A woman I had sold a few
goats to needed to sell some of her Arabian weanlings to help save her house
from foreclosure. I was 36 years old and never thought the opportunity to
have an Arabian horse would happen to me. Donnie, my husband, agreed that
I had better get a horse since life was zipping by us and we had a place
to keep a horse, after we enlarged the goat barn. So I went to the woman's
farm and she offered me the choice of three weanlings.
Two were fillies and one
was a colt. Of the three, only one called to me, the black one. This little
filly was 9 months old and had a great old dam nicknamed Cindy who is still
the best trained horse I ever rode. She was a former show horse who got sold
off when Arabians dropped in price in the 80's after the tax laws changed.
Cindy was older, but still so pretty. Her filly, only her second despite
her age, was really a homely little thing in a gangly stage of life. I am
not sure what drew me to her, but she was the one I liked the best and I
thought she was beautiful. Looking back at early photos of her, she certainly
grew out of that homely stage as she aged....She was like the ugly duckling,
she grew into a beautiful swan.
Her registered name, already
chosen unfortunately, was SunRidge Delight. It sounded remarkably like an
orange juice product. While getting the barn enlarged so that I could bring
her home, I spent a couple of months trying to come up with a name I thought
suited her. Finally, I named her after a little girl character in Isaac Asimov's
Foundation Trilogy, named Arkady. The little girl thought her name was so
glamorous, compared to her real name of Arcadia. She was a great character
with lots of spunk, so that is the name my horse got.
Finally the day came for
Arkady to come home. Her stall was complete, I found someone to haul her
the 30 miles, and we went to get her. It was truly the most wonderful day
I had had in many years, the day I walked my new horse up the driveway to
her new home, at our place.
Watching an Arabian change
colors is fascinating. Arkady was solid black with a brown nose when I bought
her. She stayed black for a couple of years, but her nose turned grey within
a year. Considering that nose, while she was in her weanling gangly stage
with big ears and a small body, made her look like a mule, I was glad to
see her grow into those ears and lose the brown nose!
I knew Arkady was going
to grey out when I got her. Her mother was fleabitten grey, her father solid
black. She already had the tale tell signs of greying around her eyes and
nose. I spent years waiting on dapples to appear, but Arkady stayed dark
colored. She got a few stray grey hairs throughout her body, but her overall
appearance was still very dark.
By the time she was four
years old, she looked more like a dark steel grey, but still no dapples.
One day Donnie came running in yelling that Arkady had dappled at last! Finding
this a bit hard to believe, I went out and looked at her and sure enough,
she was dappled all over. Donnie had sprinkled her with flour, liberally.
By the time she was six,
she had dappled out for real. She was lovely, and turned a silver dappled
color. It really is too bad this is a transitory color, it is very striking.
Arkady kept her dapples through her tenth year, but then started getting
lighter and would have turned white within another few years. Truly a horse
of a different color, nearly every year!
Arkady entered my life
and my identity changed a bit. While I still loved my goats and did my fiber
thing, a horse became the center of my farm life. The good thing was, my
husband, Donnie, also loved this horse and we did whatever we could to make
her life comfortable, and useful. Hurricane Hugo had already enlarged our
pasture area by taking out 300 trees on our hillside, and we fenced and seeded
the area after cleaning up the trees. Arkady had more space to run around
in. We fenced in every blade of grass we had, but Arkady became an expert
in running through trees and dodging limbs hanging down.
We both loved this horse
and when we moved, Donnie built a better barn for her and found property
suited to horses because of her. We could either afford land and no house
at this new place, or a house with no land. We bought land and started once
again to build another house for us. We felt like Arkady would live a better
life at the new place than she did at our old one in the forest. Lots of
open space, grass, and a nicer barn.
And she did seem to like
it. She would run with her tail high, as pretty as an animal could be, with
her friend, Zippy, and his friend, Cactus Jack trailing along behind her.
It was winter when we moved, but she seemed not to mind the move at all.
She still looked to me and would cheerfully call out to me when she saw me
across the field.
Once she was standing next
to the barn when a huge flock of blackbirds landed in the barnlot. There
were so many of them, they looked like a coordinated black cloud, flowing
over fence lines into the field. Arkady saw me watching this from about 300
feet away. She trotted to the left of the barn, then to the right of the
barn, then charged right through the middle of the birds that had landed
on the ground, towards me. The birds lifted over her in a smooth arc, flowing
gently away from her, making a tunnel that she ran through and then ran to
me. Never have I seen anything so beautiful. Arkady was a little freaked
by this huge flock of birds, but was brave enough to run through them to
get to me.
Then in the spring of the
year, I noticed Arkady had some lumps below her jaw. She didn't seem in distress
or in pain of any sort, but I called the vet to look at her. He ran a blood
test to see what he could find, and when the results came in he called and
said he needed to come back to see me. He didn't give me the results on the
phone. He never did find out what caused the lumps, which went away shortly
afterwards, but the blood tests indicated that Arkady was in acute kidney
failure. In a horse, this meant death. I insisted on another blood test with
the futile hope that the tests had been wrong. They weren't. My beautiful
horse was going to die.
She looked so healthy,
even the vet couldn't believe what the tests indicated. I brought in the
local veterinary college to check her out, and the vet in charge, who really
didn't have bedside manners, told me Arkady would die within a week to a
month. Donnie and I tried everything we could find to help her, but soon,
her appetite reduced to nearly none, and her energy levels dropped with it.
She never seemed in any pain and I kept hoping to find some kind of miracle
cure for her. But it was not to be.
One morning, three weeks
after the original blood tests, Arkady didn't come in to eat with the rest
of the animals. When I went in search of her, she was up on the hill with
bloody liquid draining from her mouth and nose. This was the end. I called
my vet who rushed over, and confirmed that the time had arrived to put Arkady
down.
I had had Arkady in my
life for over ten years. Never in my earlier life would have I ever expected
to have such a beautiful creature, a dappled grey Arabian mare, who looked
to me as her friend. She was a kind horse, a sweet natured creature, who
could run with her tail flagged and nostrils flared looking like a firey
beast, floating in air and prancing with spirit. As bad as it hurt to lose
her, I am so glad that homely little ugly duckling who became a beautiful
swan came into my life. She changed my life. I will always miss
her...
Diane