Eng. 311 (Autobiographical Writing) Trauma Essay
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I’d had her for maybe four years when she started falling down. She would stumble and fall, staying down for a few minutes, before slowly getting up again. My reaction would be to run over to her and check her legs and hooves. I’d run my hands over her, looking for any injuries. I was a shy teenager, but any self-consciousness I had would fly out the window if I saw my horse fall down. The vet could do nothing. In his opinion, Smokey was just getting old, and there was nothing he could do about that. I never even considered putting her down, and the rest of the family knew better than to suggest it.

I was a horse crazy girl in every sense of the word. In my room I had a poster that showed every breed of horse in the world. I collected horse figurines and model horses and books on how to draw horses. I even dreamt about them.

I inherited this obsession from my mother. She helped feed my habit by giving me her old collection of Walter Farley books that she had collected when she was a child. The Black Stallion, The Island Stallion, The Son of the Black Stallion, and all the rest. There were about ten of them, and boy, I read them from cover to cover. I hated to put them down. Once, a boy from my school who knew I liked horses offered to let me ride the horses at his house. I was about ten then, and so excited. But mom and dad said no, those horses were not ridden very often, and were half wild. My eyes stung when they told me.

A few years later, Smokey came into my life. She used to belong to a co-worker of my mom’s, and she lived right down the road. The co-worker wanted to get rid of her old horse, and offered her to me. My parents said I could keep her on the condition that I took care of her. I would have agreed to anything. I finally had a horse.

Smokey was old–her back was swayed, and she stood at barely fourteen hands high. She was a bay, with a rich red-brown coat and a black mane and tail. We really had no idea how old she really was until the vet came by to give her a checkup. By looking at her teeth, he estimated that she was twenty years old or more. And she definitely could act like an old lady. She would try to shake off her saddle before I could tighten the girth, and she would paw impatiently when she wanted her dinner, raising a little cloud of dust every time her hoof touched the earth.

Every morning before school, I got up early to put Smokey in the field to graze, clean out her yard, shovel manure, and change her water. In the evening, I would climb up the mountain behind my house with a sickle and a rope to cut a fresh load of grass for her to munch at night along with her alfalfa. She would often nuzzle through my clothes, looking for carrots, sugar, or other goodies. She loved mangos, and would take a whole one into her mouth, spraying anyone too close with mango juice and saliva. After chewing for awhile, she would spit out the seed. Every time I brushed her down, I would spend some time scratching her itchy spots, grinning as she leaned her head on my shoulder and whickered.

One day Smokey fell down, and didn’t even try to get back up. I begged her and bribed her and tried to pull her up myself. Nothing worked. She just lay there, breathing laboriously, eyes half closed. It started to rain, so my family and I rigged up a tarp over her because we couldn’t figure out how to move her to shelter. I crouched by her head and talked until my voice gave out, urging and pleading. I don’t cry easily in public, and was grateful for the rain running down my face.

I was stroking her neck when she passed on. For a moment, it felt as if my heart had stopped along with hers. The sweetfeed I had been clutching in my free hand trickled through my fingers and scattered in the dirt. I guess I hadn’t really accepted the fact that she might die on me. I had convinced myself that any minute now, really any minute, she would lunge to her feet, shake herself off and demand her dinner. That wasn’t going to happen.

I said I was a horse crazy girl, and it was true. But my obsession with horses had turned into something else with my introduction to Smokey. She wasn’t some nameless horse. She was my horse. My friend.

We still couldn’t move her anywhere, so the whole family took turns digging a pit right next to her body. When it was deep enough, we each held a leg, intending to tip her in the grave. This was my last chance, my last chance to pretend that she was just sleeping, and that everything was okay.

Everyone else was ready. I grasped a foreleg and closed my eyes.