Horse People - by Hollen Singleton
ISLAND | ISSUE 159
‘You see that horse there,’ the veterinarian said to me, hushed. ‘That’s Makybe Diva.’
No, it’s not, I thought. Just because I wasn’t one of them, just because I was a townie who didn’t know how to ride, didn’t mean they could mess with me. How would I know a regular horse from a Melbourne Cup winner?
‘Wow,’ I said.
‘Yeah,’ the vet seemed chuffed that I had grasped the gravity of her presence. Makybe Diva was standing in a small yard on her own. She didn’t look very big or energetic; she did have the white star on her head.
‘Don’t tell anyone she’s here. I could get in trouble for telling you.’
The paparazzi, I thought. The horse paparazzi would come.
“The paparazzi, I thought. The horse paparazzi would come.”
*
Makybe Diva is nine years younger than me. I saw her in 2006 and she had retired from racing the year before. She was the highest stakes-earner in Australian history and the only mare to win the Melbourne Cup multiple times. She seemed older than me, in the way that adult horses seem older than most people.
Horses were first domesticated 6000 years ago on the Eurasian Steppe. They were used for riding, milk and meat – as they are still, in the region. The earliest evidence of riding appears in the fossils of horse teeth, worn down by the presence of a bit. The steppe would be swept by the army of Genghis Khan in the thirteenth century on the strength of the Mongolian cavalry, their care and understanding of horses making them one of the swiftest conquering forces in the world. Each soldier had several steeds, which meant they could be rotated and not exhausted. From the backs of galloping horses, Mongol archers would release their arrows at the still moment when all four hooves at once detach from the ground.
*
‘My dad rode a horse to school,’ my mum said.
‘What did the horse do during the day?’
She looked at me like I was asking the wrong question.
She had been the one to organise the week of work experience at the horse stud. She drove me to and from Coolmore every day, a half hour each way, following the Hunter River out of town. When work experience came around in Year 10, I didn’t have anything lined up. The year before, a friend of mine had organised to do ‘work experience’ at Coles, where he was already employed, and was paid for the entire time. (The genius of the disaffected teen.) I wanted to work at a zoo somewhere, Dubbo or Taronga, but that wasn’t realistic. All I cared about at the time was animals. Instead of boy bands and movie posters, my room had A4 pages blutacked to the walls, printed-out pictures of foxes that I had found on the internet, wolves, lemurs, otters.
“I had never particularly cared about horses. In some ways, I disdained them as a ‘girly’ interest.”
I had never particularly cared about horses. In some ways, I disdained them as a ‘girly’ interest. The first person I ever dated was a horse girl. I should have known before she told me. She absolutely would not be offended by me saying that.
The horse stud was beautiful in the way of a country club. There was more grass, brighter green, than elsewhere in the country around where I lived. There wasn’t a drought at Coolmore. The place is over 8000 acres of paddocks, facilities and accommodation. To drive in, we passed solid timber fencing for ages. It looked quaint, not like the electric snarls of my gran’s farm.
‘Do you know why they use the wood fences?’ Mum said. ‘So the horses can see them. It stops them from getting injured trying to run through wire.’
‘They don’t need the electricity – they don’t ever jump the fence and run away.’
‘Sometimes they do.’
(The answer I was hoping for.)
*
I spent a lot of the first day of my work experience reading in an office. In hindsight I feel bad for the vets. No one should have a fifteen-year-old stranger thrust at them. No one should have to teach a teenager anything or co-exist with them at all, and I felt this strongly at the time.
The veterinarians were really nice once they realised that I had zero expectations of them, of what I should be allowed to do. If they had left me in the office and let me read every day, I would have been completely okay with that, and I told them so. But they let me ride around in the utes with them to different areas (different variations of barns, sheds, yards, stables, demountable offices and paddocks). They told me what they were doing, and I observed. I couldn’t believe I was hanging around with actual veterinarians. It seemed to me like a celebrity job. Even when I watched a vet put on the long rubber glove, up to the elbow (to check inside the horse, hunt around, palpate something), I kept on thinking, this is really it.
I spent an afternoon mucking out a stable. I had never been forced to work physically like that, not really at that level, and found it extremely rewarding. This is something that comes back. If you live most of your life in front of books, laptops, inside – the kind of hard labour that is designed to be a punishment can feel like fun. Like a nerd I thought about the trials of Heracles.
Everyone on that sprawling stud was a horse person, many of them from a long line of horse people. Everyone kept asking me if I had horses at home. Did I ride? It was so embarrassing to say no, no, no.
“Everyone on that sprawling stud was a horse person, many of them from a long line of horse people. Everyone kept asking me if I had horses at home. Did I ride? It was so embarrassing to say no, no, no. ”
*
The horses at Coolmore were enormous. For a long time, they skewed how I looked at normal horses. For a good while afterwards, everyday equines looked runty to me because I had spent time with giants. At least, in my memory this is so. Thoroughbreds are around a hand (merely 4 inches) taller than the average horse.
Thoroughbreds are athletes, bred over centuries for a high aerobic capacity and rippling musculature – for speed. They are ‘hot-blooded’, which here is a term separating them from ‘cool’ work horses, bred for calm and quiet. Thoroughbreds are selectively bred to possess spirit – an ineffable quality that seems critical to success on the racetrack. (This is it, the will to outpace all others.) Perhaps I perceived them differently because they were winners, engorged with soul.
I was not alone in my impression of their magnitude, however. The vets hated the size of the stallions, joked about news headlines reporting on their eventual stallion-killing rampage. They told me: ‘They’re big boys. The mares have to give birth to huge foals, too big for them. It tears them up.’ This, then, awaited Makybe Diva, former champion, in her new role as breeder.
As with all millennials, it was important for Makybe Diva to be able to switch careers. Tens of thousands of horses go to abattoirs every year. The racing industry has a term for the horses that are lost from the tracks, one way or another – wastage. These horses meet a variety of fates, which are not transparently traced. What is known is that horses are expensive to keep alive and Australia’s two abattoirs export 2000 tonnes of horse meat every year.
“The racing industry has a term for the horses that are lost from the tracks, one way or another – wastage.”
I used to bet on horses; it was family tradition. My parents would hand over the newspaper with the horses’ names in columns alongside the colours of the jockeys’ silks. My parents would put down $1 each way for each of us kids. In 1997, when I was six, I saw Might and Power on Hey Hey It’s Saturday. I can’t find a record of this but either the horse or its rider appeared on Hey Hey. I thought Might and Power was a wonderful name for a horse, which it is. I placed my bet on Might and Power, and he won. It was an incredible rush, my schoolmates clapping me on the back, and I won an unbelievable sum of money. I think it was $7. I used it to buy a Bubbling Magic Barbie, a mermaid with crimped hair, which I had desperately desired for a full year. Her fish tail changed colour in bathwater. If I tried to eBay one today, she would cost me around $75.
Might and Power got to retire to the farm, really and truly. He lives yet at a non-profit called Living Legends, a sanctuary in Greenvale that is open to the public. This place exists just for the greatest of the great.
*
The vet told me the truth, of course. I found it in Makybe Diva’s wiki page: ‘On 10 August 2006, it was announced that Makybe Diva would be served by Epsom Derby winner Galileo at Coolmore Stud.’ That was the time of my visit. I had seen her.
The serving process is frightening to watch. Coolmore practises what is considered most safe for the horses: live cover. This means that the mare is brought to the stallion and is ‘served’ or ‘covered’ in a breeding shed with human assistance.
I was shown to a viewing alcove. Though I am not short, I had to stand on tiptoes to see over the fence. I could only just glimpse it, a mare in waiting. The stallion, once brought in, dwarfed her. The vet told me, ‘Only one person is allowed to be in there during, and he has to be there to guide the stallion. It’s important to get it over with quickly – it’s dangerous.’ There were many other people present, waiting to step in if there was kicking or biting, and that solo handler hovering inside the arena with his surreal job.
I was at that time what you would call an obvious virgin. I had no idea how to watch as though my mind was not being blown away while straining on tiptoes. The oestrous cycle governs when a mare is willing to accept a stallion, and helps to physiologically prep the mare for conception. The vet ushered me away, understandably uncomfortable after a single cover. ‘Oestrous’ is derived from the Latin word for ‘frenzy’.
Makybe Diva’s line of forefathers traces her, like 95% of all (male) thoroughbreds, back to the Darley Arabian, a grandsire of the breed, foaled in the early 1700s. Thoroughbreds are the aristocracy of horses, living equally aristocratic (that is, unnatural) lives. A gloved hand guides them for every major event. Their success as a racer and a breeder is preordained in mathematics, roping them to their earning potential.
(Makybe Diva gave birth to Rockstardom, her first foal, at Coolmore Stud. It took 15 minutes. He sold for over a million as a yearling, earned $29k on the turf, was gelded and died of a skull fracture as a five-year-old. He is considered a famous failure of pedigree.)
*
I was allowed to witness a horse being put down. We rolled up to a secluded paddock with one horse in it. There were two horses in the next paddock, one of them craning her neck over the fence. ‘That’s her best friend.’ Apparently, racehorses are often buddied up with a companion animal to keep them calm and focused, to relax them after competing. The vet told me they were trying to get the friend-horse to bond with a new friend before the death of her current friend, though they were not hopeful. The friend-horse watched the entire proceeding.
The sedative. The horse to be euthanised lay down, sleepy. Lots of pats. The big twin needles filled with neon lime liquid – pentobarbitone, the ‘green dream’. The horse stopped moving.
“The sedative. The horse to be euthanised lay down, sleepy. Lots of pats. The big twin needles filled with neon lime liquid – pentobarbitone, the ‘green dream’. The horse stopped moving.”
As we drove away, I asked what would happen to the body. I was told something about a small graveyard, though I knew even then that not all of the horses would end up there. I had never seen anything bigger than a spider die before. I didn’t feel bad; I felt nothing. What about all those A4 print-outs at home? Why couldn’t I cry? It would have been okay to do so. The vet cried a little, I think. But, this was a ‘good death’, eu-thanasia, Latin again.
*
I don’t really remember the births I saw. I was barely conscious; most mares foal in the middle of the night, a protective instinct to ward against predation. I remember small hooves clingwrapped in a sac, emerging. It happened fast. I remember eating Cheds with the overnight person on foal watch, in a panopticon watch tower surrounded on all sides by big-bellied mares. I fell asleep in a rolly chair.
I do remember the placenta, so much of it, enough to fill a large bucket.
*
There were some older foals around, all angular and bambi. The ute dropped us at a large paddock, a whole hillside of luxe pasture. The horses were in a herd of a dozen or so, mothers and the colts and fillies. What were we doing there? My memory of that has been obliterated because the herd started to run. They were chasing each other at first, flicking their hooves, stirring each other up – it began as play. When these enormous, expensive creatures bolted into a gallop, they travelled as one thing, moving together perfectly, for no reason.
A theory of the thoroughbred asserts that it has been bred to attain speeds faster than its skeletal system can withstand. Its anatomy should not and barely does exist.
The vet swore, irritated, ‘I hate it when they do that, they can get injured,’ as I recalibrated my sense of the value of humanity, the comparative state of my species, human and horse, my relation to them, as a person seeing horses run, a person seeing horses, a horse person. In that context, such would anyone be, in proximity to the horses belting along, for joy or for nothing, for free. ▼
This article appeared in Island 159 in 2020. Order a print issue here.
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