Gentle reminder for a holiday weekend: I'm currently in the home stretch of Alex's story over on Substack, sitting at 114k+ words and counting - 'cause it's a big 'un that's gotten away from me, apparently. Speaking of big...
When I'm done with Inherent Violence, I plan to explore some Dartmoor next gen stories on Substack. But in order for any of it to make sense, you have to start with the monster of all doorstops...
I waited a month
to write this, and still made myself cry. But I felt like I needed to
write it. As thrilled as I am to always celebrate the record-setting,
sport-defining horses who achieve greatness, I think it’s equally important
that the unfamous, wonderful horses who enrich are lives receive their flowers,
too.
I met AB in
September of 2011. The herd at that time consisted of the two minis, my 15-year-old
Dutch warmblood gelding, Markus, and my first horse, Skip, who’d turned 27 in
June. I went down to feed and turn out one morning before class—it was my last
semester at KSU—and knew immediately that something was seriously wrong with
Skip. He was on his feet, but he had zero interest in breakfast. His breathing
was elevated, and based on the state of his stall, and his filthy coat, he’d
been down and thrashing for God knows how long. He’d been fine at night check,
but that morning, he was in the grips of a nasty colic. I immediately
administered Banamine and put in an emergency call to the vet.
Then I called my
mom, because I already had that unpleasant tingling in the back of my mind:
this was the big one. If he didn’t need to be put down on the spot, there was
an immediate trip to a university hospital in our future.
When the vet
arrived, she tubed him, and searched rectally for an impaction. Within minutes,
she was asking if I wanted to take him to Auburn or UGA. The farm’s much closer
to the Alabama state line than Athens, and it’s an easier, less congested trip
to go west, so I told her to call Auburn. We loaded Skip up in the trailer, and
headed out.
What followed was
an incredibly stressful day spent in the Auburn equine hospital’s waiting room,
watching Friends reruns on the TV mounted up in the corner. The staff at
the desk asked if I wanted the remote to change the channel; I didn’t care. I
was happy to have a laugh track in the background, and to this day, I find Friends
immeasurably comforting in tense times. I dropped the entirety of my student
aid check as a surgery deposit that day; I didn’t buy a single book that last
semester of school, and a friend was kind enough to let me take photocopies of
pertinent sections in the student center.
Skip survived his
surgery, but he would never make it home. We didn’t know that the first night,
when we headed home after dark, wrung-out and, in my case, dizzy from low blood
sugar. We didn’t know that his gut would fail to restart, and that he would
fade, and that, within a week, he would be helped across the rainbow bridge far
from home, in the care of strangers. But we did know one thing: Markus couldn’t
be alone. By some miracle, he’d tolerated staying stalled all day with only the
minis next door for company, but the next day, he would need to be turned out,
and even if Skip recovered and came home, Markus would need a pasture
companion, because Skip would be on stall rest for weeks.
“I wonder if we
could borrow a horse for a little while,” my mom said. It was too late that
night to call around and see, but we started first thing the next morning.
This was before I
had a Facebook account; today, I could hop into a horse group there, drop an
“ISO” post, and have kind strangers DMing me photos of companion horses within
minutes. But that day, I wound up sitting in a camp chair in the middle of the
paddock while Markus stood over me, rubbing my head with his lip and
occasionally whinnying for a friend who wasn’t there.
“Why don’t we
call Brandi?” my mom asked around midday, after a fruitless morning making
calls. Brandi had leased, and then sold Markus to me, and owned a boarding
facility not too far away. It was worth a shot—and turned out to be the very
best thing to come out of a hellish week.
“Forget borrow,
I’ve got a horse you can have,” she told us.
I put Markus back
in his stall beside the minis, because he was not content to stay
outside alone, we hooked the trailer back up, and off we went an hour and a
half south to meet this horse to have, ready to take her home no matter
what she looked like. Desperate times, and so forth.
We arrived to
find that Brandi already had AB’s halter, rain sheet, feed can, and bridle
packed up and ready to go. As for AB herself, she proved to be a gray,
ten-year-old Hanoverian/Quarter Horse cross who was registered as a Canadian
Sporthorse. She’d been born in Canada, Brandi explained, and used as a
broodmare in the past, but was broke to ride and knew a little dressage. She’d
also been pastured with Markus before, and Brandi was confident that the two of
them would get along. AB was big, well-behaved, easygoing, barefoot (trimming
hooves is much less expensive than shoes!), and, fat from late summer grass and
in the prime of life, she was beautiful.
When we said it
felt wrong to just take her, Brandi said, “Okay. You can buy her for a dollar.” AB
loaded like a dream, and we turned north for Riddermark.
And that was how
AB the One Dollar Wonder Horse became the steady backbone of the farm for
fifteen years.
We didn’t get
home until dusk, so there wasn’t time for a proper introduction to the pasture,
or even to Markus. As I backed her off the ramp that first night, one of the
neighbors set off a volley of fireworks. Forget that it was neither full dark,
nor a holiday—no one needs an excuse for fireworks where I live. “Oh, shit,” I
muttered, and choked up on the lead line. Some horses are petrified of
fireworks. But AB twitched an ear in a bored way. Huh. And walked
quietly to her stall. Ate her dinner. Sniffed noses with the minis through the
stall wall and got acquainted with them. The next morning, she and Markus went
out in the field and it was the safest, least dramatic horse introduction I’ve
ever witnessed. Not only was Markus desperate for company, but he must have
remembered her, despite having not seen one another in over a year. There were
no fireworks, of the horse variety, this time, and peace was restored.
Skip, of course, didn’t
make it. But we had been blessed, by sweet Brandi, and by providence, I think,
with Miss AB, and she was the perfect companion for my great big Primadonna widowmaker
Markus up until his passing in 2019.
AB grieved for
him, and I tried to fill the void with lots of treats and attention. But unlike
Markus, so long as she had the minis in the next paddock over, she was willing
to go out alone. I started horse shopping, but couldn’t find anything suitable
within budget—and then Covid hit.
When I started
shopping again, I found that horses were even more expensive. I couldn’t afford
to by an 8–10-year-old, already-trained horse…nor did I want to introduce the
wrong horse, and subject a now Cushing’s diagnosed AB to a territorial or
vicious horse in her senior years. I didn’t want a cribber, or a kicker, or a
bolter, or a massive behavior problem that would upset our peaceful
equilibrium.
So I bought a
baby. In 2023, I bought a Quarter Horse filly from my mom’s friend at work,
whose family breeds several AQHA foals a year. Kit Kat joined the herd, and for
the first time in four years, AB had a friend.
In those four
years alone, she’d gotten a little senile, and didn’t seem to know what to do
with a friend, especially a young one. She was a hot mess of mama whickering
and angry ear pinning, and I spent an entire day in the pasture, ready to
intervene if necessary. But Kit Kat is nothing if not fearless and persistent.
Freshly weaned from her dam, she decided AB was her new mama/auntie, and wouldn’t
take no for an answer when it came to friendship. By day two, they were buds,
even if AB liked to play the cranky old timer.
I have no idea
why her barn name was “AB.” Her registered name was Aerial’s Southern Snow.
It’s considered bad luck to change a horse’s barn name, and I’d had enough of
that already. AB it was, then, and I always enjoyed the strange looks people
gave me when I told them her name for the first time.
She didn’t have a
show record. She didn’t win me any ribbons. She wasn’t famous. She had a truly
atrocious canter, and she kept a messy stall. She was also worth her weight in
gold, and I’ll be forever grateful that she was a part of my life for fifteen
years. Grateful, too, that she had three little friends her last year of life,
and that I got to be with her, there at the end.
She’d been
showing her age a little more each summer for the last five years or so. Despite
medication, she wouldn’t shed out anymore, and I was body-clipping her four
times a year. Burning through clipper blades like I was trimming shrubs with
them. Her arthritis had worsened, and supplements were no longer helping like
they used to. But it was the Cushing’s disease that claimed her. It’s a
progressive, incurable disease that can be slowed with medication, but not
halted or reversed. Her body was producing far too much cortisol, and,
eventually, that amount of stress hormone taxes the heart until congestive
heart failure sets in. I knew it was time that morning, a month ago yesterday,
when I could hear the fluid in her lungs.
I still round the
corner in the mornings expecting to hear her. I still look for her big white
back in the pasture, a constant for so long. I still, sometimes, pick up a
flake of hay, and head for her stall with it, and then catch myself. The stall
is empty. The halter hanging there is too big to fit any of my young girls. AB
is gone.
She’s the sixth
horse I’ve buried, and I’d love to say it gets easier; instead, I’ll say that
it gets easier to accept. It’s no longer shocking, it doesn’t upend your world,
but it still hurts the same.
For as long as
she lived with me, she was never hungry, never cold; she never suffered. She
could always be sure of the routine, of the food, and the field, and that I
would come get her if lightning cracked across the sky, and hose her off when
she got sweaty. I’d like to think, as I stood with her in that last hour, that
she knew she was loved.
Goodnight, sweet
girl. We miss you. Give Markus a kiss for me, and I’ll see you later.
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Since my last newsletter a month ago, Kit Kat’s eye got a little better, and then a little worse; I had to have AB euthanized due to Cushing’s-related heart failure; more than one family member has been into and then out of the hospital; and all that stress caused a nasty flare-up for me a couple weeks ago. At this point, I’m John Belushi at the end of Blues Brothers with all the bad news and excuses: “Locusts!”
As a result, book progress has been slow across the board - but it has been progress.
I’m having to do some retooling on what I have so far with Field of Fire, the seventh and final Drake Chronicles installment, so I don’t have updates on that front. Likewise, The Winter Palace is moving along literally a paragraph at a time. Again: moving, but sluggishly.
My major focus at the moment is on Substack updates, both my standalone romantic suspense Don’t Let Go, and the post-Dartmoor novel Inherent Violence.
My initial plan - and we all know how those go - was to keep multiple chapters ahead and schedule drops so that I didn’t ever run out of content to post. Obviously, that didn’t pan out as hoped. I’m still ahead on Don’t Let Go - with Chapter 13 dropping this week, I’m a little over halfway through the chunk of novel I wrote last year. I’m posting Inherent Violence as I write it, however.
I like posting chapter by chapter because it helps me stay motivated. Smaller, daily goals and posting as a sense of “getting something done” help me stay energized to power through a whole novel. Obviously, the serial release format isn’t ideal for anyone who wants to binge an entire book; it’s not a seamless experience if you need to go back and check details on earlier chapters when it’s been a while between updates. I get that.
But it gives me a chance to keep y’all entertained week to week, so there aren’t long content droughts between books. It also offers a chance to see the rough draft process. I do a cursory proofread before I post each chapter, but the book in chapter form is fairly raw. If I were to ever publish these stories as books, there would be some editorial changes: likely added spicey scenes, streamlining of others, and maybe even some rewrites.
That’s a big “if,” though. I want to do right by my Substack subscribers, so these stories might need to stay forever on the ‘Stack.
Hopefully, your spring is rocking along more smoothly than mine has. Thanks for being here!
If you've been following along for a while, it's likely none of these confessions will come as a surprise. I've made them all before, but individually, across a variety of posts. Let's compile them, shall we?
What can I say? They're two different flavors of the same brand of gremlin, and that will never not be fun for me.
