Retirement

It was a crisp November day, as my colleague and I took her dog for its daily lunchtime stroll around the paddocks. There was a chill in the air, the first taste of ice on the breeze this winter and the morning frost had not yet quite managed to melt; the ground was still crunchy under foot and our welly-clad feet still manged to produce a spring in our steps. Me, my colleague and her small, yappy-type dog were in good spirits as we set off to explore the paddocks and say hello to our favourite horses.

But before the walk had begun in earnest we were stopped in our tracks. I stood on the path, frozen to the spot, as a large beige object on the ground only a few metres to my left caught my attention; Kirsten was similarly rooted to the spot squinting at something a good 20 metres away on the path ahead. "Look!", I said, slightly shocked and disturbed, pointing to the left. "No, you look!", she said, pointing at the path ahead with rising panic in her voice. And thus it was that our gazes shifted focus, and I stared at her dead horse whilst she stared at mine.

We stared backwards and forwards at the shapes, then looked at each other: "Is it ...?", "yes", "it's not just sleeping?", "No, it's very much no longer with us, I'm afraid". "Ah".

I still stared at its belly for a while, the naive 10 year old in me wanting to see signs of breathing. But I think even 10 year old Becky had enough equine knowledge to know that horses don't sleep like that during the day, and are certainly not allowed to have power naps in the middle of a path. They were very much ex-horses. They were no more; they had kicked the bucket, ceased to exist.

We opted for a different walking path, deciding it was time to meet some new horsey friends...


(PS. Ryan: I was going to call this blog Sigourney Weaver - geddit?)