No Sentiment Allowed

I started five blogs tonight.

I’m not exaggerating, either… I started five blogs, on five subjects, and deleted them all. Too pious, too preachy, no one will care, that one will start a war and, finally, too boring.

Here’s the blog, then.

Final Call is leaving in the morning.

I haven’t ridden him since Tuesday. It was too hot, I was too busy, I didn’t want to. I knew he was leaving. I don’t like long good-byes, or sentimental “last rides,” and I went out of my way to avoid it. No drama. My number one motto.

The vet check, by the way, was a hoot. And it’s not often you can say that about a vet check. The vet was a fabulous older gent with a shirt patterned in vibrant rainbow… roosters. Yes, roosters. He had a habit of leaning on the gossip-height wall between Final Call and the colt. The colt has a habit of eating hair. Although the vet had no hair, this did not stop him from chewing on the good doctor’s scalp. I love my colt, but he is a bit mouthy.

Final Call flexed sound – always nice in any horse, isn’t it? Flexion tests have doomed many perfectly sound horses to the sad netherland of “didn’t pass the vet.” He made the usual affronted look when asked to trot off from a standstill when his hind leg was very clearly cramped. “Jeez mom,” I could hear him thinking. “This is just the opposite of a warm-up.”

And that is that, a groomed bay horse, neatly wrapped up in a bow, waiting for his shiny metal box to arrive so he can be chauffered down the road, munching on green salad and sipping lukewarm water, heading for what we non-sentimental types like to call “his forever home.”