Life With Archie: midlife with horse: pony

Life With Archie: Mid Life With Horse

Welcome to my world--which seems to be shaken up a little. I have acquired a horse. Again. There was the (great)big grey horse (Hobbs) who outstayed his welcome by walking through fences and eating the house-- and the home. In a stunningly deft bait and switch, grey Hobbs moved out and red Archie moved in. Archie clattered into the barn, selected the biggest corner stall-with-a-view, decorated it with pictures of his favorite rock bands and hung out a shingle, "The Dude Is In."

Despite our generational age difference, the therapeutic benefit of having a ready made combo stairmaster, tread mill, free weights and Pilates all rolled into a furry creature who doesn't yak your ear off and works for hay, is hard to beat.

I don't need a horse, we don't need a horse, we really can't afford a horse, there's not enough time between work, life, kids, their kids, and all the stuff we do when we don't have a horse-- but I am on Cloud Nine.

This is all about me--and recovering that delight and connivance that is horse and girl. We are going to ride bareback through the fields, I will whisper my deepest secrets in his soft, furry ear and I will cater to his every whim. We will be Velvet and Pie. My grown children are NOT going to understand--but their children will.

Now if I can just make sense of the directions in that owner's manual... (Note-this story begins...HERE)

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June 1, 2009 I seem to have acquired a horse. I keep thinking of him as a pony because that's what I always dreamt I was going to get, but Hobbs is, I have been informed, a good thousand pounds plus of stocky Percheron (stamina, strength health, easy keeper), Quarter Horse (agility, endurance, brains), and Thoroughbred (looks, speed) and he's gorgeous in a kind of huge,chunky, hearty can-- do way--although he may have a teeny tiny touch of Archie Bunker Syndrome. He has recently renounced his Canadian citizenship and purportedly left service as a Mennonite carriage horse in favor of a life of luxury worth the cost of being my slobbery pocket pony.

I am 59. The horse says he's five-- his details are a bit fuzzy. I have named him Hobgoblin as he resembles a large,bumbling, well meaning house elf--and it is also my husband Tom's favorite Real Ale. I am cleverly thinking that if I can somehow align the horse with beer, he will demand a warmer welcome. A bloke's kinda horse.

I couldn't sleep the night before he came--suffering a complete time warp where the last fifty years floated away and I bucked and cantered up and down stairs, spurning my dinner, likely to neigh at any moment--reliving life as pony mad 8 year old,(except for the downing of two glasses of chardonnay). I polished and worked the leather of Hobbs' new black bridle with the white stitching on the brow band and the raised nose band which is chic in 2009 and would have been laugh- you -out -of -the- ring back in 1958 (the last time I really was 8). I thought about chewing the reins for a while to further soften them but thought that was probably way too weird.

Heather, who is a year younger than my youngest son, and I are driving up to Vermont to get Hobbs. We've already done that once back when he was Heather's project horse but he had a cough and a sneeze after 19 hours in the trailer coming down from somewhere in faraway northeastern Canada, so he took a few weeks recovery in a 90 acre green field with a running stream and a good hill, which he took to running up and down in an effort to get back into shape. Either Hobbs seems to have a good work ethic--or he's building himself up to make a break for it.

The scout, on a rooky run, who found Hobbs hanging out in a field full of other Mennonite horses knows a good thing when he sees it. The scout says he has two good Canadian farms he regularly visits--one who takes horses who have either "gone bad" or are no longer capable of carrying human beings and the other who he says, "has a great eye for a hawse." He brought Hobbs back with what looks like a goofy 200 hands high gawky chestnut who floats over the ground and will probably go to the Olympics one day if he can find a rider with legs long enough to get on.

Way before my eyes were open, my head was on its way to Vermont. Reality came a little later and ironically included the Calvin part of the Hobbs duo--a foster hairy little white dog who did a heartbreaker 'woe is me" routine if left at home. Heather drove the six horse trailer with the pickup double cab that had us in front and Calvin in the back as we wound our way up through the glorious green that is southern Vermont. Colonial houses with equally ancient barns, sweet first cut hay fields, rivers in spring spate, winding hilly roads. Bennington, for some reason, had a lot of fancy dress moose statuary on Main street.

Over the red covered bridge that crosses the Battenkill, out of the truck and into the old cow barn with the ancient rafters and a hundred years of cobwebs, we peered in at Hobbs, who peered mistrustfully right back at us from the far side of his stall. One day back from the cowboy who had him for a week of "breaking", wall to wall covered with his own dung, he was not happy. His last stay here was in that huge field where he cantered up and down hills and refused to be caught for two days. The halter I brought, even though it was made for a warmblood, didn't fit--by a long shot. I scratched my head--if Hobbs was a warm blood, and the halter designed for a warmblood couldn't even make it past his generous great lips, what was the next size up?

When Hobbs walked out of his stall, he seemed bigger and gawkier than a month ago. The dealer, seeming a little apprehensive, insisted on loading him, and in went Hobbs leaving his herdmates with a deep bellow, bracing himself for the mountains, on his way to the lap of luxury.

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