Horses and Seashells

Shortly before Hyacinth died she went completely blind. Nobody knew exactly why. Other than confirming that she was indeed blind, the canine ophthalmologist didn’t really do us much good. I didn’t need the confirmation of an expert to know that my dear Hyacinth was blind; any fool could plainly see that. She walked head first into the furniture with an ugly crack to the head. She banged into walls. It was heartbreaking. Her blindness wasn’t caused by glaucoma, and her eyes didn’t appear to cause her any pain, so I let it go. Diagnosis would have been little more than an exercise in curiosity, and Hyacinth had endured so much already. I resigned myself to the situation and became vigilant of new matters in her world. Was she near the staircase? Stuck in a corner? Did Hyacinth need my help? Was Hyacinth afraid?

One question that the ophthalmologist asked was if Hyacinth had recently been near any barns or horses. I laughed out loud. The idea was entirely preposterous. Hyacinth hated horses; they made her livid. One time, on a cross country trek I took Hyacinth to New Orleans. While there I photographed her in front of a traffic sign that said Bourbon Street. I suppose that I should be a bit more honest about this journey. The truth of the matter was that I went to New Orleans with the sole intention of taking Hyacinth’s picture in front of a sign that said Bourbon Street. That was the only real reason we went to New Orleans in the first place. My destination was Seattle and my starting location was Virginia. Take a quick look at the map and do the math. Yeah, New Orleans is a tiny bit out of the way.


We arrived in the Big Easy with no prior knowledge of the city and no clear direction. Hyacinth peered out the window taking in the beautiful architecture of the stately old homes that belong to the rich as well as the dilapidated old row houses inhabited by the desperately poor. I often wondered if she made the same distinctions in her mind that we make in ours when encountering these very different scenes. She didn’t appear to. Her manner never changed whether she was looking at rich or poor, black or white, neon signs or peeling paint. She never flinched. It all just seemed to interest her.

We finally found Bourbon Street and got out of the car for the long-awaited, several-hundred-mile-out-of-the-way, photo shoot. We held her up as high as possible, nearly over our heads, next to a sign with a lovely old-style lamp above, a street-post reminiscent of the days when the city was lit with gas lamps rather than electrical bulbs. A mounted policeman was nearby, on the other side of the street. I sensed trouble even before Hyacinth caught sight of him, and I turned our backs, in the vain hope that she wouldn’t notice that the policeman was on horseback. But as I was told by the canine ophthalmologist when Hyacinth went blind, sight is only the third most important sense to a poodle. Smell and hearing are far more useful, and of these, scent is king. My hope that she would fail to notice the nearby duo of police-beings was vain indeed. She caught whiff of the offending creature, turned like a corkscrew in my arms, locked on to the target, and went completely ballistic with a ferocious bark that shook her to her very core. Despite the fact that my weight class for wrestling is more than ten times as heavy as hers, it was not at all immediately clear who was going to win that particular match. She twisted and turned, spitting in anger, causing such a scene. Passers-by must have thought that she was rabid, or abused by her owner, or both. When I finally gained the upper hand the photo was quickly snapped and we retreated to the car with Hyacinth letting her anger be known to the entire city, the entire way. She had seen quite enough of New Orleans. We left without so much as a nibble of crawfish etouffee, red beans and rice, or jambalaya. We left without seeing the sights, without buying Mardi Gras beads. I’ve never been back; it’s almost like I was never even there. All I have is a photo of a very mad looking poodle next to a street sign. It makes me laugh to see it now.

I will never know what made Hyacinth so angry in the presence of horses, but it was a consistent feature of her character. They made her angry when viewed in a far-off field from a speeding car. They made her angry when seen up close. They made her angry in parades. Whether hitched to carts, alone or in teams, it made no difference. Horses simply offended Hyacinth every single time they entered her world. It wasn’t fear. Hyacinth behaved very differently when she was afraid. Nope – horses just flat-out pissed her off.

I’m the one who is afraid of horses. As a child my family would travel to the ocean for vacation every summer. We would park our travel-trailer in one of those little villages formed by people living in their “homes away from home” with bumper stickers that said things like “We’re spending our kids’ inheritance”. We returned to one such village each year and occasionally my sister and I would even find the same children to play with from summer to summer. It was a wonderful get-away that the entire family looked forward to. Sometimes the weather was nice and sometimes it was not. Growing up in Washington State meant that summer could sometimes be cold and rainy. It didn’t matter in our cozy little Shasta trailer.

There was a stable at the beach that rented horses by the hour and every year my father would take my sister and me for a ride. I think that the horses resented being leased out, treated as if they were rental cars or hotel rooms. Perhaps they were old, or didn’t feel well. Maybe they were just bored. I don’t know, but they always seemed somewhat less than enthusiastic about our arrival. My father would swing into his saddle, glorious, looking like John Wayne in city clothes sitting atop his faithful steed. Except that my father was better looking than John Wayne. He was the handsomest man I had ever seen. He still is. With a gentle prod of the heel, a soft “Tch, tch” noise from the cheek, and a flick of the reins my father was in control. His horse would dutifully trot through the sand toward the waves. My sister, a bit less confident but nevertheless effective, would follow behind. And then there was me. My horse would just stand there. “Tch, Tch”. Nothing. “Give him a little kick, honey” my father would say. Kick, kick. Nothing.

Eventually my father would turn around, expertly steering his horse to the rear of mine, and give the beast a gentle slap on the hindquarters. His slap said “Look here old gal, you’ve got my baby on your back. Be nice.” It seems that my father is able to communicate with horses even when he’s not riding them, because grudgingly my old mare would move forward and follow in tow, down to the hard-packed sand where the waves broke at the shore. The salt air felt cool and crisp from my high vantage point atop the large animal. The horse smelled like the country, and I could feel its shoulder muscles stretch and contract as it dutifully plodded along. There we were – three cow-pokes on a quarter-mile journey down the beach; one gorgeous man and the two little girls who were the light of his life tagging along behind. Everything was wonderful…

…until it was time to turn around. Though my father and sister remained atop the same horses they had taken from the stable earlier, my horse suddenly dissociated and became an entirely new, alternate personality. What was Sybil, was now Peggy Sue. What was a tired old mare was now competing in the last leg of the Triple Crown. It was the home stretch, my horse was just a neck behind, and it wanted to WIN! My father and sister now took their turn following me, as my horse raced through a trot to an all-out gallop heading for home. My legs in the stirrups, too short to reach far enough around the belly of the beast to hold me down, flapped helplessly. The reins were long forgotten. The only thing that mattered any more was the saddle horn, and I hung onto it for dear life. The return trip, terrifying as it may have been, was at least over mercifully quick. As the stable approached my horse’s psychogenic fugue remitted. The quiet, half-dead Sybil personality regained control of the horse’s body and the gallop became a trot, a walk, and then the same laborious plod with which we began our journey. My yearly communion with the animal kingdom was over.

Over the years it became apparent that I simply would never master the art of horseback riding and so I began to stay behind on these outings. My father and sister rode the horses while my mother and I strolled along the beach. These were special times for me. Remembering them brings me such peaceful feelings now. Mom and I would walk along the shore, heads down, silent, looking for seashells. Occasionally we would stoop to pick up a treasure that caught our eye. If I found a seashell that was especially perfect by my standards I would show it to my mother who would slip it into her purse for safekeeping. If she found a treasure she would likewise show it to me. Most of the time was silent, mother and child slowly walking side by side, stopping, stooping, deciding, and then walking slowly again. What looked like a treasure from above was usually blemished in some small way when turned over and closely inspected. These we would toss back to continue their lives with all the other imperfect shells, caressed by the ocean some more. We singled out only the rare and perfect ones for special treatment; they received our adoration. All the others were tossed back, imperfect, unimportant.

In my eyes Hyacinth was perfect, but in reality she was far from it. I took her to the veterinarian the day after buying her from the “puppy pimp”. I brought along her registration papers – they attested to her existence as an AKC approved poodle – a perfect little seashell. But she wasn’t, as the vet was quick to point out. She could not be shown at Westminster. The Eukanuba Cup would never be hers. Her tail was simply too short. Tail? Well, that is a bit of an overstatement. Hyacinth didn’t have a tail so much as she had a nub. Whoever “docked” her tail as a newborn puppy took too much of her delicate flesh. I sure hope that person wasn’t a rabbi in addition to a poodle-docker. When she was freshly groomed she looked like she had a fluffy little cotton ball pasted onto her sweet little butt. But once the fluffiness of the beauty parlor subsided she really didn’t look as if she had much of anything back there at all. Imperfect as it may have been, her tail, or lack-thereof, was one of the most adorable features about her.

I guess that souls are not the same as seashells. The little cracks and dings that lead us to toss a seashell aside are the very things that draw us to a living being. A whole seashell is a rare find to be treasured, but a whole soul has no need of us. It’s hard to love something that has no need. I sometimes think that my love of Hyacinth was so great because she truly needed me. Her imperfections didn’t end with her nub of a tail; they continued to show up throughout her life. From seizures, to bladder stones, bad hips a heart murmur, faulty hormones and tumors – Hyacinth really was not a very healthy poodle at all, if the truth is to be told. She was far from a perfect little seashell. She was one of the blemished ones.

When I was a child, walking along the beach with my mother, I often felt sorry for the seashells we inspected and then tossed away. I thought they must be envious of the perfect ones that we singled out. But now I know that the shells we cast aside were the lucky ones.


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