My Treasures

My Treasures
By Steve Orr

"My treasures do not ching together or glitter. They gleam in the sun, and neigh in the night." Arabian proverb

I never owned a horse. Which, in all probability, is a good thing. While I had pets (well ... dogs) as a child, I was never that kid who begged his parents for a pet, promising to feed and care for it. Don't get me wrong, I loved my dogs. We got along well. And they knew I was the soft touch of the family. I have a lot of stories about my dogs (like the one where my dachshund slept under the covers of my bed in the winter, keeping my feet warm in a bedroom that had no heat), but they will have to wait for another time. This piece is not about dogs. It's about horses.

So, even though I never owned one, growing up in Kentucky, I was raised with a deep appreciation of horses. Frankly, it was almost unavoidable. Countless times I walked the eight long blocks to the fairgrounds to watch the trotters and their sulkies somehow simultaneously careen and float around that dirt track. All across the counties of West Kentucky, horses could constantly be seen serving on working farms. And it was a rare month when the Junkman didn't ply the alleyway behind our house with his great horse-drawn wagon. Horses were everywhere.

I think I know where my appreciation for horses began. And, of course, it was because of a girl. My first crush (and more, to be honest) was on a girl who lived across 21st Street and around the corner on Harrison. I still remember the first time I saw her; first grade, Andrew Jackson Elementary School; massive smit-down. That crush (or whatever it really was) lasted for many years, long past the point where either of us could have done anything about it. But that, too, is a story for another time. Today is about horses.

It was pretty difficult to not know she loved horses. She wore horse jewelry. Instead of a poodle skirt, hers had a horse on it. The first time I visited her house, I saw she had a model horse on a shelf in her room; it served as one of the book ends for several fiction books involving horses. Because of my feelings for her, I decided to get interested in horses.

The fiscal realities being what they were, neither of us was going to have an actual horse, but we could both enjoy fictional horses. And that's how I came to read Walter Farley's Black Stallion novels, along with other equestrian stories and at least one non-fiction book about Man-O-War. Long before I ever read Stephen King's phrase "fall through the hole in the page," I was doing it. When young Alec Ramsay held on for dear life as the Black raced across desert sands, I was there, clinging to that great back, thrilling to the danger and to the stunning power of the Black Stallion. I loved that fictional world of horses. I heartily recommend those books to you parents for your children . . . and you can sneak a read, too :-)

A wise person once said, "The difference between theory and reality is this: in theory, they're the same; in reality, they're not." In fiction, that girl and I would have ended up spending our lives together, and horses would almost certainly been a part of it. But the reality is that our lives took different paths. I moved to Texas and started a new life. I met the real girl of my dreams, got married, became a father, father-in-law, grandfather.

The reality of horses is not the same, either. Actual horses must be fed, and housed, and cleaned, and cleaned up after (there's a reason one of the labors of Hercules was mucking out the stables). If they are a show horse or a race horse, they have to be exercised. They have to see the vet from time to time; there can be sizable health-related expenses. And, of course, horses are bred.

And here, I believe, is the really dangerous part. A foal, one who is sweet and gentle, can win your heart from one beat to the next. And if, as one of my Texas friends did, you decide, based on that sweet and gentle foal, to keep breeding "babies," there is no going back. Not for your heart. You're in. All they way in.

And so today I write about my Texas friend who did that; who, after getting that first sweet foal in May of 1989, decided along with her sister to breed and raise horses. It has not always been an easy road for them. In fact, it has often been very hard, indeed. And today will be one of the hardest. Today, after almost 23 years of love given and love returned, they lost that first foal.

Sometimes I hear people say something like, "Well, of course it is sad, but it's not the same as losing a person." I guess I would have to admit some intellectual reality to the statement. But our hearts don't usually follow our intellect, do they? Really, how can half a love be any kind of love at all? We love our animals. And it is not unusual at all for us to grieve when they're gone. They lived in our hearts, after all.

Bryn Dar Farm's first foal is gone.
Rest in peace, Dyfan (May 14, 1989 - April 16, 2012)

"My treasures do not ching together or glitter. They gleam in the sun, and neigh in the night."