A lasting gift

As my mare grows old, I’ve come to appreciate things about her that the passage of time can never really take away.

My old horse has picked up a new habit. She rests her chin on my shoulder, pressing down and holding still. Sugar is 27, a 15-hand Paint mare with two white stockings and an ample blaze on her face that makes her look like a Disney horse. Her mane is a little thin these days and her back is swayed, but she’s sound and healthy.

Sugar and I still putter happily around the ring and spend hours on the trail. She demonstrates her displeasure at walking through any kind of standing water with complex but predictable footwork: splashing with the first foot in, and then attempting a scoot-away maneuver. After more than a decade, I still make a point of forcing her to walk through calmly. “Puddles? I’ll show you puddles” is my training philosophy.

With Sugar, virtually all situations unspool at a pokey rate. I tense up when loose dogs race by, but Sugar doesn’t care---about the dogs or the tension.

We know each other well. Questions Sugar could answer about me: In which pocket are those peppermints? How long will she deliberate between retrieving the saddle and hopping on bareback? Will she misplace her helmet, the lead rope or the hoof pick first?

But Sugar’s old age has raised some questions I haven’t known how to answer. In general, I like to keep horses outside 24-7. Sugar is boarded at a beautiful, open place and has been part of the same peaceful herd for more than a decade. But last winter she started losing weight and George, our wise barn manager, recommended stall board. That made all the difference. With consistent senior feed, Sugar thickened up, and her topline and rump muscles filled out again. I’d hated watching her drop off, but having a problem that could be solved felt good. I’d been worried that Sugar would feel stressed in a stall, but she adjusted immediately, content with her new, well-bedded home.

I used to have two horses. But my gelding Romeo died young, which splintered my spirit in a way that seems impervious to healing. I miss him all the time. But as Sugar grows older, I’ve found a whole new way to mourn Romeo. I realize I never got to tend to him as an elderly horse, to see him develop thumbprint hollows over his eyes, and prefer small pieces to larger chunks of apples. As sad as that realization continues to be, tending to Sugar in her old age helps me miss Romeo without spiraling into despair.

Old horses are not stand-ins for people and living with them is not a rehearsal for life. Instead, they occupy their own fuzzy space. You watch them change; you make extra dental BELOVED: “With appointments; Sugar,” says Eliza you ladle warm McGraw, “virtually water over their all situations bran mash. The unspool at a pokey message: We’re rate.” Nonetheless, in this together. the 27-year-old You have to think mare remains about the hard sound and healthy. stuff with elderly

horses and you have to show up for it, too. They need you. I think that might be what Sugar’s trying to convey with her new gesture, given I can hardly move when she’s burrowing into my shoulder with her bony chin. “Don’t you go anywhere,” it feels like she’s saying.

Meanwhile, I’m not getting any younger myself. But when I’m riding bareback through the woods, and Sugar moves beneath me, sure-footed and (except near the puddles) steady, my heart is filled in a way that has nothing to do with age. We could both be 7 years old, and I’d have the same overwhelming sense of contentment and “rightness” that we riders seek.

Sugar has nothing to worry about. Wherever I’m going, I’m taking her with me. Riding is often about finding new ways to move through the world. With Sugar, I am very grateful to have a partner in moving through time, as well.