Puss 'N Cahoots

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T he day, sultry, kept everyone sweating. Harry could smell the salt on her own body as well as on other humans and horses. She wanted to drive over to Lexington to Fennell’s, a marvelous tack shop at Red Mile, the harness racetrack right smack in the middle of town. Whenever she’d get a little money to the good, she would order one of their bridles. The leather and workmanship held up for decades if properly cleaned. Harry wanted value for her dollar, and Fennell’s couldn’t be beat.
    The drive over would take an hour, and the heat and excitement over Shortro had already tired her a little. The van explosion upset her more than she realized, as well.
    For a moment she stood in the Kalarama temporary tack room, studying the bits and equipment used, much of it different from what she used. Saddlebreds achieved a stylish tail carriage, the top of the thick tail rising above the rounded hindquarters by use of a tail set. This light harness utilized a padded crupper, which went right under the tail to elevate it. Sometimes a vet would cut the ventral tail muscles, a simple procedure, which allowed the tail more movement without harming it. Thoroughbreds and hunters bypassed these refinements, for they had no need of them. The tail carriage was the reason hunter–jumper people dubbed Saddlebreds “shaky tails.”
    Each type of equine sport developed its own tools, although the basic principles remained the same. Saddlebreds generally used longer-shanked bits than foxhunters, who often rode out in a simple snaffle bit or Tom Thumb Pelham, so named because the shank was short.
    Bitting, a discipline in itself, required wisdom. Many a poor trainer made up for his or her inadequacies by overbitting the horse—using too much bit because they didn’t know how to achieve the result with patient training. That was an excellent way to ruin a horse’s mouth, but the short-term result might be that the animal showed well, the trainer snared his fee as the animal sold, and the new owner soon discovered all was not as it seemed.
    Much as Harry deplored this, as well as running Thoroughbreds too early, she knew in her heart it would probably get worse. The tax laws forced most professional horse people to get quick results from young horses.
    Laws reflected the needs of city people to the detriment of country people, which isn’t to say that city people received adequate funding for their needs, either. A law that on the books might make perfect sense to someone in the depths of Houston could hurt the horsemen. Something as simple as removing income-averaging for farmers drove everyone to their knees when it happened. People lost farms; those that hung on battled the arbitrary rule that you had to show a profit every four years. Sounds so easy unless you’re a horseman. A quarter horse might mentally mature, understand its training, and be sold by age three or four. A Warmblood would take six or seven years to be fully made. No way to sell the slower-developing animals within the unrealistic time frame. If the horsemen diversified and grew corn, that took money as well as time away from the horse operation.
    Harry sighed deeply. “Try telling that to someone who graduated from law school and is currently honing their mastery of the sound bite.” She half-whispered this, but her animals overheard.
    “Talking to herself again.”
Pewter, still fuming over her encounter with Miss Nasty, sniffed.
    “Mind goes a mile a minute.”
Mrs. Murphy understood Harry and loved that the human often understood her intent, although she rarely knew what Mrs. Murphy was saying.
    Harry inhaled the heady perfume of leather and oil; the steel of the bits even gave off a light odor. She could smell the hay in the hayracks in the stalls, coupled with the sweetest aroma of all—horses. She looked down at her friends. “Sometimes this wave washes over me and I feel like I will live to see our way of life vanish.” Tears filled her eyes.
    “Don’t worry, Mom. People can’t be that dumb.”
Tucker smiled, her pink tongue hanging out.
    “Are you kidding?”
Pewter, still sour, replied.
“Think about the revolutions. Everything goes. People die by the millions and so do cats, dogs, and horses. Humans have no more sense than that horrible, stinky monkey.”
She puffed out her chest.
“Figures.”
    “When an ear of corn costs fifty dollars, when mulch and manure for those suburban gardens climbs to thirty bucks a bag, they’ll