Dusty Steps In
After Vandy
The yard stayed too quiet after Vandy died. Not peaceful. Just empty.
For more than twenty years, he’d been part of our everyday rhythm. Feeding. Cleaning. Hearing him nicker in his pen. When he was gone, everything felt off-balance, like a room where the biggest piece of furniture had been dragged out overnight. The space was still there. The shape of it wasn’t.
Horses don’t greet you at the door. They don’t curl up on the couch. Their presence is quieter than that. A thousand pounds of quiet energy, just being there. When that disappears, you notice it everywhere.
Looking Without Saying So
Ranae didn’t say, “I want another horse.”
She didn’t need to.
She had always known she would get another one. The question wasn’t if. It was which. Back then, horses were still listed in the newspaper. She scanned the classifieds the way she always had, between chores and phone calls. Not searching. Narrowing.
Quarter Horse gelding. Seven to ten years old. Solid. Calm. Didn’t need papers. She liked stout horses with good minds. Always had.
Finally, one ad checked the boxes. A nine-year-old Quarter Horse gelding. Well trained. Good disposition.
Ranae took a friend with her to see him. She had the trainer ride him first. She liked what she saw and came home with the kind of satisfied smile that tells you the decision is already made. She bought him that weekend.
His name was Rusty.
Since we already had a dog named Rusty, he became Dusty the moment he came home.
A Better Horse Than We Were Used To
Dusty was younger and stronger than anything Ranae had ridden in years. You could see it in the way he stood. Balanced. Present. Comfortable in his own skin.
Dusty was her horse. Entirely.
I stayed where I’d always been. Holding gates. Carrying tack. Doing the physical work that keeps a place running. Hay in. Manure out. Fix what breaks. Repeat.
My free time still belonged to tennis courts, golf courses, and the idea that I could outride my lungs on a mountain bike. Horses were Ranae’s thing. I was support crew. That arrangement had worked for more than twenty years.
When the Balance Shifted
Then Ranae tweaked her back.
Nothing dramatic. Just enough pain to make riding a bad idea for a while. What worried her wasn’t herself. It was Dusty. A young horse, newly settled, suddenly sitting idle.
She said she was concerned he needed to be ridden.
I surprised both of us by saying, “I’ll ride him.”
She looked at me like I’d just offered to pilot a plane.
You don’t ride horses.
But something had already been shifting quietly in me since Vandy died.
Curiosity Sneaks In
Around that same time, we got satellite TV. With it came a channel I’d never paid attention to before: RFD-TV.
They ran horsemanship shows all day. Clinton Anderson. Chris Cox. Whoever happened to be on. I started recording them. Watching. Re-watching. Trying to decide if what I was seeing was showmanship or something real.
At first, it felt casual. Background noise. But the ideas stuck. Pressure and release. Timing. Feel.
Horses weren’t dogs.
That alone was unsettling.
I realized I’d spent decades around horses without ever trying to understand how they actually thought. I’d treated them like oversized pets that needed more feed and stronger fences.
The shows didn’t make me want to ride. They made me want to understand.
I bought a cowboy hat around then, because I thought that’s what you did when you rode a horse.
Stepping In
Dusty didn’t feel like a chore.
The first few rides were simple and unremarkable. He stopped when asked. Went when suggested. Covered my mistakes without comment. He didn’t test me because he didn’t need to. We were simply staying in shape until Ranae was back in the saddle.
That ease was misleading.
He was a much better horse than I was a rider, and I knew it. But instead of scaring me off, it made me curious. Things worked without drama. The responses were clean. The connection felt orderly, almost automatic, in a way I couldn’t yet explain.
I started paying closer attention.
Not a Turning Point. Yet.
The corral still felt like a work zone. But it didn’t feel only like that anymore.
It felt like a place where effort might lead somewhere, if you understood what you were asking. Where a horse might meet you halfway, but only if you spoke clearly.
Dusty didn’t teach me anything directly. He didn’t need to. He was steady, capable, and very much not mine.
But paired with those ideas I couldn’t shake, his quiet presence filled the space Vandy had left in a way I didn’t expect.
The yard wasn’t empty anymore.
Not because I’d taken on a new role.
But because something in my thinking had shifted — and riding was about to turn into learning.