Here is a reprint of a recent post I wrote for the Northwest Parkinson's Foundation Community Blog. You can still have adventures even with Parkinson's.
How did I spatter all this horse manure on my freshly
laundered clothes? My wife was away for an extended cross-country
adventure. I remained behind to care for the homestead, including her
two horses. This may seem like a heavy responsibility for a guy with
Parkinson’s, but as a life-long Westerner, I have a natural way with
members of the equine set.
My assignment was simple. I was to
make sure the horses got enough water and hay to remain alive and
reasonably happy until Pam’s return. The goal changed, as goals will
over time. After two late-night escapes and one brazen, full-daylight
jailbreak, the aim became my survival of the horses rather than their
survival of me. This meant luring them into the pole shed for the
evening so I didn’t have to worry about them testing the fence while I
snatched what we cowboys call “a little shut-eye.”
The
traditional way of rounding up our two-horse herd is to tempt them with
that irresistible, mouth-watering delicacy, hay. We keep our hay in the
hay shed downhill from the pole shed where the horses shelter at night.
You have to take a load of the itchy stuff up the hill while the two
horses gang up, and try to rip mouthfuls of it away from your arms. If
they pull enough hay out on the way uphill, they will be maddeningly
slow to enter the shed as they Hoover up the bits that have dropped.
To
avoid the delay caused by their marauding hay raids, I have found that
the most effective tactic is to run as fast as possible up the hill with
a surprisingly heavy payload of hay and fling it in a mighty arc to the
back of the stall, with the horses in hot pursuit. Then I secure the
gate while they happily mow through their high-fiber meal. This works
great in theory, but in practice much depends on your execution.
The
evening run began well. I burst from the sliding door of the hay shed,
rammed it shut and hustled up the hill through a light rain, one step
ahead of the ever-hungry horses. But disaster struck just short of the
pole shed gate when my boot tip caught in a heavy mat. I sprawled
chest-first into the ground. Luckily, the impact was softened by the hay
I had been carrying, along with a cushion of wet manure the horses had
thoughtfully deposited earlier.
I scrambled to my feet and
brushed as much hay into the pole shed as I could divert from the two
quadrupeds, who obligingly wandered into the shed with minimal
encouragement. I latched the gate and looked with dismay at my jeans and
coat, now besmirched with horse dung and clinging wisps of hay.
Bitterly
I cursed my fate when my self-pity was interrupted by this thought.
“You are a 59 year-old man with Parkinson’s, diagnosed 16 years ago, who
just ran up a hill carrying an armload of hay while being chased by
half-ton ravenous beasts, and you’re upset over a little horse crap on
your pants? The fact that you could do any of that is worth celebrating,
don’t miss the magnitude of this victory just because there is a bit of
dung on it.”
So, rather than cursing my lonely fate I decided
instead to embrace it, manure and all. Instead of being miserable, I
took pride in my crap-covered accomplishment. It's true that, as a
Westerner, I have a way with equines—and as a person with Parkinson’s, I
am a hoarse whisperer.
