I drove to North Bend yesterday to see my friend D. and her two horses. I hadn't been out to that barn for over a year and a half, which is serious horse deprivation, so we got caught up on over a year's worth of news. Unfortunately, she's had awfully bad luck.
Despite the best care and light use, both of these beautiful Quarter horses somehow sustained leg injuries serious enough to require surgery. The end result is they are unrideable for the foreseeable future, and perhaps permanently.
In the meantime, they require the same expense and attention as any working horse. What to do? Our horses don't just carry us around, they're beloved pets that take a tremendous investment of time, emotion and money. The great mystery and heartbreak is how an animal so strong and majestic can also be so fragile.
But for now, "Spanky" and "TC" look like happy campers living a life of ease and plenty.
I kept my horse Sizzle in North Bend for years, and went out several times a week to ride and care for her. In the before time, it didn't seem like such a big deal, and the 40 mile drive was usually under an hour.
Yesterday, the bridge detour took an hour just to get out of West Seattle and reach the freeway. And it was a bumper-to-bumper, twisting, white-knuckle route, filled with trucks, angry drivers, construction, hairy quick merges and stoplights.
And yet the development goes on, cramming more people into dense housing on this little peninsula, with the impractical idea that somehow they will give up their cars and ride a bicycle or take transit to places like North Bend.
There's even a plan in the works to develop the pay parking lots at The Junction (our cute West Seattle shopping district) into more high rise, low income apartments. Those tiny bits of "open land" are too valuable for something as mundane as parking.
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