Remembering Fred: Part 2
Fred and me….
Fred was a big part of our family while the girls were growing up and in 4-H. She was a bit of a princess and always the “Boss Mare” with the other horses but she was a great all-around horse. Not only was she wonderful under saddle and took our daughter through 10 years of 4-H and open shows, we had also had her broke to drive soon after we got her and after her initial purchase and realizing that she was going to be a “keeper”, that’s where she and I bonded.
My college-friend from Kentucky introduced me to the sport of carriage driving when Shelby was just a few months old. She asked if I would come to southern Indiana and be her “navigator” for a show she was doing with her Saddlebred, Handy. She said I would be riding along in the cart with her through the woods and through obstacles during a marathon portion of an event called a Combined Driving Event which was a 2-day show in which you drove your horse and carriage through a cones course, a dressage test, and a marathon, which was all the buzz for the weekend.
On the first day of the show, you drove a dressage test. The driven dressage test was much like a ridden dressage test with the horse trotting and walking a pattern that consisted of circles and straight lines in an arena…very pretty. It’s something that I heard most drivers didn’t really enjoy so much because they had more fun with the cones and marathon, but I learned that dressage work with your horse actually helps you and your horse to do better with cones and in the marathon obstacles.
Right after you did your dressage test, you did the cones course, which was near the dressage arena. It was made up of numbered orange cones placed in a field with balls balanced on top and the objective was to go through them in the proper order without knocking off any of the balls and in the fastest time….but you were only supposed to trot and not allow your horse to run. They were spaced at a distance apart that was determined by your division and the wheel width of your cart or carriage. The lower levels had more clearance between the sets of cones and the more advanced divisions were much more of a squeeze.
The marathon was the highlight of the whole weekend and was a combination of a cross-country drive with various “obstacles” along the way. The obstacles could be a group of trees or maybe some round bales in a field, or a combination of trees and fencing and everything was decorated and named something fun, like the Maypole or the Farmyard. The decorations were set up to also test your horse’s trust in you because when you come out of the woods on a lovely trail to find a small wooden goat and ribbons fluttering from a fence post it can be a bit of a surprise! There was a pattern to the obstacle and you needed to go through the gates in the proper order and in the right direction although you could choose how you would do that.
All the drivers and their navigators would go out on the course and walk the dressage test on foot, walk or jog through the cones course and then caravans of golf carts, mopeds, and pickup trucks would head out to the marathon course. It was a very fun and festive time and it was important to do so that you could prepare your route, remember where you needed to go, and get through the courses without being eliminated for going off course.
My job as her navigator was to keep her on track, watch the time, help her care for Handy during the vet-check portion of the marathon portion, help with getting him ready and hitched, and make sure she stayed on course. Sounded easy enough and fun, so I drove to the Hoosier Horse Park in Edinburg, IN for a weekend in September and absolutely fell in love with driving.
Her horse, Handy, was so beautiful and so well-trained that he was a star at the show and if I remember right, they won their division. I’ll never forget sitting with her at the show, cleaning the harness (there’s a LOT to a harness, just so you know!) and washing the carriage….or sleeping in the trailer overnight at the show grounds. At the time I was still breastfeeding so I had to pump to keep from being full of milk and in pain. I was in the bathroom in the middle of the night and had a full bottle of breastmilk and felt bad about just dumping it down the sink,, so I offered it to some of the barn cats that were out catting during the night and was very disappointed that they weren’t interested in it at all!
After this great adventure with my friend at the combined driving event, I decided Fred needed to be broke to drive! So we found a guy to take care of that for us, since I didn’t have any experience with it, and after a month or two, she came back just good as gold. We enjoyed evenings driving along the country roads, around the fields and in the arena where I had set up some traffic cones to practice with. We went to a pleasure driving show in Memphis, TN, which had mostly classes in an arena and various types of cones courses and a fun Sunday “marathon”. My favorite cones course was called the Progressive course and there were only six sets of cones and each set was spaced closer and closer together until the last set of cones only gave you about 1 inch clearance on each side of your wheels!! We did very well in that one because I practiced at home with tight cones ;-)
The “marathon” was a lovely drive through the Tennessee countryside and through the woods to a beautiful home where we all stopped to have biscuits and mimosas. Oh….and everyone dressed in their Sunday best, too!
We also went to the Kentucky Horse Park for National Drives and the Indiana Combined Driving Event and I so enjoyed having her as a partner to really enjoy being out and about with, enjoying time together.
We healed each other….
While our oldest daughter was showing her, Fred was her horse, but as all good kids do, she grew up and went off to college and started a new life which left Fred at the farm with no “job”. She became quite fat and it was beginning to be an issue for her health so I adopted her back and we began working together again.
Somewhere around this same time I became extremely depressed and developed an eating disorder. I lost so much weight that I was a mere skeleton and I felt so alone. While my family rallied around me to show me love and support, Fred was also a big part of my recovery. I spent time with her, brushing her and taking care of her, hugging her and crying into her mane for reasons I couldn’t explain, and taking selfies and pictures of her. Some of those selfies are my favorite because they remind me of how we saved each other. Truly she did. She was a friend and I just loved her completely for being Fred.
The fall that changed it all….
We both recovered our Selves and I enjoyed riding her and driving her on lazy days. We weren’t gearing up for any shows but it was nice to just be with her and enjoy the sunshine together. As time went on, she developed an on-again-off-again lameness that we couldn’t really pinpoint. One day I was riding her and asking for a slow trot when she kept trying to break into a canter, which was unusual and made me think that she was in pain somewhere and might need a chiropractor to look at her. So as I was trying to figure out what was going on with her, she tripped and stumbled and completely fell on her face and onto her side. When I fell off, my foot got caught in the stirrup and I ended up upside down once she stood back up.
We were both stunned and I was hanging there by my foot in the stirrup near her back and I got a hold of her reins and we just stood there for a bit. My husband had just left for the day and so I was there a good 10 minutes while I tried to free my foot. Then we just sat there together for a while and I took her back to the barn to untack her and make sure she was ok. The vet came out to look her over and we did all sorts of x-rays on her feet and knees when it was determined that she had some boney growth in her knee that was causing her knee to lose flexion and consequently she was prone to drag her toe and trip.
It was a sad day coming to terms with not riding her anymore, for her safety and mine. She had been such a great horse and always so much fun and now all I would be able to do was spend time with her brushing her, feeding her, and taking care of her each day. That turned out to not be such a bad thing after all.
Loving her from a distance….
When my marriage crumbled and I was forced to make the decision to leave home and my beloved farm and animals, I felt horrible because I felt that I had abandoned her. My husband assured me that he would take care of her and I still always went over to see her and spend time with her each week, but I missed having her in my backyard.
I spent the next 8 years loving her from a distance and visiting often. Often, truth be told, it was hard to go home to see her because of the emotional abuse I was receiving but I loved her too much and dug deep some days to be brave and go see her. Each time I left again it tore my heart out and I would cry my Self back to where I was living.
It was time….
Her knee continued to swell and become disfigured and upon a return from Egypt in the spring of 2023 I went home to see her and my heart broke. She was definitely in pain and had gotten much worse while I was away for those 3 weeks. I knew the time had come and when my husband came home that day, I told him I was going to have the vet come out and would he please dig a grave for her. The week I scheduled her appointment I also told him that I was going to stay at the farm….he didn’t like that at all, but at this point I didn’t give a damn. I had spent the last 8 years away from her and wanted to make the most of the time I had left and it was only for 4 or 5 nights.
It felt surreal and like an extended goodbye and I actually struggled with feeling like I needed her to have a “normal” week with me. Thankfully, he was away until late each evening so I was able to spend time with her during those beautiful evenings. One of the things I was put down for during the breakdown of our marriage was all the time I spent in front of the computer editing photos. I was so thankful that I had spent that time learning about photography with the horses because I knew how to capture a beautiful portrait of Fred and our time.
I still took quite a few selfies with her, but I also brought my tripod and set it up.
Long ending….
If you’ve read this far, thank you. There’s no way to try to put together a life of 21 years together in two short blogs and no tidy way to wrap it up without just crying. Please enjoy the collage of pictures of my sweet Fred and some of my favorite passages in the Coffin Texts as a blessing for her sweet and beautiful spirit.
CT Spell 20:
”Oh, N! Geb will open for you your blind eyes, he will straighten for you your bent knees, there will be given to you your heart (ib) which you had from your mother, your heart (h.3ty) which belongs to your body, your soul which was upon Earth, your body which was upon the ground. There will be bread for your body, water for your throat, and sweet air for your nostrils. The owners of tombs will be kind to you, the owners of coffins will come to you, they will bring to you your members which were far from you, when you are re-established in your original shape.
CT Spell 22:
“You shall go forth into the day, you shall have power in your legs in the morning, you shall have power in your legs in the evening, you shall have power in your legs at the lamp-lighting, you shall have power in your legs at all seasons, at any hour in which you desire to go forth, you shall have power in your legs in every tribunal in every court; you shall have power in your legs in every place from which your heart desires to go forth at any time.“
