Blame ICE

I'm a horse girl, always have been.

I didn’t grow up on a ranch so my front and back yard was my equine world. When I was eight-years-old, a good age for a horse I would gallop through the scary part between the fireplace chimney and the neighbor’s fence then trot around and through the fruit trees to the wide open (to me) straight away in the front yard, again and again through the gap, the trees and then all out on the home stretch.

The weather didn’t matter, horses can run in all seasons. Mostly I was the horse even though my hot weather horsey outfit was cowboy boots, shorts, a cowboy neckerchief, a tee shirt and a cowboy hat.

A gnarled tree stump at my grandparent’s cabin at the lake was a saddle. I cried the day the mountain riding stable closed. I wonder why some kids, mostly girls even those who don’t grow up with horses, crave that connection like no other.

I drove my parents nuts, it was horses, horses, horses. In my fourth grade summer they took me to riding lessons. When I turned 16 my dad offered to buy me a car or a horse. I chose a red hatch-back Mustang. I’ve ridden real horses ever since. Nothing fancy, mostly exploring mountains and deserts with a four-legged partner, some long-distance races thrown in.

I can’t ride out as much as I used to since Ray has been ill, but I have an arena in the back pasture. Now riding is breathing out a sigh and feeling my horse sigh too, where nothing matters but seconds of connection, small victories. Can we shut the gate, ride a floating circle, stop on a thought.

Horses like mine have to be reshod every six to eight weeks. If they go longer their feet get mishappen and unbalanced, muscle issues develop, and the shoes can fall off making the horse sore footed and unrideable. Knowledgeable shoers are rare birds in my part of the world, when you’re lucky enough to find one you sure don’t want to lose them to ICE.

My horseshoer belongs to the National Guard and was called up to go to LA to do something involving the migrant raids. Guard federal buildings maybe? He came home last week after being gone over three months. That’s13 weeks of hooves out growing their shoes. And me not riding.

It’s taken a toll. I’m cranky and short tempered. My horse is too. He bangs his feet on the walls of his metal shed in frustration. I bought him a massage gun. At first he was leery of the humming circle bumping him front to back but now he sighs when I turn it on. And so do I.

Good news, the shoer has returned and after he gets his life put back together he’ll come here and put mine back together too.