"Sacred Dog..." 'Bettejo Dux' (In Memory of Ari)

Bettejo Dux has lived on the cosmic Garden
 Island of Kaua'i for over 40 years.
Our  heartfelt condolences go out to
Bettejo on the loss of her Best friend,
 Ari the horse. RIP Ari...

www.bettejodux.com

www.amazon.com

Sacred Dog

American Indians called the horse  ‘sacred dog’ and acquired him  in the mid-1500s when De Soto and Coronado brought it to our shores. The Indians took to the animal like brilliance takes to  rainbows. The horsemen of the plains were considered by many in the American cavalry,”The finest light horse cavalry in the world.” They were never defeated in combat.

The Horse Culture on the plains  lived with their animals, and like the riders in the Spanish School in Vienna today,  came to call them ‘friends’. They lived with their horses. They knew them with their heart.

Lives of the nomadic Plains tribe, especially the Comanches,  were revolutionized by the horse and they became  skilled thieves perfecting the art of  rustling.  They were the best of horsemen and we treated them badly. In 1874 thousands of animals, considered by the southern Commanche to be their best, were senselessly slaughtered.  Ari often reminded me. Horses have a different sense of history and time. All of them recall what earth was like when the world was young and no grunting four-spinning upstarts jammed the roads and fouled the air.

I ‘d tell Ari stories like a silly human–dates and names and stuff like that–and he’d look me in the eye the way a good horse does–and  snort,  reminding me his roots on our home planet went back 40 to 60 million years. His earliest  ancestor, little eohippus, the Dawn Horse showed up a lot earlier in the game than we did. “How long you been around skinny two legs?”

He had me there.

He loved  me to tell him stories.

Flowers are now planted where
 Ari once lived.
Photo by Bettejo Dux
(Bettejo's first  photo
with her new iPhone!)

An incurable romantic,  he loved  fiction best.   Hidalgo, the mustang,  and Frank Hopkins who raced him’cross the Ocean of Fire were his favorites. When Ari was recovering from  surgery,  I constructed a paddock at my end of the barn and rigged  a projector and white sheet sharing the Disney movie with him. He watched it over and over.  For a horse who’d been free as a  feral hen, to be corralled in a 20×20 foot  area for three months–the recovery was long–was an ordeal. I  had to relieve his boredom. Mine, too.

I mean, how many organic carrots can we munch?   He  loved  dearly cornflake butter crunch cookies.

For over forty years I’ve lived with  a horse like the Indian lived with his.  He was a friend.  My best.  He slept in the bedroom next to mine.  I couldn’t ask for a sweeter neighbor. I met him first on Oahu in 1993. We looked each other in the eye and immediately bonded.  Born on Kauai in  1987, he was 29 years old.

The night he died, peacefully in his sleep, he said, “What you skinny two legs need  is another Seabiscuit.” He loved that film best.  (Check out the YouTube trailer of Seabiscuit below)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DjeJ37my3g

His death left a hole in my heart the size of Diamond Head Crater, and a chunk out of my life the magnitude of Mount Kalihi.

But this he gave me: the joy of having known him.

 Ari and Bettejo talking story...

Editors note;

This blog also appeared the following day as a guest column in The Garden Island News

with a different title;

‘Ari’ brought great joy to this life

http://thegardenisland.com/news/opinion/guest/ari-brought-great-joy-to-this-life/article_1a3b0699-88c6-5dec-8360-04ec62576516.html

Bettejo provided the quote on 

the enclosed Kauai sunrise meme!

Editor's note, Dakinetalk guest bloggers do not necessarily represent the opinions of dakinetalk. Guest bloggers are given space to express their beliefs and or opinions. We feel there are many roads and like to give people space to express their thoughts,after-all that's what dakine is...

Aloha, James "Kimo" Rosen---Blogger-n-chief, dakinetalk blog---

Hana Hou, (Encore) 

The late Veterinarian Dr, Scott Sims was Ari's vet
and told Bettejo," horses don't eat oranges?"
Ari didn't know that, he loved oranges.

Above image  of  Dr.Scott Sims
and Pegasus created
by Malia Coleman