On Losing a Dear Friend

Last night a very special horse died. He was eight years old, the son of my oldest equine partner, Dorika, and the grandson of her best friend, Nimbus. I have a number of horses twenty years old and older, horses that one might reasonably expect would die before a nine year old. But Figgy (Fagr) just didn't have that luck.

Figgy was a total surprise to me when he was born. I'd been disappointed when my mares both gave me colts, but when Nimbus' son managed a sneaky pasture breeding to Dorika after my husband died, I was delighted. He was a social, adorable friendly soul from the first moment. The first day of his life he came out to visit with children, dogs and everyone like he'd been around forever. When he was about four months old, however, we had our first cause for concern when his hind legs began catching as he tried to walk around. We had the American orthopedic vet see him and found out that he had subluxated patellas in the hind legs. We either had to do knee surgery on him or be ready to put him down when his legs locked up at about two years old. We did the surgery and he recovered very well, growing into a tall, athletic horse.

At four we began riding him gently and he spent a few years only working with the grooms and myself until we were sure that he could be safe for clients. We had a few adventures as he was growing. He spent some time not being quite sure where his legs were with the result that he and I ended up swimming in a canal one day during a trail ride with friends. He was the only horse I ever had who fell into a canal. I had to swim to one side of the canal to get out and he swam to the other, following us along the canal until we could come to a place where we could meet up about a hundred metres down the trail. I'll never forget how he called to me when he could see me in front of him, cantered to me and then stopped resting his head against my chest in relief at being reunited. Just a week later he tripped in a small ditch and he and I did a wonderful show of being horse and rider in a tumble drier...happily no one was ever hurt.

But lately he'd learned where his legs were and we began entrusting clients to him. We'd warn them that the enormous energy they could feel under them when they got on was just his natural collection and enthusiasm for life. He was wonderfully responsive and responsible. I don't believe he ever ran off with anyone. At the fastest gallop, the rider only needed to pull up a bit to say "Let's slow down here a bit" and he slowed immediately. He was a huge favourite, especially with teenaged girls.

Figgy adored his mother and brother and they lived together in one paddock, a happy little sub-herd among the larger herd. If one of them went out on a ride the others called out to him or her on his/her return, and they were happiest when all three of them got to work together. Figs' huge, huge walk was a joy to me and made him a great group leader because we could be walking out in front while everyone else was trotting to keep up.

The last time they went out together was just before I traveled for 10 days to see my kids in New York. Despite the fact that they were just ambling around the countryside for an hour, the next day they were running fevers and had runny noses. My farm was hit hard by a strangles epidemic in the area. While I was gone, his brother Nazeer got a huge abscess under his jaw (a complication of strangles) and when my ordinary vet couldn't be reached, another one recommended giving the horses an antibiotic, something that I never do with strangles. When I got back everyone seemed to be recovering ok, but suddenly about 10 days ago, Figgy was much, much worse. He seemed to have symptoms of laminitis, lumps were appearing in places on his body where they really shouldn't have been, and he was having problems breathing due to a nasty abscess deep in his throat. I had a good vet come to see us as soon as possible and he gave me the horrible news. Figgy's odds of recovery were maybe one in ten, but we could try with a new strong antibiotic. We did and he had the best nursing in the world, with massages, healing, cooling baths in our very badly timed heat wave...everything.

Yesterday morning he was nose deep in the bathtub where we soak our beetpulp and happily snorting water from his nose, a sign that the abscess in his neck has shrunk considerably. He was walking much more comfortably, and we were all delighted. Hopefully we'd beat the odds...but the odds beat us. Late last night he showed signs of serious distress and I could see that it was the end of his fight. I called my vet and then drove over to get the Big Blue Needle that would help him to find some peace. Figgy was a fighter to the end, but it wasn't right for him to go through so much pain. Jack told me that probably either an abdominal abscess had ruptured or there had been a cardiac embolism that had broken loose. Peace was the last gift I could give him.

Somewhere in the ether the souls of our horses meet up. He's with his grandmother now. She passed on some seven or eight years ago at over 30 years of age. But there are a lot of souls here missing them both terribly.



copyright 2010 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

Don't Ride to Giza

I have people contact me through my website all the time saying that they are coming to Egypt and have always dreamed of riding a horse "at the pyramids". I always write back asking "which pyramids?" although I know that they are referring to the big ones, the pyramids at Giza, The Pyramids. I point out that the last count I saw was that Egypt had about 120 pyramids and that there are much nicer pyramids for riding than those at Giza. I'm sure that Dr. Zahi Hawass, the head of the Supreme Council for Antiquities, would agree with me since he's certainly made it more difficult to ride a horse to Giza.

I live about ten miles south of the Giza plateau, roughly halfway down a line of most of the pyramids in Egypt. I can see the pyramids of Abu Sir from my garden, and a nice view of Giza across green fields (an amazing sight and one that is getting harder and harder to see daily) is available about 10 minutes away on horseback, weather permitting. The Step pyramid at Sakkara can be seen from a nearby vantage point from the fields, and even better there is a hill behind Abu Sir from which on a clear day you can see Giza, Abu Sir, Sakkara, and Dahshur...roughly 80% of the pyramids in Egypt. Of course we have to hope for decent weather and low pollution from the city, which is getting more infrequent also on a daily basis, but that's a different story. So my question is legitimate and my advice is usually that Giza is best seen by car and then riding be done in more horse-friendly areas.

I recently had a visitor from Costa Rica and he and I decided to ride to Giza from the farm to see what effects the Antiquities Council's new security measures had on being able to ride to the pyramids there. The ride up there isn't bad really, as long as you stay far enough away from the army base at Beni Yusef. They were having maneuvers or competitions or something that day and we rode north to the accompaniment of artillery fire, making a safe distance even farther as far as I was concerned. I had no idea what they were shooting....live shells or what?...and had no wish to find out. The horses were infinitely less concerned with the racket than we were, which was a relief. When we came within sight of the "closed" portion of the Ring Road, a section that was supposed to circle around behind the Giza plateau but that was never finished due to opposition from UNESCO and the Antiquities Council, we received our first unpleasant surprise. Although the road is just a dirt road, the traffic on it is heavy. Trucks, cars, dump trucks, you name it...they are all traveling on the road as if it were a standard highway. Many of the cars are those of the police so acceptance of this non-road seems to be fairly universal. The reason for the traffic lies in the incredible jam at the roundabout where the Alexandria/Cairo desert highway, the Fayoum highway, and Pyramids Road/Faisal Street all meet near the site of the new Egyptian museum. On a normal day a car can sit there for almost an hour, so it's no wonder that motorists have sought alternatives. To be fair, the government is building an extension to the Ring Road that will connect these areas without using the pyramids area, but it isn't completed yet and who knows if the traffic will lessen when it is done.

So after picking our way cautiously across the traffic, we entered the desert that leads to the plateau. This desert was at one time home to some weekend cottages for the well-connected but they have been bulldozed many years before. Unfortunately the clean-up never quite finished and there are areas where concrete floors still cover the desert sand and piles of rubble remain. As we made our way down the sandy washes towards the wall that now surrounds the Giza antiquities area we first began to be a bit uneasy. Dark spots on the sand in the distance attracted the horses' attention initially and then ours. Closer inspection revealed them to be the remains of horses lying in the sand.

I don't take inexperienced riders to Giza. It isn't such a tough ride as such, but the way that the clients of the Nazlit Semman stables careen across the sands pursued by whip-wielding grooms with little or no control of the horses makes me worry about the safety of my horses and clients. I warn people to assume that any horse heading for them has every intention of running them down...defensive riding is definitely the order of the day.

On this particular day, the riders were, for the most part, fairly calm, but the dead horses that we had to pass on our way in were evidence of the fact that plenty of others hadn't been. Horse carcasses lined the wash as we walked down towards the entrance to the stables area of Nazlit Semman. Most of them looked to be a week or so old at least, horses who had dropped in their tracks as they were on their way back to the stables and the bodies had been left for the kites, crows and desert dogs to dispose of. The Equine Influenza outbreak had been particularly fierce in this area this summer, hardly surprising since the horses live in crowded conditions and are usually in poor condition, and I suspect that many of the bodies we were seeing were horses who had never had the chance to recover before having to work. I know that my horses who were in good health before the outbreak took a long time to be feeling energetic and happy again. We let them rest for at least a month before any were ridden and then they were worked very gently for the next month...short hours, short distances, and slow speeds.

Once in the stables area we discovered that the new security measures meant that we all had to buy tickets to the pyramids (before a little baksheesh had given entrance), and my groom, who was accompanying us on a training ride for one of the younger horses, was only allowed in once the police decided that he did not work in the immediate area. Only local personnel from a particular list are allowed in now. Once inside we rode up to the three large pyramids (and a number of smaller ones) enjoying the fact that the area was relatively uncrowded, but still not horse carcass free. However, the areas in which we could ride appeared to be rather restricted unlike before. It was not entirely clear what the rules were, since we got different versions from the various police guards and other horse people.

On our way back out we decided to cut the body wadi out of the route and head home through the countryside which took us past an area that seems to be used as a dump by the stables and local inhabitants. There we made our way past a man hauling a painfully thin dead white horse out to the desert on a wooden wagon and then past an area where a fairly recently dead chestnut horse marked a pile of at least six other bodies and a set of feet that protruded from a blackened pile of debris indicating that someone had used old tires to try to burn a horse's body nearby. It wasn't much of an improvement. Our spirits didn't really rise again until we'd made our way down to the familiar dirt roads of the countryside, having negotiated with a fair bit of difficulty the rush hour traffic on the road that isn't there.

For myself, I will be happy never to ride to Giza again, and my warnings to fellow riders about what kind of things will be seen are clear and blunt. It's much better to go there by car and avoid all of that. It would be even better to see someone help the poor horses who work in horrible conditions, but how that will happen is beyond me, unless the stables simply close due to lack of customers. To be fair, there are some very nicely kept horses there, but I have to wonder at their mental state. My horses find the experience of being in the presence of so much pain and fear quite unsettling. They can deal with chaos, cars, noise and traffic with complete calm, but the fear and pain unhinge them a bit and their relief at leaving the area is so clear.

copyright 2008 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

Learning to Slow Down

Saturday was the Kentucky Derby, not an Egyptian event but horse people are horse people world wide and we were all horrified to see that the young mare who came in second had to be euthanized on the race track at the end of the race. As someone who raises and trains horses, I find this particularly upsetting. I still remember so clearly the death of Ruffian, one of the most spectacular mares in racing in a horrendous racetrack breakdown in the late 70's. I don't believe in keeping horses in glass cases lest they get a scratch, but it is so definitely time for the equestrian industries to clean up their act.

By equestrian industries, I mean not just the thoroughbred flat track racing industry in the US, but also other equestrian industries as well. We have the tourism stables here in Nazlit Semman where young horses are shipped in quantity to be sold on, to be used for tourist rides at the Giza pyramids, and all too often to be injured, overworked, and improperly cared for. In Egypt and much of the Middle East we have both Arabian and Thoroughbred flat track racing and we also have the heavily industrialised FEI endurance racing, which is actually not much more than flat track racing but on incredibly long distances. What all of these industries share in common is the fact that they are making money through the use of horses but are not looking out for the best care of their raw materials...the horses.

Horses are not machines. They might not be the rocket scientists of the animal world, but they are social animals who know their friends and family, they are capable of extraordinary care for the puny humans who presume to climb on them and boss them around, and they do much of what they do for humans out of an amazing trust, misplaced as it may be. The flat track industry is probably regulated more by the customer support for the events than anything else and the editorial from the New York Times that the title of this post links to points out that the industry needs to stop and take a hard look at the way that the race horses are bred, trained and raced. People will get tired of seeing lovely horses die at very young ages. After all, there is no reason that race horses can't wait to race until they are four, five or even...GASP!....six. Most serious horse people know that horses get better as they get older, like humans, and that they aren't even really mature until they are about seven years old. I don't start my horses under saddle until they are four because the spine of the young horse hasn't stopped growing until then. They have plenty to learn in terms of training and socialisation before they handle a rider, and when they do, they have a pretty good idea of what is going on and how to deal with it. The main reason for racing horses young is to get back the buyer's investment as quickly as possible. Big business strikes again. Wake up guys! It isn't called the Sport of Kings for nothing...it's called that because only kings could afford it. No one ever made a lot of money on horses..they are how you make a small fortune out of a big one.

Endurance racing and three day eventing are theoretically amateur sports, or at least what passes for amateur these days. In the old days of my youth, an amateur sport was one that you did for fun, not to win a cash prize or to make a living. The International Equestrian Federation (the FEI) is the umbrella group for the national equestrian federations that are supposed to be overseeing these amateur equestrian sports. According to their website, they are supposed to be be the guardian of the welfare of the horses participating in FEI disciplines (show jumping, eventing, dressage, endurance, driving, and so on). They are supposed to be there to be the spokesman for the silent partners who give everything they have to the sport, including, all too often, their lives. Unfortunately, the FEI makes its money from the very sports that they are supposed to be supervising.

Its income comes from the fees it charges those who are putting on FEI events, to which a portion of the prize money (what happened to the amateurs?) that is offered at the events is added, as is a fee for drug testing and supervising personnel and so on. It is, therefore, in the corporate interest of the FEI to have big events with lots of sponsorship and television rights and excitement. Eventing horses and riders have been paying a very heavy price for this lately with a number of deaths in the last few weeks, including two horses euthanized and two riders injured (one, Laine Ashker, very seriously...her horse Frodo was one put down, a dream horse who had been in the film Lord of The Rings). At some point, one would imagine that if the governing body were really governing, they would take a long hard look at something other than the balance sheet. (By the way, the charges for each service are available online on the FEI website at http://www.fei.org/FEI/FEI_Headquarters/Pages/Finance_AND_Admin.aspx)

In the end, a major source of the cancer, as I see it, comes from the push to make equestrian sports television friendly spectator sports. Personally, I don't want to watch horses on television. I'd rather be riding.

copyright 2008 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

Farewell To A Warrior

We lost a good friend yesterday morning. Aybek, my friend Cristina's little black gelding, died of a brain hemorrhage just after dawn. It was sudden and painless, as we could all wish for our horses, but the timing was way off. He was only about five and a half years old. We know more or less when it happened because the water buffalo gave birth to a daughter in the early hours of the morning and the grooms were running back and forth to check on them next to the horse paddock. Just about dawn they gave everyone some hay and all the horses were happily chomping away, but an hour later when they checked Aybek seemed to be taking a nap in the paddock. A nap at this hour would be sufficiently odd that they checked and found that he was dead. No sign of rolling or thrashing, he simply lay down and died. Cristina is in Italy on holiday with her family as is usual in July, so we arranged burial in the gravel pits.

Aybek was named after a famous Mameluke warrior by a neighbour of ours who was dispatched to rescue him from a Red Sea resort when his European owner had to leave Egypt suddenly. He was a tiny two year old black stallion at the time, so he was left to grow, hopefully, into his name. He never got very tall, being just 14 hands, but his conformation was lovely. He was a very nicely put together horse, just a bit smaller than average. The neighbour moved him to my place when he was about four and we gelded him, which was a very good thing. While he may have been small, he was a mighty warrior and was constantly challenging all the other horses to battle. Aybek was the perfect example of how a nice stallion can become a great gelding. Cristina, who isn't such an enormous person herself, began riding him not long after he'd recovered from the surgery.

Aybek proved to be a remarkably calm youngster. We worked him in the countryside at first to give his muscles and tendons a chance to toughen a bit. He never spooked at the scariest of things along the way and would cross ditches, step over the feed pipes to running diesel water pumps, and even walk past camels who were rising from rest in their strange stair-stepping fashion as long as an older horse showed the way at first, and later he would lead the way past. Cris had never trained a horse before, but her patience and firmness and obvious affection for her little guy was just the trick and he gave her all his trust in return. Training him to allow other horses to walk along behind and next to him wasn't always easy but he had learned to allow others in his space and could be counted on to behave politely when the trail got crowded suddenly, a far cry from the mighty midget warrior who had to take on the world when she started. It was a wonderful thing to watch the two of them growing and blooming with confidence and ability together. They had a true partnership.

One of the things about working with horses is the fact that they are significantly bigger and stronger than we are, even the little ones are. It isn't very easy to force a horse to do something that he/she really doesn't want to, so a rider really must rely on the willingness of the horse to cooperate with him and to help him achieve his end. Finding a horse that you can truly trust and who trusts you is a gift. Cristina and Aybek had this gift. She will have another horse to ride, but what she built from the ground up with Aybek will never be surpassed.

copyright 2007 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani