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| A full Flower Moon perches over the Harmony barn. |
The horse world is small, the Eventing world an even tinier microcosm. I suppose this is one reason why that when an Eventer suffers a loss we all feel it, much as any family does when one member suffers.
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I vividly recall the freakishly hot Memorial Day 2011. I had been fighting a cough for weeks and had finally taken some medicine which made me drowsy beyond belief. I had fallen into a drugged sleep on the couch and my husband decided to bring the horses in for me that evening. He called me from the barn to tell me that Momento had come in from the field and lay down in his stall without eating.
I ran to the barn and found Momento still down in his stall. I checked his gums and listened to his belly noises. He was colicking. I called the emergency vet service to alert them of the situation. We got Momento on his feet and began walking him up and down the barn aisle to keep him from rolling and hurting his painful gut even more. We took turns walking him in the darkening barn and I began to sponge Momento off with cool water during my husband's turn. This seemed to help him and when he seemed a bit calmer I lifted Momento's tail to take his temperature. The reading seemed too low so I decided to recheck and when I lifted his tail again to insert the thermometer, Momento passed gas and then he visibly relaxed. Gas colic! We were smiling with relief. The emergency vet had yet to return our call, so we kept up the walking/sponging protocol. Within an hour Momento was calm enough to return him to his stall. We stayed with him until midnight, when he began to doze.
At the very moment that we walked across the darkened farm to the house, still worried about our horse's recovery, a faulty hay steamer ignited a barn fire at an Eventer's barn in eastern Pennsylvania. Within an hour six horses and the entire barn would be lost.
Of course I didn't know what was happening in Pennsylvania as I checked on Momento throughout the night. Between five and six a.m. he finally passed a normal amount of manure and his expression was bright again. He wanted breakfast. I called the emergency vet -- who had not received my message -- and he agreed that turnout with observation would be best for Momento. My horse's mild colic was put into perspective when I learned of the devastating losses from the Pennsylvania barn fire.
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Fast forward to this past Memorial Day. Once again the Eventing world was rocked by news of a trailer accident that would claim the lives of three of the six horses on board. The scenario played out as if in slow motion: one horse dead at the scene, another sent to the equine hospital the following day with a serious leg injury that resulted in euthanasia, a third horse admitted the day after that with a ruptured cecum. He was humanely euthanized, too. Three horses gone in the span of one weekend, surely the longest of nightmare weekends for the entire family involved.
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On Sunday night of this past Memorial Day holiday I turned my horses out into the cool night. The moon was nearly full and draped a silver sheen over the treetops and the fields. Fireflies flashed like paparazzi from the leaves and grass. By moonlight I finished the last of the barn chores, serenaded by crickets and cicadas. I could hear the horses pulling grass just outside the open barn doors. A delicious breeze cruised through the barn. Momento came back inside and found me standing alone in the barn aisle. He asked me to scratch the itchy spots on his flanks, and I was more than happy to oblige. Even inside the barn the moonlight gleamed off his sleek summer coat. My wonderful bay horse stayed next to me, quietly positioning himself so that I could hit each and every one of his itchy places. I covered that entire horse with my fingertips, enjoying every single second and not wanting the night to end. I felt as though I couldn't absorb enough of the experience...the smell of my horse, the feel of his warm body, the easy dance of moving around each other in the dark. I know him so well and was so grateful for his presence in my life.
My heart was both full and heavy; heavy with the shared loss of the Eventing community, full with gratitude for Momento, that this Memorial Day weekend was so very different from the last. In the midst of a weekend of tragic losses, I experienced one magical hour.
