My marriage is good because my husband knows I feel depressed and cranky if I don’t mess around with my horses. He sends me out to ride if I try to pick a fight with him. “Oh, just go ride or brush a horse. You’ll feel better.” He also knows that horses (probably to his chagrin) will be in our lives for a long time. We’re both independent and yet we’re best friends.

But on the back side of my 45^th birthday, I have had a spate of physical reminders that back in the 1800s, I’d be close to dead. All my old riding injuries seem to be pooling up in various joints in my body and making me go, “Ouch!” every time I pick a stall or my bossy old Baleno yanks me over to the hay pile. When I have to bandage Belle’s leg and she’s having a tantrum, I want a little more help around here than a gentle man who still (after eight years) doesn’t really know how to put a halter on. My husband means well, tries hard, even does chores with me. (Although yesterday he came out when I was cleaning the very last stall. “Oh, my timing is perfect! I’ll spread the manure,” he said. That chore requires simply driving the tractor around the pasture. No heavy lifting involved.)

I don’t want get old. And when I do get old, I’ll want help. I can’t really imagine a life without horses, even though I think my dear husband would like to live in an apartment next to New York’s Lincoln Center and within walking distance of 15 great ethnic restaurants, none of them Mexican (our culinary choices in this neighborhood are limited, to say the least.)

I’ll never trade in my husband, who listens to classical music and writes insightful political commentary and influences the middle school minds of Albuquerque youth. But some days I wish he had a little more “farm” in his blood. 

Which brings me back to my beloved equines. So at what point will four horses and their various needs feel like too much? At what point will I have to back down from the mucking and the raking and the pulling and the hammering and the various other physical activities necessary to maintain my place? I hope never, because that will make me an extremely unpleasant person to be around and my husband will probably divorce me. Which will be worse than giving up the horses. Or will it?

Who knows. For now, though, I’ll probably need to place a “help wanted” ad in the local horse magazine: “Wanted, surrogate honey-do, willing to take on every farm chore with a smile. Horse savvy only need apply.”