My default emotion as a woman is to cry. I try to hide it well, but in the comfort of my own yard, and at the end of a telephone line, you're gonna hear about it. I'd tried everything with "The Hit Man", Linda Tellington Jones 'T-Touch", round penning, Monty Roberts, desensitizing work, John Lyons techniques, and nothing worked.
You put the Hit Man in the round pen, he'd work beautifully, he'd 'Join Up' and you'd be having a special moment with lots of head petting, 'good boy's!' and the next second you were standing there, stunned because somehow he managed to spin, kick and shatter the plastic lighter you had in your pocket, and you were now suddenly flammable, developing a chemical burn and crying before you realized just exactly had happened.
I was not giving up yet. . .
The next morning, my leg covered in lighter fluid induced rash, I suited up. Quito was tied to the industrial strength hitching post, and I had my full faced motorcycle helmet, an eventing vest, 2 dog collars, some sheepskin covers, and a claw can grabber- the thing old people use to get cans off high shelves, and a set of hobbles.
Quito stood quietly, doped with 5cc's of ace. Even in a drug induced coma, I did not trust him. His head hung low, bobbing occasionally. I closed my helmet, and took my old-people can grabber and went to work.
I used the claw grabbers to put the sheepskin covered collars around his pasterns, and when I was very sure he was totally asleep, I leaned down and buckled them just tight enough that they would not slide off his hooves. I then buckled the hobbles to the dog collars and left him with a set of shackles long enough to walk around the yard, but not long enough to kick.I let him go, and he walked a few steps, bucked twice, and gave up.
Now with every trip outside, I would stop and visit him, running my hands down his flank and back legs. He gave a hearty kick a few times, and I laughed, "Good luck with that". He gave me a look, and then stomp away sounding like Jacob Marley, but just as harmless.
He soon became used to me near his back end, I could touch his legs while he munched hay, and he no longer cared if I picked his little chained foot up to clean it.
The real test was my weirdo neighbors, so I threw a cookout and everyone came, Danny, the electrician that just moved here from California, who didn't really like Rum Gully because there wasn't enough 'negative ions' in the air. "California has plenty of negative ions man, cuz of the beaches, this place is like, stale'."
I laughed at him then, but as I sit here in Virginia, far from South Carolina, I find "Stale" to be a very kind and accurate representation of Rum Gully indeed.
Joe the drunk stopped by. Most of the horses liked Joe because he smelled like a brewery, all grains and fermentation, but Quito hated every man, wheat smelling or not. He snorted, but let Joe pet his butt.
Sean, the meth-head from down the road stopped by, his chemical breath made Quito's lip curl, but he didn't bother to raise a hoof, what was the point?
Even Sally the potbellied pig came out of her pen to visit. My mom made tamales with pretty corn husk shells (exterior not edible) but Sally tried to eat it anyway. When she went into a chocking fit and I had to give her the piggy version of the Heimlich manuver, Quito just stood there, overlooking the procession with boredom. The worst behavior he exhibited that day was nudging people to get handfuls of Spanish rice.
After the festivites and his week of visitors, I donned my motercycle helmet, and flak vest and removed the hobbles. The test run went well, I pet his flank, he didn't bother to raise a hoof. Estatic, I announced he was not only cured, but he was going to be the best- at something- I wasn't sure what yet. I was very successful at training in my area- because whenever I bought a horse, I let him pick the discipline. You want to run off with people, fine, run off with me around barrels, hate the woods? Let's try dressage!
Quito had no outward talent that I could see, except aim, but I was determined to find out his specialty.
Quito progressed quickly, within a week, I was tacking him and laying across his back. Though his kicking was gone, his mental quirks were still there. He would be fine, walking along like a normal horse, and then Jerry Seinfeld (the rooster) would come out of the camellia bush, the same bush, the same rooster that Quito lived with every single day, and he'd freeze. He didn't spook, his stopped. His big eyes would take on a vacant look, and he'd go somewhere else. He would walk along with you, but he would walk anywhere. Anywhere meaning the tailgate of my truck, the post of the car port. He no longer was able to steer himself, he was gone, and left behind was an 800 pound shell of meat and muscle.
I have seen this expression before, on animals that were 'gone', but not dead. Horses in such pain that it seemed God was kind enough to send their souls along before the body, and you had this blank eyed shell standing at the end of a lead rope waiting for the vet to come out and give 'the shot'. This was Quito. He was a shell when he went 'away'. And as you walked, he would awaken again, with no apparent trigger, he would be back to his strange, quirky self, quietly insinuating that a person could give him an alfalfa cube,and that would be quite nice.
One afternoon, with Quito tied to the hitching post, and a quite interesting program on NPR playing from the radio in the shed, I decided to try and at least sit on him. I had a bucket of alfalfa cubes, and with every step, every good deed, he would get a treat. "Look, mama's tigtening the cinch, have a cube!" Mama's laying across the saddle, "have a cube!" Mama's sitting on you, "have a cube!"
Quito was perfect, enjoying the silly antics of his human, the constant cube dispenser. I played treat factory of several days, and when I thought he was ready, I had someone lead me around the yard on him. He tolerated the normal stuff, tack, getting on, but when we began to leave, and Newman (the other rooster, Jerry Seinfeld's nemesis) ran out of a bush, Quito did not go to his happy place, but to the 'I may just kill you all!' - disgruntled postal worker place. His head got high he snorted, and just as I thought, prepare for explosion, he went to his 'happy place' an shut down. He tripped back to the hitching post, dragging his feet and rubbing me against a tree, despite great efforts on my handlers part to push him sideways. He slugged back to the barn with the pep of a man on death row taking the final tour of his mint green hallway.
I hopped down, and decided that Quito had done all the work he had needed to do.
He simply was no longer mentally capable of performing any duty other than eating the dog food off the porch, and pooping on the front steps. He had tried his heart out for me, but he just could not be ridden. He would hurt himself, or his rider. Someone had broken him inside and he had given all he could give.
I knew keeping him would be hard. I could never quite trust him around the lesson kids when he was loose in the yard, he would eat the little resources I had. I was 23 years old, and very skinny, because the horses and dogs always ate before I did, and Quito would be a financial burden, but I would happily carry him until I found a person that wanted a weird, quirky and unpredictable bi-polar, who had frequent periods of memory loss. Wait, that sounds like me. . .is that a personal ad I just wrote?
I was either magic, or God just pitied me, but things just 'happened' back then. Once, when I was in Lowe's I said to a friend, "I wish I had enough money to buy wood for the round pen." and out of nowhere, a woman walks up and says "Do you need a round pen?" I said yes, and a week later I had 24 panels, enough for two round pens! Once, I went to town with $24.00 to my name, I bought a voltage regulator for my truck, and lunch and when I got home, I had $25.00. Stuff like that always happened. I'd just shrug and say "I'm just the luckiest girl in the world."
My roommate Wendy was the UN-luckiest girl in the world, a karmic black hole.If something bad could happen, it would happen to her. We both had the same insurance company, and we both were too poor to pay the bills, so our policies lapsed at the same time. In South Carolina, you were fined $5.00 a day for every day you were without insurance. Neither of us had insurance for the past six months, so you either go to the DMV with $900 or you brought a piece of paper from the insurance company that said you did have coverage. . . I did not have $900, but I did have some pretty good computer skills.
I made me and Wendy identical Driver's Choice insurance cards on fake letter head and took them to the DMV. We went at the same time, Wending picking one window, me the other. I got out of the fine, Wendy got her license suspended.
Once Wendy left a bag of expensive feed through wormer in the back of her truck, that night it rained and it was ruined. Instead of buying new wormer, she called the feed store and told them the man that loaded it, didn't secure it and it fell into the street and busted. They told her not to worry, come and get a new bag, and they'd just take the $95.00 out of the man's paycheck. . . the next day someone stole her horse trailer.
I however, could conjure songs to play on the radio. We'd be in the truck and I'd say, "You know that new song by the Dixie Chicks? I really love that!" I would flip the channel and it would play, causing her to throw up her hands and sigh.
Any girl that can conjure songs can conjure a home for Quito, so I did, the next day. I was in the hardware store and I said "I wish I could find a home for Quito." Without a bit of surprise a woman walks up to me and says- "Do you have a horse for sale? I really just need a pasture ornament to keep my donkey happy, she's very angry and tries to kick butterflies. When she's very mad I bake her sweet feed cookies, when's she's sad, I add raisins!"
She did not need Quito, he needed her.
I told her of his "condition" of his bi-polar disorder, his pipe scar mark, his dislike for all things male, and there is a possible relapse of the kicking issues. I would sell him for exactly what I paid, $85.00
"I have to ask Neil!" she said (whoever Neil was) and she would call me, "$85 was such a great deal!
It was December, pretty close to Christmas. Close to Christmas meant that I probably wouldn't have to buy food for a few months because stores wasted more at Christmas. They would throw away entire cellophane wrapped fruit baskets with one bruised apple, or huge slightly expired hams (It was winter so you could keep the meat you found in the dumpster- my yearly stock up sale)
Selling Quito meant that that measly $85.00 would let me pay my light bill, so I didn't have to sit on the floor in front of the gas heater, heating up thawing french toast sticks over the little blue flames because they turned my lights off, again. I was ecstatic- I would have free food, the all you can eat dumpster dive buffet, and lights, AND heat. It would be the best Christmas ever! (It would sure beat Thanksgiving where all I had to eat was a loaf of slightly smelly deer meet someone gave me, mixed with a bottle of ranch dressing.
I was also sick and couldn't afford the doctor, so I sat home, alone, eating smelly ranch dressing covered meat and drinking tuna flavored cat distemper medicine (works GREAT for strep throat!)
I sighed, walking out of the hardware store, once again, the luckiest girl in the world! Until I got home.
"Neil won't let me have him." the woman on the other line of my ringing telephone said. She was in tears. "He says we can't afford him this close to Christmas, we don't have much for the kids. I already had told Dolly the Donkey all about him, she's so sad he can't come, I had to give her EXTRA raisins, and she's still sad."
I could take Quito back to the auction, a crooked auction where nobody knew either of us. I could ride him through, probably. I could put an add in the paper, I could put him on the internet. I was so excited about not having the glum little man get out of his South Carolina Electric and Gas car while I held back six dogs so he could lock my meter and leave me in the dark. I NEEDED that $85.00.
"Where do you live?"
"But I can't afford to pay you."
"You can have him." He needed to be a friend to a donkey, he needed sweet feed cookies and people to pet his pipe-scarred head and love him. He needed a retirement home where he would be loved, and run with Dolly the Donkey and try and kill butterflies.
I pulled up to screaming and clapping.
The woman was clapping, Dolly the Donkey screaming.
The entire family had come to watch, and much to Quito's relief, there were meth heads, choking pigs, drunks, or guys from California complaining about ions, there were just bright faced kids and people hugging me for making Dolly and her 'mom' so happy.
I gave her a bill of sale with the price of Quito at $1.00 "You don't need to give me the dollar." I said, "I just put it on there because I think you're supposed to put on an amount."
"No!" the woman said, "I will! Let me get my purse!"
She returned with her giant sack and dug through the loose mints and tobacco flecks and pulled out sixty five cents in change, the rest of the family dug through their pockets, and in the end I had, ironically, 85 cents they insisted I take. (God enjoys irony I have found- I could see him waving his great cosmic hand and laughing, eighty five dollars, eighty five cents, what's the diff?)
I handed her Quito's purple lead, attached to his bright purple halter and cried the whole way home. I cried over the loss of a friend, and for my thawing meat I was going to loose in the freezer, I cried for having to sit in the dark and huddle by the gas heater in the bathroom, I cried because for some reason, I had lost my luck, and was now like Wendy, doomed.
I drug my sorry behind up the steps, trying not to cry over the poop on the porch and the missing dog food. No more yelling out the screen, "Quito get the hell off that porch swing! You cannot scratch your butt on that, you're gonna get stuck!"
I was met by a flashing light on the answering machine, and a pile of bills Wendy had left on the table. I picked up the South Carolina Electric and Gas and pushed the button on the machine. It was Quito's new mom- crap- I thought, she wants to return him already! But instead the message said "I just wanted to say thank you and God bless you! You have made us all so happy!"
I smiled, and began to pull open the electric bill. I had to read the note on the top twice: This is not a bill- "Our sincere apologies for our mistake, your electric bill has been credited $400."
"God, you rock!" I pointed at the ceiling, giving the air a fist bump.
I was indeed the luckiest girl in the world.
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