Bouncer R.I.P.

One must pause here to bring sad news that Bouncer has died. Bouncer indeed has been put down, shot of necessity today.

You who know enough of country ways may not be too hard pressed to guess that Bouncer was a horse, for animals are put down and horses shot.

Not our horse - for if it were I would not now have the steely determination needed to speak of the sorrow - but of a friend, a friend who tonight is heartbroken. (Auntie Margaret would have understood and stood by as needed.)

Bouncer was not elderly, it was not age that took him, but he was throughout his life a 'wind-sucker'. Again, if you know horses you will know how both silly and how lethal that is.

Many have been the times when Bouncer and I have shared a quiet chat across the stable door (the yard knows me as not the horse whisperer but the 'horse chatterer', which is a noble title and one I am proud to bear howsoever daft it may seem) about life and good grazing and so forth.

But as we have spoken thus, inevitably moment by moment Bouncer would break off the conversation to bite at his stable half-door. Silly, silly boy! And I would say so. For in biting he was sucking and in sucking he was pulling air into his innards. And in pulling air into his innards he was risking - and often suffering - colic.

Colic you say? Sounds a fine and ancient illness. Quite like a gout, something to be had by Squire Roger de Coverley of early Spectator days. Indeed yes, so it sounds a bad belly and no more. In a human.

But in a horse something utterly more horrid. For if you have ever seen a horse thrashing in agony, kicking the very bricks out of its stable, throwing itself to the ground, twisting and rolling in a vain effort to ease the pain of the twisted gut - if you have seen that then you have seen torment.

And so, I would be wanting to say to Bouncer each day, when will you stop doing the silly one thing - the endless habit - that may kill you? And he would look me in the eye as if to say "Perhaps soon."

In passing - you are taught if you study these things never to look a horse in the eye as this will cause the poor beast to believe you must be a predator. For certain, until a full rapport is established better it is to nod as the horse nods, to sway as the horse sways and not to be seen to be a threat by making direct eye contact.

But in time - often but not not always - one can go far beyond this. Once that connection has been made between man and beast (or is it rather 'beast and noble horse'? - I do sometimes wonder) the soul of horse and man can meet through their eyes.

If you knew not that, then you know it now and you are the luckier for it.

And back to Bouncer. Tall, quite lean with a true equine face - long, narrow but not sharp and light and high. I took him quite for an antiquarian, a lover of good past things. In touch with the world and yet not a little distant. Perhaps in truth somewhat of an autistic disposition, yet for all that kindly and communicative.

We chatted at length only the other day, he with head held high and ready for a tickle. (Many the horse there is that delights in a fond tickle. More than you might imagine from the haughty look of most. Try it in due season and if they like it they will.) Post-operative was Bouncer that day, surgery having been tried to fix the suffering innards. But calm as ever - wind-sucking as ever - he gazed out over his door at the yard and its passing traffic.

But now he is gone. A sudden burst of colic, a terrible thrashing and torment, the vet summonsed and a mercy killing the only option. E tells me that his body lay covered by a blue tarpaulin at the back of the yard, the younger girls of the place in hysterics at the sight.

I am glad I did not hear the bullet fired, but I am sad not to have had the chance to say farewell.

No wind-sucking now dear boy. Beyond that silliness you are now. An eternal pasture for you and endless sorrow for Sam your rider and keeper.

And if you chide a Christian for avowing that animals have souls, then you chide in vain for you know not horses and if you know not them then little do you know.