Horses Never Lie About Love by Jana Harris

Author:Jana Harris
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Fress Press

TWELVE

Colette’s hind legs straightened completely. In fact, they straightened too much and now resembled fence posts where they were supposed to sweep up in little crescents at the hock. Her tendons continued to look as if they were contracting. It hurt to listen to her walk across her paddock—the click echoed in my bones. After much pleading on my part, Dr. Vogel made another visit, prescribing stall rest, muscle relaxers, and a starvation diet.

“She’s been overfed,” he told me, his arms crossed in front of his well-pressed designer shirt. “It happens a lot in the Northwest—we’ve got year-round grazing and mild winters. Just look at all the killer grass you’ve got here.”

“I hardly fed her anything,” I protested. “Her mother let her eat all her grain.”

“Huh.” I could tell that he didn’t believe me. “What breed’s the dam? Nice-looking. Some kind of warmblood?” Dr. Vogel looked beyond Colette to the other side of the fence, where a calmed Willie grazed next to his beloved True Colors.

As if she could feel our eyes upon her, the mare walked away; Willie followed two steps behind. We’d had a break in the weather, and the pasture glistened. True Colors’s “foal belly” had vanished and her winter coat shone like polished furniture.

“Racetrack Thoroughbred,” I answered.

“Naw?” He put a stick of nicotine gum in his mouth. “Not with that rear end. Nice view.” He looked around, and I felt him mentally calculating the value of our real estate. “We’re going to have special shoes put on that weanling’s hind feet.”

“Shoes?” I asked, stunned. “On a foal?”

“They’ll help stretch those tendons. Once they get put on, you won’t be able to turn her out. She could hurt herself.”

I put my head in my hands, feeling like I needed muscle relaxants myself.

Dr. Vogel telephoned Red, giving specific instructions for hand-forged baby clompers with extensions welded to the toes. They looked like fetish shoes for horses.

As Red shoed Colette, I found it hard to imagine the patience and skill it took to trim her hind feet, hammer out the objets d’art, burn them into the filly’s hooves, then nail them on without sticking her in the quick. Red executed it all with Coco standing on three legs while he bent over double, working underneath her. If the gymnastics fazed him, he didn’t let on.

“Hell,” said Red, “there’s not many things I love more than the wife.” He stood up straight, then bent backward, taking a moment’s rest as he counted on his fingers: hunting, fishing, his job, the three girls. “Up until now she never gave me a day’s trouble, if ya don’t count her drinking.”

Unlike most young horses, Colette didn’t mind someone pounding on the bottom of her hooves. She had started to gray on her lovely baroque neck, her appearance more refined than Ms. Piggy’s or Kermit’s. She’d inherited all of True Colors’s lovely attributes.

Following Dr. Vogel’s instructions, we kept Colette stalled for a month in the double box where she was born. Twice a day

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