The muttering of the fodder By Juan López-Ayala

I like to go down to the stables when they are chewing the last meal at dusk. I love that noise that sounds rhythmic, burr, yum, yum, softly reverberating on the walls with mutterings of fodder, as those murmurs smell like smashed oats mixed up with alfalfa hay at the adjoining troughs and… I don’t know, like the perfume of freshly washed sheets kept on the chest at grandmother’s house, the old way, with quinces and apples.
On winter nights, especially, it feels so good to be here! The horses, with their gushes of blood and their handsome, big bodies, warm the air and, since they know me, I have endless chats with them, imaginary, subliminal. What they like most is for me to tell them about the mares who are at the

shed nearby, which is next to the pastures and which they hear and scent without being able to see them until spring.

But in the meantime, they are still doing their thing, burr, yum, yum, grinding with their enormous molars and conveying something close to gratitude for the daily visit, for contemplating them, for stroking, sometimes with my words, at other times with my hands, their superior foreheads; for complying, literally, which the Spanish proverb that says that the eye of the owner fattens the horse, for the moment of company, for never forgetting to wish them good night.

Juan López-Ayala Valverde is a stockbreeder, judge for the Hispano-Arabic race and secretary of the Peña Caballista Sol located in Fuengirola.