Warmblood W
By Scot Tolman
hen you were a kid, do you remember thinking, I can’t wait to be a grown up, and I can’t wait to have a job, and money and
all the horses I want? Have you noticed that being on your own isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, and having all the horses you want has a direct relationship to your lack of cash? You’re writing a check for the hay bill (I call this our
second mortgage payment), and you’re thinking about the hours on a beach and the gallons of Piña Coladas $2,000 would buy. You tell people how much you love getting up at 4:30 am, watching the sunrise while you’re doing morning chores, but, in reality, more and more often, you find yourself standing calf-deep in mud, the third 50-pound hay bale raised to your waist, a splash of icy mud/water seeping into the top of your muck boot and soaking your right sock, more aware of the grouchy, overweight Morgan mare willing to kill you to get to this hay bale, which must be better than the other two you just put in the feeders, than you are of any faint glow in the eastern sky. You’re in a teleconference with other horse enthusiasts of your ilk, vainly offering suggestions for the future of the organization on whose advisory committee you sit, and you’re not sure if the reason you don’t hear the mantra of excuses and personal/political roadblocks is that you’re too old to have been diagnosed with ADHD, or that American Idol is on and suddenly reality TV seems much more interesting and more pertinent than the current or future state of a Warmblood studbook in North America. Being a grown up is not for the faint of heart. Of course, there are benefits to being a grown up. [pause]
Umm. [another pause] Give me a minute. I'll think of one. [light bulb suddenly brightens above my head] You get to drive a big truck! Wait a minute. It just cost me almost $1000 to register said truck with the town of Chesterfield, New Hampshire. Nope. I was right before. It’s no fun being a grown up. When I was a little kid, I used to sit underneath my
grandmother’s locust tree with a folded newspaper, creating a barn and pastures for my plastic horses. (I feel as if I’ve written about this before. Forgive me any redundancy; my mental state is becoming more and more precarious.) While most of the other kids on our street were riding their bikes through the mud puddles in the circular driveway to my uncle’s dairy barn across the street, I was dutifully involved in the beginnings of my breeding program. Of course, the plastic horses had a gestation period of about 30 seconds,
66 May/June 2013
and an addition to my barn cost as much time and energy as it took me to run back into the house and get another section of newspaper.
Much like my current, and ever-increasing, herd of real
horses, my collection of plastic horses was extensive (but much cheaper to feed), and, possibly, the progenitors of a less-complicated-but-no-less-frequently-sought-after state of happiness. Even then, I was drawn to, and covetous of, the concept of the ideal horse. My cousin and next-door neighbor, Judy, had the same plastic Palomino mare as I, but her mare’s coat was much more golden than mine…so I stole her. Rather, traded. Under some pretense, I snuck into Judy’s house, found her much smaller collection of plastic horses, and swapped my bleached and faded Palomino mare for her golden, glistening one. Had I really been in tune with my breeding program at that point in time, I would have realized stealing/trading the lovely, plastic Palomino mare was not going to make much difference to my next generation of plastic horses: I only had two foals, one blue and one raspberry-colored. They didn’t get any shinier or more golden by having a shinier, more golden dam. (We’ll leave the moral complexity of doing what you have to do to get the horses you “have” to have for another column…) Six years old or 53, the happiness that I found under
my Nana’s locust tree is the same happiness I seek during my early morning chores and my much-procrastinated bill paying sessions. It’s all for that ideal, golden, shiny mare--the one who will go on to produce generation after generation of more and more perfect horses. This morning, I stood at the pasture gate scratching the neck of my Totilas two-year-old, pushing her aside just enough so I could watch the swollen abdomen of her mother drinking at the automatic waterer. I was looking for the tell-tale kicks and bumping of this year’s foal, awakened from its uterine slumber by the icy water coursing through its dam’s digestive tract. I turned back toward the barn and saw light creeping through the trees and the stars dimming above me. Some moments being a grown up is all it’s cracked up to be.
Scot Tolman has been breeding
Dutch Warmbloods for over 20 years at Shooting Star Farm in Southwestern New Hampshire. Read more of Scot’s writing at
shootingstarfarm.com.
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