Love Is Blind: A Life with Horses

Keller

I Love Horses

I love their body smell, that deep smell of horse! How does one describe that smell that cannot be described but to inhale, deep into the lungs and heart? I’ve always wanted to bottle that smell into perfume. To wear that smell of horse, sweat and connection. To sleep with a horse infused jumper as a pillow, gave me dreams of flying and horses.

The smell of their breath after eating fresh hay or carrots, the feel of their warm rich breath on my skin their whiskers tickling my face.

I love the neigh of their voices, each voice uniquely different, and I can tell which horse is calling in the same way humans have different voices. The big horses have a deep base rumble like thunder, or the earth shuddering, yet some may have a high squeaky voice and the Arabian the longest neigh that can shatter glass like a soprano in full throat. To be standing next to one of the horses when they open their mouth and the sound comes from deep inside, makes my hair curl with the vibration and my heart skip a beat. When standing with Samio, I can feel the vibration of his voice begin deep inside then travel up and up until it explodes from his mouth, my hands tingle with the passage of his sound. Other times, his neigh seems off key and high like it’s squeaked out between his lips.

The times I’ve stood near a neighing full-throated stallion, his lips and eyes rolled back, the teeth gleaming and a full-throated roar that screams across the day.

The neigh of pain, the sound of distress, the challenge of a fight, the warning of a battle cry, the gentle speak to a new-born foal and the cluck clucking of teeth that sound like a soft whistle.

The sound of their horses’ hooves on the dirt ground, or the clopping sound as their feet hit the tarmac, sounds that ring in the heart. A rhythm of hoof music that drummers love to imitate. The sound of an advancing army or thunderstorm as the Clydesdales gallop down the paddock. The earth shakes with the mighty steeds while the Arabian floats on air her tail up over her back and her nostrils wide and flaring. You never hear her coming. My beautiful Arabian Charisma is like a ballerina floating on the wind.

All horses have a special horse smell but the heavy horse magnifies that smell. It’s like a great cloth that wraps around me when I hug or brush them the smell transferring to my clothes and body, lingering for hours. It is my favourite perfume. When I was a child, I hated changing my clothes for Id loose that smell and often go to bed with a jumper that still gave the perfume of those I love. Even their poo smells like mulched grass to me. I have never found horse poo to be offensive, a little difficult if they have diarrheal but poo has always told me the health of my horse. I sniff poo, pick it up, break it open, and put it in a plastic bag with water to check the sand content, I am a poo queen! I’ve always looked at poo for it tells me the health of all living beings and what they are eating. I’ll often leave a nice pile of horse poo that drops when I’m leading one of the horses into the stable. I then watch it day by day as the dung beetles build up mounds around it and slowly the poo disappears. Voracious little poo cleaners. I kneel down and watch and so often have to laugh as a dog or two will join me peering at the poo or bum up paws extended stare at the mound and bark!

Out here in the dry country, I built all my vegetable gardens from the collected manure of the animals. For seventeen years, I grew vegetables under cover in summer and plenty of greens in winter, then I stopped planting just for me, and now all my manure is collected by my friend Pete, who has fabulous vegetable gardens and fruit trees and in return gives me fresh vegetables and fruit and I no longer spend hours growing food, watering food, weeding and keeping the bugs away. The manure goes around in that web of life that starts as a seed, grows into hay, is fed to my animals, comes out as manure, feeds other seeds which grow into vegetables and feeds me. The amazing circle of life!

Delicious poo that dogs love, whether it’s sloppy and green or in hard little balls they can carry around in the mouth. I’ve had many dogs that have loved to roll in sloppy poo having a good back scratch and coming to me like I should be very enthusiastic that they are wearing a favourite perfume.

Try going to the toilet after a meat eater and now that’s offensive but never horse poo! I’ve had many people tell me that they would love to ‘do’ horse rescue, in fact all animal rescue and I tell them it’s mainly picking up shit! Of course, they have some fantasy it’s about cuddling animals, maybe a light brush but never picking up shit, cleaning runny shit from tails and bottoms, scrubbing legs, cleaning out hooves of muck and never getting one’s hands filthy, not just dirty but filthy!

When outside cleaning, especially on hot days nothing is as horrible as having a fly go up the nose! I sneeze and gag and it’s the thought of it being a dirty fly as much as the feel of it crawling around inside the nose that horrifies me, or swallowing it! Then there is the March fly or Bot fly dance. Horrible biting flying creatures that have the horses kicking out and the dogs snapping, me slapping and covering myself in lotions and potions that don’t seem to work but attract more flies and stings! I’ve tried sprays and jells and all sorts of concoctions to keep the march flies away from the horses and me. Then the odious chore of getting the bots eggs off of the coat of the horse without the use of chemicals, using a bot knife endlessly scraping away while the horse are dancing around me and me trying to avoid being trampled. Then follows the worming of the horse as they have usually ingested the some of the eggs. When I first worked in stables the wormer was a huge egg-shaped lump of chemical shot down the horse’s mouth with a gun like a ‘pop’ gun. A twitch was applied to the horse’s nose to hold it still. I dreaded to have to do this, holding on to the handle of the twitch and with other hand trying to get the wormer down the horses’ throat. Then came the granules which had to be mixed with feed and heavily disguised but the horses seemed to know and refused to eat so lashings of molasses was used. Finally someone invented a worming paste in a plastic plunger. I have to quick and sneaky, rapping the end of the plunger in molasses trying to make the horse think it is getting a treat and not a shot of worming paste. Trying not to be trod on or thrown into the air or hit in the face by a head, being thrown up high in the air. Or having it spat all over my face and body for it taste fowl even mixed with molasses.

There was always the drench, which was twitching the horse, putting a tub down its throat and pumping in chemicals to kill any worms, the drench still being used in the case of colic. Stomach ache is common because of too much rich food, green grass or out here in this desert location sand impaction.

I lock my horses in a small area when I use worming paste and put the polluted poo away in another area and not into my big poo pile which is used for gardens. I don’t like the idea of putting worming paste into the garden and anything a horse eats or any animal where a human is using the poo for me it is important to know what food or chemicals that animal has ingested as that will go into the food chain.

I am in awe of people like my farrier who can just pop a worming paste into a horse’s mouth, press the plunger and the job is done, what a fine art that is.

I have spent my life with horses. Travelling with them, pulling various carts and wagons and riding them. Horses have been in my life since I was two years old. Many rescued from terrible conditions and I now need my photo albums to remind me who they all were. Horses are still in my life, thus, this book. They beat with life, alive and amazing in the beauty of forgiveness of what humans do to them. They are very alive, I can feel their heart beating, hear their voice, watch their body language and laugh so often at the ways they are in this world.

All animals have taught me so much about their world and this world. The way they see the world, the way they sniff and a million messages come in, their curiosity, the twitching of the ears, the forward motion of the whiskers, their senses opened up life for a child animal and spiritually aligned. Their curiosity made me look, observe and know. Sitting watching ants or beetles for hours on end, learning of their world, learning the world of the horse and dog, the cat, those animals closest to me in life. Laying on my back watching birds season after season and I am still amazed at what birds know, the weather patterns, how to kill in flight, how to dive, how to sit like a pelican on a small branch and how to land gracefully on water, that big ship like bird landing with barely a ripple in the water.

Life has never been boring, for life is all around us. The world is alive and breathing and filled with amazement for the curious. It’s an endless teacher of birth, death, survival and the weaving of a precious web where only the human is superfluous.

The fright of horses, I look to the source, sometimes it frightens me. The horse will suddenly fright and flight. Sometimes for a reason that is unknown to me or just a big fright. (Like plastic flapping in the wind, a noisy vehicle, lo flying helicopter or dogs chasing them or if a kangaroo or emu suddenly appears) They then stop and turn and often give a look of puzzlement as if to say, What was that? I love the look of astonishment that passes over a horse’s face.

They can also egg each other on and one with snort or have a small dance and suddenly everyone explodes fright, flight.

The trust that humans so often abuse, for horses start their life in trust. They trust us and trust is so fragile that far too often we humans break that. Far too often, we want an animal, especially, the horse to behave as we want and not as the animal is. Humans are still learning to accept an animal for its own being in this world. We genetically change them calling it ‘improvement’, we breed new and often poorly bred designer horses. We teach horses tricks and work them to starvation and death in so many countries. We sent them to war and in war now they survive often badly injured by falling bombs and flying shrapnel.

There is the miracle of birth.

All birth, but to watch a foal being born, the mother laying down and straining, the bulge of the birth membrane, and hear the soft nickers of the mother as she opens the birth sack to greet her foal, the opening of the long legs and the feet protected by jelly. The slow opening of the eyes as they focus and those little nostril hairs so fine and tuned ready to seek milk. The trying to stand and falling. The legs going in all different directions. The foal wobble, then comes the seeking of the milk.

Birth is truly a miracle, and death is the other. To watch life leave, to hold an animal as the soul moves into another dimension and I am left in my grief. To hold the loved body as spirit leaves and the light fades, then the tears begin as they began on watching birth. As new life enters this world and every time I gasp as the aura flows first then the animal, or human, the colours of the rainbow swirling around the body, the chakra colours of life. Then at death as the aura fades to pink then white, then into the nothing I can see but the body in my arms and the tears on my face and soul.

I remember seeing my first horse and it registering to me the beauty, the power and the love I felt go through me like a hot wave. I was about two years of age and my father had taken me to the races. My mother was with us but off drinking and partying with jockeys and horsey type blokes that looked like all the men she fancied, con men! She loved all men, the short the round the tall as long as they played her court. Tall, dark, handsome and on the edge of violence were the men too often in her life. My father was so different, short, stocky and a lover of animals and all living things. It was an arranged marriage which is custom in my culture. She 14 years younger and six foot two and he five foot six and so infatuated with such beauty that he always forgave her. The beauty of my mother stunned most men into silence then lust. My mother who didn’t particularly like women, liked the ‘bad’ men who drank and smoked and swore. The con men, the tough men, the boxers and jockeys the sailors and finally another little fat man who was part Aboriginal Afghanistan and Australian and was like her by then, a drunk. They punished each other for twenty years.

(The irony of their relationship is that my mother only liked the jockeys and not the horses and Bob who she lived with decided to have trotting horses, those my mother called the ‘Gee gees’. If she went with him to the stables, she would sit in the car, there was no action there for her!)

The race tracks. Still much the same. The smell of horses and male sweat. The heavy perfumes of the women, the noise which would explode during the race, the swearing, the smell of beer and the tinny music. The smell of rancid fat and burnt sugar, of beer and spilt wines. Men shouting, men cursing, men yelling over a loudspeaker system, men beating horses with whips, men crying usually with frustration or the drunks cry of tears and morbidity. Racetracks are a world of competition for the best horse, the best win and the best prize, the woman on the rich punters arm.

We were at the races and my father took me to look at the horses parading around the ring. Oh my. I saw them. I truly saw them. This magnificent animal, all fire and eyes and charisma. I fell in love. When he tried to take me from the ring, I put my fingers and toes into the mesh and hung on. No way was I going to leave such beauty. A screaming match ensured with him finally dragging me off the wire, slapping my bum and plonking me down howling into the pusher. No one gave a second glance. No one came up to him to explain or help or even criticise him. Today, he’d have an angry mob around him telling him to try to understand my anger at being parted from such beauty, if they could understand that and not just consider it one tantrum or two. My father never asked me ‘how I felt, what he could do to help, and we must talk about that!’ But no, one belted bum and unceremoniously dumped into the pusher.

He hauled me off the fence and took me around to where the horses were stabled to shut me up. I stopped yelling the moment we went around the corner. There they were, rows of beautiful intelligent faces staring at me, snorting, licking, munching, and neighing. Those beautiful big brown eyes of the universe.

He held me up and he realised my love for it flowed from me in tears and song. He knew my heart had been opened again as it was with the love of dogs. He walked me along the horses so I could touch and smell each one. An old man watched us and came to my father saying, She’s a goner mate, she’s fallen in love with the horses, she’s given her heart and no man will ever have that heart for it belongs to them.

As soon as I could walk, my father stood me on a box to be able to brush a horse and as he sat me on their back as I clung on with both hands as not to fall. Then he had difficulty getting me off the horse. I was comfortable and wanted to stay on those broad backs. Besides it looked a long way to the ground. Even then I didn’t want to fall off. More so now as I no longer bounce but lay there groaning. My father recognised the love and connection I have with animals for he had it. He also loved the horse but for him it was a working animal, not like I feel that animals are their own beings first and foremost. We train them for riding or work or breed them for racing or meat. Like we justify their existence if they can be ‘useful’ to us rather than love them and connect with them for the beautiful diverse beings they are.

We call animal ‘beasts’ not a pleasant term or a term I’ve ever used on an animal.

Whenever we saw a horse, my father would take me to meet it and kiss that living being and I’d feel the heart beating, the life force moving through me. I loved to feel all living beings. Even an ant. I’d lay watching the ants and gently try to feel one, the life force of an ant is huge, they are so busy they vibrate with being busy. I felt the motion like I’d feel the motion of a bee or insect but not touch it, instead feel the aura, the vibration. I’d lay with my head on a dog or cat listening and feeling the life and so often the purr of a cat. I’ve often just stroked the aura of a cat just to hear the purr. Years later, I hear the purr of a big cat, a lion, and nearly wet myself with excitement. It was the same purr as my cats! Every animal has an individual voice. I’m sure birds do too but theirs is too subtle for me to hear but the loud neigh of a big horse can almost lift me off the ground and the high pitch of the Arabian calling her friends is deafening and make bells ring in my head.

They all seemed so big to me, when I was so little, and they were all so much a part of my life. I can’t imagine my life without horses or dogs. Or animals of this planet. It would be a void, lonely and my heart would be sore. It can never be my world and reality without animals to share and live with.

I was often left with my nana, who lived in a seaside suburb of Adelaide. The sea being a steep walk down a long hill and a puff side stitch walks back up. The train line was a street away and the sound of the warning lights singing the song that the train is coming punctuated the day. I lived mainly with my father, on and off the road, sometimes with my mother at her various places of employment or with one of her many ‘uncles’.

I lived on and off with my nana and had three stays in an orphanage, where my mother would leave me and the dog. The kind nuns would ring my nana and I’d wait for her sitting on the front steps, my eyes glued to the way she would come shimmering through the light to rescue me.

My nana ran a boarding house and when younger a pub. She was a hard-working woman and had four children to raise by herself. She threw my grandfather out as he gambled all the money she made into the pockets of others and her children were starving. She had the pub at Penneshaw on Kangaroo Island for many years.

She had moved to the mainland when her children left the island and she was known for her tealeaf readings. Women would come to the back door a hanky over their cup and have their leaves read. Or they may have a cuppa with her. Even today, I cannot abide tea bags. It must be a warmed pot, leaf tea, turn the pot three times one way then another. Pour the tea, savour the flavour and finally read the leaves. One cannot read tea bags!

When I was 11, my mother came back to live with us (it was my first house we lived in for some time) until my father died four years later of a stroke caused by war wounds, the shrapnel always floating in his body. We were then living in the ship building red steel town of Whyalla. A man’s town! With large barracks for all the single male workers, men’s clubs and small double joined commission homes for the married.

I was living with my nana when I first met the milkman’s horse.

I remember being woken by the sound of horse’s hooves. It was barely dawn. I raced to the lounge and looked out the window and there, coming up the street was a magnificent horse slowly clopping along while the man ran from house to house with bottles of milk. I was at the window next morning watching for him. It didn’t take long to figure out how to pull a chair to the front door, open it and be outside waiting. From the front steps to the front gate to being able to walk out and pat the friendly giant.

Then came the bread man, the rag and bone man, the rabbit man. All with their beautiful heavy horses. My nana let me go and pat them and feed them with saved carrots or apples. She knew if she locked the front door, I’d escape out a window. One day the big old Italian man, who collected anything people didn’t want, was standing talking to my nana when I started kissing his big black beauty on the nose. My nana pulled me away and the man said, He’s okay, he’s okay. He’s a ‘beautifoola’ big stallion, he will never hurt a person so gentle and look, and he lent under the stallion my eyes following his. See, look at those a beautifoola big set of black balls.

My nana rushed me inside with me asking, What’s a beautiful set of black balls?

As I grew year by year, I quickly discovered that many of the heavy horses were paddocked down the end of the road. I’d wander off down there, the dog my companion and sit on the fence watching the