The full book
I've had him since he was two months old. I am the only complete record of his entire life — and I know exactly what that's worth.
Marshall was two months old when he became mine. He turns 21 this month. Do that math and you'll understand something about me: this horse has been a constant through nearly my entire adult life — every move, every job, every version of myself I've been since I was young. He has outlasted almost everything.
People ask why I'm so obsessive about writing things down for Harvey. This grey face is why. I know what it is to hold a whole life — every vet visit, every soundness scare, the year of the abscess, the way he's always hated the far end of the arena — and I know it's held almost entirely in me, because no one else was there for all of it. I am his Coggins and his calendar and his memory. That's a beautiful thing and a fragile one.
A horse you've loved for twenty-one years is a record you've been keeping without realizing it. Harvey taught me to start writing it down before I forget what I know.
Marshall is the reason I understand most of what I understand. He taught me patience because he had to. He taught me to read a horse — the small changes, the off day before it becomes an off week. And now, as he ages, he's teaching me the part nobody posts about: what it means to keep a senior horse comfortable, to watch the grey spread across a muzzle, to take the long view of a life you've been lucky enough to witness in full.
If Marshall is the full book, Harvey is the blank page — the off-track Thoroughbred who arrived with no history at all. The two of them, standing in the same barn, are everything I think about keeping a horse well. One I know by heart. One I'm learning from scratch. Both deserve a record that outlives my memory.
Marshall Mondays
The senior-horse arc, told gently — in the letter every other Sunday, and on the feed each Monday.