LIPISINA
Lydia found her Lipisina in far-away drunk village, where there was no food for two weeks. Lipisina had got an awful injury of her leg (she fell through rotten floor boards). Her skin stripped off like a stocking and looked terrible.

Lydia exchanged looks with a dirty round-bellied mare (Lipa was nearly 4 years old) – and made a decision at once:
We shall take her!
Will we examine her? I asked.
No, we shall take her without this, Lydia answered.
Maybe we should call a vet? I mentioned .
No, we will heal her. And we shall! She is a great horse.

Everything was decided in 5 seconds. In a little loose box. Without dressage tests, without inspection, without diagnostics.

Knowing Lydia’s phenomenal intuition for horses, I immediately gave a little money, and Lipa went away with us. Forever.

When she had been healed and walked – she became an absolute genius of Nevzorov Haute Ecole. Phenomenally smart, phenomenally strong and talented horse.

The grateful collective-farmers, happy by our fast and profitable decision to purchase the horse (as how were they going to sell Lipa with a horrible scar on her leg), gave us a large wagon as a present.

So stories about a choice of a horse are different. And if there are no timetables of movie -making, cost sheets, or if there is an opportunity, we should choose our horses only like Lydia did.

Though … I can tell you one more story (in excuse of my experience that was described above) …

TASHUNKO
I was looking for a horse for another cinema shooting. Dogmatically not a chestnut as there were already decorations of a brown color, the color of old stones. Against these decorations any chestnut horse would not be noticeable (not to look at her work). The desire of the movie director, operators and art-directors was only one: any horse but not of chestnut color!

Finally, there was a note in the draft script: “Needed horse: grey color, dappled”. And above that judgmentally: “Not of chestnut color!”

American color partition had been offered and there would be complicated polysynthetic light on the film set, that there would be ideal for light-gray shade of a coat of the horse. Our operator was very proud of that color partition, the price of which was several thousands of dollars. He used to display his drawings and used to sit correcting something, changing “on the ray” the angle of the device’ positions, amazed and admired by the American technologies of light-organizing on the film set.

So we finally come to the stable where the horses stayed from Rostov, who were prepared for sale … Before we went inside, everybody reminded me chorally: ”Not a chestnut color!!!” As I remember, I agreed totally. A stableman said there were horses of different breeds and color, even thoroughbred English horses. I immediately did a passionate lecture about “bad English blood” and how unsuitable this breed was for School work. Especially if those horses were chestnut. The second part of my short lecture was about the total impossibility of School education for horses who had race-track experience. I was trying to prove that there are no idiots who take for a School horse, after time in the hippodrome. Operator and art- director applauded. I bowed and went into the stable.

Our group stayed outside near an awful green bus, converted into a horse-trailer. They did not have much interest in our selection process and, knowing Lydia and me, they understood it could be a long process.

In seven minutes I walked out from the stable. The stableman solemnly leading after me a horrible chestnut mare …

She was 3 years old. She had been raced since she was 2 years old. She had a very idiotic name (I changed it, of course) …

I had such a physiognomy that our operator said all that American color partition was Bullshit, and we will transmake it for a chestnut mare with great pleasure.


Why did I do this then? Simply, when I saw the mare I understood that I should save her from sportsmen, from equestrian sport of all hazards. She was still a child then. A child who has already known the hell of the hippodrome. This hell was in her eyes, in her submissive contempt of the people who were passing her. And I had passed her then, listening to her characteristics from the horse-seller, but I had caught her look and I had turned back and immediately decided everything. That, probably, was the attack of that generous passion, under hypnosis of which one must make all important decisions.

I had already known her race-track past: torn ligaments, beatings, alcoholic-jockeys, breaking her mouth, again beating, and at night, in a stinking hippodrome’s box, dripping blood from her nostrils, a tongue that was tied up to her under jaw by dirty tights, and beating again and again …

It was easy to guess the kind of future which came after racing was waiting for her … Bits, spurs, beating, torn mouth, painted sticks, again bits, training, inflated whelks, and painted sticks again … Everything was easy to predict. I knew it in advance. Clearly.

I don’t know why but I decided to prove to this unlikely chestnut and completely unsuitable mare that she could live another life.

And I have proved it.

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