I watch her eyes track the animal—hooves, legs, shoulders, barrel, hind end.
A full assessment done from eight feet away, silent and thorough.
“The front left is the worst,” she says quietly. “Significant flare with what looks like a dish in the dorsal wall. If that’s rotation, we’re looking at radiographs before I touch him. The right front isn’t as bad but it’s compensating, which means the loading is wrong on both. Left hind has an old abscess scar—see the horizontal crack in the wall? That’s a blow-out that grew down. Healed but the wall integrity is compromised.” She pauses. “The right hind looks okay. One good foot out of four. That’s not great.”
Everything she’s saying is accurate.
I knew most of it already, from observation, from Grace’s initial exam.
But hearing it laid out in Bex’s voice—clinical, competent, the professional assessment of someone who genuinely knows what she’s looking at—something shifts in me.
Not toward her. Toward the horse.
The bay needs help I can’t give.
I can earn his trust, but I can’t fix his feet.
That requires hands like hers.
“How long before you can work on him?” Bex asks.
“Depends on him.” I lean against the stall wall. Keep my eyes on the horse. “Could be a week. Could be a month.”
“A month might be too long if there’s active rotation.”
“I won’t force him into a situation he’s not ready for. Restraining a traumatized horse to work on his feet sets the rehab back weeks. Months, sometimes. You know that.”
“Idoknow that.” She’s looking at the bay with something in her expression I recognize—the same ache I feel every time I see a broken animal. The helplessness of knowing what needs to happen and not being able to make it happen yet. “So we work on your timeline. You get him ready, I’ll be here when he is, and maybe we give him some DormGel to make things easier on him.”
That’s the first thing she’s said that cracks through the professional veneer.
Not the words—the patience behind them.
The willingness to wait.
To let the broken thing set the pace.
It’s the same philosophy I’ve built my entire rehabilitation approach on, and hearing it come out of her mouth feels like finding a fingerprint that matches my own in a place it has no business being.
I nod.
Don’t say thank you.
Don’t say anything that might open a door I need to keep shut. Just nod, and she nods back, and we stand there for a second longer than necessary, both looking at the horse instead of each other because the horse is safe to look at.
The horse doesn’t make me feel anything I can’t control.
Bex works for four hours.
She builds more trust with the yearling, considering she’ll be here every few weeks, then goes to the paint with the thrush.
One of the mares in pasture four.
Methodical, efficient, thorough.
I find reasons to be in the vicinity for all of it—checking water troughs, inspecting fencing, having conversations with brothers that conveniently place me within earshot of wherever she’s working.
Not watching.
