The Kill Pen Mare Who Won the County Rodeo

The Vet and the Farrier

Our vet is a woman named Dr. Anne Keller who has been doctoring animals in our county for twenty-five years.

She came out the following Tuesday, in daylight, after school, and she spent most of an hour on Ruby.

“Body condition about a two,” she said, running her hands down the mare’s ribs. “On a scale of nine. She’s been starved, but not long enough to ruin her. Teeth are a mess.”

She floated them right there in the pen, with Josie holding Ruby’s head and talking to her the whole time.

Then she listened to her heart and her gut, and she watched Josie jog her in a straight line down the driveway and back.

She had Josie turn her in tight little circles both ways. She picked up every foot.

“She’s sound,” Dr. Keller said at last. “There’s nothing wrong with this mare except that nobody fed her. Go slow. Good grass hay, a little at a time, four or five small feedings a day. Add alfalfa a handful at a time over a few weeks. You rush it and you’ll hurt her.”

“How long until I can ride her?” Josie asked.

“Walk her now, a little, to keep her mind busy. Real work, maybe two months. Fast work, longer than that. She’ll tell you.”

The vet looked at Josie a long moment. “You understand what you’ve got here? She’s going to need you every single day.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Josie said, and I believed her, and so did the vet.

The farrier came that Saturday. His name is Ferris and he is seventy-eight years old and he shod horses for Dusty’s dad for thirty years, back when the Volds still ran cattle on the home place.

He is bent like a question mark and he still does the work himself.

Ruby’s feet were long and cracked, and one of them had a chip out of the wall the size of a quarter.

Ferris trimmed all four, slow and patient, with the mare leaning on him because she was too weak to stand easy on three legs. It took him over an hour.

When he was done, I went to get my checkbook from the house. When I came back, Ferris was already putting his tools in his pickup.

“What do I owe you?” I asked.

“Nothing,” he said. “Kill pen horse gets her first trim free. Always has, as long as I’ve been doing this. Somebody had to say she was worth something.”

He looked over at Josie, who was brushing Ruby’s mane with a currycomb that was too big for the job. “Looks like somebody already did.”