Horse Farm Arthritis

My knees are bothering me a little today. Its a strange thing, this arthritis. I feel as though Im too young at 30 years old to have it, but yet it plagues me. My mother warned me about it, but I guess I just never really believed, or wanted to anyway.

My mother warned me about arthritis in my foot. When I was 15, I broke my foot in 3 places playing football with a friend. The bones were never set, and instead I limped about in a bulky cast for 6 weeks, only to have an odd lump on the top of my foot afterward. Mom was convinced I would have arthritis before long in that foot. To this day it doesnt bother me.

My arthritis stems from another adventure all together. It comes from a horse farm. Yes, a horse farm.

I was only 19 years old when I went to work at Cadron Creek Arabians. I lied to get the job. I loved horses so much that I just knew this was the perfect job for me. When they asked if I had experience, I told them all about taking care of a sick friends horses which never actually happened. Rather, the friend got so sick that he had to sell his horses. It wasnt long after that his health finally gave out and Jerry passed away peacefully in his sleep, in Clearfield Utah.

So the story goes that I began to work at Cadron Creek Arabians in Quitman Arkansas back in 1999. I loved my job! I got to roam fields just filled with beautiful mares, feeding them, bathing them, brushing them, and during my first month there, assisting in the birth of a new foal. The horses were almost all straight Egyptian Arabians, with bloodlines fully traceable back to the time of Alexander the Great. They were proud horses with tiny ears, huge eyes, graceful necks, and the most beautiful gait Id ever seen.

I got used to my job. I even got to know a few of the mares and was very close to them. There were two in particular that were outcasts because they were not the precious straight Egyptian bloodline. One was a Russian Arabian named War Princess, the other was a Polish Arabian named Sonrisa. They were both lovely and I adored them. But because of their lineage, they had been, I dont want to say mistreated, but perhaps not treated with the same courtesy and kindness the others had been treated with. War Princess was a beautiful Bay with long black stockings and a tiny white streak in her pitch black tail. But this is the story about Sonrisa.

Sonrisa was a beautiful and elegant Gray who had an incurable disease called EPT. The way it was explained to me, this disease made her legs completely numb, which in turn made her rather skittish. This EPT was a fatal disease. She tended to prance a bit since she couldnt feel where she was stepping. I think that would make me nervous, too! Sometimes the other people working on the farm would get frustrated with her and smack her on the butt with the reigns when putting her out to pasture, as though they were in a Wild West movie.

It took me months to get her to where she would allow me near her with reigns of any kind. I worked with her for what felt like ages before she would trust me at all. At first I bribed her with sugar cubes and carrots. Usually I just left the reigns behind and didnt mess with them. Then one rainy day it was time for a vet check and guess who was sent after Sonrisa to put her in the stocks? Im sure you've guessed already. Me.

I tied the reigns around my foot so she wouldnt see them I went out to her as I normally would, one hand extended, palm up. She came to me as she had been doing for the past week, nuzzled my hand, and then reached down to pick at the grass around her hooves. Her beautiful silver mane cascaded around her head, the matching tail swishing at the flies near by.

When I reached out and put my hand on her flank, her dappled gray body quivered. I ran my hand slowly down her legs, getting her used to my movement. I was about to do something with her Id not done before. I wanted her to be prepared for anything. My hands went down to the hoof, and back up again coming up her back against the grain of the hair, lightly scratching as I went. I got to the base of her mane and her head lifted. Her lower lip began to tremble as though she were trying to tell me how good my scratching felt, so I lingered longer. I lifted my hand higher, stroking under that beautiful silvery mane as I went. Finally I reached her head. I ran my hands over her face, her ears, her eyes, her nose, and finally under her head.

I reached behind me and lifted my foot. The reins came with it, silently and unnoticeable - part of the reason I had paid so much attention to her face and eyes. I untied the reigns as I played with her face a little more, and finally was able to manage getting one side around her head. She didnt budge. It was as though she finally trusted me where she wouldn't ever allow anyone else to go. I fastened the bridle on her elegant head and began to walk with her. She came along as obediently as a well trained Golden Retriever.

One of my coworkers, Keely, who had been working at the farm for many years reached out to touch her nose and Sonrisa reared up instantly. I immediately stepped in to calm her. I walked right in front of her, put my hand out with the palm up, and bent my knees slightly, making myself smaller. She lowered herself, nuzzled my hand, and calmed immediately. That was the day I gained the respect of my coworkers.I got her all the way to the vet stocks and marched her right in, with everyone I worked with standing in astonishment at the ease to which I accomplished this task. I clipped the stocks closed behind her and removed the bridle. Her head moved not an inch. She stood as still as a marble masterpiece.

I went to gather some hay into the back of my farm truck to feed to the mares while the Vet was doing his inspections. I wanted to have a nice surprise for Sonrisa when she came back to her stall later. She had earned it. The rain started coming down harder, and the wooden ladder was starting to get slick, so I climbed the bails of hay instead. I was climbing high into the loft to gather a few of my hidden sugar cubes to hide in the bottom of her feed trough when I lost my footing and came down hard. When I saw the bed of the truck looming before me, coming faster by the second, I twisted in midair somehow. By doing this, I caught my foot between a couple of hay bales and my body suddenly was jerked to an excruciatingly painful halt, leaving me dangling from the bales like a rag doll stuck in a tree. I cried out in pain, as anyone would. Somewhere off in the distance a horse whinnied aloud.

My foot finally came free of the hay, my knee feeling like it was being torn in half, and I plummeted the rest of the way down to the bed of the truck where I hit with a thunderous explosion of crunching body parts on a hard metallic surface. Moaning, I wrapped my arms around my knee. It had already begun to swell. My Wranglers were feeling tighter by the second.

I got up, leaving the truck where it was. I limped the 100 yards or more to Sonrisas stall and finally opened my hand. The sugar cubes were slightly crushed, but she'd still have a treat when she made it back. I turned around to go back to the truck, and there stood Keely right behind me.

"Everything ok? Sonrisa started screaming out for no reason a minute ago. The vet told me I was upsetting her, so I thought I'd come up here for a minute. It's funny, though. Nobody was near her when she started screaming."

My mind flashed back to when I hung from the hay, dangling like a loose thread from a hem. I remembered hearing a horse scream. Could that have been my Sonrisa? Did she hear me? Did she love me as much as I loved her?

About a month later, it was decided that I was in need of surgery for some severely torn cartilage in my knee. I was to fly down toFlorida in order to have it done. Little did I know I would never have the surgery, and would instead find myself homeless for the first time in my life. But thats another story.

That leaves me here, now, feeling arthritis from a horse farm. I wouldn't trade that day or that memory for anything in the world.

Soaring Hopes

I have a fear of commitment.
That sounds like quite an odd statement for someone who has been married, but keep in mind I've been married twice and divorced twice.

(Photo taken in 2002
on Catalina Island)

I've finally committed to something; several things in fact.
I committed myself to taking care of my cat. That should be obvious by my other posts.
I'm committed to taking care of myself. Odd statement, yes - but it's not something I've always been committed to.
I'm committed to my job and my boss. Where would I be without them? I certainly wouldn't be able to take care of myself!


But I'm also committed to you, my readers. I'm writing EVERY DAY because I know you're there, you're listening and you're reading. I'm committed to sharing with you for as long as I have stories to share.





I stumbled across some blogger by the name of Pioneer Woman earlier this morning. While it seems the rest of the world had already discovered this amazing person, aparently I'm a little late to the game.


It all started when I discovered a comment on my latest blog signed "PW". Try as I might, I couldn't come up with anyone I knew who had the innitials of PW. My friend Vicki asked if there was a possibility that it was this infamous blogger, one of the most successful bloggers of our time. Since I didn't know the person at all, I decided that there was no way it could have been them. Whomever left the comment with the innitials PW was someone I had known well enough to tell a shortened version of my Kidnap story to - and there aren't many of those. Still, I had stumbled onto an amazing blog and spent hours reading various things.


Pioneer Woman blogs about daily life, her kids, and living out in the country. They heard cattle, have many horses, and the King of the Ranch is a bassett hound named Charlie. Pioneer Woman blogs about recipes, home schooling, trips and vacations, photography and Home and Garden. She has give-aways, sponsors and contests. But she also has a wonderful love story that completely swept me away for hours on end. I'm still not done reading it. She has the "Happy Ending" we all search for and deserve.


This remarkable woman has boosted my hopes about as much as seeing how many of you are DAILY readers of my blogs these days. My hopes are soaring high, knowing that each time I tell a story, there's someone, somewhere out there who wants to be an audience. Maybe I don't have as many people reading my stories as the Pioneer Woman does, but with hope and continued commitment, we can get there.


Thanks, to everyone, for your comments and support.

Get It, Whomp!

It's been four days since I've written a single word and I'm feeling a bit guilty. I don't even know what I will be writing about today, just that I know I need to sit down at the computer with the intention of writing something for those of you who continue to check my blogs daily. I'm sorry to have disappointed you lately, I've been a bit busy elsewhere.

I'll make this one worth your while.

I'll never forget the day my Uncle came to visit and wanted to cook for us. He was a truck driver and hardly ever got time in from the road. He and my mother were extremely close in their youth and very much loved one another even in adulthood. Still, certain things had changed. They no longer believed it was fun to throw chewed gum at one another hoping it would stick in the others hair. Well, Mom didn't anyway. Mom hadn't ridden a horse in many years and my Uncle hadn't had to run from one since then. Uncle Mike couldn't walk on his hands anymore, but he could still ride for a mile and a half on nothing but the back tire of a bicycle. Mom had finally learned how to cook durring her marriage to my father, but still didn't have the patience to teach us too much.

Uncle Mike decided he was going to teach my brother and I how to make Spaghetti. He boiled the water and threw the noodles into the pot after breaking them in half and continued a conversation with my mother about one horse they had as a kid. Uncle Mike wasn't crazy about horses as my Mother was, and in fact, still isn't wild about any animals to this day. I personally believe that's because of his days as part of the road crew who cleaned up road kill in the 70's and 80's - I can only imagine that would numb someone to the emotional experience of loosing a pet, or even loving one to begin with.

The horse they were discussing was Whomp. It's an odd name for a horse, I'll admit, but Whomp, by all accounts, was a brilliant horse. All anyone would have to do is lean over in the saddle, get as close to Whomp's ears as possible and whisper to him "Get it, Whomp!" and the horse would take off like it had been smacked with a dozen switches at once. He tore off through valley and vale, over fences and logs, through brambles and briars, never slowing and never faltering until the reigns were pulled back. Mom had, on many occasions, told us of Uncle Mike begging to go for a ride just down the lane to a friends house. Mom hated having to taxi him around like that because she had wanted to go in another direction. As penance, she would sit my Uncle, her younger brother, on the back of the horse just behind the saddle. She would ride properly for a while, not much more than a walk. Finally, he would say something smart to her about crawling along at the speed of an earth worm, and she would stand up in her stirrups. He always knew then to hang on for dear life. She leaned over towards the horses ears and whispered, and Whomp would take off with a cloud of dust behind him like a thick fog that had gathered dirt. More than once my Uncle was left sitting on the ground behind, hurting from the bottom and bruised a bit in the ego. He would stand up and continue on his way on foot. My mother would begin to feel bad and would circle back around. She would entice him to get back on the horse and he would always turn her down. Once or twice she managed to talk him into it and would give him a proper ride the rest of the way there.

When Whomp was new to the family, he was as gentle as a lamb. The family instantly fell in love with him. My Grandfather was an amazing animal trainer, and had he been known outside of the small town where they lived in rural Arkansas, there likely would have been a book or two written about this small, frail man who embodied so much more than his stature would have you believe. He was what many people today would consider to be a Horse Whisperer. But this Horse Whisperer had threee small children to look out for and wouldn't keep a violent horse or dog on his property. This was widely known.

One day my Grandfather came walking through the field to the house. My mother watched from a distance and when she realized he was limping, she ran to fetch her mother and brothers. All four stood in the window of the living room with the lace curtains swept off to the side, peering out of the window. The smudge marks on the glass from their four matching noses would have made anyone else laugh. My Grandfather limped to the house. My mom's oldest brother ran out to lend him a hand up the creeky wooden steps and my Grandmother held open the door. They walked him to the dining room table and sat him in an old, stained, cracked and abused wooden chair that groaned under his 98 lb body. He began to roll up his pant leg to reveal a horse shoe print on his thigh larger than his own face. Whichever horse it was had to have been huge. Grandma got some ice for the swelling, and the kids gathered around in the other chairs.

"Daddy" asked my mother, all of about 8 years old at the time, "which one done it?" All three kids and my Grandmother sat on pins and needles waiting. They knew whichever horse it was, Grandpa would go shoot it as soon as he could walk without needing a cane.

"It was Whomp" he said. All three kids and even his lovely wife started to cry big, fat tears of sorrow.

"You aren't gonna kill him, are ya Daddy?" My mother asked the question they all wanted an answer to.

"Aw, Hell Naw," he stated in aggrivation. "I kicked em' first!"

At the end of telling this story, my crazy Uncle reached into the boiling pot of Spaghetti noodles and picked one out. He then threw it against the wall and watched it stick.

It stayed there for several minutes before he finally pulled it down and said "I think the S'ketti is done. You know it's done with the noodles stick." Then, he held the noodle up to his mouth and slurped it in. "Yep, it's done."