for negotiating with the owner tomorrow night after she gets home from work. Dodger had a few minutes out in the round pen. Every day he looks better and happier. While we’re talking and watching him, he shows great potential for being a kneeling horse. His young life of trying to reach the few blades of grass just outside the fence have made him unusually flexible. He’ll be an athlete or a one trick pony. Not sure yet.
The vet left and possibly the worst windstorm to hit the northwest in recorded history was about to hit. We fortunately did not take the brunt of the storm but it was enough to knock out power for the foreseeable future. While the barn stayed intact and Chief walked in circles all night, I worried and lost sleep. We also lost four huge branches from an old growth fir tree towering over the house. They fell all at once on the far side of our steeply-pitched roof and slid off. It sounded like Santa and the whole sleigh took a tumble.
Results of the vet’s tests did not come back as expected the next day, but two days later, he called with the results. They were much better than he expected. Even if they hadn’t been, the sale was moving forward in my mind.
And Chief was getting a new name: Dodger. Named after Dickens’ other, more scruffy orphan, the Artful Dodger. My horse had dodged many bullets in his life and now he had figured out a way to make it over to the right side of the tracks.
Another rainy, blustery day. I arrive at the barn at noon to meet the vet and Tom. Tom’s already hosed off COQ’s feet and tried to get some of the worst dirt off other places. One hosing isn’t going to do it. Chief Oliver Quinn needs the equivalent of a week at a spa.
Tom had instructed me to bring some Selsun Blue and some M-T-G for Chief’s case of rain rot. I brought the Selsun Blue and the closest thing I could find locally to M-T-G, along with a tea tree oil product I saw on the shelf. I’m a believer in the natural medicinal effects of tea tree oil so I decided it was a good idea to have some on hand. $45 later, I walked out the door.
The vet took an hour and a half to carefully go over every inch of Chief. A slightly splayed right front foot and a hitch in his left rear gitalong shows up but they don’t seem to affect his range of motion or recovery time after a stress test. His legs are stretched, folded and turned every which way. There’s no obvious reason for his left rear sensitivity.
The vet is definitely fearless. I watch, wondering how (or why) I’ll ever place myself near the business end of Chief’s left rear foot. Fortuntely, his feet are in remarkably good condition, given the deep mud he’s been standing in for so long. The vet then reminds me that Chief’s sweet, mild disposition could change radically once he’s nourished back to health. I had given some thought to that possibility already, but I decided he could also just as easily remain sweet. I don’t add that worry to my hopper of concerns.
Blood test and fecal exam results come back tomorrow. I ask all the questions I can think of, know I’m missing many more, and the vet drives off with $335 I had never intended to spend this way.
Ahead: dental work, supplements, shots, halters, leads, a helmet, saddle… The road ahead looks paved with gold. Wonder where I’m going to find it.
I’m back the next morning at 8:15 to groom Chief Oliver along with Tom in the stall to hold him. We check the degree of rain rot along his back and note how sunken in his hips are. Poor guy. There’s not much hope of brushing off the caked-in dirt without a serious bath becoming part of the ritual, but he seems to like the brush and the attention. Tom and I discuss the possibilities of a bath the next day. We handle him gently, talk to him, and he seems appreciative.
Time to see what he’ll do in the arena. We walk him over, snap a few photos for the “before” picture in front of the big red door, and lead him into what is the largest, driest, flattest, junk-free area he’s ever seen in his life.
We unsnap the lead and wonder if he’ll kick up his heels, but he doesn’t have that in him. He saunters and sniffs, looking back occasionally to make sure we haven’t left him. I walk ahead of him just to see if he’ll choose to follow me around the ring. It’s as much of a test for me to “be the leader” than it is for him to notice. He decides I’m worth following…until he finds some hay in one of the corners of the arena. I pick some up and he’s following me again.
He doesn’t go faster than a walk. He’s happy, just not healthy. The vet comes tomorrow to look at him. I wish I could be Chief Oliver’s Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman. I’ll add Quinn to the list of possible names for him.
Chief Oliver Quinn. COQ. I like it.
Chief arrives at the barn mid afternoon on a winter day that’s being real chintzy with daylight. He’s never seen or been in a stall before so Tom doesn’t know how he’ll react to the space. Tom calls me to tell me to come on over. I send off a few emails to hit my work balls into other courts, and grab the list of names I wrote down the night before when I couldn’t sleep. I tell my husband we better drive separately, in case I want to stay longer than he does. Later he tells me he would’ve brought me a sleeping bag, if I had wanted to spend the night! Now that’s support! But I get there, see Chief wet, bewildered and muddy in that small stall and reality soon sinks in. Although he seems happy enough, relatively calm and probably delighted to be out of the elements, he deserves some time to check out his new surroundings without having some human acting like he’s the Christmas pony she’s always wanted.
Tom, Dan and I discuss how the plan took shape and take a look at Chief’s registration papers and photos of his dam and sire. He got his spots from a beautiful black and white paint stallion and his sorrel coloring from his mom. They’re both nice looking horses, but sadly, no longer alive. She died of colic, he of unknown causes. The kid’s all orphan.
Oliver is a name that would fit him better.