The thoroughbred looked cross, with flared nostrils and a pinched expression, so I should have known what was about to happen. It’s always bad news when the mare’s serene beauty drains out of her face and she affects a look like a female daytime television panel member.
She turned round and bit me as I led her in from the field, and she only ever does that when she’s trying to tell me something. In the barn, she nibbled a strand of hay from her net, and spat it back out.
Then she turned herself round in circles several times, before buckling her knees and collapsing herself like a folding sun chair. With a big exhalation she hit the shavings, stretched out on one side with her head on the ground, and stuck her four legs out straight, absolutely senseless from overeating.
She started to roll so I attached the rope back to her head collar and pulled her up. Then I began the process of walking her up and down the driveway while calling the vet on my mobile – out of hours obviously, as it was gone 6 p.m. – and texting the builder boyfriend, who said he was on his way home.
One thing leads to another with horses, and a few hours earlier I had chased back two cows who were coming over the hedge between us and our nearest neighbour.
It was lucky that I just happened to be looking out my bedroom window when they started coming over. I raced out of the house and across the front field roaring at the cows, who had their front legs over the hedge. They jumped back. I peered over to see their electric fence trampled down the other side.
I didn’t go round and complain. It’s a sad story. The farmer died recently of a brain tumour in his fifties. His wife was left with the farm to manage. Her son does his best, I think he’s given up his usual day job, but I don’t think their hearts are in it.
After shooing back the cows, I realised the thoroughbred was grazing a few metres away, so I led her and her companion pony to a further field. That way, if the cows broke in again they wouldn’t all end up fighting.
It’s always bad news when the mare affects to look like a female daytime television panel member
The further field was overgrown, and they were knee-deep in grass, but I left thinking: what harm can it do for them to have a few hours on some nice long grass?
If you ever doubt God has a sense of humour, consider his creation the horse, a grazing animal who desires only to run and eat grass, who can rarely be allowed to either run or eat grass, unless you want it to kill itself.
Darwin is not to be believed entirely, because to be still going, the horse should have evolved more. It is horribly badly designed and only survives because of daft people like me wanting to intervene in its natural trajectory. A vast, insatiable stomach balanced on long spindly legs housing a maze of tendons and ligaments, culminating in four too-small hooves housing a structure so complex that the sugar from grass can inflame it very easily.
As for that stomach… who can understand the mysteries of a horse’s guts? They are endlessly compromised by its natural diet. Left to itself, the equine bloats itself eating too much grass, or else causes a blockage by forgetting to drink, then lies down and rolls about until it twists its guts, so that only major surgery can offer a chance of survival.
For added irony, the stomach problem and the leg problem are intertwined. If you put a horse in a field with either too much grass or not enough grass, it races up and down respectively high on sugar or demented with boredom, until it does its legs in.
If you put a horse in a field with vast amounts of grass, thinking that will surely keep it occupied, what you save in tendon rehab you more than make up for in laminitis treatment and colic surgeries.
What was the good Lord thinking when he designed this kamikaze creature? I like to think he was looking forward to having a good laugh at all the ladies who would one day try to save horses from themselves, and all the vets who would be made preposterously rich, and all the animal rights enthusiasts who would make a hobby out of ringing in horses kept on the edge of their weight in nearly bald fields with little piles of hay left by desperate owners who cannot face one more colic surgery.
The builder boyfriend always says the only way to keep a horse is to graze it on concrete. Only let it out of the stable into a private locked yard where you can feed it hay and keep idiots from throwing carrots at it.
If you ever doubt God has a sense of humour, consider his creation the horse
But I like them to have freedom, to kick their heels up in the fields. I turn ours out every day, and the BB always says don’t do it. He’s very gracious when it goes wrong, and disguises his ‘told you so’ expression.
He arrived home and took over walking Darcy while we waited for the vet to arrive and administer Buscopan.
Darcy sighed and started to look sleepy as the injection kicked in. The vet listened to her stomach with the stethoscope again. We could put her back to bed now. ‘Are you sure?’ I said.
‘Oh she won’t go down again,’ he said.
As his truck pulled out of the yard, Darcy let out a sigh and collapsed on to the floor of the barn. This time, she tucked her long legs under herself and rather serenely shut her eyes, so that she rested like a snoozing chicken. The BB and I looked at each other. ‘I’m going to call this one,’ I said.
‘Go on,’ he said, looking exhausted and wanting the plate of baked beans he’d been talking about.
‘Let her sleep, then we’ll check her.’
‘I agree,’ he said.
After beans on toast, we went back out and peeped into the barn. Darcy was on her feet, happily tucking into her haynet.
We were walking back indoors when I felt a pain in my stomach. What was I thinking, eating beans that late? My stomach was swelling. I groaned. ‘I think I’m collicking.’
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