Glenspey

Glenspey was not a pretty mare, she was a mousy bay color with a course head and legs and feet that showed too much of her draft heritage. The one feature that made her stand out from the rest of the police mounts was her abnormally short tail; the flesh and bone of the actual tail were still intact but the hairs were very sparse and short.

          The older members of the unit claimed that she once sported a very long thick luxurious train and that the cop in charge of her grooming, ignoring the regulation that police horses should have their tails trimmed off just below the hocks, took great pride in her lengthy locks and went out of his way to encourage their growth, Her tail, in fact, was so long that when she was relaxed it rested on the floor of her stall and that, unfortunately, proved to be her undoing.

          One morning as she lay cuddled down in her bed of straw with her tail tucked under her, a group of boisterous cops from the station next-door burst through the stable door and startled her. When she leapt to her feet her tail remained pinned under her hind foot and to quote Robbie Burns “ She left behind her ain grey tail.” Her tail wasn’t grey but she sure as hell ripped it off and left most of it lying on the floor. It never completely grew back again and its absence did nothing to enhance her beauty

          As odd as her appearance was it was not that alone that made her such a memorable mount, she also had a peculiar habit that I was to learn about during my stay at 56 Division.

          I had ridden my young horses quite hard during the first of the week and thought they could use a rest so I offered to exercise one of the older, regular ones. “ You pick someone who needs some exercise” I suggested to the senior man Sy Hawley. He looked at the other two men present and after some knowing glances back and forth an unspoken consensus seemed to be reached and Sy said, “ Take old Glenspey she hasn’t been out for a few days.”  “ And yeah,” he continued “ Why don’t you take her down to Riverdale Park so you can give her a bit of a run?”  “Sounds good to me.” I said as I gathered up my grooming kit and headed for the mare’s stall.

           As I brushed away at the old horse I noticed that the men I had just left were now in a huddle talking softly to each other, occasionally throwing quick glances in my direction. I didn’t make too much out of it, they all had finished half a shift on the street and were about to spend the rest of the day in the stable filling out reports. I figured they were comparing notes.

          I got the old horse saddled up and took her out to the yard and as I swung up onto her back I noticed that all three men had come to the doorway to see me off, a gesture that seemed uncharacteristically civil of them. “ See you around three o’clock!” one of them shouted as I ambled out of the parking lot. He must have been mistaken because my shift wasn’t over until four thirty and it was already one thirty.

          I could see why Glenspey spent so much time standing in the stable she was totally devoid of energy and ambition and I had to constantly bang away at her sides to get her to trudge along at a walk. It took about an hour to cover the short distance to the park but it seemed like forever. Every time I would get her on the verge of a trot she would spy a traffic light about to change and stop on her own and it would take a heroic effort to get her moving again. “ So that’s what those buggers were up to,’ I thought to myself, “ They were having a little joke on the hot shot horse trainer.” I guess I did look quite comical plodding along the busy street on a tailless nag but if that was the worst they had to dish out I could take it,what the hell the pay was just the same and I didn’t have any deadlines to meet so I decided to relax and get a good look at the scenery as it, ever so slowly, passed by.

          We finally reached Riverdale Park and sidled downhill towards the old zoo. I hadn’t been there in years, not since I was a kid in Cabbage Town.  We used to go down frequently to watch the monkeys doing ’it’ or check out the huge Norwegian sewer rats running around the rabbit warren with baby bunnies in their jaws. The place was an outmoded; run down dump. Thank goodness they later built a new facility and moved the animals to better homes.

However, on the day in question the old zoo still existed and Glenspey and I were slowly making our way to center where a sizeable crowd was gathered around the compounds that held the larger animals.

I reined the old horse in and dug out my memo book and started making some entries. I had only sat there for a very short time when I began to feel something strange happening beneath me, the old horse had begun to shiver and was moving her weight restlessly from one foot to another.

She threw her head up in the air and her ears began to rotate, scanning around like hairy radar antennas and listening expectantly. She snorted loudly through her nose once or twice and was answered by a thunderous trumpeting behind us and some distance away. We both swung our heads back at the same time and were startled by the site of a huge elephant hurtling himself toward us. He had a murderous look on his face as, bugling frantically, he charged, stiff legged, toward us with his enormous trunk coiled above his head ready to slap down anything or anybody that got in his way.

 I only had a split second to speculate on the strength of the fence around his enclosure because Glenspey suddenly went into a wild panic and bolted forward. I had to hang on for dear life. I had my hands full but not with the reins because they were still drooped over her withers where I had placed them when we stopped.  I had a death grip on the pommel of the saddle with one hand and my memo book clutched in the other.

As the old girl took off on automatic pilot she steadily picked up speed as the crowd parted and the peanut venders and balloon salesmen dove for cover scattering bags of nuts and launching a gay profusion of brightly colored helium balloons.

          Somehow I managed to tuck my memo book in my belt and lean forward and catch hold of the reins as we had exited the zoo grounds and hit the soft grass of the park but she motored on undeterred snorting, farting and launching divots from her oversized hooves.

I hauled back as hard as I could and shouted whoa several times but my effort seemed to go unnoticed. She was in fact increasing her speed all the time and by the time we left the park and hit Broadview Ave. she was going full tilt.  Now, I had the reins in both hands and was pulling so hard that her chin was touching her chest but still she thundered on sparks flying when her shoes hit the pavement and foam blowing out of her nostrils.” Whoa horse! Whoa horse whoa, ah- c’mon horse whoa!” I shouted to no avail.

          There was one brief respite when the old girl saw a red light at an intersection and screeched to a halt. Even then she danced on the spot, reared fidgeted and was generally uncooperative until the light turned to green and she once again took the bit in her mouth and we were off like a shot.

We flew on in the same fashion through several more intersections, thank God the lights were green and the pedestrians had the good sense to get out of the way.

I thought we were going to hit the pavement as she skidded around the final turn and headed towards the stable but somehow she managed to keep her footing and stayed in a full canter until she made a sliding stop directly in front of the stable door.

          The three guys I had left earlier where now hanging over the lower half of the Dutch door and one of them was consulting his watch. “ Two forty five,” he said,  “ I believe that’s a bit of a record.” Then they all started laughing hysterically, they hadn’t bothered to tell me that Glenspey and the elephant did not get along and that whenever the elephant started trumpeting she would become so agitated that she would make a beeline for the safety of the stable and nothing in God’s world would stop her.

I wasn’t the first to be humbled by the tailless horse and I made sure I wasn’t the last. Before I left the division a new man arrived and he was constantly sounding off about what a great horseman he was. When we all had had enough of his bravado we decided a trip to the zoo was in order. On this occasion Glenspey arrived at the stable door twenty minutes before her rider, she had parted company with him before she left the park and he had had to commandeer a trolley to get back to the stable. He arrived pale, battered and infinitely more humble.