I can see it from the door.
The front left is loading wrong—the horse is rocking back on his heels to take weight off the toe, which means there’s pain at the point of breakover, which means the rotation is probably progressing.
Every day we wait is a day that hoof gets harder to fix.
At some point—and that point is coming fast—the damage becomes permanent.
I find Lee in the feed room mixing grain.
“We need to talk about the bay,” I say.
His shoulders tighten.
Just barely, but I catch it because I catch everything about this man whether I want to or not. “What about him?”
“He needs corrective worknow.Not in two weeks, not when he’s ‘ready.’ Now. The front left is compensating and the loading pattern is getting worse every day I watch him. If the coffin bone is rotating and we don’t intervene, we’re looking at permanent structural damage. He could go lame. Permanently.”
Lee sets down the grain scoop and turns to face me.
The feed room is small—eight by ten, shelves on three walls, a single overhead bulb throwing everything into a close, warm light.
I didn’t think about the size of the room when I followed him in here.
I’m thinking about it now.
“He’s not ready,” Lee says. “He’s letting me into the stall but he’s not accepting touch yet. If we try to handle his feet before he trusts the process, we’re going to undo weeks of work.”
“And if we wait until he’s fully rehabbed, he might not have feet worth saving.”
“That’s not your call.”
“It’s my professional opinion.”
“And this is my horse.”
We stare at each other.
The feed room shrinks another foot in every direction.
I can smell the grain dust and the supplements and underneath all of it, him—that warm, leather-and-skin scent that I’m absolutely not thinking about.
The thing is, we’re both right.
I know that. He knows that.
The bay needs hoof work urgently and the bay isn’t ready for hoof work yet.
Those two realities are on a collision course and neither of us is wrong about the piece we’re holding.
The other thing is this: I don’t back down.
Not from anyone.
Not from my father when he came home mean.
Not from the men in this industry who told me a woman couldn’t do this work.
Not from Lee Simms, standing in a feed room with his jaw set and his eyes hard and his body filling the doorway in a way that should feel threatening and instead feels like standing too close to a fire.
