The Best Horseshoe Plastic Ground Control vs. Steel and Aluminum Horseshoes

          To shoe or not to shoe is often a hotly debated question, but what happens when your horse needs more hoof coverage than barefoot can give- weather it be from a hoof problem, or sore feet- what shoe should you choose? I have chosen to compare the traditional shoes, steel and aluminum to Ground Control Horseshoes. I chose Ground Control shoes as I have the most experience with them in my practice. I've tried to add an objective view to each of the shoes.

         Here are a few points to keep in mind :

• The average steel shoe weighs 9 oz or more
• The average aluminum shoes weighs 6 oz or more
• The Ground Control Polyurethane Shoe weighs 3 oz

      If your horse lifts his legs 50 times per minute, 4 feet=12,000 lifts per hour in a 2 hour workout, he's lifted 6.74 tons. 

      Steel Shoes: 

•  Steel has long wear life as opposed to aluminum shoes, often being able to be reset twice.
• It is malleable without becoming brittle and can be shaped and modified.
•  It is economical as it can be reset, whereas aluminum is good for one shoeing. 
• The downside to steel is weight, 9 oz. turns into tons in as little as 45 minutes of working.
•  Steel is known to be more 'shock absorbing' vs. Aluminum.
• Best shoe overall for horses with fractures or surgery where the hoof capsule must not move. 

      Aluminum Shoes: 

• Lighter than steel.
• More expensive.
• Cannot be reset.
• Brittle and may add more 'sting' to the hoof and joints. 
• Will wear to the breakover of the horse. 

     Both Steel and Aluminum:

• Weigh more than polyethylene shoes.
• 'Snowball' in winter.
• Do not allow the hoof to expand and contract.
• Prevent the frog from embracing the ground, leading to atrophy of the frog and collateral cartilages, leading to underrun heels, navicular. 
• Both do not allow for energy dissipation, straining joints. 
• Metal Shoes have an analgesic effect, leaching as much as 5 degrees of heat from the horses hoof. A change as little as 1/4 degree will cause a decrease in dexterity. Your horse will not be able to feel as accurately.  

    

  Polyurethane Ground Control Horseshoes: 

• Non-leaching, will not cause a change in heat or circulation. 
• Allows for expansion and contraction medially and laterally of the hoof capsule. 
• Shock absorbing. 
• Lightweight, 3 oz. 
• Thicker than aluminum and steel. 
• Outlasts metal, steel and aluminum, 2 :1 with a money back guarantee. 
• Excellent choice for arthritic horses, or horses suffering from ring bone, founder or joint/suspensery  problems. 
• Frog support bar stimulates the frog, allowing for stimulation of the internal structures.
• Easy to shape with nippers and rasp- no special tools required.
• Not as widely known as traditional horseshoes- you may have to make a special request from your farrier- or order your own. Or get an open minded farrier. 
• Come in pretty colors- pink, black, and clear. 
• More traction on varied terrain. 
• Stay on longer- will flex if caught on something (such as a fence) and not 'rip' the hoof apart. 
• Frog support is removable. 
• Flip-flop action sheds mud, but the hoof is harder to clean. 
• Can be used with pads, pour in or traditional.
• Removal is different- one nail at a time, vs. using shoe pullers as leverage.  

Do you have questions about anything in this article, or have a hoof question, contact me at www.NaturalFarrier.com. I have free hoof care videos, articles and more! 

The Adventures of Gangster Barbie

     "My god is that thing real?"
      I got out of my car and walked to the front, a small crowd had gathered at my grill. I glanced, screamed and looked away.
      I love gross stuff. At horror movies, I'm rewinding in slow-mo just so I see the guts, car wrecks, I'm the jerk that slows everyone down. My profession if I didn't do horses? Coroner. In podiatry school, I was the one voulenteering to discet the cadaver legs, to put my finger in the tendons, or smush some never-before seen tumor. Here, at the front of my car, at ten in the morning, was something so gross I had to look away.
     I assume I hit Goliath, that's what I named him for the brief seconds I allowed myself to look, last night. I flew in from St.Louis the day before, and I had to work overtime trying to catch up on my customers here in Virginia. It was nine at night when I left the barn, and as I was driving in the thunderstorm that hinted it might just be the end of the world, something jumped out of the grassy median and hit my car. It was a loud "slam!"
    "Was that a frog?" I asked, then shook my head, there was no way a frog could have jumped that high or made a sound that loud.
   I was wrong.
   At ten in the morning, exhausted from the night before, I looked at what appeared to be a hick hood ornament. It was the biggest frog I have ever seen. It was something that should have plagued Egypt in biblical times, it was something that should have hopped out of Chernobyl, not something that should be hanging from the chrome of my BMW. 
   
   Seeing the thing hanging there, the size of a small child, activated some girl-y part of my brain, that part that makes you jump on chairs when you see mice, or run screaming from spiders, the very same part that I thought was missing from my tom-boy brain had been activated and I could not bring myself to look at it.
    "There is a dead frog hanging form the car!" I screamed into the phone. "You have to come get it off!"
    "Where are you?" My husband sighed.
    "Warrenton."
    "Near Culpepper?"
    "I dunno, I just do what the GPS tells me. I'm about an hour and a half from the house."
    "I am not driving two hours to pull frog off your car."
    "It's HUGE!"
    "I'll pull it off when I get home."
    I should have thanked him anyway, I should have said sorry for calling him at work. I should have said 'I love you.' because I was going to be calling a lot more in a few hours.

      "Can we climb those rocks?" Beeps, my five year old asks every single time we drive past a hill on the side of a major four lane highway, having spent her entire life in the country has no concept of traffic or danger.
   "No honey, we're not allowed to stop on the side of the interstate, it's dangerous."
   "How about that hill."
    "No honey."
    "Why?"
   "What did I just say?"
    "Humph." she puffs and crosses her arms.
    I think the kid has magical powers, and her hate broke my car. First the radio flashed, on and off in the middle of a good song. Then all the dash lights came on. Husband time. I whip out my phone, "All the lights are on in the car!" I skip hello and I love you and go right for the newest emergency.
    "Pull over, pull the key out, put it back in and try that."
    I found a safe place, turned and parked.
    "Ya!!!!" Beeps screamed from the back. The safe place I chose to park was next to the giant hill. "An adventure!"
     Oh, how right she was.
     I pulled the key out, put it back in, and then turned it. Nothing. Not even that click click sound cars make when the battery is dead. The lights were on, but mama wasn't driving home.
    My husband sighed, "I'm on my way."
 
    My legs are weak, I'm exhausted, I haven't had a day off in weeks, I trimmed 10 horses the night before, two horses this morning, and here I am, on the side of the road with a 5 year old and a husband 2 hours away.
   "Let's climb the hill!"
   "Go ahead, mommy's tired."
   "You're always tired. And grumpy." Beeps said, scaling weed and rock mountain. At the top she squealed and waved her arms, "I can't get down!"
    Weed mountain was steep. 90 degree angle steep. I scaled past the rocks and crushed plastic bottles and decaying plastic bags and reached the summit that gave you an amazing few of eight lanes of highway, and way off in the distance, a little town.
   "Look! A castle!"
   "Ohh," I said. The same "Ohh" mom's use when you get the thousandth weed flower that you must put behind your ear, even though the sap of said weed flower gives you a rash for a week. "That's nice" I said of the decaying church steeple. "It sure looks like a castle."
    "I want to go there."
    "You have to cross 8 lanes of traffic."
    "I want to go there!"
    "No."
    My husband called, "It's going to take a little longer, I don't have jumper cables, I'm going to have to go by the house."
    My wait just turned to 2 1/2 hours.
    "Lets go to the castle." I said.
   
    I was hoping not to be some redneck trucker's strange ornament on the front of his Peterbuilt. "Where'd you git that thar girl hangin' from yer grill Travis?"
    "I dunno, I think she done got 'er leg stuck and just hung there."

    8 lanes of traffic, one 5 year old girl, and an exhausted mommy all came together for a rousing game of Frogger. Before battling the asphalt and the truckers who didn't think to slow down, just wave and honk, we stopped for a little game of lets see how many rocks we can throw in the sewer grate. Beeps is naturally scared of the sewer grating, ever since she almost got sucked into one. I thought it would be cool to show her were rainwater goes at the Pizza Hut one stormy afternoon. After dinner we walk out into the rain and I point into the street.  "Look the water comes down the street, through the ditch into this hole right here, and. . ."          And then there was the screaming. The ground gave way and Beeps entire leg went into a sink hole. She was in no real danger of getting sucked down the drain, but tell that to a kid whose entire bottom half is sinking into dirt. No mother of the year award for me on that one.  . .

    We played it safe with this storm drain, and stood a safe distance and hurled rocks, until she threw one large enough to splash me with sewer water. "That's enough of that." I said.
    We walked to the edge of the road with the honking, waving people who found anyone walking in a city to be a complete spectacle that must be scrutinized.
     I grabbed Beeps in my arms and said "Go!" I said this mostly for encouragement to myself, because my body was saying "Stop, lay down and have a small nap! Right here is good!"   I ran, all forty pounds of Beeps flailing and shouting for joy "Run mommy run!"
    I cleared the 8 lanes and ended safely on the other side.
   "I want to go that way." Beeps pointed to a little side road.
   "But the castle is on the other way."
    "I want to have an adventure! Let's go this way!"
     I had hours to kill, and she needed to run off all the sugar from the 12 inch Rice Crispy treat I gave her earlier. We walked less then ten feet and there was a mobile mechanic working on a car. I sighed with relief and walked up to him and asked if he he had jumper cables.
    He stood, pushed his hat off his eyes, ran his greasy towel over his brow and sighed. "Nope, got some at home though." he pointed to a building behind us."Eddie's Auto and Trailer Repair."
      "Go over there and ask Eddie, he might got some."
      We were saved. I called my husband with the update. "I think it's all going to be okay, I'm just gonna go over there and buy a battery." With a satisfied sigh I turned to Beeps, "You are smarter than mommy." I shook my head. "If it wasn't for you, we  would have never found the mechanic."
     "I know." she said.
   
     "Eddie just went to lunch." The frizzy headed woman said, her voice sounded like she was attempting to gargle with a mouth full of rocks. She leaned on the counter, grease stained and slick. The room smelled like every mechanic shop in the world, a strange mix of man stink and diesel fuel. "We're two guys short, and the other went to lunch."
     "Well, do you sell batteries?"
     "We'd have to order it."
      "How about jumper cables?"
     "Eddie's got some, on his truck. But he just went to lunch. Go across the street, and ask Roy. He's a short fella with a bald head. He might have some."
     
     The town seemed to sag somehow. Like it just heaved a big sigh and was ready to give up. The real-estate here had to have been amazing, a parking space was probably worth $500,000 so close to the interstate and near a big town, but nobody seemed to notice. The houses were gray and empty, their windows gaping, the glass like teeth in a big black decaying mouth. The diner was peeling, great white sheets of paint flaking off like scales on an elderly dragon. Across the road was a building that seemed to be pieced together by three different kids playing with Lego's, combining their talents to make a giant, Lego empire. Windows were an afterthought, the doors were haphazard.
    The sign said "Roy's Wrecker and Towing, Paint and Body and Used Tires!"
   "Used Tires" had an exclamation point, as if old rubber was worth yelling about, maybe it was. The place was the centerpiece of town.
   
   Around the side a boy was sanding Bondo from a bumper of a Dodge Neon with chrome rims as tall as beeps and as bright green as a fresh Skittle.
     Beeps pointed, "Mommy, he looks like me, his pants don't fit either." She grabbed the waist of her jeans and hiked up her pants that were constantly sliding down and showing her butt.
    The boy looked down for a moment and then back at me.
    "Do you have any jumper cables?"
    "Yep." He reached behind the door and handed them to me.
    "Do you have anyone that can go with them to jump my car?"
    "Sure, I'll get Roy."

    Roy was a three hundred pound black man with a bald head and tattoos. He had dragons, and hearts, dice and dogs. He lumbered forward. "Yep, you can ride with me."
    I was scared when he walked to his car. I wasn't scared of the man, his massive hands or his scary tattoos, people like him actually comfort me. It's the snooty rich people I find frightening.
     I got stared down at the gas station just an hour earlier by a woman who scowled at me when I explained the 'five second rule' to Beeps. "That fry is still good, it was on the ground two seconds, tops." She crossed her arms and looked away, probably wondering if she could Purell her eyeballs.
      I looked down at her feet, they were shoved in a pair of expensive ballet flats, on the top of her foot, nearly hidden by her Ralph Lauren hemmed trousers, was a giant tattoo of an angel. No grandmother with a new foot tattoo and two hundred dollar slacks can be trusted.
     I feel safer with society's misfits, people who aren't afraid to show their scars. It was not Roy I feared, but the roof of his Chevy Blazer. Tied in carefully to the roof rack were three pink sparkle Barbie fishing poles. I recognized them immediately because Beeps has one. They come equipped with a light up reel and pink fishing line.
    He shoved himself in behind the precariously loose steering wheel, looked up through the sun roof with a slight shrug and an embarrassed smile, and motioned to the boy with the saggy pants sanding the Dodge, "Me and the boys are goin' fishing after work."
   "Oh." I said as we crossed the 8 lanes of traffic back to my car. Wordlessly, he hooked up the jumper cables, made sure the car started, and waved his hand when I offered to pay him for his trouble.
    "I just like to help folks out." he said waving as he pulled away, the sun glinting off his pink sparkly poles.
    "Thank you!" Beeps called out, eyeing the fishing reels covetously. "I like those." she whispered.

   I called my husband, saying "hello" this time and told him to go back home, the car was fixed. "Maybe I should head out there just in case."
 
   "No, it's fine, really." I insisted. "We're almost out of the city, and it'll be all nice country back roads the rest of the way home." for some reason this calmed me. I felt much safer in the middle of nowhere than ensconced in traffic. I never thought about the lack of gas stations, cell service or help.
    "Okay, if you're sure." he said.
    "We'll be fine!" I swore.
     And we were, as soon as civilization was well behind us, and the fields were green and the cows dotted the landscape like a Norman Rockwell painting. It was perfect, until the Speedometer needle began to flop wildly. Then the temperature gauge, and then the RPM thingy started waving their little needles like a college kid at a concert. All the lights began to flash and the car sputtered. I made it to the driveway of a scary looking double-wide with crank windows that made the thing look like a giant fish with gills wide open, gaping for air.
    The gravel crunched as the car rolled to a stop. "Ya!!!" Beeps clapped her hands together. "An adventure!"

You're going down!

         I look around for potential weapons, and am disappointed. There is a display of crackers in front of me, the beef jerky on the counter behind me, everywhere soft things. There is nothing to truly defend oneself.
       I look around now for the danger, the source of my uneasy, deep terrible feelings. The gut twisting fear started just before I walked in the door of the gas station. It was a nice place, bright, filled with normal people, but the feeling could not be ignored.
       Beeps was tucked close to me, "I'm cold."  she said. I held her closer, thankful she was small, and I could shove her away if something bad happened. The Icee machine was sheltered  safe alcove in case of crazed gunman should enter the store. She could hide there while mommy turned the Lance's snack display into a shield, or perhaps a projectile.
     "Danger!" my gut whispered. I wanted to tell it to shut up.
      Some people call my psychic, I like to see myself as a transformer for a universal radio. Many of the times, I try to walk around with my switch turned to 'off'. There are times where that switch simply is ignored and the message comes through anyway. There are animals with messages- "Tell her to put sand so I can scratch my back!" a sway backed mare told me once. I din't tell her owner, and she said it again "Tell her or there will be trouble!" she said, slamming her foot down on my toe. I screamed, "FINE- I'll tell her!"
      This time I was getting a message- but it was vague. It was a simple warning, a dull ache in the middle of my chest. "Bad things are about to happen." 

    I searched the faces in the store. There was a bored fat woman with her arms crossed, her face friendly. There was a tall skinny man, flirting with the cashier. There was a quiet, slight man with thick, too big glasses. I could take him I thought.
    There was a new man coming through the door, pushing past the beer vendor with his dolly full of twelve packs. His face was angry, he was in a hurry. I watched him. He knocked into a woman, and he paused for a fraction, his face lightened. "I'm sorry." he said, and I turned my attention to other potential attackers. Gunmen don't apologize.
    We ordered our cheap gas station quality lunch and carried it outside. Beeps wanted a picnic, I wanted to go. The car was miserably small, so I decided that the picnic tables outside would be safe.
       On my way out, I locked eyes with the bigger men. If you made them look at you, you became a human, not just a face in the crowd. If you were human, they'd be more likely to help you in a hostage crisis. I ignored the lady with a kid. She'd be no use, she'd be shielding her child. I would shield my child, while removing bolted down picnic table, and beating the perpetrators with it.
    'DANGER!' the feeling in my gut said as I unwrapped my square patty that was supposed to be 'fish'. I bit down, but it tasted wrong, like fear. Beeps sang to herself, "fancy fries are fancyyyyyyy", while arranging those fancy fries.
   The side door opened. The creepy guy from before came out too. He sat one table down. He looked nervous, looking down at his tray. I looked at him, and then to my car. If I could just slip over there, and get a rasp, I'd feel better. A nice, wood handled, sharp metal paddle. Nobody would want to mess with a mom with farrier tools parked next to her fish sandwich.
    I slid the wilted lettuce and sun deprived tomato off my sandwich and dropped it on the wax paper. 'DANGER' my gut said.
    "Let's go." I said to Beeps. "We need to get out of here."
     In the car, I resisted the urge to reach across and lock the door on the passengers side. I drove quickly, hoping that when I left the station, that perhaps my feeling would be left behind too. It did not.

     I pulled into the barn, my last appointment of the day. It was normally quiet, with no one but the owner holding her single horse, but today the owner would not be there- she was out of town, and the horse was so good, I could do him by myself.
      Instead of being deserted, the barn was a hub of activity. Tall, sleek horses were being fussed over by a team of pretty teenage girls. They had all their pink brushes laid out in the sun, drying. They had their saddles on racks, the stirrups tied up, the deep brown leather slick with new oil. Surrounded by so many familiar smells and smiling faces, I felt better. There was no danger here.
    I've been doing this horse for years. I often told him if every horse was as good as him, a lot more people would be farriers. I went to get him, 'he's easy to find, the only horse that isn't a giant!' one of the girls laughed. I walked to his field and caught him without a problem. As we were leading to the barn, he stopped. He looked at me with the 'are you sure'? expression. I stopped, waiting for him, but he would not come. Many horses are annoyed with people, who are always pulling them, yanking halters shouting 'walk!'. I tend to stop, to let them think about whatever it is they need to think about, and after a few seconds, they walk, but he would not. I pulled gently- he took a few steps, and then he'd stop.
    After several pauses, we made it out of the gate and to the barn. I tied him to the only available spot- an eye bolt attached to a formidable barn door. I trimmed his feet, made it back to the fronts to reset his rubber shoes. "You need to hurry up and wear these things out!" I told him- July would be a year that he's worn these same shoes. I assembled my tools, and began to put the shoe on.
     This horse has several 'quirks', one is he likes to get to the end of his lead, until his halter is pulling tight against his head, and then he leans on the rope.He's not pulling away- he's literally resting his head on the taught rope. The other thing is when you're putting on the first shoe, he has to slam his foot down at least twice. It's just a con game he plays. Nail one nail, slam the foot. Pick up the foot, nail one nail, slam the foot. Once he 'shows' me who's boss, he stands quietly for the rest of the time. Despite his quirks, he's a wonderful horse to work on.
   After nail number two, and foot slam number two, he relaxed. I was about to snip the sharp nail sticking out his foot when something happened. I don't know what it was, because the world went black. Something huge was after me, my brain said. It was like a monster in the dark, some great unseen danger and all I knew to do was run. The monster hit me on the shoulder. My face hit the ground, I tried to get up but something was on me. I couldn't get up. There was a great, grinding sound, and the horse pulled and I was free. I don't remember standing, but I remember wondering why the giant barn door was attached to the horse, and why was it in the driveway.
    The old black gelding looked at me, 'what the hell is this mess?' he said, looking at the door, and then to me. I ran to him, removing the clip off his halter, and freeing him of the door. He was annoyed at the door, but otherwise fine.
 
      From the scattered nails and the scrapes in the dirt I could see the path of the door. It had landed on my legs, and a nail went into my leg, but blessedly pulled out. It was drug over my back, and then came to rest about ten feet from the barn in the middle of the driveway. A fat, shirtless man walked up, annoyed. He looked at the door, to me, and then to the place the door should have been. He pulled the lead rope free, handed it to me and drug it away.
     I walked back to my little area of scattered nails and flung tools. I had no place to tie the horse now, so I tucked his lead in my back pocket. I thought about finishing, my leg hurt where the nail had penetrated, my face hurt from where I'd hit the ground, but I could finish, except I had no place to tie. I looked around to the other door with the eye bolt sticking out of it and then sighed. Maybe I'd just wait for the owner to get back into town.
   I pulled the partially completed shoe. My back hurt and I was bleeding, and my face was covered in dirt. That didn't hurt near as bad as the criticisms I heard coming from the man. He leaned back in a lawn chair, watching me. He began to tell the other girl sitting with him, "I'll tell you what she did wrong. . ." and he began.

   Secretly I smiled, the karma bus would come for him soon enough, and it will be his turn to go down.




       

The Hit Man, part 3

    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.

   

     
   
 

Quito- The Hit Man- Part 2

H        He loaded perfectly- hopped right in, like he was relieved to get out of there and I didn't blame him. I went to the office to collect my coggins and pay. Old Mac was sitting behind the counter, and when I told him what horse I bought, he tried not to smile. "Oh, you got him."  he said, his hand strategically landing on the "NO REFUNDS FOR ANY REASON!!! sign taped to the counter. He already had my money, what did he care?
       "What about him?" I asked, cautious. Maybe I didn't want to know.
       "The slaughter man broke down on the way to the plant." Mac said.
       This was back when the horse economy was half decent, and only the worst of the worst went to the plant. "He got half way to Georgia and the wheel feel off. The horses sat in that trailer all day." (it was summer) "Some of 'em got a bit beat up. The vet didn't want to put them down, so they just stayed there until they died on their own." (As sick as the story was, the deep south was as compassionate to its animals as it was to its migrant workers. . . and that's not saying much. I've heard of vet's refusing to put mortally injured horses in trailer accidents for fear of getting sued.) "Guess your guy was the lucky one." he smiled again, handing me my coggins. I walked out in a daze.

       It was dark when I got home, Guido hopped off the trailer and I put him in my quarantine stall. (this was the very same stall that once was an extension off the shed. The roof really low, but I had this beefcake of a friend come over, and like the incredible hulk, he lifted the roof, and I put blocks under it to raise it up- the same roof that I decided needed sweeping, and while I was standing on the old tin, I fell through, caught by my arms that would not fit through the hole. My brother comes out of the house, looks at me dangling, rolls his eyes and says, "Phone call."
        "Tell 'em I fell through the roof, and I'll call 'em back!")
 
        I pat old Guido on the butt as he passed, and closed the door. "Night buddy."

     That morning I woke up as any kid would do on Christmas morning. I rushed out to see my new friend. Guido was waiting at the stall door. I reached in, snapped the lead on and led him out. I tied him to the hitching post and started brushing. I noticed the leg swelling from last night. He had a long scar from his hock to his pastern, a big, jagged black scar said it had been there awhile. I went in the shed and came back with some DMSO in a spray bottle to spray on the swelling. I leaned down and pulled the trigger. I'd never seen DMSO fly before. It took a moment to realize that my pretty hot pink sprayer had not defied gravity, it had been kicked.
    In my enthusiasm, I didn't think about Guido not liking spray bottles. Some horses are afraid of the hiss sound it made, so I got a rag to wipe it on.

  Oh, how many lives have I used up? It's hard to say, but the hoof that grazed my ear said, you're damn lucky.

    All horses have legs, all horses can kick, but most don't aim. They just give you a small warning swing, but Quito was not called "The Hit Man" for nothing.

   "I suggest you just grab his back leg, and when he swings, you push it into him, and he kicks himself." My roommate Wendy said.
    "Go right ahead." I answered.
     She went back inside.
     I had a few tricks that usually cured kickers. One was a broomstick. You just laid it over their back and down their legs, letting them get the feel of something back there. You just gently rub and rub, and when they kick, you keep your hand still, and they kick the stick. You just let them kick and kick while you rub gently. Eventually they kick themselves out, and realize you mean no harm.
This worked great.
For about one minute.
Quito kicked, and I rubbed. He kicked and I rubbed, he kicked and the broomstick turned into a javelin. It soared across the yard and landed in the woods. That bastard had aim.
     Trick number two, the wall. This is a variation of the broom stick, taught to me by my first farrier. You simply rub the stick on the back legs again, but this time the horse is backed up to a solid wood wall. You rub, he kicks the wall. The wall stings their legs, and they stopped.

      It worked great on my sassy filly yearling (who HATED me because the first day I brought her home a hay truck drove by. Having never seen such a contraption, she ran away, flipped over backwards, and landed under the board fence, two legs on one side, two on the other- and this was completely my fault and I was to be hated and kicked at)
     My farrier Larry rubbed her backside with his big hand, she kicked the wall twice and that was it. Party over, she never kicked again. Quito, on the other hand, was smarter than 'the wall'. He kicked twice. The wall hurt his feet, and he never kicked again, the wall that is. I was still soft, and I didn't hurt his legs when he struck out at me.
   At a loss, I decided to end our 'session' since I was clearly going to die if I didn't, I turned him out with the herd. My horses had seen it all. They knew mommy took in every single living creature that needed a home. Horses being the most common collectible, they barely sniffed noses with newcomers. I let Quito go out with the herd and remembered the slaughter man's warning and the look on his face when I picked up Quito's back legs the night before, and suddenly realized A: I could have been decimated if it wasn't for the saving grace of Ace and B: why everyone had given up on him, and he was on the slaughter truck bound for Georgia. I, however would NOT give up on him.

   My old gelding walked up to Quito, sniffed his scarred nose, and squealed. Quito spun and ran. He ran so fast that he simply removed the electric fence tape off of fourteen posts, stepped out of the mess, and started grazing in my front yard like he was bored.
   An hour worth of fence repairs later, Quito had found his new home- in the front yard. He didn't mind the duct taped goat tied to the camellia bush   (that's another story.. . . the goat who's side fell off) the giant wild tom turkey who adopted me after I saved his life with Gatorade soaked dog food and penicillin shots in the waddle (there's not many places to give shots on turkeys) and the bands of chickens who paid as much mind to horses that kicked as they would a rock.
   It wasn't that I wanted him in the front yard, it was simply that any attempt to catch him got you a butt of two loaded cannons attached to it, pointed right at you. He was smarter than to be lured into a stall, so in the yard he stayed.
        He would accept treats, as long as you rolled them to him, slowly. Anything faster than a gentle toss would send him flying like an insane horse around the yard, upsetting Duct Tape Goat and flustering Mr.Surk, the Turkey. Quito quickly learned that he better come for his sweet feed when called, or every other animal in the yard would eat it before he decided the pan was safe.
   Life continued like this for a month. I did nothing more than ignore him while he learned how to sneak up the front steps and eat the dog food off the front porch, or undo the latch on the shed door, remove the heavy metal lid off the barrel, and eat his fill. When the latch was fortified, he learned how to ever so gently nudge the glass out of the shed window, and toss all the grooming boxes within reach, onto the floor.
   Eventually I was able to had feed alfalfa cubes, his favorite snack, out of my hand. Cubes were worth braving the crazy humans for. Once I made the mistake of introducing to Quito to a date. The cocky cowboy with his stinky knock off Stetson cologne strode up to Quito and held out his hand. I was so proud when Quito ever so gently accepted the gift of the delicious snack. He mindfully chewed it, swallowed, looked at me and spun, double barreling the guy in the chest.
    Despite the fact that the kick was well aimed, and the boy eventually proved he needed to be taken down a few notches, I did realize that Quito was still volatile and quite dangerous. . . it was now time for some serious action. The next day I was going to fix this mess once and for all. That night I assembled my arsenal. . . a full faced motorcycle helmet, a eventing vest, those grabby claw-things old people use to take cans off the top shelf of the pantry, two nylon dog collars, sheepskin covers, and a pair of hobbles. Oh ya, and one more thing. . . a shot of Ace.

The Hit Man- Part 1

         Mac McCranie resembled Conway Twitty, should Conway been tossed in the washing machine with the whites and got bleached, or perhaps just left in the sun too long. Mac had a huge white smile, and tight, dark blue wranglers with a crease down the center. He had the swagger of a movie star, with white blonde hair that was swept back and held into place with an entire can of hairspray. When he walked, the pearl buttons on his cowboy shirt would wink at you, and his belt buckle, as big as a small dinner plate, aimed properly, could blind you.
       Mac's eyes crinkled when he smiled, and for a few seconds, you might get sucked into that friendly face, even feel a little special, the way he gave you a look that said you had his every scrap of attention, you were the most important woman in the world. You almost forgot two important things. One, Mac was pushing 70, and the fact that he was 100% pure cowboy hat wearing, rooster strutting, evil.
       If you didn't know better, the woman that sat beside him, looked like is sister. She had the same white hair, except for a shiny, slicked back sheet, it was a mass of cotton candy fluff. It seemed soft, but it also defied gravity, for when she moved her head fast, her hair lagged, held down by the industrial strength Aqua-net. It was always the same exact style, almost like she simply took her head off each night, and set it on the side table, to avoid messing it up. Mandy McCranie wore the same matching blue jeans, but when she walked by, you always heard the same song lyrics in your head, "A cowboy once had a millionaire's dream, and boy I loved that lady wearing tight fittin' jeans."
    The jeans were the same, dark blue as Mac's, but they no longer seemed like pants, but simply a denim colored skin that had a W stitched on the ass. There was no line where leg started and jean began, Mandy and the wranglers were one. She resembled a cowboy Barbie, except this Barbie was old, and mean, and though her body may be all curves and plastic, her face was a deep, nutmeg colored raisin. A raisin with a scowl permanently sewn amongst  the wrinkles.
     Mandy and Mac, king and queen of the Walterboro Horse Auction.
     Nobody in their right mind really came there to actually buy anything, it was simply something to do on a Friday and Saturday night. Sure, there were a few shoppers, bright eyed city people who wandered in from Charleston. I called them "Tennis Shoe Cowboys" because of their new hats and bright, western print shirts, and ridiculous swagger that was supposed to say, "Yep, I'm a real cowboy." which really translated into, "Yep, I take English riding lessons, and I have only fallen off once!" They should have simply come with a sign that read "Hey-  I'm over here! Sell me something drugged and dangerous!"
     The real cowboys were quiet, they had faded jeans and sagging old hats, and walked with a limp. They were the ones with the keen eye, and if something did come through that auction that was worth a dollar, they bought it out back, before they ever had a chance to run through the chute.

     As soon as the tennis shoe cowboys would plop down, the dealers would swarm. Danny Tate would be on one side, Vince Vierra on the other. Preston Martin would be below, and the old slaughter man would sit above. The newbies were the soft underbelly, and the men that surrounded them, the sharks. They'd pretend to have a conversation, but instead it was a very carefully orchestrated plot, like bookies taking bets. "Aw, look at that right front, he looks a little off." one of them would say of  a chestnut gelding being brought through. "Yep." chimed in another. "I wish I had done brought that quarter mare through, but I left her out back. I don't think I'll get what I want for her, nobody in this crowd knows good horseflesh, cides'," he'd add mournfully, "I want her to get a good home." a good home meaning anyone with cash. A few minutes later, you would see two very excited city people, 'casually' heading towards the side door, with a old trader swaggering behind.

      I loved the auction, the smell of kerosene from the big metal heaters that were so close to the wooden bleachers that the paint bubbled, the cowboys and their stories, even the four dollar tray of greasy fries. I usually never finished the fries, they usually were dumped when I jumped out of my seat, screaming at the auctioneer, Mac's son (equally handsome and evil), for saying something to make me pissed off.
    "You can't train this 'un with milk and cookies darlin'." He'd say when I would bid on the occasional mangy animal that ambled through. I have a very keen eye for the diamond in the rough, and was young enough that I still bounced when I fell.
    "Fuck you!" I'd scream, levitating from the hard plywood bench, my fries flying, my coke dumping at my feet. "I sure as shit can!" I'd jab my finger at him, ignoring all the rules on the new sign. It was impossible for me to be courteous or quiet.

     I had a bit of a reputation in town, one that insinuated that I did not fully embody the behavior a Southern Lady.I had a nasty of a mouth, one that made sailors take notes on the new curse words they could use later.            
I  was not married, and often told the boys if they wanted to buy me a ring, it better damn well have sand footing. I lived in the woods of Rum Gully in a haunted rental house on a couple of dusty acres I forged into a profitable training business, thanks to that same auction. I called it the Sunday morning blues- when Saturday night's horse drugs wore off, and the proud owners were now left with a raging, evil, angry horse that Mac refused to take back. I would be called, and a few hours later, I would have a new customer.
      I ran my own fence and built my round pen out of scraps of posts and wire panels tied together with twine. I drove a ford truck that was older than I was, and was on first name basis with all the guys at the auto parts store. I loaded my own feed at the farm supply, and had arms bigger than most of the men that worked there, I was the opposite of a southern lady, and damn proud of it. I would defend my white trash honor to the death, if need be.

    The bidding for a depressed looking filly went over what I was willing to pay, and Mac's son laughed at me, saying something snide. I stepped in the soup of fries and coke at my feet and screamed "Fuck you!, that thing ain't worth $600!". Mac and Mandy scowled, but left me alone. I think I added to the entertainment value.

    The last horses were led through were for the slaughter man, they were the lame, the ugly and the crippled, stuff nobody wanted.
     The slaughter man was a nice guy. He was fat and sweaty, with a kind face and a baseball cap so greasy the brim shined. He'd travel around the state with his big cattle truck and buy horses from the low end auctions, and drive up the state, running them back through the auction and turning a profit. The ones that didn't sell, met their final destination in a Georgia rendering plant.
   I liked to sit with the slaughter man because he could tell you the back story on almost every horse. "That one's got so much ace in him he'll sleep for a week." he said, nodding towards a pretty Appaloosa mare with a sleepy eye. He taught me how to read teeth, and to check their gums for color to see if they'd been drugged. "Watch out for head pressers." he told me once, explaining that one of the side effects of Ace is messing with the equilibrium in their head, causing the horse to press is head against walls, or even your hand if you tried to pet them. "Used to be used on crazy people." he pointed to his head, "but they'd bust their heads all to hell and had to quit using it." I don't know if any of his stories were true, but they were fun to hear. He'd even helped me pick a few really good horses in the past.
   The crowd was thinning and one of the last horses was brought through. "Do I hear One-fifty? One-twenty five? C'mon folks he's not that ugly."
    He's not that ugly.I was on my way out, but turned around. Those same exact words were used to describe me in middle school. I was long, and awkward, and had big hair that was not straight, or curly, but in some bizarre transformation stage that rendered it large, and in charge. I looked down at the chute, and there was a plain bay pony being led through. Nobody wanted a horse that was being led through. If it was being led, it was dangerous, unrideable, crippled, or all of the above. When nobody bid, a little girl about fourteen came from a side door and walked out. She had long hair down to her waist, with eyes that looked older, like they had seen too much of the world in such short years, and most of it was bad. She worked for the auction, so that's probably all she ever saw. She was the girl that rode the horses nobody else wanted to ride. She strode out, her fierce, determined eyes sized up the pony. Someone came forward and gave her a leg up, and she rode the pony bareback, up and down, back and forth.
      In front of the announcing booth he pooped.
    "Well folks, he ain't gonna colic on you, that's fer sure!" Mac's son said, grasping for something nice to say about the poor, plain mount.
    The slaughter man wasn't bidding, and  should have seen that as odd. I knew better, but it was like love at first sight, but worse. It was like some piece of destiny was falling into place, I could almost hear the slam of the door of fate. This horse was mine. "I got eighty, do I hear eighty-five?" Mac's son called. Some unseen force raised my hand.  The other man bidding gave me a look, usually when you outbid someone it's a look of defeat, but this was not defeat it was relief. I beat him by $5.00 and he looked happy about it. I walked to the back to see what the heck I just bought for $85.00

     Buying from an auction is a lot like on-line dating. You do a lot of browsing before you find something you want more information on. At the auctions, you go in the back, you separate the hustlers and dealers from the owners, and you have a very good idea of what to bid on before it comes through the chute. It doesn't hurt to have a little horseman's Spanish under your belt too.
    I was at an auction in Modoc South Carolina, making my rounds when I came across a beautiful TB mare standing tied to a trailer. She was wearing a beautiful Mexican saddle with a dinner plate horn and even a fancy stitched sword sheath. "Wow, she is so pretty!" I said, tilting my had down over my eyes and pretending to be shy. If you played dumb little girl with the cowboys, you could make even the most hardened dealer spew stupid, telling  things he shouldn't be about his horse. "Well, he bucks, a little."
   A handsome gentleman with a hat as big enough to blot out the sun and maybe smuggle a few small children into a movie theater walked up. "She sure is." He hooked his finger in his belt loop. His helper sat in the open trailer and looked scared.
   "How old is she?" I kicked the dirt and pretended not to be interested.
    "Seven."
    That usually translates into fifteen in auction speak, much like a profile on-line, the age was always a lie. I checked her teeth, he was right. The mare had a bright eye, and glossy coat. She did not belong at an auction tied to a Mexican horse traders ramshackle trailer. .
    The man watched me carefully. He knew I wasn't stupid, so I gave up the ruse and started asking questions. "Is she rideable?"
     "Yep."
     "Can I see you get on?"
     "Sure, no problem." he said, tilting his Volkswagen sized hat. He tightened the cinch on his saddle. The man in the trailer looked stricken "Este caballo esta' jodidmente loco." The mare is fucking crazy.
     My head snapped up.
    "Ella va a estar bien, yo ya la le monto un par de horas." She'll be fine I already rode her a few hours. He climbed on, the mare hunched for a moment and then walked off without incident.
     I had seen and heard enough. I tipped my average sized hat and smiled, "Gracias, pero ya tengo bastantes caballos locos." Thank you, I already have enough crazy horses.

    Little did I know, I was going to add to my collection. This plain pony was the best and worst $85.00 I've ever spent. I did my walk of shame, past the slaughter man. . . despite my best efforts, the fact that I was a girl in a man's world, slipped out. I made my very first emotion based auction buy.
   Guido, as I'd later change his name to, because it seemed fitting for a small gangster with hidden weapons, waited in a stall in the back. The door was rusty, and bent. Jagged pieces of metal and bent rails paid homage to all the other lost soles that had been through these hallowed stalls before them, some so desperate to escape that they attempted jumping, some climbing.
    He lolled his head towards me, and then away. He had the look of defeat and abject hopelessness. I was thrilled! I would prove him wrong, I would win this lost sole over and we'd be great friends. I walked inside and ran my hand over his dull brown coat. He was a pony, but he really just looked like a stunted horse. He was well proportioned, and not too small that I couldn't ride him. I put my hand on his forehead and that's where I noticed the pipe mark.
    Right between his eyes was a perfect circle where his head had been presumably smashed with a pipe. The skin folded back on itself, leaving a simi-circle skin pocket. It had healed, and leaving a hairy pocket and a shiny scar. I put my finger in the pocket, almost to the knuckle.
    Just behind his withers was a hunk where muscle should have been, but it left a hole, a skin covered dip, like someone or something had simply scooped it out. His rear leg was swollen, and he was covered in various scratches and cuts, and he was mine. I reached down and picked his front feet, ran my hand down his side and picked up his rear. "Be careful, he's young." The slaughter man said. I turned around to catch a fleeting expression of guilt as he passed. This was his horse. He didn't even stop to get his halter. NO dealer in the history of dealing has EVER let you keep the halter. Something was bad wrong. . .

A nip in time. . .

     There is a special place where lost thing go. A special lost and found in the sky, or maybe to another country. Maybe some tribal leader somewhere is opening the door to his hut and there, laying on his dirt floor is someone's sock. Once, I lost a really beautiful antique ring.I set it on the table, went to get it the next day, and it was gone.
    A few weeks later I opened a brand new bag of birdseed, I began to dump it into the feeder when  something shiny caught my eye, and there amongst the little seeds, was a ring. Not my ring, but a crappy, ironic version. Somewhere in Mexico, or Tiwan, a factory worker who found it amusing to sort birdseed with their feet, is missing a toe ring.
     And somewhere else in the world, someone is holding up a pair of hoof nippers, turning them over in their hand and saying, "What the heck is this?"

     Last Friday, the last barn of the day, I carried my tools out to the field. It was a beautiful day, the sun was shining and the temperature was perfect. The first horse was a bit of a mess, and we ended up circleing the pasture about 20 times before she relented and let me trim her feet. The last horse, the owner informed me causally, hated wind.God thought it would be funny if he'd send some. He'd not just send wind, but a storm of biblical proportions. The sky opened and began to dump icy droplets. The poor horse I was attempting to work on was spinning in place, stomping his big foot into the mud and splashing me, my tools and his owner.
    I finally convinced him to stand, and we were just about done when my 5 year old, Beeps shows up. "Mommy it's raining!" she says, wearing my coat on her head, and flailing the sleeves hanging off her like tubes. I laughed, gathered my things, and we walked out of the pasture. I tossed my tools in the back and we started for home, glad it was Friday, and glad to have heated seats.
      Monday came, and I was readying myself for the first barn. When I opened the truck I had a feeling I was forgetting something before I even had a chance to remember. It was a void, like the car had somehow developed trunk guilt. At the first barn, my feelings proved to be correct, they were gone.
    I have lost nippers before- my first 'real' nippers were given to me by an old farrier, who I'm sure felt extremely sorry for the starry eyed girl who lived in the woods, trying to trim her own horses. He would stop by when doing the neighbors horses and give me tips on doing my own. I stared in amazement, gape mouthed at his 'real' nippers, a pair of mid grade Diamond brand. He laughed and shook his head. "I'd give 'em to 'ya, but these things are 'lible to be older 'en you guurll." He shook his big head, his old cowboy hat flopping with the movement.
    My nippers were the red handed kind that all cheap tools made in some foreign country where the workers live in huts provided by the factory and make seven cents a day. The nippers would not cut a piece of cheese, much less a hoof, but as a beginning farrier, I probably had no business cutting cheese or hooves with nippers.
   A few weeks later, the old farrier stopped by for a visit. He pushed the door of the truck, and it barked loudly, the hing crying out for oil like a dying man in the desert might call out for water. He slid out of the seat with great effort, limped around the side of the truck and dropped the tailgate sat with a sigh. "I found somethin' at the dump." he said, as if the words were some huge effort. I sat beside him, curious. "Thougth 'cha might like it." He reached behind him, and handed me a long slender box. A 15 inch long box. My heart pounded. No, it wasn't jewelry, but it did say Diamond. "Found 'em just layin' there, right on the ground." he said of them.
     I was twenty, and totally fell for the ruse that someone would  drop a brand new pair of $100 nippers on the ground in a rural South Carolina landfill  that is so picked over that the rats don't bother stopping by anymore. I screamed and hugged first the nippers, and then him. He just smiled, his wise eyes crinkling in the corners. "I best be gettin' on now." He said, and lumbered back to his feet, shut the tailgate and left me with the box in my hand, staring at his truck disappearing down the road in a cloud, not unlike one an angel might appear to you in, except this cloud was made of dirt- and angels tend to fly and not drive twenty-year-old Fords.
    The nippers proved to be magical, as if some of the old farrier's luck had rubbed off on them, because shortly after, I got my first customer, and then another, and another. I lived in a tiny town called Rum Gully. It was a hole of a place, it's claim to fame was 'the Christmas Lights'. "That's the place with the Christmas Lights?" people would ask when I told them where I lived. I learned to just say "yes" though I never saw the lights the four years I lived there, I heard that they were 'something to see' the person would explain and then sadly say, 'they don't do 'em anymore', shaking their head at the loss.
      Rum Gully seemed to be a cut off point, an invisible line that farriers simply did not cross, past that line the market was wide open. After a few years, I saw why. . .

     I was young, young enough to believe that there was no horse I could not ride, no animal I could not tame. I would drive for an hour to stand up to my ankles in mud with a stallion's teeth snapping the bill of my hat, his leadrope tucked in my back pocket, and his elderly owner saying "Isn't that cute, he's nibbling you."
     "Yes ma'am." I'd say, cutting an inch and a half of overgrown hoof.
     I was a sucker for the line: "I just can't get a farrier"
    I was so desperate to help horses, even at my own detriment, even if the drive proved to cost more than what I charged for the trim. I wanted to help horses, and I wanted to help them all.
     I charged $20 , it didn't matter if I got kicked in the face, or had to chase them around a barbed wire pasture dodging junk cars. I once trimmed a wild mustang, with a freeze brand so fresh, the hair hadn't grown back.
   "I think she's gentle deep down." The owner said over the fence, because she was too afraid to go in the pasture with this sweet mare. I nodded, panting and bleeding, holding the end of the lead rope while she galloped wildly around me. "Maybe so." I said, waiting for the mare to slow. In the end, I learned that mustangs can kick you in the face with a hind foot, while I was holding up a front.
     My Diamonds and I had more adventures than most couples on "The Amazing Race" show. Our final journey was with a farm deep in the heart of nowhere.
       I laughed the day South Carolina issued our brand new license plate boasting the new state motto stamped in pale blue hard to read letters "Smiling Faces, Beautiful Places".
      South Carolina had some places that could have been construed as beautiful. The sun setting over a forest of Cyprus, their nubby knees reaching out of the water like hands reaching out from graves, begging for help could have been construed as 'beautiful', to a zombie. The smiling faces were also an exaggeration. I often joked that the tooth brush was invented in South Carolina, because if it was invented anywhere else, it would be called the "Teeth Brush". The deeper you went into the belly of the state, the more rotten the core. Looking at many of the residents made you feel guilty for having so much calcium in your mouth.
   Family was very important to your placement in society. "Who's your daddy?" was not a sassy come-on but  a genuine question. My daddy was a picture in a scrapbook, gone since I was a kid. To make things worse, he was Native American, which lent to more suspicion, and my mother? She was from France. It would have been better if I had whipped out a Yankee accent and said "I'm from New Hampsha" (I did live there for a few years as a kid and learned enough accent to make fun of them). I was a stranger, a strange stranger- a girl doing a man's job. A girl with a floppy cowboy hat and a truck two years older than I was. I'd pull up in my chugging old ford, hop out in my faded jeans and the customers would  look past me and ask "Where's your husband?"- wondering where the farrier they called was.

    Me and my Diamonds had reached our final destination, a farm an hour and a half from Rum Gully in some municipality that nobody even bothered to name much less put it on a map. I got out of the truck to a crowd. It seemed that the woman who wanted a farrier called everyone in her family, and most of their friends, to watch me trim.
   "She's right thare" she said with a voice that should have been used in an add to terrify small children about the dangers of smoking.
    The horse she pointed to was a pretty gray- she was tied to a hitching post made of telephone poles. This should have been a warning. "She ain't been done since I got her." she said in her 'I smoke twenty cigarettes before breakfast' voice.
   I smiled, confident I could trim this sweet girl.

   Twelve years later, I biq jbiq a new language. It's called Farrier Speak. When an owner says "The farrier just quit showing up!" it translates to: "I quit paying the bill- or my horse killed him and now his wife won't return my calls"
   The line:  "She never kicks!" translates to "You will loose your front teeth and look like me!"
   "I don't know how she'll do" translates to "I know what she does, but I'm afraid if I tell you, you won't even try." The owner knew exactly what this horse, standing in the hot summer sun, with four shoes grown into her hooves, would do.

   I walked to the horse and picked out her first hoof. She stood quietly, and I pet her and said a few words. I began to pull the nails out of her overgrown hoof where the shoe had embedded itself and she slammed her hoof down. I picked it up, started again, and she slammed it again. I heard a man chuckle. I looked up, Red-neck-family-Robinson crept forward. Someone even pushed Grandma a little closer, her wheelchair wheel crunched a twig and the mare pulled back against her telephone pole post and snorted.
   A dirty, shirtless little boy spit tobacco and asked, "When's she gonna git kicked?"
   "Dunno." A fat man with boobs bigger than mine shrugged.
   The mare wasn't mad, she was simply proud. She refused to behave for any two legged creature, even one that was trying to help, and looking at these people, I couldn't blame her.
     I finally figured out to use her anger to help us both. I hooked the teeth of the nippers over the shoe and let the ol 'gal pull. She yanked, and I held, yank and hold. Eventually she pulled all four shoes for me. Most of the family had given up by now. The few remaining stragglers stood with sour faces, their arms crossed resting on their ample bellies.
   An hour and a half later, the mare was standing on four trimmed feet. I was slimy with sweat, but was free of bruises and blood. The entire family had given up and gone back inside the single-wide.  The woman with the 'rocks in a blender' voice pulled a wet twenty from the front of her shirt and handed it to me. I took the boob cash and carried it to my truck and started the hour drive home.

    I walked in the door to be greeted by a flashing light on my answering machine. The Marlboro woman had left a message. "You left yur hoof cuttin things here."
   My heart sank. In my exhaustion, I left my Diamonds behind. I got back in the truck, using the $20 I just made, in gas, to retrieve my precious tool.
 
   The mare was still there, tied to the telephone poles, wet with sweat, the noon sun beating down on her. I turned away and walked to the trailer. It looked like a bloated tin can of creamed corn, affected with botulism, bloated from the inside out. I knocked on the botulism door, I saw a movement behind the dark brown, warped plexiglass window. A strange, glutteral sound answered my knock "Wha?"
    "It's Shannon- the farrier."
    More animal sounds came through the tin door, and finally it swung open. The family was crammed into the tiny doorway- Marlboro woman stood in the opening, her arms crossed.
    "Hi, I'm here to get my nippers."
    "Yur what?" She narrowed her eyes.
    "I got your call," I smiled. "You found my nippers." I said, hoping to jog her Budweiser soaked memory.
     "They got lost." She said.
     "but you called." I said, my voice cracking. Behind me the mare snorted telephone pole post. There was a deep rut where she'd been pawing.
      "They got lost." Fat brother/husband came forward, his breasts swinging. He crossed his arms across his chest, and rested his forearms on his stomach.
      "What?" I asked, crushed. The family started to squeeze forward, filling the doorway like I would dare enter the fortress of tobacco stink and sweat.
      "I said they're lost." She said again.
      "Yup," brother/husband said, reaching for the door. "They're lost." The door slammed.
      I stared at the dented door for a long while, the duct tape cross patching some mysterious hole- made from the inside. I felt a loss, a deep inexplicable feeling like a part of my body had fallen out on their dirty floor, like a appendix or spleen had been surgically removed.  I walked back to the gray mare tied in the sun. I looked around the dirt beside her, maybe my nippers were there, but I knew better. "Hey girl." I said, running my hands over her sleek coat. "You deserve better." I said, wishing I could fold her up and put her in my front seat and take her home. Instead, I reached up and un-clipped her halter, sliding it over her beautiful ears. "Run." I whispered. "Run."

    Somewhere in South Carolina, is a silver Arabian mare, wild, and  living on the green grass of the lowcountry. Somewhere is a fat family has a rusty pair of Diamond nippers on their coffee table being used to pull teeth or clip toenails.

    Somewhere, here in Virginia, a portal exists sucking in GE nippers in through the trunk of my car. But wherever they are, I hope they're happy.