Victory on a Ragtime Wednesday

There was a lot of hugging and crying and laughing and barking going on in a Ventura courtroom last Tuesday and Wednesday, and when it had all subsided, the existence of a dog-sized horse in a suburban neighborhood was vindicated, and another city effort to skewer one of its citizens had been flushed down the commode of lost causes.

I was not present for the joyful moment, more’s the pity, but I am told that bailiffs, lawyers, judges and passers-by danced and wept when another judge ruled that it was all right for Patty Fairchild to keep a miniature horse in the yard of her Thousand Oaks home, thus culminating a 2-year battle that encompassed more drama and sweetness than a Robby Benson movie.

The media, which has turned the tale of Ragtime, the miniature horse, into international fare, dutifully recorded the proceedings and engendered speculation that the whole thing might be turned into a television movie, even a mini-series. There hasn’t been this much fuss made over a horse since Roy stuffed Trigger.

The barking, by the way, was not from the horse or from any of the human participants on a day already being called Ragtime Wednesday. It came a day earlier with the actual appearance of Ragtime and an unnamed Great Dane in the courtroom. Patty Fairchild was attempting to show that her miniature horse was smarter and nicer and smelled better than your average stupid dog.

I can vouch for that, having visited Ragtime in his Shadybrook Drive abode. Patty demonstrated the horse’s intelligence at the time by having the spunky little quadruped wave, bow, dance, nod and shake its head no, challenges that leave a lot of teen-agers drooling with incompetence. I had the feeling that Ragtime could probably write simple essays, but I didn’t ask. I’m not up to taking on a horse with a keen sense of narrative.

I was also shown Ragtime’s stall. It was heated and spotlessly clean and did not send me reeling backward choking on pungent horse smells. I’ve had neighbors who smelled worse, and they didn’t keep horses.

At any rate, Ragtime demonstrated some of his smartness and fragrance before Ventura Municipal Judge John J. Hunter on Tuesday, leaving his honor, needless to say, favorably impressed. Ragtime’s appearance was followed by that of the aforementioned Great Dane who bounced, bumbled and panted about the courtroom with typical canine ebullience. The contrast was remarkable. The dog did everything but knock out a wall and urinate against the empty jury box.

The judge ruled in Ragtime’s favor the next day, and the victory would be complete, except that it has cost Patty and her husband, a Sparkletts delivery truck driver, $20,000 they don’t have. There were lawyers’ fees to begin with and expert witnesses flown in from Washington, D.C., and New Mexico for the final hearing.

The Ragtime & Patty Story began in December, 1986, when Patty was told by smug, comfortable Thousand Oaks that she couldn’t keep a horse on her residential property, the logic being that if you allow a horse in, someone else would insist on housing a white African rhino or a family of migrating wildebeests.

Patty argued that Ragtime, at 28 inches high, was smaller than most large dogs, a breed not excluded from residential neighborhoods, but the Thousand Oaks City Council, no doubt feeling threatened by a horse with a higher IQ than a majority of its members, ruled that Ragtime had to go. A law was revised to implement that order, and the whole thing went to court three times, each of which case the city lost. Final defeat came Wednesday.

“I hope this is the end of it,” Patty said the other day in a voice barely above a pneumonia-induced whisper. “I am physically and emotionally drained. The court ruling was a wonderful moment, but now I just wish they’d leave us alone.”

I tried to prod her into saying that she despised Thousands Oaks and every false value it represented, but all she would say was that she was angry and hurt and wished it all hadn’t happened. “There are a lot more important things to do with the taxpayers’ money,” she said.

If there’s a lesson here, it’s how petty and mean municipal government can be when it responds to a citizen’s legal challenge with a lash of civic vengeance. Patty was lucky. By its bitter little effort to stamp her out, Thousand Oaks demonstrated its immense capacity for malice. The next step would have been to burn down her house and haul her away in chains.