The Vet Check

Copyright Shaere Biran 2004

(published by Spinifex Press 2004 - HorseDreams  - The Meaning of Horses in Women's Lives.)

Photo Copyright Peter Gower 1993

"Come on, Henry. There’s only five minutes left!" I waved the timecard at my strapper. I didn't want to be eliminated from the competition because I’d missed the deadline for the final vet check.

"Stop panicking," he replied, grey eyes glinting from his sun-browned face. "Just trot Hobbs out once more so I can make sure he’s OK."

I yanked on the lead rope. Hobbs pulled his head out of his feed bin and flattened his ears. He shuffled into a limping trot. I couldn’t believe it. After almost fifty hours in the saddle, clambering up and down goat trails, falling into wombat holes, sliding off embankments into rivers, here we were, with the final obstacle standing between us and the trophy that would signify Hobbsy’s right to the title of Endurance Horse. And Hobbs was lame. I felt as though I’d been kicked in the guts.

Hobbs strained at the lead rope, angling for the only blade of grass he hadn’t managed to vacuum into his mouth for the last five days. Passing a vet check wasn’t a matter of do or die to him, but getting to that bit of green certainly was.

Henry swore and rushed to Hobbs’ side, running gnarled hands over his back, then down his legs, probing and squeezing.

"I think I’m going to be sick," I said, bile rising in my throat.

Henry pushed back his akubra and his gaze fell to Hobb’s soup-plate hooves. He bent over, picked one up, and swore again. "Get me a knife!"

I grabbed a pocket-knife and handed it to him. Henry jabbed it into a lump of clay, wedged beneath Hobb’s hoof pads, and pried it loose. "Trot him again!"

I yanked on the lead rope, my legs jelly, hands shaking. Hobbs trotted after me, his steps even. He was all right.

"Go! Go! Go!" shouted Henry.

I took off with Hobbs to the vet arena as if the hounds of hell nipped at our heels, hoping we weren’t already too late. The steward waved us into the arena. My fingernails dug into my hands. The slightest sign of uneveness or a laggardly trot and he would fail the vet check. And Hobbs never trotted when he could stroll.

Henry arrived and slid something into my hand. I looked down and almost swooned with relief. A pocket-sized spray can. Our secret weapon against a horse that infinitely preferred eating to moving.

The chief veterinarian did the routine checks, then turned to me. "Hand it over," he said.

Relief turned to despair as I held out the spray can. "But I need it," I cried. "He won’t move without it."

"Yes he will," replied the vet.

Easily said for someone with no stake in the outcome. Especially someone who didn't know just how important that spray can was. Hobbs hated the hissing noise spray cans made. Nothing could make his eyes ring white with fear faster, or produce a high-stepping trot an olympic dressage rider would kill for.

I stared at the three flame-orange witches’ hats. This was it. The final test of fitness of the four hundred kilometre Shahzada, the toughest endurance ride in the world.

The peanut gallery laughed and pointed, waiting with macabre glee for Hobbs to fail. To them he was a cart horse with flat feet, legs that resembled tree trunks, and rump the size of a barn. He was a ‘wannabe’, an outcast, not fit to share the trails with sleek, wiry Arabs with high-falutin’ pedigrees.

They never saw what I saw, a glorious white horse with a mane and tail that glittered in the sunlight. Nor did they share the trails through hail and sleet or see the moon rainbow from his back in the middle of the night.

All they wanted to see was Hobbs fail the final trot-out.

And the vet had taken away my spray can.

I lined Hobbs up and stared at the first cone, like a one hundred-metre sprinter focussing on that narrow corridor between two painted lines. Come on, Hobbs, you can do it. I drew a deep breath. Seconds ticked by. Then inspiration dawned. I turned to Hobbs, clenched my front teeth together, and hissed.

Hobbs threw up his head as though a tiger snake had bitten him, and ran. Hauling on the lead rope, he surged past the peanut gallery. I ran beside him, trying to keep him on the track. It had to be the longest trot out in history. One cone and turn. Second cone. Keep trotting Hobbs. Don’t bob. Don’t stop. There’s the final cone. Turn. I ran back towards the vet and he lifted his thumb UP! I stopped dead. We had done it, Hobbs and I. We had shown them. Hobbs had won. He had earned the title, ‘Endurance Horse.’

I threw my arms around him and burst into tears.

Hobbs just stood there, curved ears twitching, a bored expression on his face. He pulled the lead rope from my hand and strode off in search of the next tussock of grass.