I met Bruno in New York last week. We bonded, I think. He is, I could see, one of those increasingly famous abused horses I had heard so much about, there he was, strapped in his harness of chains, fresh from his cell, breathing awful fumes, about to be worked to death and unable to eat grass freely or socialize with other horses. I wanted to bring him comfort and perspective.
We talked, Bruno and I. I know about abuse, I told him. As the owner of three working donkeys, a very hard-working border collie, and a Labrador Retriever who chases balls and eats many revolting things, I will be frank with you, Bruno, and admit right here that my animals do not get five weeks of vacation, they work day and night in all kinds of weather, and do not get breaks every two hours. If I lived in New York City, they might well banish me and send me to a preserve for lost souls. Bruno pawed at the ground, he snorted and whinnied, I could just tell that he and I connected on several levels.
I followed his gaze. There she is, Bruno, a big red-tailed hawk, I can see you watching her, high up in the park, I hope the pigeons and the swallows do not make a mistake and fly too high or too much out in the open. I can see you are a curious fellow, Bruno, you are a lover of parks.
I asked Bruno if he was aware of the fact that a number of people who care very much about animals had set out to save him by putting his cruel owner and driver out of work and forcing them to sell him to a farm where he could play with the other horses, eat grass every day, even in the middle of winter, or maybe die instead in a Mexican slaughterhouse (Bruno, anything is preferable to New York City traffic and standing around Central Park all day and eating oats, right?)
A sensuous tremor emerged from Bruno’s big nose. Bruno picked up his ears, dilated his nostrils in his upraised head, he exposed a few of his large yellow teeth. He seemed to breathing in all the air in the world, I followed his gaze. Yes, there, trotting ahead of us in the park, on a slight rise, fine and gray sky, was his beloved, head high, clip-clopping with attitude and style. There were double brayings, they were long and sonorous. And then, she was gone, I could almost hear him saying, “it is hard to believe, it is hard to believe, it is hard to believe…”
I told Bruno I had come to tell equine stories, tales of abuse. Something he might need to know on the next leg of his journey, since he had come from a long line of abused but very distinguished equines.
Can you believe it, Bruno?, I wondered you are the most controversial horse in the world right now, people are coming from everywhere to take photos of you, to fight over you, to save you. There are things you should know. I told Bruno I think he is a philosophical kind of horse, I have been hearing a lot about what horses like him think, I think I knew precisely what he was thinking – where did she go?
So I told Bruno my paltry stories, my short history of equine abuse. Dapple, Rocinante, Simon. And Bruno, of course, the victim of an intolerable life. Let’s start with Rocinante, I told Bruno.
It’s too bad the people who love animals were not around when Rocinante was living in Spain, Bruno.
He was Don Quixote’s horse, and he was abused almost every day of his life. He never got to eat graze and graze freely or hang out with the other horses. In those days, all of the horses worked then, as they had for centuries, and there were no rescue farms and none of the horses got five-week vacations like you do or spent their lives grazing freely, as has been promised you. Don Quixote made Rocinante walk and ride for hours on end, he made him haul him, wood, supplies all over Spain, Rocinante was skinny and grumpy. He had to save Don Quixote from himself almost every day, that was not easy work. Bruno, the horse’s original name was “Rocin,” which means “old nag,” but Don Quixote thought he deserved better, he changed his name to “Rocinante,” which means “foremost steed.” Pretty classy, eh, Bruno?
In fact, Quixote spent four days thinking about what to name Rocin, because he said, “it was not right that a horse belonging to a knight so famous, and one with such merits of his own, should be without some distinctive name…” See, Bruno, maybe you’ll get an upgrade when you get to that farm out in the wild, maybe a name worthy of a great steed. Bruno snorted at me, he was, I am sure, absorbing the stories.
And then, I said, there was Dapple, Sancho Panza’s long-suffering donkey. Until very recently, Bruno, all horses and donkeys and equines worked, that’s why they were alive, that’s what they did, and let me tell you something, and I don’t mean to offend, but if those horses and donkeys came to the park and saw you they would have told you to “man up” and pull something worthy of your size, not some silly little gussied-up carriage on rubber wheels over flat ground.
Dapple lived inhumanely, I said. He was a high-strung jittery sort of donkey, and if the animal rights people had been around then, they would have gone after both Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, maybe chased them through the streets and stoned them, painted scarlet letters on their foreheads, forbidden them to adopt rescue dogs. Dapple carried heavy loads day after day, climbed up steep hills, pulled wagons. He was pelted by a hailstorm of rocks thrown by a group of convicts, and he heard aftershocks from the concussions in his head for days. He and Sancho Panza fell into a hole together, and the donkey was so bruised and battered by the drop that he moaned and groaned in piteous tones for days.
Don Quixote, I told Bruno, was the first great work of literature in which animals – a donkey and a horse – were central characters.The book – The Life And Exploits of the Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote de la Mancha – is considered one of the first great novels of Western civilization. Don Quixote and Sancho Panza were given two equine companions, both mirrors of the men who ride them into every predicament and misadventure. Two two men are helpless and hapless, the donkey and the horse carry the day, every day.
This story is still one of the most popular novels in the world, Bruno – are you getting restless, my friend, the best stuff is coming? – mostly, critics say, because it celebrates the great bond that drew human beings and animals together – work. Their relationship was really the story of the great connection between people and working animals, a connection that helped build the modern world
Beyond that, the poor donkey had to listen Sancho Panza drone on day after day, perhaps that was the greatest abuse of all. When Dapple was stolen by a picaroon, Sancho Panza grieves to the depths of his soul, often waking Don Quixote up with his doleful laments of sorrow. He waxed poetic over the loss in his own way, by calling Dapple the child of his bowels, the treasure to his children, a delight to his wife, a source of great income. And still more abuse, Dapple was so valuable Sancho Panza rented him out for twenty-six maravedis a day, almost half his income, so he could work for other people. Throughout the novel, Dapple endures, relishes, hopes, lives and dies at every turn of luck and fortune. It is the donkey and the horse that make the men who ride them.
In the book, Bruno, as in life, we come to understand that these animals and their humans cannot be separated, they are inseparable, one makes the other possible, both together mirror the joy and crisis and mystery of life. Perhaps the greatest partnership that ever existed in our world, and exists to this day, as you know well.
There you have it, Bruno, I said – the big horse was listening to me, I think, but he seemed distracted, perhaps by the lady horse – there was this ideal, the man and the horse, experiencing the world together, doing their work together, depending on one another, each in his own way. Has there ever been a relationship like it, Bruno? Might there ever be again?
But it is not possible, is it, Bruno, I asked, that Panza really loved this donkey, as he made him work, every single day, and we now know how cruel that is? It is true, donkeys have never done anything but work, and work hard. Still, times change… Dapple should have been set free to eat grass and dance with the other donkeys. Although it is true, without work, hardly any of the tens of millions of donkeys still in the world would be alive for long, but perhaps extinction is simply the price animals must pay for being loved so much.
I think Bruno was listening to me, he seemed a thoughtful horse, he was munching oats from his bucket thoughtfully, I could see he knew little about the history of donkeys and horses, but my wish for him was to be fulfilled, to be happy, to shed his loneliness and exhaustion.
I showed Bruno a copy of one of the greatest donkey books ever written- “Platero & I”, by the Nobel prize winning Juan Ramon Jimenez. Every day the poet Jiminez and the gentle Platero travel through the little Andalusian town of Moguer in Spain, Jiminez speaking of the sights and sounds that touch and inspire him – white butterflies, sparrows, beautiful old buildings, children, pretty lady donkeys, and the universal emotions of love, fear and nostalgia.
Platero was a small, downy, donkey, he loved mandarin oranges and grapes and “purple figs tipped with crystalline drops of honey.” He was, said Jiminez, loving and tender as a child, but strong and sturdy as a rock. Like so many men and so many horses, Jiminez and Platero moved through a world both enchanted and real, the man and the equine in their timeless travels through the world, confronting together every day the great theater of chance. Platero made Jiminez’s poetry possible, Jiminez gave Platero a life of meaning and purpose. It was work, but the purest kind of work.
At this, Bruno seemed to perk up a bit – perhaps it was the mention of the figs. Perhaps he knew the stories were coming to an end. Several people and their children had spotted Bruno standing on the sidewalk looking out into the park. The children were excited. I think you are being chose, Bruno, I cautioned.
Bruno, I’m sure you can recognize that Platero might have been sturdy, but was he not abused? He worked every day of his life, he hauled water and food and firewood on his little back, he never was set free to live on grass, he could never socialize with the other donkeys, he was often forced to navigate his way through the town’s crowded market streets, where he was bumped by big horses, kicked by other donkeys, rammed by carriages and carts, stumbled into holes, stepped on rocks and thorns. He nearly died a dozen times because there was no health care for him, no modern medicines, but Jiminez and the townspeople always pulled him through.
Unfortunately for Platero, there were no people in Miguer who loved animals as much as people do now in New York City. If there had been, the poet Jiminez might have been exiled from town, his work taken from him, he would have been ordered to give up his poetry and walk through town with a smaller, eco-friendly chicken instead. Platero might have lost his beloved human and his work but there was probably a lot of grass in the Adalusias, I’m sure he would have been very happy, as you will be, once you and your farm find each other. Don’t be looking for figs out there, though, my friend
And finally, Bruno, I must tell you of another equine, I must be honest with you. This one belongs to me, his name is Simon, he is one of my donkeys and I am writing a book about him called “Saving Simon,” and the farmer up the road tells me it ought to be called “Two Asses On The Road,” because I am often seen walking him up and down the country roads and that’s what the farmers love to call out to me. We love going walking together, Simon and I, we have been to the theater of chance together. Simon is my Platero, I am his Jimenez. We experience the world together, the ups and the downs, we talk to each other in the moonlight, he brays joyously at the sight of me and I always yell back, “Hey Simon, you beautiful thing!”
My wife says it was Simon who opened me up, she never saw a look on my face like the one when he first came to us.
Simon was brought to me by the police after he was taken, very close to death, from a farm where he had been left to starve, his hooves grown out a foot on either side, his teeth grown into his jaws, his ribs protruding, his hide covered with lice and rot. Simon did not die, he came to my farm and was healed. I must confess that he is also a working donkey. I’ve told you the truth. I won’t even talk about the border collie or the Lab.
Simon is a guard donkey, he guards the sheep from stray dogs, coyotes and their own foolishness. Simon gets no vacation, no breaks. Often on Sundays, he visits with emotionally disabled or disturbed children, when I know he should be grazing freely, looking for grass. Lulu and Fanny live here two, they also are guard donkeys, they work all the time, they are like Secret Service agents around the sheep, they always deploy around them, they have even saved chickens from a fox or two. Simon and I understand each other, Bruno, I let him walk at his own pace, and he goes where I want to go.
And I’ll tell you something else, Bruno, a secret, when I do Tai Chi every morning, out by the barn, Simon comes and does Tai Chi with me, he puts his big forehead against my back, I think he is making sure I don’t topple over.
in the old days, Bruno, it was once thought that this kind of work for horses and donkeys was a beautiful thing, people wrote so many wonderful books about it. Donkeys and horses built so much of the world, made so much of it possible, connected to powerfully to human beings, did so much for them. I think, Bruno, that the work people and animals have done together is most glorious chapter in the long, sometimes very sad history of people and animals. It is the only hope for animals in our world, don’t you think? Men and women and horses, men and donkeys, setting out into the world to find love, adventure, work and meaning. Are those lost ideas, do you think, Bruno, or are they still embedded in the hearts and minds of human beings? We shall see, wont we? And very good luck to you, I will be thinking of you.
