(I am tired tonight, so instead of an update...I will copy one of the Bayou Tails.)

A Horse Named Wizard

I met a guy when I lived in Santa Fe, that raised poultry. I needed some duck eggs because a Muscovy duck had made a nest in my hayloft, and they were infertile, so went to him, got some eggs, and she had some eggs to sit on that would hatch.

He came by my barn a few times and he was a very nice, likable guy. His name was Hoddy. He had paid his way though college, rodeoing. I can't remember now if he rode broncs or bulls or both, but he didn't know very much about horses.

He had a little girl, and bought a pony for her, and a horse named Wizard, for himself.

As she grew up, he encouraged her to barrel race and bought a number of horses for her. She did good, but he was always buying potential horses, most that never got ridden and just stayed in the barn all the time.

When she was about 16, she rebelled, got involved with a bunch of rowdy kids, and the horses fell by the wayside. Hoddy and his wife got into it over it over that, and ended up getting a divorce. The horses, neglected for a long time, had to be sold.

Several of the horses hadn't been out of the barn in years. Yes. Years. They were in very large stalls...they could walk around, but the barn was old and just thrown together, and when I had been over there in the past for one reason or another, (I fed for him when they were out of town a couple of times), you could see that the stalls got more than a little muddy because when they dried up, there were deep ruts.

The horses weren't skinny...he fed them and thought he fed them well, but he had no comprehension of how much horses need to eat or how to feed them, and like a lot of horse people, you couldn't tell him a damned thing. It isn't how you wish it would be, it is how it is...damn it. Horses are grazing animals and deprived of that, if not given enough hay, and exercise or from boredom, they will chew on wood. It is called cribbing. Cribbing is bad. It causes endorphines to be released and becomes such a habit that horses will stop eating, to crib, and from cribbing, they will go to wind sucking. They will clamp their teeth onto a plank and make sort of a belching noise...only, it isn't a belch...horses can't belch...they are swallowing air. It ruins horses. They will colic easier, they will loose weight, and their body shape will change.

So, when it was time to disperse all these horses, Hoddy had about a dozen worthless horses. Not all cribbed that bad, but many had leg problems from the years of standing in stalls. They didn't face a good future.

Meanwhile, Hoddy was having his own nervous breakdown. He had been a Viet Nam vet, although whatever he was doing in the Army, it didn't involve being in combat.

He went to the Veterans hospital and was diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder. He was put on multiple prescriptions. The next time I saw him, he was literally a zombie.

He had always liked to talk to me and would call me and ask me for recipes. His wife worked and he worked sporadic, but mostly, he was Mr. Mom and he did the housework and cooking. We had even gone to the flea market together once.

He called me and asked me to meet him for lunch and he told me about his problems. He had always seemed so outgoing and happy go lucky and now he seemed so flat. I told him he needed to get back to the doctor because he was absolutely not the same person I had known. He said he was going, but couldn't get an appointment for two months.

Meanwhile, there was the problem of selling the horses. They would have to go to the auction. That meant, most likely, bad homes or the slaughter house.

I couldn't help. I have always had too many horses, myself, but I asked about Wizard. He was old. It was a shame for him to end up this way.

I offered to take Wizard. I would give him a home as long as he lived. He said okay.

I admit, I had a little bit of an ulterior motive. I knew Wizard as a very gentle horse, and one that had been ridden a lot. I thought, if I had Wizard here, I could ride him. It would be nice to have a gentle horse to ride around the place and on the back roads. Just an old horse to plod along on...nothing very strenuous for either of us.

He was going to haul him to my place. I went over to Hoddy's the day to load Wizard and when I walked into the barn, I saw a strange looking creature, covered in long, tangled and matted hair. He looked more like a yak than a horse.

I said to Hoddy, "Where did you get that one?" He said, "That's Wizard. People tell me he has Cushings Disease and that is what made his hair grow long."

He hadn't told me that. Not that I wouldn't have taken him anyway, but that completely destroyed my vision of riding Wizard off into the sunset.

I learned that it is caused by a tumor on the pituatary gland. Cushings horses grow long. wooly hair, drink a lot of water, pee a lot...have many other health problems that can be related to their condition.

I didn't have a bunch of money to spend on treatment. I told Hoddy I would take care of him as best I could as long as he lived, or until he needed to be put down.

The first problem with Wizard was that my other horses hated him. No...they despised him. Especially Lonesome, my gelding. Lonesome was gelded later than most, and he saw himself as protector over his little band of three mares. He would lunge at the fence if Wizard was within 20' of it. He acted like a stallion, flattening his ears and running up and down the fence, sliding into it and shaking his head and baring his teeth.

Old Wizard didn't seem to notice. He was more intent on seeing grass for the first time in 15 years.

I couldn't put him in the pasture with the rest of the horses. That was definitely an out. My yard is about two acres, divided by a fence into what I call the upper and the lower part. The lower part, by the bayou, although the upper part wraps around and joins the bayou for a couple of hundred feet. I put him in the upper part. Lots of grass, some big trees, and lots of water to drink in the 20 or so waterlily tanks there. He didn't care to eat the waterlilies, unlike my other horses, who considered them to be tasty delicacies.

Wizard was doing okay, and I set about trimming off the tangled mats that almost completely covered him. He was a thin, but it was kind of hard to tell much about him under all the wool.

Unfortunately, this story has a sad ending.

One evening, I went out to feed. I was late getting home, and it was dark. I called Wizard, and he didn't come up. I walked around the yard, looking for him with a flashlight. I could hear him breathing...hard.

We had an old boat shed. Made out of tin, it looked like a barn. I have often walked into it, and it had silted in over the years. There might be a few inches of water, but it was a hard bottom. You could walk several feet to the deeper water of the bayou edge and not sink in even an inch. However, we had just had torrential rains and the bayou had been up and running. I guess the water had softened the bottom in the boat shed....I don't understand just how, but now it was like quick sand, and Wizard, having spent fifteen years in a muddy stall, had walked with the innocence he had from living his miserable existence for years, off into it and was mired up to his belly in the mud.

Jody wasn't home. He was working on the shrimp boat engine...old Sea Weed, broken down again. I called him and he said he'd be there, but it's an hour and a half drive home.

Jo and her boyfriend, Jamie, were living nearby. I got Jamie and we tried for an hour and a half to dig him out. I always feel more confident in whatever I do if Jody is there. Jamie, a crackhead, never had to do more than make enough money for a few hits of crack. I'm not saying he didn't try...and I don't think anything would have gotten Wizard out, but Jamie didn't know what to do. I could reach in the mud and feel Wizard's legs and they were burning hot...meaning he had foundered and he would never recover if we got him out. This would kill him either way. He struggled and we were in mud up past our knees. We couldn't move around to help very much. We'd dig a hole and it would fill up.

I went to the house and got the .22. A vet had once showed me where to shoot an animal to kill it instantly. I had killed animals, but never a horse. I knew I could do it though, but Jody drove up and he wanted to try to get him out.

He wanted to get a block and tackle and try to lift him up, but I knew it wouldn't work. It would put too much strain on Wizard, who was dying anyway, and could even pull the whole structure down.

He tried digging some more, and it wasn't working, Wizard was dying, and he shot him.

If I had gone out one morning, and found him dead, or even if I had to have him put down, it wouldn't have been so sad, but the thought of him walking off into that deep mud and how he struggled so hard to get out, broke my heart. The memory of it still makes me cry.

I hope there was some way that he understood that we tried very hard to help him.