Tally-2

Mind Meld Side Note: Our first subject for the mind meld is haltering. Some of you have already gone into some pretty good detail. Now everybody dive in. How do you halter a horse? How have you solved haltering issues? What kind of behavior do you expect?

Tally

I led my first two rides of the day down the alley to the tie wall.


The boss was sitting in the middle of a pile of old folding chairs and a picnic table known as the "observation deck" of the indoor.

"You sure know how to pick'em," he told me.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"I can already walk up and pet all over the grulla, but that bay you thought we needed so bad won't even come up to eat."

"Give her time, she'll settle in," I said, while making a mental note to beg off the next time the boss asked me to help him pick out a horse.

"Bill has taken a shine to her," he said.

I paused with my brush in mid-air and looked at him over my filly's back.

Bill was the three-times-divorced, just out of com corp after his third DUI, 25 -year-old son of my employers.

He was a decent enough guy to visit with but he hadn't even come close to figuring out his place in the world. Bill was thinking he might be a horse trainer. He spent a lot of time wandering through the barn with a John Lyons book clutched to his chest.

I wasn't unsympathetic. I had been just as swept away by Lyons when I first learned some of his techniques. I had borrowed a grainy, poorly lit video on trailer loading from a friend and had been properly amazed.

I had immediately started playing with the new concepts I had seen on my already very broke horses in a solid, safe, wooden round pen.

I didn't progress on to anything wilder until I had worked out a basic idea of how things work.

Bill had apparently decided to start his new career on Tally.

"Well, I hope it goes well for him," I said.

It didn't.

I kept a straight face as I walked past the brood mare pen. Bill sat crouched self-consciously on one knee, halter in hand watching the little bay. He looked just like Robert Redford kneeling in the pasture during The Horse Whisperer.

Tally stood just outside of the broodmares eating hay. She didn't even flick an ear at him.

When I put my horses up that evening Bill still sat in the middle of the pen. I figured he had to be whispering like crazy by now, but Tally was happily immersed in her dinner.

I managed to get into my car and halfway up the steep drive out of the valley before I started laughing.

The next morning Tally had started up the restless pacing which had filled her first week at the place. She trotted the fence line, splashing through the creek and almost hitting the cross fence before she turned the corner and made her way up the hill towards me. She passed by me as if I wasn't there. No spook, no snort, no friendly roll of the eye.

I stood and admired her as she flowed around the pen. Her short, sturdy legs moved with the cadence of a well trained reiner. Her thick, heavy tail was low-set and hung quiet no matter what her gait and her mustangy little head was balanced on an elegant neck.

I looked a little closer and saw her knee was all torn up. It looked bad, but she wasn't lame.

"Hey Janet!"

The boss waved from the deck.

"Come up for a cup!"

The morning was cool and coffee sounded just right. I walked up the trail to the log A-frame.

"That mare hurt Bill bad."

The boss's wife, Carolyn, plunked down two cups of hot, thick coffee and sat with me and the boss.

"Oh no, what happened?" I asked.

"He got frustrated when he couldn't catch her and herded her into one of the holding pens," she said.

I stayed silent and waited for Carolyn to continue. The holding pens were 10 x 12 feeding stations built out of a single strand of hot wire. The boss had them hooked up in every pen to feed the low end of the pecking order.

"He got the mare in there and then crawled in with her," Carolyn said, "he didn't have a clue things would go wrong."

"The mare tolerated him for a minute, long enough for Bill to get a rope around her neck and then she blew," the boss said.

"Poor Bill, he's so tough, he wouldn't let go even when she ran him down and drug him through the wire," Carolyn continued.

I sat with my shoulders hunched, staring into my coffee. This story was going so many wrong directions all at once I couldn't believe it.

"He hung onto her even when she drug him halfway across the pen," Carolyn's eyes began to fill with tears, "he was hanging onto the rope and being dragged between her front legs. She was stomping all over him."

"Is he all right? Where is he?" I managed to say.

"He's in the hospital," the boss finished, Carolyn couldn't talk anymore.
" He punctured a lung and broke all kinds of ribs. He fractured his pelvis. When she spun and blew she hooked him on a T-post."

We sat in silence for a bit. I curled into my thoughts and the steam from the hot, bitter coffee. I didn't know what to say.

"Are you going to bring him home to heal?" I finally asked.

"Yes, his neighbors said they'll feed his horses. He'll need some help."

I stood up and headed out the door. The boss and Carolyn sat huddled together. They looked old and sad.

I walked down the hill and paused again at the broodmare pen. Tally still paced the fence line, her bright bay coat was flecked with sweat and her eyes still looked right through me as she passed.

The boss came up behind me and we watched her ceaseless path.

"I think she's crazy," he finally said.

"Have you got a history on her?" I asked him.

"No, nothing on her at all," he answered.

"She sure moves nice," I told him.

"Bill wants it understood," the boss said, "nobody's to touch this mare but him."

He turned and headed out to start up the Daewoo.

I walked into the arena and started my day.

It occurred to me nobody had mentioned Tally's leg.