Mourning an Empty Stall, a Broken Heart : Love: Reporter was devastated when her horse died a year ago. Their friendship was unconditional and cannot be replaced. But, slowly, she is opening up to another equine companion.

His name was Sundance, and he was a horse to dream about.

He was a companion and a protector. And by the time he died a year ago, he had become the most trusted of friends. He would listen, respond, accept the worst, share the best, give more than asked.

Once forged, our friendship was not conditional, as it is with humans. Nor could it be easily broken.

Such a communion of spirits cannot be replaced, and that is why my grief over his death seems so complete at times.

I feel sorry for myself. There is such a sense of melancholy in knowing I will never again hear his deep, throaty nicker of greeting or feel his soft nose or race through woods jumping streams and dodging trees.

The first time I saw him it was early evening around the time of the winter solstice in 1980, so it was very dark and cold, too cold to snow. He lived in a rundown barn, all alone, and his eyes told me he wanted company and someone to stroke his face and talk quietly to him.

He stood in an open stall with wooden sides that only went up to his chest. Not a horse stall at all, but he didn’t seem to mind. A single light bulb illuminated his face--a golden light that seemed to create a halo around his head, showing off the blond tips in his black mane and the amber in his reddish-brown face.

When I went to the barn the next day, others were looking at him, examining him, poking him. I hated them for the interest they showed.

They examined leg length and bone structure and teeth and hoofs. All I wanted to know was whether he’d lay his head on my shoulder like he did to the woman who fed him.

He had been given so little attention all his life. His teen-age owner wasn’t interested in him any longer, so he was being cared for by a relative, a young mother who, though kind, didn’t have time to do much more than feed him and clean his stall.

No one even knew how old he was. By checking teeth and gum lines we guesstimated he was around 8. But we could have been off by a year or so.

I bought him, even though my husband and I weren’t ready yet to get a horse. As crummy as his old barn was, ours was crummier--a paltry, wind-whipped three-sided shed with more holes than wood.

He didn’t seem to mind. Sundance was a loner, not at all like most horses who wither away without companionship. He loved the outdoors and only became surly when he was locked inside. Even later, when we built a grand barn, we made a special stall so he could go in and out as he pleased.

Sundance made me wait a long time before he allowed me to become his friend. He was afraid of many things at first, tentative about letting me pet him or ride him, fearful of strange objects on the trail, reluctant to cross streams, petrified of the sound of water being squirted through a hose, reserved to the point of being almost antisocial with strangers.

But as the years passed, his trust in me steadily grew.

He would do anything I asked, at any time.

If I wanted him to take me through a thicket of thorns, he plowed ahead with nary a flinch. And when I’d stupidly test his loyalty by picking the steepest hills for him to climb or the longest culvert to walk through, he never faltered. He just did it. Because I asked him to.

The feeling of complete satisfaction that comes with having such a companion is impossible to describe or measure. I rode him thousands of times but never ceased to feel a thrill when we’d ride fast and wild and free--and immeasurable comfort in knowing he would keep me safe and do nothing reckless. This was life at its most perfect.

Over the next 12 years his stride never faltered, his speed never diminished. The more I rode him, the more he seemed to improve with age, like a marathon runner who never gave up running.

I did not expect him to die so suddenly.

The day after Christmas, 1992, he lay down and didn’t want to get up or eat. Less than 24 hours later and what must have felt to him like an eternity of pain, he was dead from an undetected tumor that cut off the blood flow to his abdomen and rotted his intestines.

It was weeks before I could enter the barn again, and months before I could spend time with my three other horses.

The more I neglected the other horses, the worse I felt. And one day I recalled that old adage about falling off a horse: You really do have to get back on.

I mostly ride Arkay now. She’s 5 years old and she seems to want--no, need--my company. She tags along behind me when I’m in the pasture, pokes her head between the bars of her stall to watch me as I move through the barn and gets visibly jealous when I ride any other horse.

She’s not like Sundance. She likes baths. She likes to be brushed. She hates mud. And she keeps her stall very, very clean.

We haven’t reached that same telepathic union Sundance and I shared. But then, Arkay’s still young.