The Day the Horse Fell
We had finally reached the end of a hot afternoon bicycling trip along Vermont’s D&H Rail trail, our favorite ride that runs between a rocky stream and rolling farms. Our car was parked at the spot that starts us out riding “uphill” (it’s only a 3% grade) so that our return ride is slightly downhill. The trail begins by crossing a large bridge over a deep ravine with a stream at its bottom, and we stood halfway across the bridge enjoying the cool shade.
As I started mount my bike to finish riding across the bridge, I saw in a flash a large brown and white horse tumbling down from the top of the embankment towards the bottom of the ravine, pulling with it a young girl who had been leading the horse with a thick rope along a narrow trail. The horse came to rest on its side, its head resting motionless only inches from the stream. I hopped off my bike and watched through the rusted metal bridge railing, my stomach churning as I felt adrenaline rush throughout my sweaty body. A man who had been walking a second horse immediately behind the girl and the horse that fell jumped down and knelt beside the horse, quickly checking it for injuries. One of the horse’s back legs was jammed deep into a muddy hole in the side of the embankment. The girl was panicked as the man stuck his arm into the hole to check the horse’s leg for a fracture. I was filled with dread and fear that the horse would have to be euthanized if the leg was broken. My husband called down to the man and asked if he needed help.
“No,” he called up, “It’s not broken. He’s just shocked from the fall.” Slowly the horse began to struggle to stand, and the man laid on his side in the mud while he worked to extricate its leg from the hole. It was hard to believe it was not broken; the horse was very big and had fallen a long way. If the girl had been riding the horse instead of leading it, she surely would have been badly injured or even killed by the horse’s weight. The instant the man finally worked the horse’s leg from the hole, it raised its head and shook it mightily, a cloud of leaves and sticks flying from its white mane. It slowly regained awareness and began to raise itself, then folded its legs beneath its body which still wore the blanket and saddle. The man gently urged the horse to stand, and when it did, to everyone’s relief, it looked uninjured. Tears welled in my eyes, and I rested my head against the bridge railing, still feeling shaky from the adrenaline, even though I did nothing but observe the incident. The man and girl carefully led the horse back up the path to the top of the ravine. The horse seemed fine, and they collected the man’s horse and soon all were walking down the trail as if nothing had happened.
Until we saw the horse fall, our ride had been idyllic. We had passed through Vermont’s gorgeous summer fields and farms, even stopping a few times to bask in the long awaited warmth and the sweet aromas of grasses and wildflowers. We admired a herd of sheep grazing on their side of the fence along the trail, baa-ing loudly while their lambs tried to nurse at every opportunity. Cows stood in shady spots and luxuriously rubbed their strong necks on trees.
Seeing the horse’s fall jolted us from our reverie, and I had a visceral reaction to what the horse might have felt as the ground gave way under its legs. It was an immediate connection to the pain and fear experienced by another living being, with no judgement or criticism of what might have led to the accident. After we loaded our bikes on our car for the drive home, we passed the farm of the flock of sheep we had admired. A sign in front of the farmhouse advertised, “Lamb for Sale.”
It is the lambs unlucky enough to be born male that are chosen for slaughter, as it is with calves, roosters, pigs, goats, and newly hatched male chicks that are ground up alive for feed. I’ve been a vegan for quite a while now, and I’ve never been able to reconcile how we revere cats, dogs, horses, and other domesticated animals, but view nearly all others as food. This has always been a conundrum for me, especially how some people can proclaim themselves as “animal lovers” and then eat a steak. I see that as a cognitive dissonance.
How can we view a single animal in danger as a situation to be remedied while turning our heads to avoid the of the agony experienced by hundreds of thousands of cows, pigs, sheep, and chickens being sent to slaughterhouses? We now know that none of that is necessary.
A cow is a dog is a pig is a cat is a horse is a duck is a goat is a chicken. They all deserve to live.
