Pets/Pet Care

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Tall Ears and Short Tales invites the reader to pull up a bale of hay, grab a cookie, pour a cup of coffee, sit and relax to stories framed as barn chats. In her stories, Chapman focuses on the bond between humans and animals, gently stressing that animals are not objects over which humans have dominion, but are kindred souls on a mutual passage through our life experiences. She invites readers to watch donkeys playing hide and seek, dogs stealing carrots, and an elderly horse caring for a blind horse. Chapman vividly enables us to feel the emotions that animals share with us and to recognize the beauty within all animals that can change our own lives

Horse Ears, Tails, and Everything in Between

Now, just hold your horses! (I’ve always wanted to say that to someone—mainly, because I truly know what it takes to hold a horse that wants to go.) If you bought this book thinking it was full of cute, gentle tales about wonderful, ribbon-winning horses, you’d better take it back. My horses, although very loving, loyal, and gentle creatures are not mane- and tail-flowing dream creations. They are closer to being the discards of today’s throwaway society, tattered and tossed by the storms of life. I named my place The Last Refuge for two reasons: one public, one private. The public one is that this sanctuary provides a safe place for elderly and special-needs equines to dream of days of glory in shade-dappled pastures next to a deep, cool pond. They come here thin, downtrodden, dispirited, and quiet. In the space of a moment, they are transformed into individual personalities with quirks, humor, pathos, and a decisive set of likes and dislikes. (There! That sounds so much better than saying, "They have whims and whimsies.")


Ever since I was a young child, horses have marched through my dreams. First, as pretend horses, then as stable rentals, a leased horse, and finally, I met and fell in love with a swaybacked, elderly carriage horse that I paid $25 for when I was a young teenager. To me, he embodied the essence of Horse. His stumbling steps were transformed in my vision to glides of grace and elegance. Rather than perceiving his belly-dragging shamble, I saw poetry. His elderly sunken eyes spoke love and faith to me as I sat mute and listened to the music of his existence. He followed after me, gladly entering into my world of pretend and hope. When he passed on, he left a legacy deeply embedded in my soul. I had met Horse—and I was his forever. That is the source of many of the stories in this book, the wonderment of Horse.


What? I didn’t share the private reason for the name of the sanctuary with you? Okay, let me see if I can explain it and still keep half my audience. When I was a child, at one of the many schools I attended, while horse dreams drifted through my consciousness, we had to commit to memory a quote each week. We were given latitude on what to memorize, but if we did not have a quote ready for Monday morning, we would get a zero for that day. I admit to being scatterbrained at the time (and yes, sometimes that trait still lingers), and I got sidetracked easily. One Monday morning, I had no memorized quote ready and I was called on to recite. I stood and declaimed, "The last refuge in an uncaring world is a sense of humor." After ascribing it to the thirteenth-century philosopher and mathematician Roger Bacon, I sat down, bowed my head, and waited for retribution from the heavens above. My teacher complimented me on my quote and went on to the next student. I bore the internal shame of my deception until the break, and then I crawled up to the teacher’s desk and confessed my turpitude. She laughed and told me that if Roger Bacon hadn’t said it, he should have. I got a zero for the homework memorization and 100 % for the original creation. It has turned into one of my favorite quotes, and I’m sure Roger Bacon would appreciate it if he could hear me, to this day, crediting him with helping create the name of my sanctuary.


Excerpted from Tall Ears and Short Tales: Observations from the Barn by Carol M. Chapman. Copyright © 2003. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.