View from the North 40: Just another soul-sucking adventure

A modern expression warns that “a boat is a hole in the water that you throw money into.” I like that and the format applies to many of our specialty splurges.

A monster truck is a hole in the mud you throw money into.

See what I did there?

A craft room full of fabric is a hole in a quilt you sew money into.

There I added a new twist. But truth is truth and found even in my own hobby.

A horse is a hole in a corral you throw money into.

But this is not the whole truth. Not for me and that elite tier of horse people who — and I don’t mean to brag here — continually invest their emotions into their horses to an unhealthy, pathological degree.

It’s like psychological roulette, waiting for the disaster that will be the final one to do you in.

A horse is a hole in your heart you throw your soul into.

That’s so beautiful, or rather that can be so beautiful. Largely, though, it’s a soul-sucking nightmare of stress and twisted fear of being hopeful and having that killed. Or maybe that’s just me.

Those who don’t know horses should know that they are amazingly powerful and shockingly fragile. Some days it’s like they are working to find a way to injure or sicken themselves, permanently debilitate or kill themselves.

The risks are compounded with young and newly purchased horses, and perversely, with a horse that you have invested anything extra, like time, money, plans or your heart.

I have had a rough couple months with all my horses, but especially with my special, new, young horse — yes, special, new, young. She’s like the trifecta of doom.

This week she’s been putting a lot of effort into meeting her doom. She peaked in an evening of colic that saw me leading her around for three hours trying to will her to poop. For her part she tried to lie down and roll, as if that would fix her bellyache rather than give her a twisted kink in her intestines.

Sunset found me in her corral, finally letting her lie down because she seemed to have passed enough manure and gas to relieve her colic and she looked simply tired, not in pain. For my part, I was sitting in the middle of the corral hoping I was right to let my guard down. I was on the phone letting a friend, a kindred spirit in horse-related emotional trauma, talk me down from selling all the horses and taking up adult coloring-books.

Then the horse quietly stood up on her own and shook a little dirt off to make herself presentable.

She walked across the corral to me, lowered her head and pressed it against my chest for pets, which I gave, plus a few tears just for effect, y’know, before she wandered off to eat some hay like the previous three hours of distress didn’t exist.

So is a horse a hole in your heart that you throw your soul into? I suspect so.

Maybe that’s when you’re doing it right.

(This is just a hole in the paper that I throw words into at [email protected].)