Tues­day night, August 2, lying in bed in his Hid­den Hills home, Vin Scul­ly, the leg­endary sports­cast­er, drew his last breath.

Cindy and I live across the street from him. I was in my home office when he passed. About 9:00 p.m. I found the news of his death on the Hid­den Hills Face­book page. A neigh­bor two doors down post­ed, “Rest In Peace Vin Scul­ly. With­out ques­tion the great­est sports broad­cast­er and sim­ply awe­some neigh­bor. Huge loss to Hid­den Hills and fans alike. Always will­ing to talk at the mail­box. Always made you feel like this was going to be the year we won it all.”

I stared at that post for a long time.

His pass­ing was not a sur­prise. He was 94 and had been in fail­ing health. A while back, the red and blue lights of emer­gency vehi­cles flashed in our front win­dows when he fell and broke his hip. Pub­licly, he made light of it. “I won’t be doing any­more head­first slid­ing,” he quipped to a reporter, but it was a seri­ous injury.

A few months lat­er, his wife San­di died after a long bat­tle with Lou Gehrig’s dis­ease. Scul­ly was no stranger to grief. He lost his first wife in 1972 to a pre­scrip­tion drug over­dose and a son, Michael, in 1994 in a heli­copter crash, but San­di had been his con­stant com­pan­ion for almost 50 years and her pass­ing hit him hard.

The Sun­day before his death, when we saw fam­i­ly mem­bers gath­er­ing at his home, we antic­i­pat­ed bad news. Despite that, when it came, I had a hard time assim­i­lat­ing it. His smooth voice had been a steady pres­ence in LA since I moved here in 1975. He broad­cast Dodgers games for 67 years, start­ing in 1953 in Brook­lyn, fol­low­ing the Dodgers to LA in 1958, then call­ing almost every game here until he stepped away from the micro­phone at the end of the 2016 sea­son at the age of 88.

He was a liv­ing leg­end. He was vot­ed nation­al sports­cast­er of the year 4 times, Cal­i­for­nia sports­cast­er of the year 33 times, sports­cast­er of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, and the top-ranked sports­cast­er of all time. He received a Life­time Emmy Award. He has a star on the Hol­ly­wood Walk of Fame. He was induct­ed into the Amer­i­can Sports­cast­ers Hall of Fame, the NAB Broad­cast­ers Hall of Fame, the Nation­al Radio Hall of Fame, the Cal­i­for­nia Sports Hall of Fame, and the Nation­al Base­ball Hall of Fame, and he received the Pres­i­den­tial Medal of Free­dom. In LA Straw polls we vot­ed him the most trust­ed media per­son­al­i­ty, the most mem­o­rable per­son in Dodger his­to­ry, and the biggest icon in LA sports history.

When I moved to LA, I’d nev­er heard of Vin Scul­ly. My law firm rep­re­sent­ed the Dodgers. One of my first legal assign­ments was to draft a con­tract for the team. My super­vis­ing attor­ney called me into his office and hand­ed me a file enti­tled Vin Scully.

“Who’s Vin Scul­ly?” I asked.

He paused. “Where are you from?”

“Vir­ginia.”

“I take it you crawled out of the Great Dis­mal Swamp only recently.”

He gave me a good-natured tuto­r­i­al on Vin Scully’s cen­tral role in the sto­ried his­to­ry of Dodger base­ball. We draft­ed a short con­tract in plain, straight­for­ward lan­guage, the kind that depends on trust, good faith, and integri­ty, and the Dodgers pri­vate­ly sealed the deal with him with­out ran­cor, bit­ter­ness, or brinksmanship.

Watch­ing Dodgers tele­casts my first sum­mer in LA, I under­stood why the orga­ni­za­tion held him in such high regard. The way he addressed his audi­ence was dif­fer­ent from any sports­cast­er I’d ever lis­tened to. It was as though a well-read, unpre­ten­tious, nice guy saun­tered into my liv­ing room and pulled up a chair beside me. He talked eas­i­ly about the game, mix­ing in vignettes about the play­ers, coach­es, and umpires, sto­ries about life’s lessons, and some­times bits and pieces of his­to­ry, lit­er­a­ture, art, and culture.

Among the con­stel­la­tion of his mas­ter­piece broad­casts, some of the shini­est stars were his per­for­mances dur­ing the biggest moments in base­ball his­to­ry. Like no oth­er announc­er, he under­stood the virtue of silence. At the peak of the excite­ment, while the crowd roared, he kept qui­et, allow­ing the audi­ence to drink it all in. Then, when we’d final­ly caught our breath, his first words per­fect­ly cap­tured the dra­ma and sig­nif­i­cance of the moment.

Two of these high points are indeli­bly etched in my mem­o­ry. In 1974 Hank Aaron hit his record-break­ing 715^th career home run in Atlanta against the Dodgers. “To the fence. It’s gone,” Scul­ly said, then fell silent. The crowd cheered as Aaron round­ed the bases and was mobbed at home plate. After 31 sec­onds of silence, a life­time in broad­cast­ing, he reclaimed the mic. “What a mar­velous moment for base­ball. What a mar­velous moment for the coun­try and the world. A Black man is get­ting a stand­ing ova­tion in the deep South for break­ing a record of an all-time base­ball idol.”

In the first game of the 1988 World Series, Kirk Gib­son hob­bled to the plate on crip­pled legs when the Dodgers were down to their last out and mirac­u­lous­ly hit a game-win­ning walk-off home run. Scully’s call: “High fly ball into right field. She is gone.” He said noth­ing more for an incred­i­ble one minute and eight sec­onds as vir­tu­al­ly every­one in LA went wild. Then he expressed what we all felt in our hearts. “In a year that has been so improb­a­ble, the impos­si­ble has happened.”

He spoke in per­fect sen­tences with flaw­less gram­mar while still some­how pre­serv­ing an infor­mal famil­iar­i­ty and casu­al inti­ma­cy with his lis­ten­ers, and most amaz­ing­ly, he made it up as he went along. Base­ball games don’t fol­low a script.  Scul­ly broad­cast each game as it unfold­ed in front of him with words no one could have writ­ten any bet­ter beforehand.

When we moved into Hid­den Hills, I installed a sec­ond tele­phone line for busi­ness calls. The first time I answered its ring, a woman was in mid-con­ver­sa­tion about a per­son­al prob­lem. When she paused, a man’s smooth tenor voice broke in, con­cerned, sup­port­ive, encour­ag­ing. I imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­nized the speak­er. He had talked to me for three decades.

“Mis­ter Scul­ly,” I said ner­vous­ly, but he and the woman couldn’t hear me. I hung up, not sure what to do. I picked up the line. They were still talk­ing. I called AT&T on my pri­ma­ry line and told a cus­tomer ser­vice lady my tele­phone line was tap­ping Vin Scully’s phone. “I’m talk­ing about THE Vin Scul­ly,” I said.

“Who’s Vin Scul­ly?” she said.

I paused. “Where are you from?”

“Dal­las.”

“Is there a swamp in Dallas?”

AT&T sent out a big mean-look­ing guy with a sour dis­po­si­tion, who turned into a lit­tle kid with wide eyes and a shy grin when I told him Vin Scul­ly owned the phone line he’d been assigned to repair.

The first time I saw Vin Scul­ly face-to-face was at Hid­den Hills City Hall, our local polling place. He walked in when I was vot­ing. The ancient lady hand­ing out bal­lots said, “Hey, who’s that hand­some red-head­ed fel­la?” The elder­ly woman poll-work­er sit­ting beside her said, “Oh, he’s not much. I heard he sells peanuts for the Dodgers.” They both cack­led, then flirt­ed with him mer­ci­less­ly while they set him up to vote. He was a good sport, laugh­ing and jok­ing through it all.

Not long after that, my dog Zoey and I walked by his house when he came out to the car to head to Dodger sta­di­um to broad­cast a night game. He spoke to me and pat­ted Zoey on the head. I was tongue-tied in his pres­ence. “Good luck at the game,” I stammered.

That was stu­pid, I thought, as I watched his car dri­ve away. I had just wished the great­est sports­cast­er of all time good luck in broad­cast­ing a mun­dane reg­u­lar-sea­son game.

As our neigh­bor remarked the night of his death, he was always will­ing to talk at the mail­box. He always greet­ed me and Zoey on our dog-walks with a warm smile, and his friend­li­ness even­tu­al­ly dis­armed my reticence.

In a makeshift shrine out­side Dodger sta­di­um after Vin Scully’s death, a fan framed a plac­ard that said, “God acquires Vin Scul­ly from the Los Ange­les Dodgers.” God broke a lot of hearts the night of August 2. In a let­ter to the LA Times, a man from San­ta Mon­i­ca said it best. “Lit­tle boys are cry­ing all over Los Ange­les. They just hap­pen to be 60, 70, and 80 years old.”

He is irre­place­able. For almost sev­en decades, in our cars, liv­ing rooms, and bed­rooms, at our kitchen coun­ters and bar­be­cue grills, beside our swim­ming pools on sun­ny sum­mer days, he talked to us in an easy way like an old friend.

There nev­er has been, and there nev­er will be again, a sports­cast­er as great or as beloved as Vin Scully.

I turned 75 this month.

When Casey Sten­gel was 75, he said, “Most of the peo­ple my age is dead. You can look it up.” I did. He was right. In 1965 when he made that state­ment the aver­age age of death in the U.S. was 70. For men it was 67.

I was sur­prised to find that Casey’s pro­nounce­ment comes close to hold­ing true today. Even with all the advances in health­care, the aver­age age of death for U.S. men is now only 76.

That doesn’t give me much breath­ing room, so to speak, but at least I’m still alive on that mor­tal­i­ty table. Using an actu­ar­i­al analy­sis focus­ing sole­ly on the life expectan­cy of men born in 1947, I’m already dead. I passed away in 2012 when I was 65. For­tu­nate­ly, I didn’t notice.

Research­ing per­spec­tives on aging for this post, I found an arti­cle even more trou­bling than the death charts. In “Why I Hope to Die at 75,” Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel asserts that the opti­mum age to die is the three-quar­ter-cen­tu­ry mark. He says our health­care sys­tem has suc­ceed­ed in find­ing ways to extend life but has failed to delay the onset of dis­abil­i­ties and dis­ease. We live longer only to suf­fer longer. At 75 he believes most peo­ple are head­ed into a steep phys­i­cal and cog­ni­tive decline, ren­der­ing them inca­pable of mak­ing valu­able con­tri­bu­tions to soci­ety. “(F)eeble, inef­fec­tu­al, and pathet­ic,” they inflict a crush­ing finan­cial and emo­tion­al bur­den on their kids and grand­kids. To spare him­self and every­one else the mis­ery of his descent into infir­mi­ty, he intends to com­mit a pas­sive sui­cide by reject­ing pre­ven­tive health­care mea­sures and life-sav­ing pro­ce­dures after his 75^th birthday.

Dr. Emanuel’s cre­den­tials make it dif­fi­cult to dis­miss his dour view of aging. An inter­na­tion­al­ly renowned oncol­o­gist and bioethi­cist, he is the Uni­ver­si­ty of Pennsylvania’s Vice Provost, Chair of its Med­ical Ethics and Health Pol­i­cy Depart­ment, was an archi­tect of Oba­macare, and cur­rent­ly serves as a senior advis­er to the Biden admin­is­tra­tion on Covid-19.

He also seems to be a good guy with a lov­ing fam­i­ly and a lot to live for. He was 57 when he wrote his arti­cle. He’ll turn 65 this fall, so I hoped grow­ing old­er might change his opin­ion about life after 75.

It did not. In a recent inter­view, he held fast to his orig­i­nal premise, and when ques­tioned about exam­ples of peo­ple who are men­tal­ly and phys­i­cal­ly capa­ble and pro­duc­tive well past 75, he dis­count­ed their con­tri­bu­tions. Such “out­liers” are “a very small num­ber,” he said, “and when I look at what those peo­ple ‘do,’ almost all of it is what I clas­si­fy as play … They’re rid­ing motor­cy­cles; they’re hik­ing … that’s not a mean­ing­ful life.”

Not a mean­ing­ful life.

Three days before Christ­mas five years ago, I woke up in the mid­dle of the night with a sear­ing pain in the upper right quad­rant of my abdomen beneath the ribcage. It spread upward to my shoul­der and became so intense I had to stretch out on the floor on my back with my arms over my head to breathe. I pushed through the pain, and it went away at sunrise.

“It was no big deal,” I told Cindy.

“Call the doc­tor,” she said. “Now.”

When she uses her steely tone of voice, I do what I’m told. I slunk into the doctor’s office that after­noon. He said my symp­toms indi­cat­ed a gall blad­der infec­tion, a com­mon prob­lem, eas­i­ly treat­able. He ordered an ultra­sound to con­firm his diagnosis.

I lay on my back while a tech­ni­cian moved a hand-held trans­duc­er over my abdomen and chest, up, down, and across. The doc­tor said the ultra­sound would take fif­teen min­utes. The tech­ni­cian kept at it for an hour.

The doc­tor called me at eight-thir­ty that night, well past his quit­ting time. “You have a gall blad­der infec­tion,” he said, “but not the nor­mal type. The ultra­sound indi­cates you have Acal­cu­lous Chole­cys­ti­tis.” He said I had to see a gas­troin­testi­nal sur­geon the next day.

“On Christ­mas Eve?” I said, alarmed. “How seri­ous is this?”

“It requires imme­di­ate attention.”

I pressed him. Reluc­tant­ly, he dis­closed the fatal­i­ty rate for this con­di­tion as 30 to 50 percent.

I didn’t sleep that night.

The gas­troin­testi­nal sur­geon, a mid­dle-aged sandy-haired guy with a big nose and wide mouth, was skep­ti­cal of the ultra­sound. Acal­cu­lous Chole­cys­ti­tis usu­al­ly attacks peo­ple suf­fer­ing from anoth­er seri­ous dis­ease, can­cer or heart fail­ure. I had no oth­er ill­ness. He ordered more tests.

Strapped to a gur­ney in the hospital’s nuclear med­i­cine depart­ment for three hours, I watched streams of mul­ti­col­ored flu­ids on a mon­i­tor above me as they coursed through my diges­tive sys­tem. The test results con­firmed the ultrasound’s diagnosis.

They wheeled me into the oper­at­ing room at five o’clock on Christ­mas Eve. An anes­the­si­ol­o­gist, a tall bald­ing man with a reas­sur­ing smile, pumped the con­tents of a syringe into my I.V. “Here comes the good stuff,” he said.

My last thought as the lights dimmed was a drug-blunt­ed fear that I might not wake up.

I was under for two hours.

A spindly crack in an off-white ceil­ing came into focus. I heard tap­ping beside me. I looked over to see a heavy-set young order­ly dressed in hos­pi­tal blues work­ing at a com­put­er. He looked up. “You’re back,” he said.

“How do you feel, Dad?”

I turned to see my son stand­ing beside my bed.

Behind him sit­ting at a desk by the wall, my sur­geon gave me thumbs up. “Your gall blad­der was gan­grenous,” he said. “I got it all.”

I sobbed. “Thanks for sav­ing my life,” I choked out.

“It’s the drugs,” the order­ly told my son. “Makes them emotional.”

It wasn’t the drugs. It was the stu­pen­dous joy of being alive.

A week lat­er, the results of my gall bladder’s biop­sy came back. They found an infin­i­tes­i­mal­ly small gall­stone buried in the gan­grenous tis­sue. All the tests had missed it. It had caused the infec­tion. The diag­no­sis had been wrong from the start. I nev­er had Acal­cu­lous Chole­cys­ti­tis. I had a nor­mal gall blad­der infec­tion. The only way it could have killed me was if I had refused to under­go the surgery to remove it.

I’m glad I didn’t know that at the time. Think­ing I might die gave me an appre­ci­a­tion for the bless­ings that were to come in the days still ahead of me. If I hadn’t sur­vived the infec­tion, here’s some of what I would have missed.

Grand­daugh­ter num­ber 1 blos­som­ing into one of the top fifty soc­cer play­ers in the nation in her age group. Grand­daugh­ter num­ber 2, also an elite soc­cer play­er, stand­ing at the front of her fifth-grade class­room on grand­par­ents’ day, telling every­one about fun times with Papaw. Grand­daugh­ter num­ber 3 falling in love with hors­es at three years old and becom­ing an expert rid­er at sev­en. Grand­son num­ber 1’s pre­co­cious tal­ents as a karate war­rior, skate­board­er, rail­road enthu­si­ast, and stu­dio artist. The births of grand­sons 2 and 3, both wild and crazy guys now three years old, one a future offen­sive line­man for the LA Rams, the oth­er des­tined to become a world-class heavy-equip­ment operator.

I would have missed build­ing a horse barn, tak­ing up horse­back rid­ing, bond­ing with Marge, Lily, Wil­son, and Jack­son, and the equine ther­a­py of a thou­sand trail rides.

I would have missed the heart-swelling exhil­a­ra­tion and qui­et sat­is­fac­tion of craft­ing the plot and char­ac­ter inter­play in The Judas Mur­ders, the cel­e­bra­tion of youth­ful first love in The Princess of Sug­ar Val­ley, and the cathar­tic self-real­iza­tions in Keep­ing the Promise and 20 more blog posts since its publication.

I would have missed watch­ing my younger daugh­ter mar­ry and build a hap­py fam­i­ly with the love of her life, my son’s care­ful expan­sion of his pros­per­ous busi­ness with­out skip­ping a beat in his role as a lov­ing father and hus­band, and my old­er daugh­ter and her hus­band achiev­ing inter­na­tion­al acclaim and com­mer­cial suc­cess for their art gallery.

I would have missed five more years of love and com­pan­ion­ship with Cindy along with the chance to become her care­giv­er and coach through two years of painful recov­er­ies from dou­ble knee replace­ments, a small install­ment on my great debt to her for fifty-three years of sup­port and encour­age­ment, prop­ping me up and keep­ing me going through good times and bad.

This is the short list. The full list of what I would have missed in the past five years would fill more pages than all my nov­els combined.

I don’t con­sid­er my life mean­ing­less. In many ways, it’s more mean­ing­ful today than ever before.

I won’t reject pre­ven­tive health­care mea­sures and life-sav­ing pro­ce­dures now that I’m 75. I’ll take all I can get. Dr. Emanuel is a real­ly smart guy, but on the sub­ject of aging, I pre­fer the med­ical advice of the poet: “Do not go gen­tle into that good night,/Old age should burn and rave at close of day;/Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

I could go on about the many gifts of grow­ing old­er, but I’ll rein it in for your sake and close by updat­ing words I wrote in this blog five years ago.

I’m 75 years old; I’ve lived a long full life; I’ve still got a good ways to go; and you ain’t seen noth­in’ yet.

Last month, when the far­ri­er lift­ed Wilson’s right back hoof to shoe him, the twen­ty-year-old thor­ough­bred lost his bal­ance and almost fell. Hav­ing seen this before in old­er hors­es, the far­ri­er ran his hand along Wilson’s neck and back, and as he expect­ed, he flinched and nipped at him.

We called the vet. He stood beside Wilson’s hindquar­ters and pulled his tail toward him. Wil­son swayed, then stum­bled. “The nor­mal reac­tion,” the vet said, “is for the horse to brace against the tug­ging force and hold his posi­tion. Wil­son can’t do that because he’s not sure where his back legs are.”

Arthri­tis in his neck had dam­aged nerves run­ning down his spine to his legs. Arthri­tis is incur­able and relent­less­ly degen­er­a­tive. “All we can do,” the vet said, “is slow down the skele­tal deterioration.”

He pre­scribed pred­nisolone. “If the drug works,” the vet said, “Wil­son should be able to car­ry a rid­er bare­back or with a sway­back cush­ion under the sad­dle for a few more years.”

The next morn­ing, I dis­solved 400 mil­ligrams of the drug in water, mixed it with oats and molasses, and spread it over Wilson’s alfal­fa. Lat­er in the day, Janet, my train­er and good friend, rid­ing her horse, Jesse, ponied Wil­son while I fol­lowed on Marge. Wil­son strug­gled, espe­cial­ly on the down­hill slopes. When we fin­ished up, he was sweat­ing; his head was down; and he was drool­ing. Even a rid­er­less walk had bro­ken him down.

That was a water­shed moment for me. I knew then that I would nev­er again allow any­one, includ­ing me, to climb on Wilson’s back. Even if the drug worked, I wouldn’t take the chance of inflict­ing more pain on him.

It’s the right deci­sion, but I’ll miss my rides with Wilson.

I first saw him almost four years ago on a home-made sales video. A young woman lunged a hand­some, glossy bay in a dirt cor­ral in Bak­ers­field, then rode him on a bare­back pad over a dusty road. Doing his best to ignore a trio of mutts scur­ry­ing around his feet, Wil­son fol­lowed the young woman’s cues, care­ful­ly back­ing up, stand­ing still, and mov­ing for­ward, to enable her to open a gate with­out dismounting.

I liked his demeanor. The way he held his head and the look on his face gave me the sense he was a good soul, try­ing hard to do his job well. The ask­ing price was low and the young woman agreed to trail­er him to Hid­den Hills with­out charge, so I bought him.

She deliv­ered him on a cool, clear Feb­ru­ary evening, and Janet and I walked him up the hill on Clear Val­ley Road toward my barn. A big, tall horse, a lit­tle under six­teen hands (about five feet four inch­es from the ground to his with­ers, the spot where his neck joins his back), his dark brown neck and head framed by a peach sun­set, his black mane and fore­lock rif­fling in a light breeze, his head held high, his eyes alert, he looked around anx­ious­ly at the res­i­den­tial homes and man­i­cured lawns.

When you buy a horse like Wil­son, with no papers or pedi­gree, you know noth­ing about his his­to­ry, what he’s been through, or how he’s been treat­ed. More than like­ly, Wil­son passed through many own­ers’ hands, some who were good to him and oth­ers who were cru­el. Jane Smi­ley, the Pulitzer Prize-win­ning nov­el­ist, wrote that such a horse’s life is like “twen­ty years in fos­ter care, or in and out of prison, while at the same time chang­ing schools over and over and dis­cov­er­ing … that what you learned at the old school hasn’t much appli­ca­tion at the new one.”

That pas­sage ran through my mind as I watched Wil­son prance ner­vous­ly up the street. Ear­li­er that after­noon, he stood on a drought-parched farm where every­thing was famil­iar to him. With­out warn­ing, the young woman came along, put a hal­ter on him, and loaded him into a small, cramped tin box. For the next two and a half hours, he jounced around inside the metal­lic stall, as it rocked and swayed over free­ways at sev­en­ty miles per hour, speed­ing him away from every­thing he’d ever known. When the trail­er final­ly stopped, the young woman clanged open the rear door, backed him down a ramp, and hand­ed his lead line to peo­ple he’d nev­er met in a place where all the sights, sounds, and scents were com­plete­ly for­eign to him. Head­ed up the hill toward my barn that evening, he had to be lost and fright­ened by the sud­den, rad­i­cal change we’d forced upon him, and yet I sensed he was try­ing hard to adjust to this new world.

We led him into his stall. He walked around appre­hen­sive­ly, check­ing out the gray stuc­co walls and the wood shav­ings on the floor. He drank from the water buck­et, then looked out the Dutch stall-door, tak­ing in the street below, the val­ley, and the oppo­site ridge. We gave him orchard grass and alfal­fa, and he attacked it like he hadn’t been fed for days. When I left him an hour lat­er, he’d calmed down a lit­tle and seemed to be set­tling in.

His name on the bill of sale was Chip­py. It didn’t fit. I’m not sure why, but the name Wil­son came to mind when I was with him that night in the barn. I went with it, and it took hold.

A few days after Wilson’s arrival, we put him in the cor­ral with his sta­ble­mate, Mar­garine, a lit­tle sor­rel alpha mare. She hates most oth­er hors­es. She tol­er­at­ed Wil­son for about an hour before attack­ing him. I ran a fence down the mid­dle of the cor­ral to keep the peace and called the vet to tend to Wilson’s bruis­es. For a more detailed account of their dust-up, see Ani­mal Pharm.

The vet said Wil­son was phys­i­cal­ly sound, but old­er than we thought. The young woman said he was twelve. The vet said he was six­teen or old­er. I didn’t care. I want­ed a trail horse who would be good with my grand­kids, and he fit the bill.

Janet spent the next few weeks train­ing him, and he adapt­ed to the neigh­bor­hood streets and trails quick­ly. I first rode him that spring. He wasn’t a com­fort­able ride. His walk­ing gait was irreg­u­lar, chop­py, and bumpy, and his trot was like sit­ting on a jack­ham­mer, but I liked rid­ing him anyway.

Horse­back rid­ing presents a thrilling para­dox. When you climb in the sad­dle, you must take a mea­sure of con­trol over your mount, but sit­ting on a twelve-hun­dred-pound ani­mal, you give up a lot of con­trol at the same time. Wilson’s tall frame and big bar­rel encase extra­or­di­nary pow­er, and his speed lives up to his breed. My aware­ness of his pow­er and speed made rid­ing him excit­ing each time we went out. He turned out to be a gen­tle giant, though. He was always a safe ride except once when he reared for rea­sons beyond his con­trol. See For the Love of Hors­es for a descrip­tion of that incident.

Janet deter­mined ear­ly on that Wil­son was “cold backed” (sen­si­tive to weight on his back until he was warmed up). We lunged him for a long time before each ride to com­pen­sate for that, but the steep down­hills still seemed to strain his back, so we rode him on flat­ter trails.

Look­ing back on it now, I feel guilty about some of those rides. He must have been suf­fer­ing, espe­cial­ly dur­ing the more recent out­ings, but he did what­ev­er I asked of him, always giv­ing his best effort, nev­er balk­ing or faltering.

About five days into Wilson’s treat­ment with pred­nisolone, the drug worked its mag­ic. When I arrived at the barn that morn­ing to feed him, he ran up the hill to his stall like a young horse. When we ponied him that day, the pain seemed to be gone, but I haven’t changed my mind. I know too much about arthri­tis. It crip­pled my knees until they were replaced, and I still have it in my fin­gers. Med­ica­tion eas­es the pain for a while, but it always returns. Wilson’s been through enough. His rid­ing days are over.

There’s a mys­ti­cal com­mu­nion between a horse and a rid­er. I had that with Wil­son. Although that part of our friend­ship is gone, our bond remains strong. I can still pony him, walk him on a lead line, groom him, give him car­rots, and talk things over with him, just like before.

I’m told that some own­ers would dis­pose of an old­er horse in Wilson’s con­di­tion, dump him on a res­cue orga­ni­za­tion, or send him to a kill-pen. I can’t do that. Wil­son did his job well for as long as he could. Now I’ll do mine. I’ll keep him healthy, hap­py, and safe for the rest of his life.

Post Script: “Take care of your hors­es and trea­sure them.” Jane Smiley