The Mare

Velvet

I knew it was going to be weird when they put this thing like a giant clothespin on this horse’s face. It didn’t seem like there was a lot for me to do. There was that blond girl who watched my lesson — her name was Lexy — and this other one, Lorrie, going around in tall black boots and little jackets, doing everything really fast, and it seemed like I didn’t do anything fast enough. Finally they let me take over grooming Lorrie’s horse, Spectacular, while she did something else, but before I was done, Jeanne walked past and said, “Look at his ears! He can’t go out in public like that!” I said, “What’s bad about his ears?” and she said, “They’re hairy.” And she brought a electric shaver and tried to take the hair off his ears, but he wouldn’t let her. So she asked somebody to bring her “the twitch”—that was the giant clothespin that pinched his mouth and nose so hard you could see his teeth. She used the twitch to pull his face where she wanted it and ran the razor and he didn’t say nothin’, or even move.

“It looks like it hurts,” I said.

“It’s a distraction,” she said. “It’s releasing endorphins so really it feels good.”

Then they told me to put the saddles and pads and everything in the compartments of the trailers, but when Lexy came out, she looked at it and made a face and did it different. They got the horses in the van, Spectacular and Lexy’s thoroughbred, Alpha, who did not want to go. These two Mexican men had to lock arms under Alpha’s ass and shove him in like that.