Cognition by Andrea Dahl

During the process of labor, a foal shifts like a four legged rocket inside the mare’s uterus until its tiny nose is pressed next to its tiny knees, aimed for the earth outside. Once the foal is streamlined like this, the mare knows to drop to the ground. She rocks onto her chest and slides her back legs to one side or the other, then lets the weight of her body plus the foal’s body sink down. She stretches out her neck and sometimes closes her eyes, then rolls to her side. Like a human mother, she contracts and grunts and sweats and strains for hours. Meanwhile, the foal is suspended there in the birth canal, in mid-flight. Once she provides enough momentum, the foal slides out, escaping the pressure of her muscles, organs, and bones. The mare experiences a great relief inside her as the weight of her newborn glides smoothly out of her packed abdomen.

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They watched a yellow foal’s delivery one early afternoon in July. They named that foal Santana, which is a name of Spanish origin that they had heard before, probably on the radio, maybe at a rodeo? They didn’t know that Santana was a running together of the words Santa and Ana, which of course referred to Saint Anne. They weren’t Catholic, so they didn’t know that Saint Anne was the mother of Mary, or that she was the grandmother of Jesus. They named the foal Santana because they liked it from wherever they had heard it before, and liked to shorten it to Santan. Santan, they imagined, would sound right when they whispered or yelled. It snapped and hummed like a perfect horse name.

They watched him walk across the length of the paddock on legs made of thin bone and unused muscle and wet fur, planting tiny hooves, like oversized fingernails, into the dirt.

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Colics are common gastro-intestinal blockages that can be life threatening to horses if not treated immediately. A horse’s intestines, like the ones inside Santana and the mare, occupy the vast majority of the abdominal space. The large and small intestines hang mostly by luck and a few membranes in their proper places, making them susceptible to torsions, flipping, and displaysia. When the intestines twist or block up altogether, horses like Santana and the mare feel tightness and pain, though no research has proven how close this discomfort is to the pangs of foal delivery, or being delivered for that matter.

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They stroked the sweaty mare on the nose and told her she did well. She knew the difference between the sounds of kind words and cruel ones and so she let them stand close by, but she didn’t know the difference between the pain of foaling and the displacement of her intestines. She knew there was pain as the foal shoved hard at her teat, then pulled the milk down from where she had been keeping it. She grunted again, which she shouldn’t have at this point--when her maternal instinct should be to feed and care--and they knew that something must be wrong because they’d never seen a mare chase away a foal like that before.

They could see Santan’s muscles shaking, tired from being pointed like an arrow and strung through the bow of his mother and pushed through the air, landing on the ground. He was more than hungry, he was buckling with desperacy. They knew something was wrong with the mare because she didn’t look at the foal, she started looking at her belly: the right side, then the left. She swung her head back and forth like that as they walked into the paddock. They chattered in tones that sounded like static, like noise zinging around without projecting a clear sound or a conclusive image. They touched her lightly and circled around, rapidly vibrating their words. Her ears flipped back and forth wildly, like a pair of satellite dishes looking for a signal. She grunted again and sunk slowly to her knees.

They stood between her and Santana, then one of them ran into the barn. The one who left came back again with a halter in hand. The halter went around her nose with the flared nostrils, past her whitened eyes, then over her twitching ears. It buckled on the other side, and a rope started to pull at her head. One of them got behind her and pushed up on her heavy haunches. She braced her front legs and stood. She swayed slightly as the pressure of blood rushed away from her head to her intestines that rested in the place Santana’s arrow body used to be, flipped over the top of her once-occupied uterus.

They didn’t know that what was happening inside her was called “displacement colic” because they weren’t veterinarians, but they knew enough to get her into a trailer and take her into town.

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Before they left they told Javier that the foal’s name was Santana. He spoke some English, so they gave him a bottle, some formula, and a phone with numbers taped onto it, “in case something happens here.” Otra problema, he understood, knowing that emergencies happen, that one was happening now, that they were leaving, that the mare was sick, that there was a foal, and the foal’s name was Santana, Santa Ana, like the mother of Mary, like the guitar player.

Javier also knew the fence was still loose in the field below the barn, that the wire stretcher was waiting down there, ready to torque the barbed strings tightly between posts so the cattle would stay where they should be. He knew that wasn’t finished yet, that there were about four more miles of fence to check beyond the place he’d left. But they came to get him, down there by the riverbed and the red angus, and now they were gone. Javier knew, standing there in front of the paddock with a phone in his pocket and a bottle in his hands, that he was buying them some time.

Santana was bleating like a sheep, which appeared to Javier to be both sad and funny. He was a stringy yellow animal with a black nose and white wooly mane, which made the comparison to a sheep even more appropriate. Only a few hours of practice had made the foal’s muscles, though unfed, more confident in their function, in the choreography of ligaments and tendons and the pulling of bones, so he began to move quickly inside the paddock. His ears pointed rigidly forward, aimed at the point in the horizon where he had last detected the crunching of his mother’s hooves on gravel before she pounded onto the floor of an aluminum trailer, cla- clang, cla- clang. His memory was just forming that image as his body crashed into the gate the first time. He bounced backward after impact and the bang of heavy metal bars, which were far more solid than his own frame. He had fallen back onto his haunches, but his ears were still pointed forward like a homing device and his bleats quickened, raised a few decibels. He stood up, backed up, and crashed into it again.

The third time the little spindly thing prepared to launch himself at the bars, Javier knew he couldn’t watch anymore. His hands wrestled the chain from the latch and his eyes focused on the yellow foal. Santana had frozen in mid-stride, then rested his hooves back onto the ground. His eyes and ears now pointed higher than the empty horizon, toward the face of the man. Javier cast a shadow over Santana’s face for a moment, just unlocking that gate.

Javier knew the silence was a good thing, that the colt was now paying attention to a presence and not an absence. Javier stood there because he didn’t want to scare the frightened and panting foal, and Santana stood there because he didn’t know how to react yet, being only a few hours old.

The only message Santana’s snapping synapses sent to his muscles at that moment was an order to hesitate. So he did, opening his nostrils and ears as wide as they possible to take in some other message that might tell him something different. With his soft black nose, Santana pulled in the scent of sweat and mountain dust that was baked into the man’s hands and hair and clothes and boots. With his yellow ears lined with tiny hairs that vibrated with sound, he received the noises of raspy breath that rushed in and out from the man’s face. They stood there, Javier and Santana, listening to each other respiring in the afternoon heat, assessing the damages and the dangers.

Javier held the bottle out to the colt, right over his muzzle. Santana gingerly sniffed at the rubbery nipple, then he caught the scent of something stronger than dirt or man, and knew it was milk. He nearly leapt into the air to reach it, pushing and prodding to make the liquid flow faster. In less than a minute, the bottle was consumed. “Ay, caballito,” Javier crooned, when the bottle was empty and the tiny orphan began bleating again, but softly now, pushing his nose against Javier’s dirty flannel shirt. He ran his fingers through the wooly-looking mane, which was actually just wispy, short and soft.

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They were still buzzing speech back and forth at each other, this time a little hotter and a little faster, in the cab of the pickup truck as they were nearing town. They pulled into the paved lot of the veterinarian’s office and one of them went inside the glass doors, past a woman leading a border collie with a cone on its head. The truck idled for a few moments out there. Passers by could hear the grunting of the mare in the trailer, and the coned border collie looked back when he heard the loud stomping of her hooves on the aluminum floor after she kicked at her own belly. She was shifting around inside the trailer, trying to escape the heat, trying to beat the gas out of her abdomen.

They swung open the rusted door that took two people to pull up and out from the latch, then both of them went inside, changing their static words to cool, whispering ones. They touched her sweating side and her sweating neck, and noticed her pulsating nostrils clinging to the hot air. She looked at them with her neck long, and curled her upper lip to reveal her teeth. They thought might be sad or funny: it might be some expression of pain or just a display of her irritable attitude.

The vet walked up in his white lab coat, which flew back from his side as he strode towards the horse. Usually flying fabrics, flags, and strings cause a horse like this mare to spook or flinch. But this mare was too distracted by her knotted pains to notice much, though she periodically slammed her legs upward into her gut. As he took her lead rope from them, he explained that she was displaying signs that meant she would need surgery, that the colic was severe. They explained back that she had just had a foal a few hours ago, that the foal would need her back soon, so whatever he had to do to fix the problem, really, should be done.

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Once the horse clip-clopped onto the cement flooring, a small crowd of vet techs stirred and approached, ready to access her state. The vet handed the lead rope to a young man with long fingers and quiet blue eyes, then walked to the back of the building where the tables were to prep them for surgery.

The long-fingered youth didn’t know exactly what was wrong, since the vet hadn’t told him anything yet. He decided the best course of action was to stand quietly and watch carefully in case something really bad happened between right now and the time when the vet would come back to give him instruction. She had walked inside the building, which was at least better than being wheeled in on the huge stretchers they had in storage. She had a healthy brown coat and shiny black mane, which meant she was relatively well cared for by her owners. The mare’s eyes were wide and white, though, which is a tell-tale signal of distress, like the coating of sweat and the heavy breathing she also displayed. He raised a slender hand to her wet forehead as he waited for the vet, stroking down in long, slow passes. He steadied her neck before she could swing it around and nip at her stomach. She kept trying to sink to her knees, but the young man kept silently stroking, pulling upwards with the rope.

A few minutes later, the vet took that rope and lead the mare away. She gave a little groan and walked heavily over the cement flooring to the back room where several techs came with syringes and bandages. The youth stood at the glass window of the operating room and rubbed his hands on his scrubs, pressing the mare’s sweat into the fabric.

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They were directed to the waiting room in the front of the office where three girls sat with a box of kittens. One old rancher was waiting for some medication for a calf with an infection, shifting from one brown boot to the other impatiently. They sat down and watched the receptionist, then looked either at their hands or the ceiling. Neither of them said much, because they didn’t know what words made time go faster or better. They didn’t know if the foal was still alright, because frankly, they could only think of the mare and the twisting of her neck and face and intestines. They wondered if they had done something wrong, or if this was an accident that just happened, like a common cold or a sprained ankle. They didn’t know how much surgery would cost. There had been births at their ranch before, so they knew mares lived through it and so did foals.

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Judging by the sun, because he didn’t have a watch to look at, Javier knew several hours had passed. He wiped the sweat off his brow with the gritty cotton of his shirt and removed his tattered straw hat for a moment. It was cooler on his head, and Javier concentrated on that second of relief as his wet hairline began to dry off, the water particles evaporating into the breeze.

There was enough formula left in the canister to mix another bottle, and after the hungry and distressed colt desperately sucked and pulled at it, Javier knew that he would realize the fatigue that ebbed inside a satisfied stomach. Trying to set an example, Javier sat down, legs stretched out into the dirt of the paddock. Because he wasn’t a horse, it wasn’t likely that anything Javier did would teach Santana much about how to behave. Something about the lowering and shrinking of his stature, though, fostered calmness inside the paddock, as if the air was sinking down lower, heavier, and softer. Eventually, the colt slowed to a staggering walk in lethargic little circles. He squeaked periodically into the empty afternoon. Patiently, Javier sat there and waited for the colt’s knees to bend and lower his shaky body to the ground.

Santana’s pricked yellow ears became flopping ones now that he only sometimes remembered his mother’s place on the horizon, and other times swung low and aimed for the ground. He had lost his focus on panic and felt only warm, weighty fatigue push down on his back. Finally the foal rested on the ground.

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Javier’s eyes fluttered closed for a brief moment before he heard a car horn honking. It honked again, and he sprang up to see who was making the noise. He stretched to his tip-toes and saw around the side of the barn that his brother’s red truck was idling in the drive. Ernesto sat in the front seat, waving his hat into the air which reminded Javier that he still didn’t have his on, so he grabbed it out of the dust and ducked under the fence.

Ernesto wanted to leave right now, right then, ahora, because the work day was long over. He would not wait, it was time to go.

Javier knew that Ernesto was tired, that he had worked hard, that there was no other ride except this one. Javier lived with his brother and his brother’s wife, and he knew she had made dinner and that it would taste good. Javier knew that his back hurt, just then, and that his whole shirt was soaked through with the sweat of the afternoon and of worry.

He argued anyway, demanding that Ernesto wait until the ranch owners returned.

Javier didn’t know for sure, but he suspected it was dangerous to leave the foal alone right now. The owners weren’t back and they did not call, so Javier didn’t know how long, exactamente, he would have to wait.

When Ernesto looked at him impatiently and angrily again, then hit the gas pedal hard, Javier had to yell out and run forward a few paces for his brother to stop the car. Javier knew that the only thing he could do was to leave, say a prayer, and come back tomorrow. Javier had no other ride. Javier had no other home.

Javier told Ernesto that he would be right back, he needed to close a gate. Ernesto groaned and tossed his hat angrily into the passenger’s seat before he turned off the engine to wait.

The colt had lolled onto his side now, and Javier checked to see that Santana was still breathing normally, in and out. He knelt down and poised his hand to touch that mane again, but thought it might startle the sleep out of the foal. So Javier just murmured a few words that didn’t matter much beside the sound. He made some words that carried apology, “Lo siento.” He made some words that carried hope, “Mañana.” That was all that Javier could do, because no mare was here to feed the foal, no workers were here to pretend they were mares, and no owners were here to fret, to order, or to manage.

Javier took the phone out of his pocket and fingered the plastic keys, 7,8,9, then flipped it over and read the numbers taped on it. He dialed both numbers, but neither were answered, so Javier put the phone on the fence post, looked again at the sleeping foal, and turned. He walked to the truck with his brother inside, and opened the door. Javier rode into town with his eyes closed, not quite asleep.

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The surgery had not gone well. The vet explained that he moved the intestine back to where it should be, which was not over the uterus where it had been, and, though she was sutured up and re-arranged, the anesthesia never wore off. She never woke up because she had a heart attack. They tried to shock her back to life but they couldn’t because sometimes horses just don’t respond well to surgeries. Sometimes colic is deadly. The vet handed them a bill for a few thousand dollars and said, “I’m sorry.”

The yellow colt’s mother died with her legs splayed upwards, strung up by ropes so that they wouldn’t fall down or kick out and injure the vet or the vet techs. Her head dangled down over the end of the table, and there were bandages around her head meant to block out the light in case she came to in the middle of things. The logic was, if she couldn’t see, she wouldn’t struggle. Her tongue hung out of her mouth past tubes that went to her stomach and her lungs. She hung like that while she died, just inverted, until they all knew she was gone.

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Santana slept in the cooling dusk on his side with his legs poised as if they were running. Sometimes his tiny hooves flicked back and forth to an unconscious dance directed by his twitching eyes as they tracked a dream. He rested there for a while until his belly was no longer full, and the dream had run out past the corral he had pictured in his brain. The corral, of course, was the only space he knew thus far besides the birth canal.

Santana didn’t wake up inside the mare or near her. There wasn’t a man inside the paddock anymore, and there certainly weren’t any bottles. In the paddock with Santana now were only a few flies, which he chased off his body with a tiny brush of a tail. He rolled up until his legs were folded beneath him, then he forced his backside, belly, neck, and head into the air over his four toothpick legs. He stretched his neck long and rolled his eyes back, then bleated into the blue air.

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They didn’t hear Santana, of course, because they were driving the twenty-five miles between town and the ranch on county road 79. Near mile marker 181, they took a left and drove a few hundred feet up into the part of the mountain where the ranch was. They didn’t say a word, either of them. They listened instead to the empty, clattering trailer bouncing off the gravel stones and over the ruts in the dirt. Their bodies rocked side to side with the changing of the surfaces, but the truck surged forward in a straight line. They didn’t know if Santana was still alive, but they knew that the mare was not.

They pulled into the gravel drive, then parked the trailer and unhitched it. They drove the truck to the next out-building, which was the barn. They heard the tiny steps of Santana and the periodical cries that he must have been making because he didn’t realize that the mare was dead.

When they approached the gate of the paddock, Santana quieted completely. It had been several hours since he’d felt a presence instead of an absence. His tiny black nose reached up and the untucked hems of both of their shirts, smelling the smell dirt and man, and traces of his mother. They reached their hands between the bars and ran their fingers through his wispy, short, and soft mane, calling him Santan, which sounded best when they whispered.

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There is no research that reflects that horses understand death. Veterinary science hasn’t tracked its way into horse memory and hasn’t outlined the depth of their cognition. Behavior observation usually indicates that horses feel stress when they are abandoned, however, and that their attitudes are drastically affected by that stress.