"A few minutes later, one of the bay-coloured skeletons stumbled up the trailer ramp, followed by a muddy foal. He took the list of names out of his back pocket again and walked to the front of the trailer, disappearing inside for a minute. When he reemerged, he hopped onto the wheel fender and shouted across the paddock to me.
"Lay Me Down", he called, waving the list. "Her name's Lay Me Down."
So begins the tale of Lay Me Down, a horse rescued from abuse by 'Chosen by a Horse' author Susan Richards.
"She was a tall horse, sixteen hands - about five foot four at the shoulder. Face to face, my eyes should have been level with her nose. But she had dropped her head so low I could look along the ridge of her mane straight down her back to the top of the tail. She looked like a complicated wire coat hanger draped with a mud-caked brown pelt. Bones protruded everywhere. I watched her ribs heave up and down for a minute and listened to her wheeze. Her eyes were open but droopy, weeping a whitish discharge that streaked the dried mud on her face. The same discharge was coming out of her nose. I knew she had pneumonia and had been started on antibiotics before leaving the SPCA. She couldn't keep her head up because she was too weak."
Rescued by Susan, Lay Me Down joins Susan's three existing horses; the spoilt Georgia, devoted Hotshot and fearful Tempo. The book describes Lay Me Down's recovery and integration into her new herd. Her personality is beautifully described by Susan. The author also shares her troubled childhood, failed relationships and problems with alcohol, and describes how Lay Me Down's gentle and trusting nature, despite the abuse she's suffered, have a profound effect on her own outlook on life.
"She took a deep breath and let a fine mist flubber out of her nostrils and slightly parted lips. I felt it on the back of my neck, her big, wet sigh. I felt it on my heart."
It quickly becomes apparent, however, that this isn't going to be a story with a happy ending. A swollen eye turns out to be a cancerous growth, and Susan's time with Lay Me Down seems destined to be brief.
"Lay Me Down's illness filled me with a sense of urgency. It changed time from something abstract to something almost visible. Something to be watched and measured, something as precious as Lay Me Down herself. Time was achingly finite and unfair, too. Lay Me Down deserved better. So had my mother. And what about me?"
During the course of the book, the author does much soul-searching, and learns from Lay Me Down and her illness, how to trust and also to stand up for herself and not to become a victim yet again.
"I hoped she felt fantastic. I hope she felt loved. I pressed my lips against her forehead, only inches from the tumour, breathing in her horsey smell. "Thank you", I whispered. It was OK now. It was almost over.
I gave her the apple and felt the prickly whiskers of her chin in my palm. Before she had eaten half, she dropped straight down. I dropped next to her in the grass and held her beautiful head in my arms. It was heavy and warm against my chest. Her breath smelled like apple."
This book is beautifully written, and at the end I was left sobbing hard for Lay Me Down. In fact I still felt pretty choked when I described the book to one of my work colleagues the day after reading it. I felt the prick of tears as I selected quotes from the book for this post. It's one of the few books I have been able to enjoy despite not totally warming to the author. In fact, there were times in the book when she downright irritated me! This small point was far outweighed by the writing, and the joy of reading about Susan's horses, with their very distinct personalities. As with any book of this nature, there are life lessons to be learned, and we appreciate the importance of living life with an open heart and joyful spirit, as Lay Me Down did.
On finishing the book, I really wanted to know what Lay Me Down had looked like. I managed to find these pictures of her on the internet.
Here she is (left) with Georgia, Hotshot and Tempo.
And here in her field, when the tumour was starting to become visible.
I'm not sure if my own love of horses made me resonate with this book more than I otherwise would, but I certainly feel that the words contained in it encourage us to appreciate life, and fully live it, in spite of any difficulties and setbacks we have encountered.
Perhaps for me, it was just the right book at the right time.
I've been doing a bit of soul-searching myself these past few weeks, trying to work out where I want my future to go, what direction I want to be headed in, and what I need to do to make sure I get there. One thing is for sure, I'm very much looking forward to finding myself on the back of a horse once again, after far too long an absence.
