Chancey of the Maury River (15 page)

She turned toward the barn to retrieve lead ropes and grain to bring the geldings home. Then she turned back to me and said, “Chancey! I’ve got an idea! Would you like a new job? I need a good, sound horse — a bombproof horse — to help Mac, Gwen, and me teach in the therapeutic school. Ask your buddy Mac what he thinks. I’ll ask Claire’s mother.”

This seemed a revelation as to how a new vision of belonging with Claire would come to pass. Claire and I had met just when each of us needed the other. Claire needed a companion to help her sort out her feelings and find her confidence at a difficult time in her family life. She needed a friend who would believe in her and give her the courage to be great and true to herself. And I had needed exactly the same. What we had already accomplished together was more precious than one hundred blue ribbons; I did not want to see that foundation erode over time because any future ribbons weren’t the right color.

I faced the truth of the matter. Whether she knew it or not, Claire needed something that I could not give her. Claire needed to be a champion; she needed to win. Though I would have given up the last of my remaining eyesight for it, I was not the horse who could take Claire to the level that she was ready to achieve.

I suppose that I should have felt regret about this truth, but I did not. Had Claire grown tired of me or rejected me for another, stronger gelding, yes, that would have cut to my heart. But Claire would have gone right on training with me three times a week, taking me to little hunter shows, and cantering me through the mountains, without complaint. She would have kept cheering me on with every fourth- or fifth-place ribbon we brought home. In Claire’s eyes, we were a team. Had either of us placed competition at the center of our friendship, I believe we would not have lasted together as long or as true as we have. From the beginning, there was something more in it for both of us. I hoped that Claire and Mother would agree with Mrs. Maiden and allow me to try this new endeavor.

I felt it a great honor to have been recruited to serve alongside Mac. Although less than half my age, Mac agreed to act as mentor to me as I prepared to enter service in the therapeutic school.

Mac had worked in therapeutic service since he was purchased at auction by Mrs. Maiden for that very purpose. To Mac this was not a menial position; it was his life’s work. He spoke lovingly of his students and cautioned that should I accept the opportunity offered to me, I could no longer save the best of myself only for Claire. If I were to become a therapeutic school horse, I must withhold nothing and give myself to every student as if each one were, in fact, Claire. “There must be no favorites, my friend. To succeed in this work, each must become your favorite,” he advised me.

According to Mac, each of my students would need something different from me. While one student might desire to gain muscle tone in her back, which had been ravaged by a disease of the muscles, another might wish to increase concentration in order to find a moment of peace from acute misfires in his brain. Still another student might work on improving his gross motor skills, which had been slow to develop. Mac impressed upon me that I must be ready to love each of my new students as deeply as I had come to love Claire. I vowed to welcome each student just exactly as I had been welcomed and nurtured.

When I arrived at the Maury River Stables, I too was in desperate need of restoration. Mrs. Maiden devised a plan specific to my needs. We worked to manage the pain from my arthritis. We salvaged what we could of my eyesight and used a variety of techniques to help me find new ways to see. Most of all, I finally found purpose and joy in my life. It was no accident that Claire was assigned to oversee my nourishment back to health. Mrs. Maiden gave me Claire because Claire was the person I needed in order to become whole.

It would be the same in return with my new students. Mrs. Maiden, together with each of my students, or their families, would create a plan for healing and strengthening. Through barn skills and riding, we would work in the therapeutic program to nourish body and soul, just as Claire had nourished me. I gathered that for therapeutic riders, horsemanship was a means to restoration. Whether to body or soul, my job would be to help restore each of them. I was eager to get started.

Mac assured me that proper training would equip me with the skills that I needed. He warned that therapeutic service, while rewarding, was also challenging. The training program on which I was about to embark posed the first challenge for me to overcome.

Mrs. Maiden had recruited me into my new position fully aware of my age and my conditions. It was Mrs. Maiden who had first observed the tumors in my eyes. Of course, Mrs. Maiden had also witnessed my refusal to jump with Claire because of my increasing blindness. These facts did not diminish Mrs. Maiden’s faith in me, but I believe these were cause enough to put me through an intensive training with Stu.

Stu’s charge was to increase my capacity to remain brave and calm under any and all circumstances. Courage has never been lacking in my spirit, thanks to my exceptional breeding. My dam was not only the most striking Appaloosa I have ever known; she was also the bravest, most serene being that I have yet to encounter. Dam was my first teacher in matters of courage.

I am not frightened to hear the wind tearing through our forest, even when there are few leaves to soften its howl. I am not afraid of other horses, be they moody mares or scowling, hot Thoroughbreds. I don’t spook or dash away at the sight of a red umbrella, as do some others. A chair that was upright yesterday does not shatter my confidence if it is upside down when I encounter it today. Nor do I bolt when an engine backfires. I dare say neither friend nor foe can detect fear in me, ever. This courage was the trait admired so by Mrs. Maiden on the day the hunters fired upon our field.

Tolerance was to be my lesson. I quickly deduced, from listening to Stu and Mrs. Maiden plan my course of study, that increased tolerance was to be the primary aim of my training. By eavesdropping, I learned that Mrs. Maiden doubted not at all my bravery or my ability. She wanted to increase my tolerance to be able to accept the often unpredictable, erratic actions of some therapeutic students. I further overheard that I would not be immediately placed into service as a teacher. I would spend the rest of the fall and all of the winter learning to welcome intolerable and unexpected stimuli. Stu was to be my teacher, Mac and Gwen my mentors.

In addition to being the barn manager and a trainer at Maury River Stables, I am of the opinion that Stu was Mrs. Maiden’s special companion. On a number of occasions, how many I cannot accurately state, I witnessed with my own eye a physical closeness between the two, the likes of which I have yet to see between other people. Their intimacy rivaled that of Claire and Mother, but at the same time was very different indeed. Having observed Stu’s capacity for tenderness, I placed my complete trust in him and, in fact, welcomed him as my teacher. I felt certain that Stu would allow no harm to come to me, if for no other reason than his profound devotion to Mrs. Maiden.

Like me, Stu also battled arthritis. The disease had rendered his hands so twisted that the act of buckling the girth around me was very nearly impossible for him to complete without assistance. Yet he never winced or cried out. I saw how he rubbed his hands when the task was done. In this way, too, Stu trained me, through his example, to better tolerate that which aimed to distract me.

I was not surprised to find that Gwen, the old Hanoverian, along with Mac, was a star in the therapeutic school. There was no gentler mare in all of Rockbridge County. More than once, hearing Claire singing in the mare field, I had trotted over and found Claire sitting in the grass with Gwen’s big, warmblood head resting in her lap. Claire held no fear of Gwen, who at seventeen hands high is a great deal larger than I am. I never disturbed the two of them at such moments, nor did I allow them to detect me as I watched from behind the cedar clump in the gelding field. Gwen’s gentle spirit was well suited for teaching, particularly in the therapeutic school.

Before we started our training, Stu tied my lead rope to the door of my room so that I was facing the indoor riding ring. He proceeded to bring Gwen into the middle. She wore no bridle or halter and could have bolted from him at the moment of her choosing; she did not bolt. She appeared bored. Her breath warmed the air and formed a cloud around her face as she blew toward Stu with her standard greeting of exchanging breath.

With no warning or verbal cue, Stu reached back to his belt loop, then threw open an umbrella directly into the old mare’s face. She blinked at him once, but made no sound or movement. She did not spook. She stood square in the same bored way as she had started out.

“See that, Chancey, my friend? That’s you when we’re done,” Stu told me. Then he reached in his pocket for a treat, which Gwen gladly received. Ultimately, I was to achieve this same level of tolerance.

My formal training consisted of repeated conditioning to every unusual, unexpected sight, sound, or feeling that Stu could imagine. Stu started our work together by crumpling paper bags near my ears and face. He popped balloons next to my ears. Had Mac not opened my heart to the higher purpose of this most irritating training period, I may well have been put off and refused to accept these distractions. Stu dragged ropes and twine across my withers and barrel. He waved the rope around my face and rear. I did not react.

With no evidence that I understood his words, Stu explained to me that each lesson was necessary to simulate sensations that I might encounter with my new students. Stu’s goal was to condition me to expect anything. When I had passed each test, Stu always made his satisfaction known to me with the same three words: “That’s right, Chance.” I came to expect that hearing the phrase signaled that we were ready to move on to the next challenge.

Throughout the winter, we trained everywhere. Our lessons were held in my room, the indoor ring, the outdoor ring, the cross-country field, and, if Stu desired maximum distraction on any given morning, in the mare field. I may be gelded, but the mares still distract me like no other living beings. All over the grounds of Maury River Stables we worked for two sessions daily, in the morning after breakfast and again at midday.

Claire came most every day after school. Gradually, we all but stopped our own equitation training in exchange for taking quiet afternoon trails together. The winter ground was hard and crunched beneath my feet; I did my best to keep Claire warm, though I did not mind the cold as much as she did. Some days we had no need to talk at all and would only walk through the many miles of hills or alongside the river. Other days, Claire gave me detailed reconnaissance from Stu and Mrs. Maiden about my progress as a therapeutic horse.

“I’m so proud of you, Chancey. Everyone is proud of you, especially Mother. She gets all choked up whenever Stu tells her about how well you’re doing.”

In time for my evening meal, Claire would walk me back to my room. “I love you, pony,” she’d say. Often Claire would return more than once with an extra carrot or apple to place in my grain box.

Mealtimes and after dark were the only hours I spent in my room while I was training. I can’t say that I missed my room during my training as a therapeutic school horse, for I did not. I desired to pass as many hours as possible outdoors while I could still see. I knew that blindness would one day close the mountains to my eyes for good, for cancer knows not compassion. I knew there would be enough time for standing in my room, one day.

In order to build camaraderie, Mrs. Maiden had relocated Dante to the other side of the barn and now cradled me between my two mentors, Gwen and Mac. To further cultivate an
esprit de corps
among us, she had sectioned off a new field in order that we could establish an unbreakable bond that would carry over to our work with the students. As Gwen was the oldest and most experienced in the therapeutic school, she easily and without fight became the lead horse in our paddock. There were occasions when, because of the shared fence line, Princess still assaulted Gwen. At those times, Mac or I were only too happy to race to Gwen’s aid and slam our back hooves into the fence with such force and reverberation that Princess would not only scamper away, but squeal, too, as if she herself were the injured party.

At night in our bordering rooms, we three would whisper until early into the morning. Gwen and Mac made me repeat to them each exercise and aspect of my training progress; they then explained to me its purpose and described what I might expect the next day. I had easily passed the first phase of my training; still, Mac said even more was necessary before I could begin my work with students. Gwen rightly foretold that Stu would introduce me to more unpredictable stimuli than simple bags or colorful balloons. Thus, I was not at all alarmed when Stu showed up for my lesson with a pack of beagles.