View from the North 40: One plus one is not three

One of my horses is kind of loaned out to a ranch right now, and it’s like having a disturbance in the Force to be missing one of the living beings in my life.

The two horses I have left are rocking the adjustment like, well, horses.

This means, they ran around frantically for 15 minutes, whinnied loudly and regularly for maybe three hours, whinnied occasionally for another 10 hours and then they moved on to jockeying for position in the discussion over who would be in charge of their personal food, scheduling and leadership privileges.

I admire horses’ ability to cope with this kind of change, partly because I know how sensitive they are to differences in their world.

My property, in its former life, was a junkyard with cars and trucks and all their parts and various sundry items left sitting around several acres. You couldn’t so much as roll a tire that had been sitting out in the grass to a more discreet spot 10 feet away without causing some kind of snorting fit of suspicion.

It was like they thought the tire would spontaneously come “back” to life and chase them down — as if “Maximum Overdrive” was a documentary and not just a cheezy horror film about mechanical things coming alive to kill humans.

I was always amazed how they could they tell that, in all the acres of random junk, one thing was moved.

Despite this hyper awareness of their environment, they’ve moved on from missing a fellow equine which they’ve spent virtually 24 hours per day with for four years straight.

He’s gone. Buh-bye. Where’s the food?

I, on the other hand, don’t take to change very well and worry at his absence like a missing tooth.

I’m short one living being when I do the many random head counts of horses as I look out in the pen throughout the day and do chores.

I can’t figure out how much hay to throw out for a herd of one-less. I worry about how he’s getting along at the new place, with different people, horses, dogs and cats. What does he think of the chickens and ducks? I wonder if he was a good boy about getting shod and if he’s doing well learning to be a cow pony.

It’s been a week since he left, and I still think of him in one way or another maybe 100 times a day.

It must be a prey animal thing to just assume that because he’s gone, he’s good as dead and they need to get on with the business of living. Horses are like that.

My dog, Cooper, gets me, though. I see him looking over our horse herd of two and seeing that we’re shy one large, brown horse. He stares at me then like, “I seen what you did there. That chubby one is gone. What did you do with my horse?”

It’s not as bad as that time the owners of the stray cat we called Cheeto came to get the cat after it had spent six weeks in the shop treating Cooper like he was his long-lost hero and the best best friend ever. I handed the cat to the owner and she drove away with it, and all of a sudden I was guilty of trafficking a beloved family member.

For the record, Cooper showed nothing but disgust and jealousy toward the cat while it was here, but still shunned me for a whole week after its owner claimed it.

Somewhere in the mix of herd mates and dog should be a reasonable response of a human for missing and worrying about a four-legged friend who is being given the chance to prove he can go on to a useful life. I’m pretty sure that healthy place doesn’t involve obsessively looking out to the horse pen to do a head-count and feeling an odd space where the number 3 used to be.

——

Maybe I just need to study up on some of this new math to make the count come out right at [email protected].