I was called in to do a consult on a German stallion with food sensitivities at a quarantine station two days ago. Quarantine stations are where imported stallions and mares are quarantined for 30 days for testing on CEM, a venereal disease. Mares and stallions are cultured, then the stallions are required to live cover 2 test mares.

When I got to the facility, I felt like I had walked into the equine version of barracks. After the consult the quarantine manager offered to show me around. As we came around a corner to another barracks-type barn I could feel a real darkness/sadness. It was coming from the test mare barn.

When I walked inside the mares were all at the back of their stalls. The sadness, the resignation was palpable. The manager explained that some of the test mares had had ovariectomies so that they couldn't conceive, and that others after the stallion had live covered them, and conception occurred, had the embryos pinched off. They mares were cycled with hormones to drive them into season. Immediately I saw in my mind the arm of a veterinarian entering the vulva with an instrument and working arm and instrument into the vagina and then to the uterus. I saw the twitch around the mare's nose, and force being applied to keep her from kicking in the stocks.

I stopped in front of a black mare's stall, her head hung down, in listless resignation. She moved her head to look at me and said, "they won't let us keep our babies."

The manager droned on about what a good life the mares had, 6 months in florida, then 6 months in Kentucky or North Carolina. I asked about turn out. Was told they each get 1 hour in a sand paddock every other day. Barracks in deed.

The last stall held a pinto pony mare. Like all the others she hugged the back wall of her stall. As the manager walked out into the bright sunlight, I stayed at the stall, and lowered my head and shoulders to "horse speak" that I was not a predator. Then she showed me a red bay stallion mounting her in the stocks. She didn't want him, she didn't want anything to do with him.

I walked out into the parking lot, and looked over at little pond and what do I see....a three foot alligator sunning himself on the opposite bank. It felt like a perverse synchronicity.

I drove down the road like a bat out of hell, but of course the mares were still with me. That horrible feeling of confinement, of being held prisoner, of heartless stainless steel instruments being thrust into the womb, the tear-less sadness from the mares' eyes.

I sob but no tears come. I sob big heavy, gut wrenching sounds, but no water. Yesterday a spider lady twirled down from the ceiling waving her delicate legs, the message of The Weaver, the message of create, create, create.

Show me.

And then I got a tug to go to the ocean. Take the dogs to the dog beach. When I got to the beach, I discovered that the area I was walking in was full of Portuguese Man o war. I like jelly fish a lot, I find them beautiful. But here were hundreds dead or dying. It was kind of like walking through a galaxy of white/blue planets, and then I saw them as embryonic sacs, their long tentacles like umbilical cords.

I waded into the cool ocean, the dogs bouncing around me, chasing each other, freedom beyond leashes and dog parks. FREEDOM. Unbridled, unrestrained, wild. Not cooped up in the squares of humanity.

In the wind and waves I finally felt the release.

humbly, tigger