A Short Tail: The Adventures of Sirius, The Arabian

By Linda Carpenter

A show horse with a magical mask? Predators and their prey working side by side to prevent the extinction of both black-footed ferrets and their main source of food, prairie dogs??

A Short Tail: The Adventures of Sirius, the Arabian, tells the story of an unlikely partnership in an epic battle against the destruction of an endangered ecosystem to preserve the balance of nature. A story about the power of coming together to create change.

Never judge a horse by the length of his tail but by the size of his heart and the magic he shares.

Meet Sirius and his activists!

Watch where you step!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Newman Springs Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Dec 12, 2022
• ISBN: 9781638818137

Book preview

Contents

A Champion Is Born

Inherited Magic

Arizona

Adam and Other Humans

Family

Tail Trouble

Military Tattoo and the Animal Activists

The Animals Are Coming

The Really Big Show

After the Show

The Killers

They Knew Him by His Tail

We Don’t Extinct

Prey and Predators Unite

Lindy and Sirius

Everybody’s a Director

The Hothouse Horse

The Challenge

Race Training

More Gunshots

Striking Distance in Production

No Crying in Tattoo’s Paddock

Showtime

Jeffrey Paul to the Rescue

The Whole World Is Watching

Oh, Mamma!

Nobody Likes the Mud

Colic Again

The Roadrunner

Who Cut the Cheese?

The Final Preparations

Diana Plans Her Race Strategy

The Race

What’s Going on Here?

Epilogue

Author’s Note

About the Author

A Champion Is Born

The weather had turned the sky yellow-gray, with dark streaks of violet. Clouds shaded the mountains; the setting sun lit up the landscape where it pierced the layers of gray in the sky. The wind bent the new leaves on the trees, so their white undersides twisted, full of light. The crescent moon peeking over the horizon was barely visible. It was March 26, 1997. March is still cold in upstate New York but late in the year for mares to be having their babies.

Lindy stood back from the crowd of adults who had come for the birth. She knew it was too late for her to be out, and neither the others who had gathered (nor her parents) had any idea that she was there. There was no way she was missing this. Khemosharena, her favorite mother-to-be, knew her well. Lindy slipped quietly into the barn, most evenings, brushing and sharing treats with the prized broodmare. Expectations were high for her newborn. She was, after all, the last daughter of the great champion, Khemosabi.

Lindy peeked around the door into the barn, then quietly found her spot behind a stack of hay bales and sat down to wait. That lasted only a minute as she jumped back up to pace back and forth, looking out from behind the hay bales, carving a path in the dirt as she paced. She often sat there at the end of her day, surrounded by the rich smell of the hay and the scent of sweet feed and bran. Even the smell of the manure was sweet. At fifteen, Lindy was mature for her age. Quiet and respectful and a bit shy, she loved helping out around the farm. She loved to feel the quiet hum of the horses’ lives. She felt their calm and their grounding energy. She was so grateful to have them. Her own life could be quite chaotic. They balanced her.

The Milky Way was visible just past 3:00 a.m. when he finally arrived, sliding out into this world and into the deep layers of straw in the stall. Lindy caught her breath as everyone cheered when he was fully visible. He was perfect! A light bay, with long legs, the classic Arabian head, four white stockings, and a perfect little foal’s tail.

On spindly legs, he practiced standing up. Instincts prodded him to run as soon as he could. Flight is a horse’s only safety plan. Horses are born with their legs nearly as long as they would be when full grown. Sirius, like all horses, found his to be a bit hard to manage at first. Comical to watch even. He just kept practicing. He tripped himself trying to turn too quickly and sprawled back to the ground, all four legs splayed in different directions.

He looked up at the humans standing all around him looking back down at him. Not sure what they were, he looked at his mother. Not sure what they expected, he did what was natural. He tried again to get his long legs in the right position to lift him up to look even closer at these humans and to find his first taste of mother’s milk. As he tripped over himself, falling again, rather ungracefully, it could be told, to the ground, he heard someone moan, He’s no Khemosabi!

Lindy, forgetting where she was, blurted out from her hiding place behind the stack of hay bales. Give him a chance! He’s not a superhero! He’s just a foal. An Arabian colt named Sirius, grandson of a champion. She looked at him, and her eyes welled with tears. She knew his ancestry traced back five thousand years to the desert people of the Arabian Peninsula, who have kept detailed breeding records across the centuries. Arabian horses are known as bold, athletic, and spirited, and for their beauty, loyalty, and endurance.

He certainly had the look of his grandfather, the great Khemosabi. The perfect confirmation, the same four white stockings, the same long flowing mane, and a jagged white blaze like a wizard’s lightning strike lit up his forehead and long silky muzzle. His large round eyes revealed the exceptional intelligence and kindness that would determine his life.

Sirius didn’t understand human then. But he did understand that Lindy was different from the other humans there. He looked directly at her and saw a halo of light around her. (Horses have perception that humans do not.) She looked directly back into his eyes. She shivered as goose bumps ran up her spine. Their senses let them know that something extraordinary was happening. Little did they know what the future would hold.

By the next morning, Sirius shadowed Khemosharena out in the paddock keeping up with her graceful trot and canter. Everywhere she walked or trotted or full-out galloped, he went right by her side. It was evident to anyone who watched him move around the paddock that he was special. He floated more than trotted, and his little foal tail waved like a flag as he pranced by. His Arabian dished face reflected the centuries of breeding that advanced his lineage. He carried his head proudly, neck bowed, ears pricked as he investigated his status within this first herd family.

He still shared the big stall with his mom but spent more and more of his days playing with the other foals out in the huge paddock. He trotted up to each foal, as if saying He-e-ey in a singsong voice as he put his face into theirs. He touched his nose to theirs and sidestepping by, as light on his feet as any horse ever, to the next nose to touch. He led the herd of baby foals in large circles, trotting around the paddock, one by one in the line, waving their tiny foal tails as they tiptoed by. He was exceptional for everyone to see, never dominant or bossy or mean. Other foals pinned their ears and made nasty faces at each other when they got too close, but not Sirius. They never minded his attention nor felt the need to dominate him.

Soon they would be weaned from their mother’s milk and learn to eat hay and oats and corn and carrots. That meant a rather painful separation from their moms for the foals, usually when they were turning six months old. But for now, every day was spent by their mamma’s side.

You will be the next national champion in the family. Just look at you already! his mother gushed as he trotted up to her for some nourishment.

Sirius looked down at his white stockings that stretched all the way up to his knees in front. He could see his lightning strike blaze down his face in his reflection in the water trough. Perfect shape, perfect mane, perfect conformation, perfect little foal tail. Full of his own perfection, Sirius took off bucking and jumping, chasing the other foals in the pasture, gently letting them know he was the new star of the show.

The next two years of his life were filled with training to help him accept the weight of the saddle on his back and the feel of the cold metal of the bit in his mouth. Luckily, he had gentle humans who respected him. They used their legs and hands to teach him how to stop and how to turn to the left and right, how to back up in a straight line, and how to change from one lead to the other. The lead is whichever front leg is moving out first. Different direction means the other lead. Turning left with their left leg leading and then switching effortlessly to their right leg in the lead to go straight. Every lesson, every workout to build muscle memory for competition was essential to his future success in the show ring. Practice makes perfect, and perfect practice makes champions. Inside leg to outside rein was the constant link from rider to him. It was his destiny, after all.

Inherited Magic

Anybody who knows Arabian horses knows the name Khemosabi. Sirius’s grandfather, the great champion stallion, sired over 1,200 foals in his breeding career. More than 300 of his offspring were show champions and 75 won the national championship. He himself won national championships in both halter and western pleasure classes. That earned him the highest achievement in the Arabian horse world, the Legion of Masters. He grew even more famous when a series of comic strips featured him wearing the Lone Ranger’s mask. In the comic strip, Khemosabi and his redheaded sidekick, Ruth, fought together for Truth and Justice the Arabian Way. The character of Ruth was fashioned after his breeder and owner, Ruth Husband. Everyone in the Arabian world knew her well.

Of course, you have to know who the Lone Ranger was to understand why Khemosabi wore his mask. Many of you now may be too young to remember, but in the early days of radio and television, the Lone Ranger was a fictional hero, a former Texas ranger believed to have been killed. He fought outlaws in the Old West with his Native American friend Tonto. Khemosabi means faithful friend in Apache and was Tonto’s nickname for him. The Lone Ranger wore a black eye mask as a disguise. It covered his eyes to protect his identity as the most famous Texas ranger of his time.

Hi-ho, Silver! he would yell as he guided the stallion to rear up and gallop away—he, on Silver, a massive white stallion, and Tonto, on Scout, a black and white spotted horse just as massive. Silver went on to become quite a horse celebrity of the 1950s. That’s when Disneyland in California first opened, and every horse on its carousel was white because all the kids wanted to ride Silver.

The comic strip author had a replica mask made, big enough for a champion Arabian’s head, and presented it to Khemosabi. He loved it. He used to put it on to spin intricate tales for his grand foals about how the mask’s magic would transform the right horse when the time was right.

No one knew for sure what that magic might be, but the mask had been in the family since Khemosabi’s retirement many years ago. At this very moment, Khalee, first cousin to Sirius, had the mask. Khemosabi had passed it on when Khalee won the national championship. Khalee had little faith in magic. It was in his tack trunk with old brushes and bandages.

Sirius, however, never forgot the tales his grand sire told about the mask. It would become powerful at the right time. It was for a miracle, maybe. He had thought about it a lot. He’d listened to stories about the magic mask his entire life, and he had no doubts that they were all true. Grandsire would never lie. He had his own ideas of what the mask might bring.

Lindy had just turned eighteen. She wore old flannel shirts handed down from her brothers, jeans, and waterproof boots to work and loved it. Her hair almost always was tied back into a ponytail. In the moment, she was just happy to be back at the farm full-time to start her summer job.

All the horses here were bred for the show ring and were exceptional to see. But there was just something so special about Sirius. To her. Maybe because she was there when he was born. She watched every move he made as she mucked out his stall and added clean wood chips to it every morning and night. Horses were everything to her, and this perfect young colt greeted her loudly every time she arrived. She hardly missed a day of his early training and often helped cool him down after a long session. She would often sneak in long after everyone had gone to give him some carrots. He always greeted her with a loud neigh and waited for her at his gate. Sometimes she went just to hang out in his stall with him. He loved watermelon. So did she. He would slurp in the rinds with the fruits on them and call out for more. All the horses in the shed row neighed for their piece of the melon too. Lindy never only fed Sirius but made sure to get treats to all those who lived around him. It’s the only way in a barn full of horses. Then she and Sirius would often lay together on the thick bed of straw in his stall sharing their melon.

Sirius enjoyed these long lazy training days. His trainer taught him how to become a western pleasure show horse step by step, which is, of course, the only way anybody can learn to do anything. His long days of calm groundwork, without