Scar

Roux has lots of scars; she has them on her knees, where she must have fallen in harness while pulling that Amish buggy. She has one on her tongue, where some asshole used a brutal bit badly in her mouth. She has a broken baby tooth imbedded in her lower jaw, and some evidence (according to the vet) that her jaw was broken when she was a youngster and healed mostly straight, but a little crooked. She's got a bum hind leg that swells up when she's been in her stall too long; you can't see the ligament injury, but you can see the swelling. She's a tough old bird who has seen some action in her time.

But the scar she has that really bothers her is on her right side, midway down her rib cage. It's a patch of white hair in that sea of copper coat. She's sensitive on that side-- she'll raise a hind leg at you if you mess with it too much. She's apt to kick at you if you girth up the saddle too quickly over there. She pins her ears back and scowls at you if you linger over that area too long with the grooming tools. It's obviously sensitive, and there's another story there if only she could tell it.

And, just because she's the Red Menace she is, she gave me one in exactly the same place on my right side, about halfway down my ribcage.

It was in the first summer I had her. She was still putting on weight, but the trainer and the rescue people said to put them to work and keep them working while they were getting back in condition. Good for the mind, good for the discipline, good for the body.

So I had a huge, fluffy, fuzzy ridiculous saddle pad for her to keep the saddle well up and off her thin skin and the sensitive boney spots poking through it. It was comfy, ugly, and good for her. I was tacking her up one afternoon, feeling confident and self-satisfied that our feeding and exercise regimen was putting weight and muscle tone back on her, and that she really seemed to be getting used to her new home, her new people, her new life.

So, happy and smug, I was chatting with the friend whose barn we were boarding in while said friend tacked up her unflappable quarter horse at the other end of the aise. I made some sort of joke, laughed, and tightened the girth.

And Roux whipped around and bit me in the side. Hard.

Ow! Damn! WTF!?

And she just stood there looking at me like, look asshole, pay proper attention to me and treat me with the respect I deserve, or I'll bite you harder next time. If a horse could smile sweetly and completely insincerely, she was doing it.

She didn't break the skin, but pinched so hard through my shirt that I had an inch-and-a-half long blood blister that later bruised the size of a frisbee, and eventually shrunk back down to an inch-long thin scar. Proportionally, and locationally, it matches the one on her right side.

She has not bitten me since, though I've seen the same insincere smile on her face plenty of times. And she's only really hurt me by stepping on me inadvertantly and throwing me off once, but I'll wear that scar the rest of my life.

And she'll wear hers, and we'll match. And I kind of like that.