Star Dancer: Part One

Star Dancer, fly me away
Ride me off to a better day.
Your hooves barely touching the ground.
I don’t care if we never come down…

(from "Star Dancer," on the CD Many Ponies)



They say that when the Carribe Indians first saw the Conquistadors on horseback, they thought horse and rider were one. Now, having known Star Dancer awhile, it’s easy for me to understand how you could make that mistake.

Star Dancer is an 18 year- old Appaloosa gelding. He’s gray with patches of black like an approaching storm. Like most Appaloosas he has a marvelous combination of speed, stamina and toughness. The easy, rolling rhythm of his gait when walking is a mantra for relaxation, soothes the stiffness from hips and back. His trot is like gliding, his canter like the backward and forward lullabye of a giant rocking horse. And when he gallops, it’s like soaring.

He responds to the merest knee pressure or shifting of weight so immediately that it’s almost like telepathy.
Hell, maybe it IS telepathy.

It makes me wonder about horses. They’re so powerful and yet so gentle. They could easily buck us off, bludgeon us into gory pulp with those hooves. I wonder why they don’t. Why do they let us ride them? Why have they carried loads, dragged plows, pulled wagons, carried us into deadly battle, lived and died with us and for us?

The Old People would probably say they do it because they see how small and weak and stupid humans are and they take pity on us.

I haven’t known Star Dancer very long, but we seemed to have a certain rapport right from the start. I enjoy his company — maybe I enjoy the company of anyone who can tolerate mine. I spend more time grooming him than I absolutely have to, delighting in the warmth of him, tracing along the contours of his muscles with the brush, following with my hand, combing out his tail and mane — even when I know he’s going to go right out and roll in the mud.
I’ve sat in his stall for long times, just being with him. Talking to him. Listening to him. Seeing what I can learn by osmosis. Horses know secrets. But they don’t proselytize.
Once, I fell asleep, stayed there with him, stretched out on the hay, my back propped against the gate. Awakened to the soft, warm nuzzle of his nose against my cheek, just before dawn.
I turn him out on warm nights, leading him out to his paddock, navigating along the rutted path by starlight. After I walk him in past the gate and slip off his halter, sometimes I climb up on the fence and stay awhile, breathing in the soothing combination of earth smells aloft on the breeze, looking out at a billion other worlds that have got to be better than this one, and feeling quite small. Often Star Dancer will come and stand near me, nudge my leg with the side of his face until I stroke his neck. Or rub his ears. He likes that.

And carrots.
He likes carrots.

I always bring him some nice carrots. Sometimes I munch one along with him. I figure I hate to drink alone, so maybe..... Once in a while, I put a carrot in my jacket pocket and let him ease it daintily out with his teeth. He’d make a great dipper. Maybe, if I’d met him earlier, when I was a kid, I’d have turned out to be somebody different, too.

One evening, working out with Star Dancer in the indoor arena, I had the feeling something was different. He seemed nervous, on edge, like a guy who’s been on a cocaine binge. Walking out and trotting, he kept sidling, turning his head to watch me out of the corner of his eye, as if he didn’t want to takes his eyes off me. The way you’d keep your eye on a guy you thought was going to give you one right in the back.

It puzzled and disturbed me.
I was walking him along the rail, about to ask Jill, my riding instructor, what she thought the matter was. Suddenly, I became aware that my keys were still hanging from my belt. There are quite a few keys on that ring, attached to a big brass hook that’s a souvenir from a couple of years I spent on a ship. Used to carry my bos’n keys on that hook. I usually leave them with my coat in the tack room because losing them in the arena would mean a search through dirt and dung that would make finding a needle in a haystack seem as easy as bottom- dealing an ace-high flush.

I asked Jill to hang on to them for me and tossed them over to her.

The keys jangled loudly as she fumbled them and with the sound of it Star Dancer abruptly bolted. I had to move him forward hard to keep him from rearing up and probably tossing me on my ass. I spoke to him, reassuring him and in a moment, he settled down. For the rest of the workout he was perfectly fine, back to his old self again. We did some easy cantering — he knows how to do it but I need the practice — then ran around a few barrels —he loves barrel racing — and walked a few laps.

Afterward, I untacked him and I walked him around the arena slow and easy to cool out. No hurry. There's no such thing as time in the world of horses. Jill kept us company and I asked her what she thought about Star Dancer’s aversion to my keys.

“He’s just got a couple of funny little things like that,” she said. “A sudden change in the environment, a sudden noise and any horse will get on his guard. That’s how they survive. Being really aware of potential threats.”

Sure. But keys?

“Plus,” she added, “it may have something to do with his being abused some, back before we got him.”
“What do you mean, ‘abused’?”
“There was this guy. Hired hand. A real Marlborough-man cowboy, you know what I mean?”

I knew the type she meant, though by a different name.

“One afternoon he laid into Dancer with a shovel.”
“He did WHAT?” I could feel an old familiar tightening in my gut.
“Didn’t hurt him real bad or anything but...”
“A shovel? “ I said. “He hit him with a fucking SHOVEL?”
“Fortunately that guy didn’t last long,” Jill nodded. “When Bonnie found out— you met Bonnie, right?”

I had. Bonnie was the B in B&L stables.

“Bonnie canned his ass right away.”
“Not soon enough,” I said.
“No, I guess not.”

I brought Star Dancer to a halt, gave him a little massage and he almost nodded out, which is ok with me. Off in one corner, a pair of tabby barn cats were hunting for a mouse in a small haystack to the amusement of Sheba, a grand dame German Shepherd whose only remaining duty was to enjoy her retirement. Outside, crickets.

No wonder Star Dancer and I got along so well.
We had some history in common.

Finally, we headed for his paddock We stopped by where Jill was measuring out sweetfeed and I asked her— very casually, trying to make it sound like idle curiosity — “So this shovel guy. You know his name?”

(To Be Continued....)