For Flash

When I was in fourth grade, I was your typical horse-crazy girl. I think nearly every little girl goes through the phase, even if somewhat briefly. I would gallop around the playground during PE, shake my mane in the wind, and (only when playing alone in my backyard) I would whinny with joy. I loved horses so much that I thought I was one.

Each week, our class would walk the 30 feet down the school hallway to the library to check out books for the week's report. Every time we would make that walk, I would arrive at the doorway of the library breathless, not because the walk was so long, but out of desperation. I was so afraid that someone would get to the horse section before me and get the book I wanted. I knew I couldn't break line or run (those were against the rules, after all), so I would hyperventilate in place until we were released to find a book. While most students would gravitate to the thinnest books possible on the kiddie shelves, I'd make a bee line to the shelves in the center of the back of the library - the shelves that had the magical books that could sweep me away from galloping around in my tennis shoes or pretending my bike would jump with mane flying over the cracks in our driveway. In those books, I was always mounted on the most intelligent horses possible - I rode Marguerite Henry's Misty of Chincoteague and Sham from The King of the Wind. I understood and could ride Will James' Smoky the Cow Horse. But my favorite horse from my imaginary, paper-based stable was The Black Stallion. I loved the feel of the library-edition, hard-bound, pimply cover that had a black horse silhouetted on the front.

 I had read Walter Farley's The Black Stallion and the second book in the series, The Black Stallion Returns, several times by the time I started my own collection of the books. When I bought my own copy, it came in paperback, and this time, The Black stood tall and windswept in full color - his inky black coat dappled and his intelligent eyes glinting.

Later in the series, one of The Black's colts is a blood bay - a deep red coat with a shiny black mane and tail. I dreamed of these black and bay horses that seemed to loom larger than life to me.

It may be surprising, then, that when I was 13 years old and got my first horse, I fell in love with a scrawny little chestnut whose coat was dull and shaggy and whose breeding was a complete unknown. He was only a year old, but I wasn't intimidated by the prospect of training him. After all, I'd read all those books in the library! I could train a baby horse!

Thank goodness someone bigger than me was watching out for me. My parents and I got lucky with Flash, the ambitious name I'd given the little horse; he didn't have a mean bone in his body, and he put up with my pseudo-training despite the hours I spent crying because I thought he'd just NEVER get it! He'd never learn to jump. He'd never learn to canter on his left lead. He'd never be as smart as The Black.

Over the years, though, Flash grew into a large red horse with an exclamation mark on his face (Flash!) and one tall white sock on his right hind (that in later years, my future hubby and a friend would use to nickname Flash Tubesock). By the time I was in high school, everything revolved around him. The first time I ever drove alone the morning after getting my driver's license, I dropped my Mom off at work and headed to the barn. The freedom of driving was great, but I couldn't wait to get to Flash and drown myself in the intoxicating freedom of riding him. And...he learned.

I loved coming home smelling of horse hair and sweat. I loved stepping out of my car at the barn to hear horses moving around in their stalls, munching hay, or calling out in soft whinnies. Flash's stall was in the back of the barn where I boarded him (pictured in the background above), and I'd walk through the front barn (which was MUCH nicer) and all its purebred Thoroughbreds and riders with expensive custom chaps and the newest in riding clothes. Much like that fourth grader in the library, I'd make a beeline for the center back, knowing what awaited me in that stall. He was the red horse that now loomed large in my dreams.

Time did what it does best - it continued on. As I grew older, Flash couldn't follow me everywhere. I graduated from college and moved to Honduras - I moved to Wheaton, Illinois, for graduate school. Flash was always in my thoughts (and I'm sure my students in Honduras got tired of hearing about him...one student, though, painted a picture of him for me that I have in my office to this day), and my heart broke every time I'd have to leave him.

Then, I moved to my dream job in Montana, working in the horsemanship program at a therapeutic boarding school for girls. It was there that I had the chance to finally have Flash come follow me - and I had him shipped from Virginia to Montana. He had been diagnosed with ringbone in his left front, a progressive joint disease where calcification builds up around the joint just above his hoof - the pain of that extra bone scraping and moving made him almost always lame and limping. My farrier in Montana, though, could help him out. I couldn't believe my luck...my heart horse was coming out to be with me, and I was going to be able to make him healthy again.

He came out, got his ringbone stabilized, and I was able to use him to help the students learn how to be compassionate leaders. It was in Montana that I spent hours riding him in the woods, in the arenas, around the school property - blissfully unaware that those would be my last years riding my big red horse.

When we finally moved back to Virginia (now with a husband in our little family), Flash was put into a well deserved retirement after arthritis developed in his remaining good front leg (from standing on it extra heavily to compensate for when the ringbone hurt him). He lived the good life in a large pasture that was half trees and half open. The last part of his life he lived on the farm of a dear friend who had designed the whole property and the barn to cater to the old horses' needs. He had good buddies and a good place to live. I'd visit to groom or bathe him and feed him treats - his favorite apples or carrots.

The day Flash died (on Wednesday the 24th, it will be exactly six years ago), I wasn't there for his burial. However, that dear friend, Danielle, who owned the farm told me of the amazingly kind gentleman who used his fork lift to slowly and carefully lift Flash's body and take him to his grave by the pond. As he carried my boy high above the ground past the crepe myrtles in bloom, Danielle told me that Flash's red coat glinted in the sun from where I'd groomed him that morning to a high sheen as I said goodbye. It was a procession fit for a king - fit for Flash.

Flash still lives in my dreams from time to time - and he always looms larger than life. His sweet face and his big red shoulder where I could lay my head have taken the place of the imaginary horses I'd only read about. No, the dreams I have now are based in a reality, sparked by more than just words on a page. This dream is rooted what was real for over half of my life - in a tangled mane, hours of roaming together and singing songs to him, learning to fly over jumps together, and the deep scent of horse hair and dust.

Thank you, Flash, for being everything I ever wanted in a horse - I miss you all the time.