Day 4: Apache, Christmas 1985

Apache was never really my horse.  I never owned him. I just felt that he was mine in my heart.  When he came to grandma’s house in December 1981 I fell in love with him.  I fell in love with every scraggly, mangy inch of him.  He wasn’t a very pretty horse and the fact that he had coca-burrs in every inch of mane and tail didn’t help.  He looked more like a fuzzy dog than a horse in his gangly two-year old stage.  But I fell for him.

In my adolescent love I took every chance I could find to stay at my grandmother’s house so that I could be near him.  In the summer I would take a book, sneak into the pasture, and climb onto his back.  I’d lay on my stomach with my elbows propped on his rear and I’d read while he and the other horses grazed.

In the winter I did the same but with hat, coat, gloves, and a blanket.  I spent more time on him than I think I did on my own two legs.  We palled around and I confided every woe of my youth to him.  I convinced myself that we had a special bond and somewhere inside he understood me like no one else could.    

Then I grew up and life began pulling me away from that mangy little pony.  I was gone more than I was present.  Then the call came.  Apache was escaping the pasture.  First he escaped to a neighbor’s yard.  Then he was found eating another neighbor’s cat food at their back door.  Then, the last straw, he scared one poor farmer half to death when he tried to enter their house by a door left accidently open. 

I’d treated Apache more like a pet than a horse and he thought he was part human.  I think he missed human contact and was seeking it any way he could.  I’d abandoned him and had no way of resolving the situation. Repairing the fence didn’t work, he still found ways to get out. He was lonely. 

The neighbors were getting fed up.  He was damaging fields and private property in his bid to find companionship.  Then, the second call came. This time to tell me that Apache was being moved to a new home.  Christmas of 85’ a family took him in.  They promised me I could see him any time I wanted but I couldn’t stand the thought.  It wouldn’t be the same.  I’d lost him and I knew it. 

I still feel a great deal of guilt over Apache. I feel that I abandoned a friend when he needed me most.  I also understand a little bit better why it was that I loved that little pony so much. I think I recognized in him something that I felt about myself.  He wasn’t a particularly pretty pony, nor was he well mannered.  He wasn’t smart or fast or even very coordinated.  He was just an average horse that most everyone overlooked.  And, at the time, that is how I felt about myself.  I wasn’t pretty or particularly smart.   I was always being compared to my beautiful cousin or my older and brighter brothers.  I always felt overlooked except when I was on his back.