Jackson Free Press

Weight problems are nature's perverse intersection of passion and pain. Anyone who has tried to diet knows this. But it is especially true for horses. Like goldfish, there are some horses that can literally kill themselves with one abundant meal. They're called "easy feeders."

I own an easy feeder. Her name is Iris, and her passion for food was once overweening. She'd bump my arm, and even bite it, while I was putting grain in her bucket, anxious that I wouldn't give her enough. Even our gelding Buck was tyrannized by her appetite. At mealtimes she gave him the evil eye—lips curled, teeth bared—and he would run off, then creep back to watch her eat his grain.

When I first saw her, Iris was an elegant beauty. I showed her a handful of oats, and she came prancing over to get it, cavorting and displaying herself like a ballerina on stage. I learned later this dance was a starving gourmand's mad tarantella, but at the time all I saw was her gorgeousness: wide intelligent eyes, flashing white stockings and a lustrous roan coat.

In our pasture, Iris morphed from svelte to Sumo, and I put her in a stall on a strict diet, but she continued to gain weight. The vet was called, and after much poking and frowning, he gave unexpected news. She was pregnant and due to deliver any day! So I gleefully turned her out again.

Three months and 300 pounds later, she lay down and started moaning, and I prepared for the new arrival. I sat with her all night, and except for more moans and some piteous looks, nothing happened. At daylight, the vet came, and owned up to his mistake. Iris was not pregnant, but had eaten too much, and was colicky. Since horses don't vomit, when they colic their stomach and intestines have to be purged for them, or they'll die. We went to work, and after pumping three gallons of oil into her through a tube in her nose, she recovered.

Now, after three months of pigging out, she was obese, and I had to get some weight off her. We began a routine of taking two long rides a day. We had a lovely time really, lumbering around Madison County in early mornings and dusky evenings, scaring up coveys of quail and herds of deer and lone peering owls. And at the end of the summer I had lost 10 pounds, and Iris had lost none, but we had a wonderful time together, and became friends.

Frost came early that year, which was a relief, because it meant I could turn her out in the pasture. But I began a new ritual, inspecting the pasture each day for clover, which is poison to a thick-necked easy feeder. By February, she had lost some weight—at least the big dimple in her butt was gone—but then disaster struck. During one of those flukey warm Mississippi winter nights, clover popped up everywhere. It was literally mounded in great drifts when I got up that morning, and Iris was nowhere to be seen in this field of greens. Only Buck was there, standing dolefully under an ironwood tree, looking my way and popping his head up and down.

He was standing guard over her, and she was lying on her side, all four legs distended and grossly swollen from hock to knee. When I laid my hand on her sweaty neck I could feel her heart racing, a sign that she was in pain.

Our new vet came right away, and was shocked at her condition. "What are the odds she can recover?" I asked him. "About zero," he said, shaking his head, "but I'll give her the best shot at a miracle I can." After a dose of painkillers, she stood and stumbled into her stall.

Iris had foundered—an allergic reaction to rich food that puts pressure on the tiny bones in a horse's hooves, moving them around until they punch through the bottom of its feet. It is painful and hard to treat and can disfigure a horse forever, if the animal survives. So that first night, I sat in the stall with Iris, trying to keep her spirits up, desperate enough to use an old horseman's trick, a kind of ESP: I pictured the rides we'd taken, playing them out like a movie in my mind, and she bobbed her head and nuzzled my arm, and when morning came she was still standing, and wanted food. All she was allowed was a flake of hay, but I placed a bag of oats where she could see it and smell it, and all day she remained standing, staring at that bag while I soaked her feet in ice water. By afternoon the swelling was down and she seemed more comfortable.

One crisis after another followed. All her hooves abscessed, and we cut them open and packed them with Epsom salt, and changed the bandages twice a day. Then Iris colicked again. And foundered again on two feet. And abscessed again. There were times when I wondered if it wouldn't be more humane to put her down, but as long as she still watched the bag of oats, I knew she hadn't given up.

Six months later Iris got her miracle and walked out of her stall and back into the pasture, and after five years she's beautiful and fit once again. She'll always be an easy feeder, but she's learned to accept the limitations. Now, when I give her a scant handful of oats, she doesn't gulp, but savors it slowly, her eyes soft with enjoyment, and when she's through, sometimes she rests her head on my shoulder and goes to sleep, the smell of oats on her breath and, I'm sure, in her dreams.

Ruth Williams is a writer living in Madison County.