The Third Thing

Normal Life Field Report #10

Small talk: Which is to say I’m still talking about the weather

May 04, 2026

Location: Living room couch, Grand Junction

Date: 5/03/2026

Weather: Could definitely use more rain

Vibes of the month: Deeeeeep breaths

On a Friday afternoon, Dr. Dooher is placing thin needles all over Tex’s back, and legs, and feet. He stands like a perfect gentleman, his eyes heavy, his neck drooping with ease. I expect him to jerk backward but he barely registers the acupuncture needles.

There is nothing wrong with him it turns out. He is perfect except that he needs to put on a little muscle which I believe will be our endless work. He’s a little tense in the neck, jaw, and pole (that bundle of muscle and fascia just behind the ears), but otherwise, he’s just a real solid horse. Dr. Dooher says he’s a real sweetie, which fills my heart with a kind of pride that I previously imagined was solely reserved for motherhood.

It feels special to buy him this chiropractic appointment as a little treat.

A few Fridays later, another vet and a dentist are out to float his teeth. They give him a sedative and he slumps forward in his pen and us three women laugh about how nice it might be to get a little high on a Friday night in the desert. Tex’s lower lip droops and his tongue starts sloshing around and the dentist slips the metal speculum into his mouth.

She goes in with a hand file and starts softening the hooks and edges that have formed in his perpetually growing teeth over the last year. Tex works the speculum with his tongue over and over and over again until spit is running out his mouth and making a dark brown puddle in the sand. His eyes are soft and dark and rolled back just a little in his head.

A half hour later, his teeth are finished and it is my job to walk him around the empty barn and keep him from eating anything until the drugs wear off and his swallowing reflex kicks back in. For the next few hours, anything he can get his mouth on becomes a choking hazard. A friend brings me a s’mores blizzard from Dairy Queen and Tex watches me eat it longingly (by which I mean he attempts to knock it out of my hands multiple times).

After two hours, I make him a sopping wet smoothie that he slurps up from a bucket like a messy toddler and proves to me that he can most likely swallow. His muzzle is covered in wet green slop, which he lovingly rubs all over my shirt when he is finished.

I put him back in his pen as it’s getting dark, where he attempts to eat hay, but his mouth is still funky, so a lot of the hay just falls out. This makes him hilariously angry and sends him bucking all over his pen. When a skunk runs near the fenceline, Tex takes off at a gallop and attempts to stomp the poor thing to death. In those 4.5 seconds all I can think is there’s no way there’s enough tomato sauce in the world to un-skunk a horse.

The skunk, thankfully, escapes without incident.