Complicated

“Well she’s… complicated…” he says, “This isn’t the kind of horse you move on, sell to someone else or otherwise offload.” As he turned to my friends he added, “This is the kind of horse that, well, people with this kind of disorder end up with…”

I didn’t ask Tom what exactly that disorder was. I didn’t ask because I was pretty sure I knew. I was pretty sure it was whatever the disorder- it is the thing that tries to explain why certain people, upon finding they have acquired a “complicated” horse, instead of thinking what a terrible thing it is and how difficult the road will be, see an opportunity to learn things that “uncomplicated” horses cannot teach you.

I could be wrong about that and probably should have asked. Probably I didn’t really want to know the definition of this disorder in it’s entirety. Some things are better left to wonder.

I do have a fairly “uncomplicated” horse in the herd and I enjoy her immensely. I am not the kind of person who has to have a problem to solve at all times. Ok. That’s not true, I am that kind of person. However, I am also the kind of person who can enjoy an uncomplicated horse. In fact, I am grateful that the complicated horse will make me better for the uncomplicated one as well. 

Enough of that. Back to the complicated wild one.

I’ve had Wyoming, I keep saying about five years, but I think I’ve been saying five years for at least two years now, so it might be more like seven years. I’ve written about her journey from time to time here. I’ve ridden her, I’ve done ground work, I’ve trailer loaded her, I’ve done clinics with her… but I have never found “success” with her. 

When I say success I mean: felt like we had come to a place where things were working together well. 

Everything I have done with her that initially masqueraded as success has always eventually unraveled, sometimes in potentially dangerous ways.

I could get things done with her, and she’s so sensitive it sometimes “looked” amazing, but it never felt good, it never felt solid, it never felt right.

I still haven’t given up. This mare has over time brought up the question for me if there are horses we should “give up” on and allow them to live out their days as a pasture ornament, but that never felt right for her. I think Wyoming has a desire to do something together. I just have not been able to figure out how to do it so it works for us both.

This is Tom Moates’ second visit to play around with us on the farm. We focused on trailer loading last time, and though that is still not settled, I have a good path laid out and can continue to work on it. What I wanted to address this visit was the path to becoming a reliable riding horse (or the decision she couldn’t be). 

She has been started and restarted a few times already, the last time, a couple years back I even went on a few nice trail rides on her before she began laying down during the ride. Yes, while I was riding her. When she was done, she was done. I was never hurt, she would simply lay down and I got off, but this is an example of how it was not successful. 

I tried letting her know this laying down thing is not how we do trail rides. She didn’t care. When Wyoming is done, there’s nothing left to say about it. I could have whipped or beat her, but it wouldn’t matter. She would die if that’s what it took. This is what we come to, eventually, with about everything.

After a few episodes of her laying down on the trail, and me trying various responses of either ignoring it- getting off, asking her to get up, and simply getting back on and continuing on… I also tried carrying a crop and smacking her forward when she started to lay down… she actually got so fast at it in order to avoid getting driven forward that she could lay down with little to no warning! 

But it didn’t matter in the end, because the problem continued to move up the chain to her refusing to leave the yard entirely and she would crow hop, buck and start to rear if I insisted. Which took us all the way back to can we ride in the arena again, and then can I just get on her and ask her to go forward at all?

This is an example of how things would come apart. 

And so I go back to the drawing board and try to figure out why this isn’t working out.

Since she didn’t travel on a trailer (she has before but that also came unglued) my options for getting help living at the end of nowhere have been limited. In February, Harry Whitney put me in touch with Tom Moates, who lives within driving distance from me. Tom has an interest (disorder based too?) in wild mustangs and complicated horses, Wyoming is both of these, so he was keen to work with me if I could line up enough other horses to make the short trip worthwhile. We now call them these fun two-days of people and horses “roving clinics” as we hop up the valley from farm to farm on the 220 corridor. Mix in some good food and laughter and what could be better?

On Monday (day one of two days this visit), Tom watched me halter Wyoming in the field with her small herd loose on the handful of acres, and try to get her mind centered on me. Unsuccessfully. 

I had planned to get her halter on in order to bring her in so we could begin talking about the process of saddle and riding and how we might go about finding the holes that have apparently been left behind in the many other starting processes so I could sort out my homework with her going forward. I had plans, but have learned to come with a plan and take what presents. I could have walked her away but I knew she wasn’t with me, so I tried to address that first. 

Tom watched me struggle to center the mare and get her to let go of the herd, the environment, and all the other things her busy mind keeps track of at any one second and after a few minutes asked me: Would you like me to comment?

Yes. Please. 

In this way we began working right there in the field with what we had. It took a while to get the mare willing to give up on all the other thoughts she was juggling enough to cooperate with a few simple asks including “can you walk around me in a circle, relaxed and responsive in case I want to make a change midstream (not on autopilot)?” What I’ve become used to and what Tom and the others were seeing is that this mare can go from: I’m ok but I’m not really focused… to I’m about to stab you in the heart and pound on your grave… quickly back to oh hey what do you want to do for dinner?

It’s a Jekyll and Hyde life with her, and when she threatens death it’s convincing.  I’ve yet to see her follow through, and I’m not afraid of her. This doesn’t mean I don’t take her seriously, but I don’t think she wants to act out her threats. When I see this dragon act, I usually put in a hard boundary and she lets go of murder momentarily, and we go back into the cycle… wash, rinse, repeat. I have not been able to make a significant change in the cycle as of yet. Thus the we are not successful feeling I have. 

On any normal day you walk into the field with the herd she is the ambassador, friendliest horse I have. I bring anyone and everyone in to meet the horses without concern. She is not a generally aggressive horse. She loves to be around people and I see her as usually quite willing to try. All it takes is for her to feel trapped and asked to do something (anything) that isn’t what she had in mind and it flips like a switch to life and death, self-preservation, and you can see it in her threats to fight.

She doesn’t hold on to that big bluster long, and when I meet that with an equal sized quit that!! She always does, and she goes back to a normal looking horse, her eyes are not blazing and her ears look normal, and the teeth go back where they belong behind fuzzy velvet muzzle. Usually she’ll comply with the request which is something like walk around a circle. But often she does it with a hard heart. She complies in order to get it over with which becomes avoidance by compliance. This turns into auto-pilot where she can do the thing without engaging her brain which she prefers to keep on the forty-two things she is juggling while trying not to have to give me any more brain space than necessary to keep me at bay.

I have learned to walk the knife edge of demanding things of her and yet not getting hurt, which as I reflect might have put us in a truce where I accept not having her full attention if she will give me enough of it to do a thing together. This would also be why we still are not successful.

As Tom watched this dynamic between us he questioned some of my responses and my timing, and my choice to get bigger or not get bigger, and when… which all was useful for me because we have a particular history and way of relating that may not be always ideal. Yet after a while when he asked to take the lead rope and do some experimenting he came back with the moment we began this blog.

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She’s complicated.

Tom observed not very many horses are as quick as she is to go to full on life or death self-protection response and threaten violence. He also didn’t think she truly wanted to take out a human, but we all agree it’s not completely posturing. If she were pressed it seemed likely she’d shoot to kill. Her switch between the two: life and death versus compliant seemed unusually quick. It was also not completely clear when the bad attitude needed to be met with a big boundary and when it might be more productive to ignore it and allow it to dissolve without creating an explosion. I have struggled myself sorting this knife edge out in working with her.

What Tom came around to express is his clarity that the mare doesn’t feel very good most of the time, and because she isn’t feeling very good, she’s quick to explode. We don’t know if this is necessarily physical. She may not feel good physically, though I don’t have evidence for this. What seems very clear is mentally and emotionally she does not feel good. This could be chicken and egg so we have to start somewhere to effect her feeling better and my sense is mentally emotionally is a good place to start because we have no clear entry point for the physical (I’ve had her checked over through the years wondering if she had physical issues, and we just don’t have any good leads on that side). 

She is hyper vigilant and is always ready for an environmental factor to take out the herd. She is concerned about everything. I also think from the way I’ve worked with her in the past- with my natural horsemanship, direct pressure, driving style- she is concerned about getting the right answer to a cue. It’s not personal, it’s everything. She’s like a teenager who is mad at the world and the bad attitude is always at the surface ready to come out in a snarky comment, sarcastic remark or an eye roll. 

I don’t know if she came this way or if humans (including me) created this. My guess is it’s a combination, and it doesn’t really matter. The same me working with the same tools also produced Khaleesi who is a great partner and basically compliant- even one might say responsive – horse. We have much room for improvement together but Khaleesi never threatens my life. Each kid is different in a family, so is each horse in a herd. And this horse is more like the kid adopted from a war zone who lived there long enough to carry some trauma. Regardless of her background, I’m sure I have a hand in the degree of problems we are working out. I’m not particularly bothered by this, I only plan to do better from here. 

When Tom said she doesn’t feel good about anything it struck me in a new way. Strange, because I could have said that same thing myself for years if I’d thought about it. Deep down I knew this was true but hadn’t isolated this is the root problem everything hinges from. Clearly the entire picture is hanging on the question: can I help Wyoming feel good about life in general and working with me?

If she did begin to feel good, then trailer loading would work out better, the riding would fall into place, and even simple things would not be such a challenge. As Tom observed: you can get THAT onto a trailer, but then what? You’re just trailering THAT around! You don’t want to travel with THAT? THAT is not the kind of thing you want to export.

Indeed.

And so, the whole thing depends on the question: can I help change Wyoming’s experiences and thus her mind, that working together with me is something she can feel good about? And in changing this, could she feel better about her life all around?

Apparently that’s part of the disorder in me, against all evidence so far, I say yes. At least I think that’s what having hope is all about. Here at Hope Horsemanship, I’m certainly going to try.