Notes from Maine - 2022/02/27

I spent a good part of last week quietly angry at my friends. Maybe I wasn’t so quiet. 

One friend is Earl—a giant Shire horse. Earl is a known jerkface. I don’t personally feel this way, but this is the current opinion of his wife, Maybelle. Each day, when Maybelle walks past Earl’s stall, she flicks her tail and kicks at his door, driving him back. How dare he even look at her. Their daughter is a little more friendly with her dad. She will bounce up to him on springy legs, wait for him to approach, and then she pins her ears back, nibbles his face, and bounces away. She does that to everyone though.

Each day, when Maybelle rebuffs Earl, he seems confused. This is probably because ten days ago, Earl was a known dreamboat. Maybelle was absolutely in love with Earl, lingering near his stall and delighting when he would press his nose against her neck or groom her mane. The swap in Maybelle’s attitude is abrupt and happens every couple of weeks. She’s tiny next to him. It’s fun to watch her run the barn. When Maybelle first came here, she seemed so timid and docile. I like this version of her personality. 

I wasn’t angry with any of this behavior. 

I was angry with Earl and his stupid foot. At one point, Earl went to strike out in his horsey way. It’s not an attack thing, it’s just a reaction where they sometimes stomp the ground with a front foot to punctuate a vocalization. Striking is forbidden on lead—I don’t want my foot stomped on—but there’s not much I can do about it when he’s in his stall. A week ago, one of Earl’s strikes hit directly into a wall, splintering the wood. I don’t care about the wood, but he also bruised his toe and was limping around later. His health is my responsibility, so when I watched him injure himself for no good reason I was perturbed. 

A few days later, we had a similar incident with Finn. He’s an active dog, but he’s also pretty old for a Mastiff. I heard him roughhousing with Albert (just a year old) and went to break it up when it got too rowdy. A few minutes later, I had to break it up again. Several minutes after that, they stopped playing on their own when Finn yelped in pain. He had re-injured his left knee. It’s nearly better now, but I had to watch him limp around for two days, and that hurts my heart.

I know we can’t prevent our friends from ever injuring themselves, but it’s so difficult to watch someone do something stupid and get hurt, especially when you’re the one responsible for tending to the injury. 

When I stop typing, I can hear parents everywhere laughing at my “revelation.” The difference is that these animals will never grow up, move away, and become responsible for themselves. Oh, wait, I guess a lot of parents have that issue too. 

I suppose a better reaction would be to simply empathize with their pain, nurse them back to health, and then watch them bang up their bodies in some other stupid way a week from now? I don’t really have any other choice. The situation will be the same, regardless of what I do. Maybe the only thing I can actually control is my reaction to it. Nah. I’m going to continue to believe that irrational anger is the only sensible course of action.

For now, Finn’s knee is nearly back to normal. He’s on some pain medication and wants to go play, but I’m keeping him quiet.

For now, Earl isn’t limping at all, although he continues to be a known jerkface in the eyes of Maybelle. Next week, he’ll be a dreamboat again. My mom was here two weeks ago back when Earl was the love of Maybelle’s life. She watched, agape, as Maybelle pushed her backside up against Earl’s door. Mom said a single word—“Slut.”

I was horrified. It’s amazing to me the layers of shame that people are willing to heap onto a perfectly natural impulse between two horses. Not to mention the fact that these two horses are married! My mother has clearly been injured by the way that she was indoctrinated and oppressed by our society. And, of course, my first reaction was to be angry at her for having that injury.