The $60,000 Dog: My Life With Animals by Lauren Slater Page A

siblings just go away, and that woman, well, she lifts me like a baby, her dripping hands under my arms, lifting me as though I am light and easy, she swinging me onto the saddle as someone whistles and we are off. I am hanging on hard to the greasy mane and, though it couldn’t have been more than a slow trot, what I feel is the world break up in a bounce, the immutable, rock-solid stuckness of things become otherwise, the landscape chunked and piecemeal from the clunky gait, and my mind, for once my worried nattering
what will happen
mind, resolved into a particular point of concern, or concentration. All that mattered was to do what I would later learn the phrase for:
keep your seat.
That was it, sum total. All that mattered to that girl back then—and to maybe my girl now and, if I extend myself still further, maybe to so many of the girls groomed to groom, loving horses—all that mattered was to root myself to the animal, graft my rhythm to his, or vice versa. The concern is not over who gives, who takes, who leaves, who stays; the point is simply
staying
with,
staying
here;
here
. And suddenly there was a here, and the future fell away, what could or would or may, and truly time stood still.
    “Did you have fun?” my father later asked. Did I have fun?
Fun?
No, I did not have fun. I was sore and chafed. I was gripped and gripping. I wanted one thing only and that was to try this thing again, this perched-on-a-precipice-hang-on-hard sport. This getting off the ground, and the subsequent return, refueled, full of thanks, enough so you could, of your own free will, become bendable, kneel down, and put your mouth to the mud in a kiss that no one called for.
    But my mother—she was not happy. She had brought her brood to Israel for certain reasons. She had wanted us to improve our Hebrew and experience the feverish pace of a country determined to irrigate the desert. My father, although a paler creature than she, also had these hopes. My brother brought back from Israel an embroidered yarmulke, my eldest sister a prayer shawl, my youngest sister a miniature menorah. I brought back ladybugs no one knew about and an Arabian saddle blanket made by bedouins, who, of course, are
not Jewish
, never mind the Semitic similarities. My mother tried to toss that blanket. I insisted on sleeping beneath it.
    Jews play tennis or golf
, my mother always said. For this reason she forbade me riding lessons at first, hoping I’d come out East Coast-Jewish-country-club style. Perhaps the fact that I am ambidextrous is why that never happened.
    I was a terrible tennis player. My siblings all got good at the sport, but, being ambidextrous by nature, I couldn’t decide which hand to hold the racket in, and thus I didn’t get past step one. While the other students at the country club progressed, I was simply stuck between two equally possible grips. When the coach quit on me, my mother must have seen her options dwindle.
    The coach quit in March, and in April overnight camp material arrived in the mail. My sister chose a sleep-away called Ben Davide, the promo material picturing girls singing at the edge of a beach, their eyes all fastened on a colossal menorah adrift in a row boat on a large lake.
    There were no menorahs anywhere in the pamphlets for the Red Fox Riding Academy or the Salisbury Hunt Club, both describing eight weeks filled with black boots and blue ribbons from the riding competitions that were at the heart of the camps’ missions. My mother shuffled through these materials, shaking her head. I shuffled through, also shaking my head. Then Flat Rock Farm appeared in the pile. No fancy binders or calligraphed letterhead.
Flat Rock Farm
was typed on plain white paper spiral-bound into a simple notebook. I turned the page. Four or so cabins scattered on a grassy knoll. A red barn overlooking a field bordered by birches. A girl leading a pony by a raveled rope. Three girls bareback on a horse high-stepping through a