Free Horsekeeping by Roxanne Bok Page A

Bubba or JaJa. But that dog adored the old lady, and I can still see Butch with his front paws up on the chipped lip of the porcelain kitchen sink smiling broadly while Bubba brushed his gleaming white, lethal teeth.
    Scott had only one childhood experience with a pet. Before he fully embedded into the household, a frothing springer spaniel named Rusty bit the neighbor kid’s bottom and was shipped off to the pound. Too bad: if only his parents tried another dog, maybe Scott would be more interested in our growing animal family. But we are formed by early
experiences and follow our own inclinations. I make do with one house pet when I’d prefer several, and Scott had endured our problem child Peanut in our new marriage and now suffers my over-enthusiastic affection for our excellent Velvet. So in tune on almost everything else, we stare across a gaping divide when it comes to pet adoration. I envision other couples cozy on the couch, with a cat and a dog squeezed in between, waxing eloquent about their furry children, just as we do about Elliot and Jane.
    I have not given up: someday he may surprise us all with a deep and abiding affection for a dog, a bunny, a cat or even a horse.

CHAPTER FIVE
    Not Much of a Plan

    A S OUR MAY 1ST CLOSING DATE for El-Arabia approached, we fully registered our limited experience. Our romantic excitement did not quite prepare us for the responsibility of operation. Now what do we do, just up and run it? Plug in a few horses and throw them some hay occasionally?
    We had enough on our plates already—two homes, two kids, too busy. Moreover, we were not horsey material—we liked things neat, clean and safe. We are sensible, practical people, and horses are not sensible, practical animals—they are expensive, delicate and needy. Scott, a lawyer turned investment banker, grew up in small town Michigan, dresses in hand-tailored suits and works all hours not dedicated to me, the kids and sleep. While he can readily put together a merger of two titans of industry, he crumples when faced by a six-year-old’s unassembled hot wheels track or a “fun to do together” Lego space station. Talk of building a tree house turns him visibly pale. Although he claims to have picked cherries and asparagus for a nickel a pound as a kid, after twenty-plus years of marriage to the man, I still find it hard to believe.
    Scott had ridden horseback only once, a trail ride I bullied him into when we first moved to Salisbury. As we raced along a wooded path, Scott’s massive smart-aleck horse ran his knees into every close tree trunk and his head into all low-hanging branches.
    â€œDuck,” our fifteen-year-old leader repeatedly yelled.

    Scott’s wrathful eyes bored into my back as we recklessly flew along the mountain trail.
    I boasted a bit more experience. As an invincible teenager I rode western a few times at one of those backwoods operations where they took your money and cared little for your life. The horses meandered all pokey heading out from the barn, but look out once they turned for home. They would full-gallop back, and if you lost your grip you got dumped in the dust and left for dead. Later, when Scott and I lived in London, I hacked a few times in Hyde Park. The stable girls do not baby you there: their rule of thumb is that you are not a real rider until you’ve spilled a dozen times. Once mounted, ten or so of us would cross an unforgiving cobblestone lane and a honking London ring road to reach the park. The Dickensian charm attracted tourists, many who were riding virgins. “How hard can it be?” I imagined them asking their friends and spouses. “The British are so polite, so civilized.” Well, the British and their horses hide a wild streak—they invented fox-hunting after all—and few of the uninitiated could anticipate the Rotten Row, a half-mile stretch of soft dirt where the horses like to let loose.
    At the top of Rotten,