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Show /07 center of balance shifted. It became her, her personality too, for early on she Ba^ turned as mild and gentle as family pets are supposed to be. She even got a soft misty look in her eye. I could touch her anywhere then, curry her stroke her rump and flanks and belly and even her ripening udder and she stood there and preened and practically purred. I thought she didn't want to jolt the foal in her, probably hormonal changes had much to do with it, but whatever, sometiing growing in her tyri eased the torment that pack of kids had caused her, as if, fulfilled, she had come at last fully into serenity. No birth can be taken for granted. We had a bay mare named Belle whose first colt simply would not come out: Dad Jptt*Thad to use a block and tackle to yijp it out of her, with the result that her interior space was ruptured, mangled, she never came into heat again and remained barren. Wkaa What I remember most about her was that the sphincter of her bladder had been damaged so that she had no control, she dribbled urine constantly and had a white salty crust on her hocks. One day she was part of a team I was using, at the end a of the row I turned the horses, when she saw another horse and whinnied. The whinny forced her urine out with more pressure^ the wind carried it back to me, right in my face. Scvne-tihiCS \t d.'ci 5*f wes^y, But of course Beauty was charmed and one May day when I was in school she went through the pain and blood of birth, cheerfully, Dad said, and we had another mule, male, though a lot of good that would do him. No doubt that he was Beauty's offspring, black and white with her lively eyes, though he had longer ears and a longer head, was thinner and eventually taller than she. And he was vivid: he caught the eye and held it. But he had the personality of one of those spoiled pretty children who make you ache to smack them, and a lack of concern for anything other than himself that was appalling. I'd thought Beauty was independent but she, after all, had a sexual tie with the rest of the world, subject to it. She was also back to her old ways, touchier about her flanks if anything, |