On Consolation

This is the horse I will ride this year. You know her already. I call her Consolation.


Many of you have commented on Consolation's name -- how appropriate it is to our journey, how you read it as Constellation for weeks, how it is strange and somehow perfect.

Well. The truth is that she was originally registered under another name. I changed it -- registry and all -- to suit the circumstances of the time. Yet even I have been surprised by how thoroughly this powerful mare has lived up to her gentle name. This is our story.

Consolation was born a very dark black-bay with an odd star on her forehead in the shape of her native state. Being a filly by Arivaca out of Dove, she was christened Idaho Dove. I first saw her as a two-year-old, one of the most awkward in the herd, when her coat was greying in patches and her star had faded like Venus into daybreak.

Among the other fillies -- the blacks, the chestnuts, the grullas and buckskins and bays -- she stood out, but not for anything good. I knew her bloodlines were strong, but was not impressed with the gangling beast I saw. The others were rounder, brighter, altogether lovelier.

This was in the fields of Quien Sabe, where I worked weekends for a year and lived for several months with the goal of training to take over care of the Barb preservation project as its founder aged. Moving to the ranch had been a lifetime decision involving the sale of my house in town and sacrifice of a decent job, but it was a dream the likes of which few people ever have opportunity to chase.

Chase it I did, but it got away. Relationships aren't always what we'd like them to be, and a few months at the ranch proved enough. It wasn't going to work out. Sadly, painfully, I made the wrenching decision to return to life in the mainstream and leave the Barb project to its fate.

A few of the Barbs came with me. They were payment for labor completed, hours spent, hopes dashed. Insider and Tuetano, Acey and Sandstorm...and Idaho Dove. Though I had hand-picked most of the others, that gray filly was not one I'd have selected. But, she was a Barb with good bloodlines, and one of the few made available as payment. I accepted her -- and re-named her Consolation.

She was, you see, a sparkle left behind when the meteor fell. A piece of Quien Sabe, beloved, carried home from battles lost. The scent of a lover, long abandoned, left upon clothing at the back of a drawer. I determined to cherish her, awkwardness and all.

But oh! As time passed and her belly grew round with the foal she carried, the rest of her body changed too. She transformed from a disorganized filly into a mare capable of stopping me in my tracks when I glanced up from farm work or from the window of my house. To this day, I find myself gazing at her, awed, stunned by her balanced proportions and regal carriage.


There is more. The part you already know. The part about the years of heart poured into dear Aaruba, molding him from a disturbed colt into a promising endurance prospect. The part about his battle with ulcers and chronic colic and, eventually, the devastating decision to retire him well before his prime.

But she was waiting, my Consolation. Waiting to occupy my mind and emotions with the challenges only a willful and intelligent mare can offer. Waiting for me to become who she needed, so she could do the same for me.

We finished a few races last year. Little triumphs, in the big scheme of things. Big triumphs, in our little sphere. And really, does anything else matter when you're among horses? This is their gift to us -- the shrinking down of all that matters. Here. Now. You. Me. There is no tomorrow. No one else. This is freedom, my friends. This is Consolation.

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