Gold Dancer

My name is Gold Dancer, and I’m nervous today. There’s a buzz in the air that feels familiar, it’s loud here. Everyone around me is being prodded and poked and strapped with equipment. Today must be one of the big ones. 

I can see the fences in front of me now, they’re the difficult ones. They’re taller than the hurdles and each one is harder to clear than the last. But I know I have to try – they teach me that with the whip. 

I know horses like me die here, the man on my back has had one die under him here only two years ago. Three horses have died under him that we know of so far. He wouldn’t let me be the fourth, surely?

Someone has fallen now and they’ve taken down someone else – my panic levels are rising, but my energy levels are falling. It’s so hard to clear massive fence after massive fence. My hooves graze through the next one – not a good sign. Maybe the next one is the last one. I give it everything I’ve got and make it over, only for my heart to drop when I see another coming up. This has to be the last one. I jump with everything I have left but it’s not enough. The fence catches my back legs, and I can barely get them back under me before I hit the ground. 

I hear it crack, I feel it crack, my back is broken, but I jump back up and try to keep going. My body wants to give in, but my instincts say to try to keep going. They never let me live in a herd, but I know it’s who I am in my heart. We’re social animals who come from the wild and when the herd is running you better be running too, otherwise you’re the one who’s going to get taken down by a predator. 

I try to keep going but straight away I can tell that something really isn’t right, the pain in my back is agonising, so I start to slow down. Surely, he will let me slow down. But that’s when a pain shoots through my side as he hits me hard with his whip. I have to go on. So, I keep going and going and going until they let me stop. He jumps off me and that’s when I lose my legs. It all goes dark around me and the people who were poking and prodding us earlier are back. They’re poking and prodding again. They’re saying things like “there’s nothing else we can do”.  

The world turns black and in the distance, I can hear people saying I won – but this doesn’t feel like winning. 

My name was Gold Dancer. I was someone.