Nube: More Dark Clouds and Questions With No Answers

The worst thing about remembering a horse in the past is that maybe there are current options that your horse only missed by a few years. For all that we don’t know about horses, for all the worry and grasping at symptoms, eventually all will be revealed. The stray symptoms, the unusual events, the chronic fear of not knowing will eventually tie itself up in a bow and become clear. There will be an answer, even if it’s too late. Or at some point, it hurts so much for both of you that it ceases to matter why. It just needs to stop.

I had scraped every square inch of what anyone knew. Vets, bodyworkers, specialist vets, farriers, and an eclectic equine dentist. I read all I could find online and spent every dollar and most of the credit limit on a card. Acupuncture, chiropractic, yet more specialists. There were so many varied explanations of what we don’t know that I became an expert on the topic. I know a lot about what we don’t know. It’s served me well with clients, it’s made me a better clinician. Maybe there are two kinds of trainers; those who tell you to sell your horse and get another, and those who work with the horses that got sold off. I am the latter, and we aren’t the rich ones.

It didn’t help that I knew Nube (nu-bay) probably had other conditions underneath the ulcers. I could make some very educated guesses now, not that it matters. It would all sound like excuses. I hear the same defensiveness in my clients, and I want to reassure them they did the very best possible for their horse. Words that hit the ground and roll like a tin can. Other horses manage to right themselves somehow and I feel I’ve failed Nube. I know miracles happen every day. Then a horrible space of dead air, waiting, aching, and trying to hope.

So, I tidied up my desperation and went to a lecture by Dr. Temple Grandin. The woman is a giant in a dozen ways. The auditorium was full and on that day, she was speaking about autism, not animals at all. She didn’t have a script, just a question session, as is her unique way. I asked her if horses could have autism. She stared at me a little too long. Maybe she was processing an answer, but she didn’t say a word. Then she took another question. This one was about depression in those with autism and partway through her answer, she looked back at me again.

Nube and I continued to ride lightly, as recommended. Now we were working with a new vet specialist who traveled through several states with his brand of acupuncture and chiropractic. We drove over an hour to see him at an elite show barn north of us. He’d given us some prescription Chinese herbs. Maybe I trusted him a little more because he was a cowboy from Louisiana with a great accent. His work went against type, it must have really hooked him. I imagined his father gave him the kind of looks mine gave me. Maybe the herbs would work.

I was riding at a trainer/friend’s barn. We’d finished, but one of my clients there had a question. I asked my friend to take Nube back to the barn, and I’d be right there. When I arrived, she had a quizzical look and Nube was eating some of her hay. She said they had stopped for a second, and Nube collapsed. He stumbled, I asked. No, he dropped to the ground in an instant. He got back to his feet a moment later. It was so odd that I had trouble visualizing it. Back to the internet with a new behavior that might be a symptom or a fluke. Weirdly, horses collapse for lots of reasons.

Two weeks later, on a warm afternoon with no wind, Nube and I were in our home arena. We had the music cranked up, we’d done some groundwork, a weird mimic game we played. Then a twenty-minute mounted warm-up with lots of transitions. He was perky and mentally engaged. Sometimes offering something better than I asked. Then, as we were cantering a large circle at the end of the arena, just as we returned to the rail, he collapsed again.

It happened so suddenly, so absolutely. Like a gunshot. I flew out of the arena, landed hard on my back, and skidded a few feet further, thanking my helmet. Nube had it worse. He must have somehow caught a leg in the arena fencing. There were grinding, crashing sounds as he tore out two posts and dragged a ten-foot gate into the arena before he broke free. I’m the sort who thinks arena fencing should give when something live hits it hard. Better to break the fence.

When I could get to my feet, I staggered into the arena. Nube was at the far end, his head low and he held his rear leg off the ground. I clucked once. It’s how I say hello. Was he okay? He lifted his head and tried to canter toward me. He moved like an eggbeater across the arena, faltered to a stop, and pressed his head to my shoulder. He was quivering. There was a large abrasion ran up the inside of his left leg, blood dripping, but it didn’t look like anything was broken. I took a deep breath for him, as deep as my ribs permitted. And the exhale came out of him.

It wasn’t pretty, the two of us making our way back to the barn. A cold hose for Nube and a dose of bute. I briefly considered some for myself.

This is what I do know. In one moment, we were cantering, his stride had a high and long roll. A canter with hang time, that instant when gravity releases you and the rhythm is all that holds you. Weightless between the one, and the two-three in the count of a canter. One, levitate, two-three. Our equine waltz starts in one pelvic bone and rolls out to my head and toes. It pulls the blood from my brain and sweet air swells in my chest. Surrendered to the sway, I let him canter me. The sand arena becomes a beach open to the horizon. He tosses me up and catches me again and again, his strength effortless. His canter is as buoyant and free as the cloud he was named for. There was a feeling that he surrounded me, that I didn’t ride on him, but within him.

And then he disappeared. He simply ceased.

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[Eleventh in a series called Nube’s Story.]

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