CABOT COURGE COMMAND

“HAM”

1991-2024

I was twelve, standing in the nosebleeds at the Morgan World Championships in Oklahoma, looking down on the class below. Ladies Hunter Pleasure and my trainer, Judy Nason, was showing Cabot Courage Command. Rambo, we called him, then.

I had seen him before, but never how he moved that night: like a dancer, like destiny, like his hooves had wings. He won his first World Championship; his body in the spotlight, wreathed in roses, was resplendent in the glow. That horse, I thought. Dream horse. Back home in New Hampshire, I played with my Breyers, pretended my most beautiful model was Rambo. Dream horse. And I his rider.

Months passed. I turned thirteen, suddenly tall. My legs dangled from most horse’s sides. I spent the summer at Judy’s training barn, Bellewether, two hours from my home, learning to groom from the older girls: Marisa, Rhiannon, Anna, Erin, Danielle and Libby. At shows we slept in tents and campers, rose with the sun to muck and braid. A blessing, because my parents were separating. Home, as I knew it, was gone. Better to be with the horses, the girls.

Rambo had a reputation in those days. Pawing, nipping, rubbing out braids, “high maintenance” show horse behavior. But he had also been a safe walk-trot mount and solid classic driving horse for my Meadowair Farm family, Hannah and Betsey Chickering; before that, an in-hand horse, an English pleasure horse, and, as a baby, his photograph had served as template for the Cabot Farm logo; he was the first-born foal with the Cabot prefix. All to say, it was difficult to tell his true nature.

At New England Regionals that summer, Shawn Amazeen–who was assistant-training for Bellewether, back then, and an incredible teacher and guide–assigned Rambo to me; it was my responsibility to groom him. I entered his stall cautiously, pitchfork at the ready, but found him docile, if nosey; he followed me around, put his head on my shoulder while I mucked. As if making a choice.

By summer’s end, some of the girls had disbanded. But Anna Radocchia remained. And Jenna Britt, our little sister, undefeated champion aboard Sharky (DFM Poetic Justice), even when I forgot to put mascara on his ear wart. Rambo remained as well, of course. A three-time World Champion that October, winning the Amateur title with his owner, Joyce Thoma, and Reserve World Open with Judy. It was late fall when Judy came to my mother. Would Allie like to try him? He would be a lot of horse, but he was tall; maybe it could work.

Riding him was like flying.

Buying Rambo was, by all practical standards, a poor choice. I was starting ninth grade at a new school where I knew no one, shuttling back and forth between my parents every week, and both of them lived two hours from Bellewether. But in the end, my mother, Mary, bought Rambo anyway, using the money her father had left me for “educational purposes.” Screw practical, I needed this horse, she said. And he would be an education. How she was right.

All winter, my parents drove me to Bellewether, trading weekends. We stayed at a motel called the Rosewood Inn. On weekends with my father, George, he and our dog, Dal, would watch me ride, then go outside to walk the field, as they had at Meadowair Farm when I was seven, eight, nine years old, riding in the early mornings with my first, wonderful teacher, Andrea Chickering Sawyer, steam rising off the river, frost sparkling the cornfield. My father championed my riding without waver, took it as seriously as a spiritual calling, could often be found at horse shows carrying a wet bucket, a rag flung over his shoulder, wiping my boots before my classes.

Spring came, my fifteenth. School let out. My parents went to court. I stayed at Anna’s house for weeks, hiding from them. Our friendship blossomed then, the two remaining Bellewether girls. Groom girls, we called ourselves. We worked in the day, mainlining Dunkin Donuts, prepping horses for Judy, cleaning stalls. In the evening, we stayed late to ride our own horses, Max and Rambo.

Anna with her camera. New England summer, that sort of soft light. I’d never so much as sat on Rambo without supervision. But slipped on bareback one evening, anyway. He seemed surprised, pleasantly so. Like he’d been waiting all his life to join this very game: a girl and her horse, no freedom like it. He kept trying to crane his neck around to eat my sneakers, not quite serious, a ham. Yes, he was afraid of the world outside the indoor. I took him there anyway. Let him eat the long summer grass, told him he was safe with me. I was his girl, he was my dream horse. That was the night I renamed him. Ham.

There were wins and there were losses, blue ribbons, white ribbons, brown. Judy’s move to Greenville New York, where I drove every weekend to ride, three and a half hours each way, listening to self-help tapes and visualizing World Championship roses. There was my struggle with anorexia, which would last many years. I was at war with the world around me, as many adolescents are. It would be disingenuous to say that I was not, at times, at war with Ham, pushing us both toward perfection, that great impossibility. Exhausting, but there were quiet moments, too: cracking up with Anna over our many inside jokes (Tuna forever); friendships with other horse show kids like Steve Handy and Jacob Snyder, who would one day become Anna’s husband; Judy’s gentle smiles, her praise following a good ride or ribbon; the warmth of Ham’s body, how on cold days in Greenville, I would stick my hands under his blanket, where the heat was, and we would stand there, embracing; My father coming into the ring after I trained to “join up.” I would drop the reins, let Ham follow where George led; he always followed.

It sometimes seemed the only time I could rest was on Ham’s back, my father guiding us. Or on those early horse show mornings, well before sunrise, Ham and I alone in the groom stall, warm clamp lights and the noise of the show waking up as I braided. I would talk to him, tell him how our class would go, tell him he was beautiful, the best. And he would sigh, exasperated, because he already knew all that.

When finally we won the World, our last junior year, it felt predestined. Every step Ham took was a step I had planned for us, sitting on my bedroom floor with my Breyers, playing dream horse. I returned to college with a wreath of roses around my neck. But at night I cried for Ham, our love, afraid to lose. I was torn between the freedom I felt in New York, at NYU, and the freedom I felt with Ham, my guilt when I wasn’t with him. On top of all that, my mother wanted to sell.

Judy Nason saved us, took Ham in while I went to school; under her guidance Savannah Cushing did well with him in Junior Exhibitor. When I could, I caught the train from New York, rode up the hill at Judy’s new barn in Ashby Massachusetts, a view all the way to Boston on clear days. In the summer, I still groomed for Bellewether, having an absolute blast with Kali Sink and Laura Palmer. My mother, by then, was sick. The cancer she’d beat when I was five returned my freshman year of college. Surgeries, treatments, questions, they seemed endless; four years of fear. I graduated, moved to her attic in Connecticut. Together we drove to Judy’s to pick up Ham. He greeted me at his stall door expectantly, like he’d been waiting. What took you so long?

We moved him to Baldwin Stables in Deep River, Connecticut, where I could visit every day after work, a part-time job I commuted to in the city, good enough to cover Ham’s board. My mother was still in and out of the hospital then, and Karen and Jack Baldwin often let me ride late at night, after I visited her, because I had no other time. When she came home, she walked with a cane, and would hobble to the barn despite the cold, to watch me and Ham fly.

She was sick again by summer. Her best friend, Judy Rasmuson, and I shared caretaking duties. Those months return to me now in smudges of color: my mother in her hospital bed in the sunroom, swaddled in cream-colored blankets. The red of her wound. Judy R. with her long yellow hair, clasped in butterfly clips, bringing bouquets of blue hydrangeas to Mary’s bedside. My chosen-uncle Richard at the patent black piano. Ham down the road, wearing his summer coat, a brown that shone purple-blue as a ripe plum. For my birthday, Judy R. gave me dressage lessons with a local trainer, came to watch, reported to my mother how beautiful we looked, how strong. I could see it pleased them both.

Some months prior, I had gotten into graduate school in California. But how could I go and leave my mother, leave Ham? She would help me, Mary said. I had to live my life. She seemed determined, that summer, to heal so I could do so. In my attic room, I found a card on the bed from Judy R. Inside, enough money to ship Ham to California.

I drove West, selected a boarding barn close to school, tucked into the mountains with a small ring and creek bed we could ride along. While I got set up, Ham stayed in Connecticut with the Baldwins and Amy Zolnik, who did a fabulous job with him. In the early winter, Gerry Rushton drove Ham across the country. Gerry’s truck, coming up the driveway, pulling Ham, looked like someone returning my lost home: here you go, you’ve been missing this, the heart center of your life.

In California, we galloped under full moons; we walked in the creek bed, watching out for snakes. I lay on Ham’s back, looked up at the sky and felt his soul and mine, entwined beneath the shooting stars. My father visited and led us around the ring, Ham following, as he always followed. I met my husband, Jon, and we fell in love. He came to the barn with me sometimes to be bitten by Ham, who for the first five years of their relationship, was suspicious. Once, we rode together, Jon at Ham’s withers, me spooning from behind, my hands on the reins, the three of us flying.

In 2011 we moved to Texas. Ham turned out in a grass pasture while I worked on my PhD. My mother went in and out of the hospital, in and out, in and out, as if through a revolving door: oncologists offices, chemotherapy suites, emergency rooms, hospital rooms, they blurred by. Through it all I never worried about Ham; he was safe and strong, steady. I needed him to be that, and he was.

In June of 2015, Jon and I married. I had always wanted to ride Ham to my wedding or arrive in a cart he pulled. But he was in Texas that summer and we were in crisis; my mother was dying. By September she was gone.

I returned to Austin and threw myself into riding. Everything was Ham. We moved to Grace Harris’s beautiful barn, with the big covered ring around which deer came to graze most nights. Each time I saw them watching us, I thought of Mary, how relieved she would be to know I was with Ham, to know we were together.

Grace and Rhiannon Beauregard gave us an introduction to dressage, Rhiannon and I taking Ham and Meadowair Yomen to small shows in the oppressive summer heat, camping in a tent outside their stalls, as we had when we were girls. It was soon to compete, but I was manic in my grief, determined to win after so much loss. By then Ham was twenty-five. But he still flew.

All the way to Oklahoma we went, back to the site of our World Championship win. This time we lost, last place. Then again, by coming this far, had we not already won?

Still, I was sinking. Grieving, and Jon’s mom was sick by then, too, the weight of caretaking once again heavy. We returned to California and Ham went to live at Lyles Perkins’ Courtship Ranch under the eye of Jennifer Granger, of Rushton Stables, LA. A godsend, because my hands were full, worrying about Jon, who soon after our move lost his mother, also. Jen gave Ham a beautiful life as a lesson horses for little ones. I drove up some Sunday nights, rode bareback, or just lay there, feeling his body beneath mine, strong, every breath a reminder: I could always come home.

Two and a half years ago, Jon and I moved to Malibu. It was time to bring Ham closer. Four minutes down the road, to be precise. Brian and Ahad at Zad Ranch gave him a lovely stall and let him tear up the turn out. When we moved next door, to Gina Merz McCloskey’s Rancho Sea Air, he had an ocean view.

I will always remember these last years with Ham as among the happiest of my life. The accomplishment of having made it to Malibu together, the pride of caring for him, the joy. It felt surreal. As a girl, I had to drive for hours to be near him. Now I saw him twice a day, often finding him and Maestro kissing, sometimes seeing Lenore and Sagan in the evening and laughing about our horses, so in love. We no longer rode, but some nights we still flew, Ham trotting beside me in the round pen; I would grab onto his mane and jump, and for a few strides, he would carry me. When I went to New York to launch Aesthetica in paperback, and later, on book tour to Sweden and France, my dear teacher Suzee Carnel, Diana Bock, Juan, Sammy, Gina, and veterinarians Dr. Merle DerVartanian and Dr. Kristen Brown, of Conejo Valley Equine, tended to Ham as though he was their own.

He belonged to many but he was my home. The ground on which I stood. He held in his body the story of my girlhood, so much change and pain and fierce determination to survive. In my adolescence, I often dreamed the same nightmare: Ham and I trapped in a crumbling barn, and I needed to lead us to safety. But I shouldn’t have worried; we were always going to make it. Ham was always going to save me.

His illness, in the end, was swift, for which I am grateful. He was thirty-three, a venerable age, and I had spent the past twenty-four years telling him how much I loved him. I wanted more time, but had no unfinished business. On Friday November 1st, the day he died, twenty-four years exactly from the day I got him, I went by the barn in the morning, found him waiting for me, eyes bright, ears up, expecting treats, which of course he received. We did our daily walk, our daily groom, daily application of liniment, more treats. As I turned to leave, he stuck his nose over the stall door for me and I kissed it. I remember thinking it was the perfect kiss, reciprocal, singular, a touch that was more than a touch. I’ll see you later, I said. And told him once more I loved him. And walked off into my future.

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