My eyes began to water in the heat of the afternoon as I stood in the large dirt arena watching the scene unravel. I was glad it wasn’t likely anyone would notice. My back was to the onlookers, and Mark was working with the wild mare, too involved in what he was doing to notice. I’m not so concerned about tears in public anymore, though it’s not my favorite, but I was pretty sure anyone who did notice would misunderstand the reason for the emotions gripping me in the scene.
They didn’t come from watching my mare rear violently in reaction to even feather light pressure on the halter. Particularly when she became so reactive she fell on her side in the dirt which was quite dramatic. (She wasn’t hurt).
The emotion didn’t come from worry that Mark was being unreasonable in his approach, creating unnecesary fear and stress, and watching him work with her might upset me. I knew he did not create any of what I was observing, it had been inside her as long as I’ve known her.
What grieved me as I watched Wyoming flailing on that lead rope like a fish on a line was a snapshot I had somewhere in my heart of how many of us go through life or seasons of life like this. We are fighting and we can’t seem to stop fighting. We end up getting hurt, and hurting those around us while we flail and fight against what we perceive as life threatening pressure but what is intended to be a comfort. I saw myself at times. I saw people I love at times. I saw humanity. I saw my beautiful mare react in dramatic fashion as if her life was in danger, unable to let go of her past experience, trauma, and fear to trust the guidance. It touched me in an unexpected way in that moment.
Mark Langley working with Wyoming
Mark Langley, who was instructing the four-day clinic on the last stop of his USA tour, cares deeply for the horses and this thing in her that overreacts to any pressure is a torment she does not need to carry. He was hoping he could help her get through it to the other side of this trouble. There is a physical or mental memory (maybe a combination) in her that was seared into her on day one of her mustang make over competition training.
I was told the history when I picked up the wild mare in Tennessee: the trainer put the halter on Wyoming, the mare reacted in fear and came aggressively toward the trainer, the trainer (in her own words) overreacted, putting excess pressure on the halter, and sent the mare up in the air. Her first experience of education with a human ended in a rear up, back flip, and injury to her neck that took her out of the contest and put her on a trailer to Tennessee to have a slower longer training process through the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) Trainer Incentive Program (TIP).
It’s likely with the trainer’s natural horsemanship approach: round pen, energy work and driving to create draw, the mare could be successful and avoid having the feel of restriction of the halter on her head. She became an amazing energy and body language reader. She became a punishment avoiding release hunter. When we picked her up as total strangers, just walking into the small arena, she would hook on to us or whomever it was, and follow closely. It didn’t occur to me that so much draw had been created in this mare that she felt the only good place to be was next to a human in order to avoid being sent out and driven.
Since I’ve had the mare, asking her to back up and out of your space brings pinned ears and stress. It’s a huge feat years later to ask her to comfortably stay just out of your bubble. If I do get her to step back three feet and stand she gets anxious and begins to try to offer a circle or creep back in. She has the expectation that the human is going to ask something of her and she throws out possible options anticipating what might come next. She has learned if she doesn’t comply quickly enough with a request, the enforcing punishment will come via escalating pressure: a lead rope to her hind end, a flag will touch her, the bump on the halter. She lives in the future of what might be coming, and how to avoid it. If she can’t avoid it she feels trapped, gets angry and fights back.
the potential for pull back is serious in a trailer
I stopped natural horsemanship style driving about 18 months ago when I watched Harry Whitney work horses in February of 2023. I think it’s begun to help change some of Wyoming’s experience and reactions, but the deep early formative work with her is still churning away at her core, and when it gets poked it comes out in big reactive displays.
The physical feel is only one thread of the knot which is inside this horse. Many horses comply to driving pressure (I have one who did), but Wyoming was one of the horses for whom the combination created a bit of a Jekyll and Hyde monster. She is either snappy quick, spot on with her reaction to a request or super angry and violent. Additionally in layer of wound up layers, she is a mare who has a hard time letting go of anxious thoughts.
Jaime working with Wyoming during the clinic
Not only is strong drive and draw set into her, but when she is very close to me she can keep track of me physically while keeping her mind out on the larger environment. Asking her to back off three feet also means the human become part of the larger environment and she has to give mental space to keeping track me as well as everything in the next three miles in every direction. She has yet to become truly mentally centered in the way she can let go of the “other things” she holds onto for her survival.
It’s stunning how she can be in this mental, physical, emotional place and still function to the level she does. If we could ever get to the other side of trouble there’s a phenomenal mare in there.
How do we get to the other side of trouble?
If I could answer this definitively I could have helped a lot more people and horses than I have to date. Yet somehow I’m still at this mystery even when I get discouraged. I wonder if I’ll ever know something definitely enough to be of value to a horse- or maybe even some of my fellow humans who are willing to take the mysterious journey into this wilderness of trying to understand how to help a horse feel better and be a more powerful willing partner.
I do believe it is possible and so I don’t give up even when there are setbacks and it gets hard. I do believe with a horse like Wyoming it is a matter of going through to the other side of the trouble and not letting the trouble make her world smaller and smaller until she is afraid of any pressure at all.
It’s likely that Wyoming’s early training taught her that pressure meant she needed to adjust in order to get the pressure to go away. Unfortunately, anytime someone takes a rein in hand it creates a pressure or imbalance that the horse has to respond to – if done well it should bring the horse comfort through guidance, but if they have been trained to avoid pressure and seek release we have lost the ability to guide them through the reins or the lead rope. Very few people work their horses in the real world without reins or a lead rope. Nor do I recommend it as the ideal. Yet this means anytime someone picks up a rein to communicate with their horse, instead of relaxing into a guiding hand, many horses respond with anxiety to seek immediate release of pressure/imbalance which creates brace and tension through the body which works against strength, balance and grace in forward movement.
Jaime & Mark with Wyoming & Khaleesi
I have a hope that Wyoming can get through this extreme fear of pressure that was created early in her training (and solidified for a time by me) so she can trust me to guide her. I want her to feel the rein or lead rope guide her into where she will find peace and safety in my leadership. I want her to correct the imbalance she notices and in doing so find she has choices, and the freedom to choose a path of lease resistance that is fairly available to her because I am able to offer that. But I also want her to be able to stay connected at the end of the rope in appropriate balance of pressure like I would hold my dad’s hand to cross the street as a child.
She has to stop fighting first. If she would stop fighting she could follow that feel and see it would not bring her danger or pain, but comfort and safety. I asked myself if this deep sadness that came over me momentarily was indicative that this scene was playing out in my own life, or was a memory now. I’d like to say I’ve learned not to fight against the hand that guides me with strength, kindness and love. I know that my own journey through the wilderness is far from over, and sometimes I don’t even realize that I’m fighting the guidance that feels like pressure and imbalance and sometimes downright life threatening to me.
I’m sure Wyoming doesn’t understand what I’m trying to do in the bigger picture just as I really don’t always understand the big picture of what is going on in my own life while I’m in the middle of it all.
We were not able to get Wyoming to the other side of trouble in the four days of the clinic, but I learned some things that I hope will help me continue to guide her through. As with most worthwhile journeys, I feel like we’re deep into the wilderness, but in recent years I’ve learned something about the wilderness. I’ve learned it’s the place we least want to go, yet it’s the place where the transformation takes place. If we are going to get to the other side of trouble, chances are we have to be willing to be led into the wilderness.
I am excited to announce to you first officially the first annual POWERFUL HORSE EXPO during what we’re calling Freedom Week. I have been working toward this event for a couple years now am incredibly excited to see it coming to life July 4-7, 2024.
Freedom week is all about helping our horses become powerful equine partners through freedom… We are coming together here to discuss ways our horses can be FREE!
Freedom from pain
Freedom from disease
Freedom from fear
Freedom from force
Freedom from stress
Freedom from confusion
Readers of the blog know HH follows horsemen who consider the mind of the horse first and how it affects the body and emotions. Some known horsemen who do this well and are teaching it include Harry Whitney, Mark Langley, Tom Moates (who also writes about it), Charlie Snell and Ross Jacobs. I highly recommend getting out to visit with some of these guys and see what they are doing to help horses and humans get along better and feel better about the process and become free from fear, force, stress and confusion.
You have a great opportunity to do just that here in Virginia. Mark Langley is on a rare USA tour and will make a stop in Greenville, VA for a 4-day clinic hosted by us here at Hope Horsemanship July 4-7, 2024. We will be at Penmerryl Farm working in the large indoor arena and we have a couple participant spots still available. I haven’t begun to advertise the clinic yet so I anticipate now they will go quickly. If you’re interested send me an inquiry at jaime@hopehorsemanship.com and I’ll get you all the details and registration forms. We are also taking auditor reservations. Auditors will have the ability to interact with Mark and ask questions and those spaces will also be limited each day so it’s a good idea to reserve if you know you plan to come join us!
Mark Langley is also presenting a public demo on Friday, July 5 from 6:30-8:30 at Penmerryl Farm. This is a great way to join us for the weekend events. Mark will work with horses in a live demonstration of his approach to horsemanship and take questions as he goes. Reservations Recommended Link Here.
Mark’s clinic is the anchor for freedom week but on Saturday, July 6 from 10am-5pm we will be holding the Powerful Horse Expo where exhibitors and vendors will be showcasing, offering demos and educational talks with Q&A sessions on topics such as functional saddle fit, forage-based anti-inflammatory equine diets, feeding options for the metabolic horse, rider posture and Alexandar technique sessions, proper balance in functional hoof care, and more! There will be chances to win great prizes from our sponsors including a pair of Scoot Boots!
Advance ticket reservations for admission for the Saturday Powerful Horse Expo are now on sale (click here for tickets) and they will be increasing in price as the event approaches with an at the door price available as well. Reservations are made by name. (We can take a few more vendors at the time of this email as well, contact Jaime@Hopehorsemanship.com for details)
I am so pleased to offer this fun week to celebrate freedom and excellence with our Powerful Horse Partners. Mark your calendars, share the info (download the flyer below), and come join the Powerful Horse Community for a fabulous celebration!
Last year I spent some time with Harry Whitney, read some books by Tom Moates– and invited him to come visit with us here in the mountains, and listened to a fair amount of Mark Langley‘s podcast. I was steeping myself in this way of considering the horse that was a fundamental shift in my approach as much as possible.
I had some nice changes with Khaleesi over the year that I’m loving watching take root into an early harvest this Spring. As we prepare for some events this year, I can feel her new levels of relaxation and adjustability in movement! However Wyoming and I had a rougher go of the changes and trying to sort out how to understand each other in a better way. Last summer there were a fair amount of death threats (probably from each of us) as the lines of muddled communication began to untangle, and sometimes things get looking worse before they begin to smooth out.
Regardless, I knew there was something important in the process so I kept at it.
Then the horses moved home in November which has been a big change for all of us that is settling in nicely now six months into it… and I’ve begun to spend some time working with them again.
The initial work with Wyoming this year has been promising, and in the subsequent sessions, I’ve seen continued progress toward more partnership. Certainly the difference rests mostly in me. Change is possible, but it has to begin with “me” because usually the horse is a perfectly good horse doing what horses are created to do, and usually what the exhibit is in response to the way their environment (mostly human caused) has shaped in them. So regardless of who that human (or humans) were and what it was that did the shaping- that’s not nearly as important as where to go next. The change has been happening in me as I continue to seek and grow and take an honest assessment of my flaws and weaknesses in order to commit to address them.
I’m encouraged by the start of this year, and it gives me hope that there really is change possible for the two of us. I have a sliver of excitement that maybe this could be “the year” for Wyoming and me to begin to function together in a positive way!
Change is possible, but it has to begin with “me”
People have mentioned lately that staying with this dysfunctional situation for over six years must mean I have a whole lot of patience and determination. I suppose in some respects that is a little true. However… I remind them that she had more patience and determination to help me, because she is the one who refused to get on a trailer for that long- and I live in the end of nowhere… which meant I couldn’t move her on if I wanted to and pass her education on to someone else! Unless I was willing to shoot a perfectly healthy horse (which I did consider once or twice, but never seriously!) I wasn’t left with many options but to keep slogging onward. Considering in all those years of lots of sound and fury and threatening, she only once gave me a bruise from trying to bite the halter and grazing my arm, I think she’s been the one to praise. Apparently she never gave up on me.
I won’t get ahead of myself yet. We have a long journey ahead of us, but I think we’ve begun to sort out a better path, and maybe you’ll begin to see some exciting changes in our story this season… stay tuned and see!
Meanwhile, here are two videos that will show more than my words are able how the progress is coming for now.
I scrolled through a video recently where Mark Langley was leading a distracted horse around an arena at a clinic, and whenever the horse attempted to blow past him instead of correcting the horse, he simply changed direction and the horse found himself right back slightly behind Mark (where he preferred the horse positioned). He did this with such grace and softness that it didn’t feel as though the horse was being tricked or punished. Mark played to the onlookers as if he had possibly forgotten something the other direction, or maybe dropped a coin and needed to step back to find it, or was otherwise distracted himself. This mental state was meaningful because the scene playing out didn’t carry any weight of correction. It was a human and a horse navigating around an arena where the horse kept finding himself in exactly the place the human wanted him to be — without judgement.
The horse began to take interest in what was happening with the human at the end of the lead rope, this began to become more engaging than the worry about his environment, and eventually the horse stayed in the zone Mark wanted him. It was as if he had figured out the puzzle instead of being trained or corrected into place. I heard Mark say (this is a paraphrase):
This horse came in here distracted and fearful of this new environment. In this case, with this particular horse who tends toward fear reactions, if I were to harshly correct or punish him for his distracted pushy behavior, I would be increasing his fear reaction by making him more afraid of me than the environment.
The kind of horsemanship I’m interested in is not formulaic, and when posing a question to anyone worth their salt content, the most likely answer will probably sound like a variation on: it depends. The sticky wicket is that a real solution means understanding the root cause and usually a good horseman needs to see what’s going on with their own eyes to notice things that many of us don’t see unless pointed out. They then interpret it with a best guess, and usually after that comes trying something to see if the guess on the right track, and then how the horse responds will determine the way forward for that particular creature in that scenario. Anyone who claims can fix problem X, Y or Z with a three-step, five-step, or any set rubric is selling snake oil, and oddly enough, even snake oil works for a percentage of things….
Mark does a pretty decent job of explaining what his approach is and allowing for the “it depends but you might consider trying….” Which considering we can’t all get to Australia (or Virginia!! We have spaces still available for his USA tour 4-day clinic in Greenville, VA, July 4-7, 2024) can give some ideas to people with fewer resources close to home. So, to clarify, the scenario I watched was not the one and only best answer to a horse who blows past a handler in leading. It was a unique scenario where this response from Mark taking into account the circumstance and the horse’s personality and what Mark had to offer helped to support a struggling horse and bring peace and a present mental state.
This is probably not what my go-to with Khaleesi would be if she was not leading well. However, as I watched, I connected some dots to Wyoming, who is also a fear-reaction-type horse that is on hypervigillance most of the time. I am certain my past training in correcting behaviors I did not want to continue, created in her more fear and anxiety than supporting her confidence and certainly did not bring her peace and a present state of mind. Considering this is what I think about moving forward with her I made a mental note and thought I might play around with that idea when we had some time.
Then Monday came, and I had some time.
My goal was somewhat nebulous: Work together in a way that gave her the least amount of ill feeling possible.
Wyoming packs around some baggage and isn’t entirely cooperative to my plans most days. I was toying with what it might look like to not “correct” her when we begin to diverge in plans.
Could I work with Wyoming in a way where she doesn’t feel wrong, but can I renegotiate to make things work out together better for us both? Can I adjust to keep us at least loosely on my plan for the day and… somehow set it up so that she simply lines up with what I’m doing almost naturally?
In the past, I’ve corrected Wyoming in ways that have been, in her opinion, overly harsh and unfair. Can I help Wyoming make choices that work out better for us without her having ill feelings about the work? How can I shape her behavior patterns without her feeling negatively about our relationship and disconnect us (and not descend into complete positive reinforcement either– we’ve gone there for a time and it’s is missing some components we need for a strong connection)? Can I find ways for us to cooperate and her to become increasingly willing to work together? Can I change her mind about what to expect from me? What would that look like?
I took the halter out to the yard and she eyed me suspiciously. I am sure they know what color halter has their name on it! Also, I probably don’t hide very well who I’m most focused on. That’s ok, I also have given up trying to manipulate my way too intelligent mares by tricking them. That erodes trust. None of my horses were born yesterday.
She knows what I’m doing there with the halter, and so I offered it to her. I’ve never had a mare who comes running to me and dips her nose in the noseband begging me for a work session or a ride… That being said, considering in seasons past she has occasionally all but threatened my life when I offer the halter, she showed pretty mild levels of disinterest instead of dragon ears and nipping at me, and though she had the entire yard to walk away, and she did not. She stayed with me as we negotiated the terms of our connection for the day. Eventually her nose went in the band with minimal fuss and I was able to tie a good knot as she tentatively decided to give me a chance today.
Upon walking out the first gate, through the “front yard” I played the make direction changes against my straight line nature and we made arcs and loops around the yard in the general direction of the second gate. I liked this exercise for the moment. Not only did it stop her from getting ahead of me and cutting me off (don’t take me away from my herd please) but I didn’t have to correct her with a flag swish or rope bump- I simply changed direction and she found herself always positioned just in the right place to follow my lead. She didn’t get frustrated or worried, instead, she seemed curious and she kept herself within a certain boundary to me (I never had to adjust my lead rope) and figured out the game which was emotionally neutral.
When we made it to, then through, the second gate, I rewarded her with some fresh spring grass and hand grazed her a minute or so.
So far so good!
Next, I decided to open the trailer and see where we were since November. The divider is currently out which means its a more open feeling box. I walked on and didn’t do much more than that. Again, as Tom reminds me, she knows what’s going on here. We’ve been playing with trailer loading in this very trailer since she came her years ago. She considered, took a moment at the end of the ramp, and I paused to wait. She came right in, then backed out, came back in, backed out calmly, asked me a few questions, and without ever having to make it “uncomfortable” with the flag, she found the relaxed space in the box with me and never became worried or agitated. I walked her off to hand graze and then went back about four times and each time she was less concerned being in the adventure box.
Loading practice
That was a great first day back in the trailer!
Next I walked her up the driveway to the front of the house where the saddle was set out. I also have some grass in my front yard as a bonus! I groomed her minimally for mud and a layer of shedding fur, and tacked her one step at a time, taking a little circle walk or hand grazing in between and found she never had that ill feeling surface. Only in tightening the girth did she turn her head with a hard eye… I kindly asked her if she might just keep her head straight and “look over that way” if she’s going to give me the stink eye, while I do this, and she relented without much fuss. I also tightened in increments and gave her a little walk circle or a moment to graze in between that as well.
I had not believed I could get to riding before things would fall apart on this day one back in work, but here I found myself. How might I ride her around the yard without bringing up the ill feeling she had gotten in riding previously? I thought it over and decided I would set up a little game… In front of my house was the patch of grass she’d been enjoying off and on, what if I got on her a ways down the driveway and encouraged her to walk toward the house and grass patch? Motivation and purpose can be incredibly helpful.
And so I took the mounting block down the driveway and stood on it. I reminded myself as I’d done the whole session, just like the halter, the trailer, she knew what we were doing here. In the past, when I asked her to line up with me to mount, she nipped and showed concern, but today I waited a moment while she walked in an arc trying to negotiate her position. I simply stood still and let her sort herself out. She eventually put herself in the perfect position. I put a foot in the stirrup, said a little prayer for grace, let my breath out, and sat in the seat. She stood calmly while I rubbed her and waited a while….
I made the intention not to be in a hurry. I rubbed her and relaxed, thought about where I wanted us to go, then sat up, opened my arm out with the lead rope and tried gently to bring up some energy. Wyoming is incredibly sensitive and if I bring up my energy sharply she feels it like a rude slap in the system. So I dialed up the volume of “walk” in me until I felt her begin to shift. She only took a couple steps but it was a start and she did it without ear pinning or offense. I continued to ask her to take a few steps at a time toward the grassy patch and when we finally made it I dismounted and offered her a moment of grass. We repeated this cycle a few times.
The second time I saw a remnant of that past bad attitude and as I gently tried to direct her (probably at this point erring on the side of not enough clarity which is also super annoying to a horse like Wyoming) she reached toward the stirrup and made an attempt to bite my toe. Thankfully I have metal wrapped western monels for her to make contact with and I didn’t have to do a whole lot to redirect her (not even horses like making teeth contact with metal). A few more circles than last time and we made it back the grass. This time she did not try to eat. I think she was more engaged with our activity which is not a bad thing.
We did a third time toward the house and it was a mixed bag of wandering, but it was complete success if one is looking for absence of ill feelings from either of us, and I decided three times was enough for a Monday afternoon and I took off the tack.
On the way back to the herd I stopped at the trailer and we diverted back inside the box for a moment and it was relaxed and easy. Then we wandered slightly circuitous toward the inner gate to the herd. After entering I walked a few steps and removed the halter from a very quiet mare.
After setting her loose she stood there with me in no rush to disconnect. This is a good sign. We must have done something of value for her to decide to stay close once she’s turned loose.
Looking back, I was pleased with this session. One reason I’ve waited so long to take time to work her outside the yards was because I haven’t felt ready to take on the battle the work with her can become. This approach put a check in the positive column and considering we have some baggage and negative past experiences, that is not a bad thing.
And yet…. as I processed the session with Tom, he reminded me that this mare still gets offended at being asked to do anything not in her play book at the moment. When she’s asked to “let go” of her own thought and “come along with me” she chooses to fight about it and has learned to hang on to those thoughts with much more force than is reasonable for an equine companion.
This is true.
Sometimes one has to get big enough to break loose that hard thought and come out the other side feeling better about it, and yet I’ve gotten into those situations with her where I try to get bigger and actually, I can get pretty big, but even though I can prevail, I’m not certain she feels any better for having complied in the end. Our relationship has not improved for that experience. I don’t believe this is because the work Tom is referring to isn’t important and necessary, it’s more that I don’t always have the ability to bring it to positive on the backside. We just end up in a fight, that I kind of win (if you can call it that) and that’s not what he means when he talks about getting big enough to make a change for the better. And without more experience actually doing that work, I am not likely to magically get better at it either.
This is where I sit in the journey, where things are murky and less clear than I like. This is where a formula would be fantastic and I understand why people prefer that kind of horsemanship. The kind that gives an answer.
I was glad to have a day where the relationship was on a positive feel between us and I still got done what I had hoped for. It is never a bad thing to have a good feeling day with your horse. In fact, I think I might could use to rack up some good feeling times together where we both feel successful and neither of us had to deal with fear. In truth, I do have to sometimes deal with fear with the dragon mare (though I try not to allow it to rule me), and I believe that she also faces fear when I take her out of her comfort zone and take away her ability to self-determine her reactions to anything that might come our way.
This is why we can’t go together into the real world yet because I can’t promise a perfect conditions bubble out there, and we don’t have the tools to come together if things go sideways without a bit of a wreck. The positive feeling day did little to seek out the hard resistant places inside her and help heal and release them either or work on tools to get through a mess without it being a wreck. This stuff still lurks down there and will show up again no matter how good I get at helping her “feel” good about our work.
A good relationship is not one that thrives as long it is always kept in happy, predictable, safe places. That is actually a very weak relationship. A good relationship is one that can withstand challenges and unhappy feeling, that can stand firm in fear and stress even if it’s not pretty. A good relationship won’t disconnect in the messy unpredictability of real world circumstances.
Wyoming having a session with me where she was never directly confronted or corrected I believe had value for us. But the short of it is, it won’t be the way we work every day. We have some things to expose that will demand some confrontation of what’s going on deeper down. We don’t have to tackle all of it in a day though.
Looking forward, I get to consider how to approach our work, and thankfully my friend, author and horseman Tom Moates visits semi-regularly (contact me if you want to come on board and join us on our 2-day roving clinics!) and it’s nice to have someone farther along the trail to help poke the places that will bring about the fight to help us move through them without getting stuck there or disconnected. I still need some help with her gaining the tools to keep the connection even when things go sideways.
The beautiful thing about this all, is I believe we can continue to improve. We can open up some of those old places that have gotten scar tissue and some infection, created disconnection, and we can, in time, get better. This solid relationship doesn’t happen by accident. It happens through working out challenges together and coming out the other side still able to trust each other. The only way it can get stronger is to be tested.
I am grateful for the people who have gone before me on this road to “better” who help me see things I wouldn’t otherwise see, and help me to grow. In life as well as horses, we should all consider who is it that we are looking up to? Who are we following behind and learning from intentionally? What do they look like and would I be honored to think someday I might resemble them? And who is coming up behind us that we are investing in with what we have to offer?
That, more than anything else, is what this whole thing is all about. That is the stuff that will last.
I took some clips of the work from the day this blog was composed and spliced them into a short highlight video. Watch below:
Last fall we had a significant transition and the herd moved to my home property. After the move and then with life naturally slowing down for winter, I haven’t had much of general interest to share. Basically, we all went into transition, survival, and finding the new normal mode — trying to negotiate the challenges of moving a small herd to a smaller than ideal place. Not only is my land on the small side for the horses, but my storage spaces inside and out are about non existent. This means that tack, equipment, feed and hay storage have been a puzzle to navigate. As with most things you think will be the worse case, the truth is usually not nearly as bad as the fears. At the end of the day I’m finding ways to make it all work, and as we settle in, things are lining out.
Logistically, we finished a pretty cool shelter building this month to give the mares a place out of the weather. Also, with some corral panels in place, it will give me some management options that will make a big difference on a small property. I’ve had a fair amount of variety in management scenarios to work with, as my horses have lived on a a range of properties — all with different levels of experience, resources, styles, and values in horsekeeping and land management. More often than otherwise, I’ve struggled with the very real issue of “too much of a good thing.” Wyoming has been on the unhealthy side of overweight on and off since relocating with me to Virginia and we are simply not in enough physical workload to ignore her sugar (grass) intake and not pay a price for it as the years accrue. Khaleesi has had bouts of intermittent lameness from borderline laminitis and pulling her off grass to “dry lot” her has solved the problem every time it’s reared itself. Since those episodes (which are eye opening and grave) I’ve tried to manage her access to abundant, healthy grass. Sorting this odd problem over recent years has been a number one challenge.
Though a smaller than ideal space for the herd presents a fair amount of new complications for me to solve, this is one thing I finally won’t have to worry about. At the moment, I’d call my property a dry lot, but considering all the winter rain we’ve had, it’s not been dry very often.
In November, after the chips landed in their places and the options laid out, I had about a week to prepare my home for the herd arrival and that included the bare basics: fencing (mostly electric), cleaning up any potential safety issues, and sorting out water and feeding protocol. Getting a shelter in place took a little more time, but I’m pleased to report that the new (metal built) shelter building is basically a three stall length (34 feet long x 12 feet deep) and I will be creating small pens from the corral panels so that the horses don’t have to be completely enclosed in a single stall when I need to restrict them. This gives me options for keeping them off the grass areas possibly allowing for limited pasture time in spring/summer.
I suppose it’s good that I have a learning approach to life. Looking back, I’ve been pressed into situations I might have avoided, where thinking creatively (especially when you aren’t the decision maker) becomes survival, and that’s not always a bad place to be. When you don’t have unlimited finances or access to resources, you have to become a bit more creative and scrappy to thrive in adverse conditions.
Though I have avoided bringing the herd home because of serious space limitations here at this property, I’m finding after we’ve begun to settle in there are some real benefits! I don’t think this particular place is forever for us all, however having them right outside my kitchen window and in my backyard has been a joy I’m trying to savor because I don’t know if they’ll always be quite this close- even if they continue to live on property with me. I do love making my coffee in the morning and looking in my kitchen window to see a friendly face looking in, waiting for a few flakes of first thing in the morning hay.
View out the kitchen window
I am learning there are things I can do that make this workable, and what seemed impossible, or like a pretty bad idea, has been also a gift in more ways that I can write in this article both practical and personal. I’ve been humbled in the ways God has shown up with provision and resources that have made this process not only workable, but even a joy. It has been a further education in how generous God is and how he shows up to walk things out in unexpected ways. Overall this season has the feel of transition to me more than arrival- and I’m excited to imagine where the next steps will lead!
In fact, I’ve got some pretty cool things already brewing this year and I look forward to making some fun announcements soon! I don’t know all of the amazing new opportunities and adventures that this next season holds, but some of them are coming into focus. So stay tuned- we might have gone into a bit of hibernation this winter, but spring is just ahead… followed by Summer which promises to have some exciting activities this year!
As I look out the large window over the sink I see a rainy winter day with sweet little Hope voluntarily tucked into a stall and munching hay. I see Khaleesi going deeper into a stall for a bite then turning to stick her head out and look around the yard monitoring the environment as she is prone to do, and Wyoming who likes a little rain now and then in the larger yard picking through some old hay piles. Everyone is content and seems to be doing well in their new home. It isn’t perfect… but it is a season, and it is good.
Anything will give up its secrets if you love it enough. Not only have I found that when I talk to the little flower or to the little peanut they will give up their secrets, but I have found that when I silently commune with people, they give up their secrets also – if you love them enough.
George Washington Carver
George Washington Carver revolutionized agriculture in the South after the Civil War. Working with children of ex-slaves in a land exhausted by cotton and a painful history, his hope was to “improve the lot of the man farthest down.” He made it his purpose to find ways to renew the land and teach farmers about self-sufficiency and conservation. An article from Tuskegee University revealed that: Dr. Carver took a holistic approach to knowledge, which embraced faith and inquiry in a unified quest for truth, believing that commitment to a Larger Reality than ourselves is necessary if science and technology is to serve human needs rather than the egos of the powerful. His belief in service was a direct outgrowth and expression of this.
This resonated with me. I also am on a unified quest for truth in each part of my life with a commitment to a Larger Reality (a creator God) who gave us an orderly world to be studied and deep truths uncovered that hold true in many different applications. I also believe if we seek in honest humility and the heart to love and serve other instead of self we will have more clear vision and understanding.
In other words, in the language of Dr. Carver:
Anything will give up its secrets if you love it enough.
This quote came at a time when I had begun to see what appeared to be positive changes in my progress with Wyoming, and I had been considering what was bringing about the change after so many years… It is always likely the change is more in me than she (my wild mare is already just about perfect at being herself) but what was the change in me? I knew it was a deeper level of serving her needs above my own, which coincides to a deeper love for her than I’d been walking out previously.
I am also a violinist and I’ve played more weddings than I could count. There was a local Catholic priest who always had the same wedding homily. He would talk about love. I remember him saying we throw the word around for too many things— we love chocolate or coffee or wine or soccer or traveling or staying home… we love people to death (what does that even mean?) in English we have one word and we use it to speak of our favorite sports team in one minute and our “till death do we part” spouse in the next. I don’t think I completely followed him to what this meant about marriage, but the point that our language falls dreadfully short in expressing more accurately what we feel-choose-carry in the way of affection.
I have always said, and believed, I love my horses. More than chocolate (anyone else humming along to that lyrics your love is better than chocolate… better than anything I think I’ve tried….) But what did it really mean to say I loved my horses, and was it true? Could it be truer?
What I propose in this meandering ponderance of truth, love, and deep secrets, is that a shift came in me that brought new levels of improvement between Wyoming and myself. I really do like her- even as she has been unable to cooperate with me in any way that could be seen as successful from any angle for about seven years (that’s a long time to have and try to work with an uncooperative horse I think for most people…) and regardless of her performance I have been dedicated to staying in the process with her. Yet though I’d say I love her, I realize how I saw her was a problem/project to conquer. This summer, gradually, I began to see her less as a complicated mystery to untangle, less a representation of my current failure to work with an equine I’ve had in my care for many years… and I began to see her.
As I was able to release more of my ego, to let go of my need to fix things and solve problems, I began to have a more authentic compassion for her, how she feels, and what her experience was in all of this. The filter I’d been seeing her through which created some minor distortions was disintegrating, and the more I truly loved her (instead of what I might be able to do with her, or how she could perform for me, or even what she could teach me) the more I had clear vision of what was happening in the moment between us.
Wyoming has been challenging, but I often related to her strong willed, fiery spirit and refusal to go along with a program that was not working for her. The mare in all these years has never given up on me, and I haven’t given up on her. We’ve gotten in a few near wrecks, and yet she has always come back to reconnect with me and try again. For a mare that occasionally threatens my life, she actually has a lot of grace.
But did I love the horse? I wanted to. I thought I did, and maybe I did in part, but not the way I have come to recently.
I didn’t understand: what was it that kept her from walking in the compliance I could extricate from Khaleesi? What on earth did this horse have to fret about? She didn’t want for any necessity, including pasture, a stable herd to depend on, shelter, non-invasive but attentive health and nutrition care… I’ve never been able to ask much of her- so her life is pretty ideal it seems from my human point of view. I could not wrap my head around why on earth she could be so snarky and grumpy at every interaction that wasn’t custom fit to her short sighted equine demands. I’ve had her checked out physically on just about every level. This inability to understand what could possibly be so bad that she’d threaten to take me out when I try to work with her has been mystifying.
This is not happy to see me…
Then I began to work with Tom Moates, who has been a Godsend for getting an outside pair of eyes on us and guiding me to work with her within the truths he has picked up from years of close work with Harry Whitney. His regular visits to help us sort out a better path have been a game changer to chipping away at the trouble we seem to get into.
That doesn’t mean it’s been roses and sunshine. Honestly, it has looked on the surface like everything was getting worse, yet I sensed something was different this time. I felt that deep tuning fork reverberate, telling me that we were going deeper in, digging out some wounds, some history, some infection, some sewage, but if we could face these things together and try to release them without fear, maybe this time we might get to a new place. So I kept trying.
Over the summer, armed with guidance from Tom in person and via email/video, I spent many hours a week trying to find common ground. Wyoming’s stall (aka the shark tank) has been my classroom this year.
The halter has always been sticky to some extent. Though for years I have been able to get her head in the rope halter (and she will comply), I have always sensed that it was not ok. My gut tells me this is a key: the halter is a basic loss of her freedom, and it takes a lot of trust to volunteer to submit to anyone in that way. I am still not on her list of trustworthy enough to relinquish that level of control.
It is worth considering that putting a halter on a horse- a very small piece of equipment- takes away almost entirely their ability to self govern. There are limits, horses can jerk a lead rope out of a human’s hands, or I’ve had Tom tell me I looked a bit like a kite as she pulled me right off the ground in retreat, but once we have the ability to control the somewhat delicate head with all those nerve endings and the soft tissue places around the nose, we have a powerful level of force over them, especially if tied secure to a post with a strong rope.
Over the years I have tried to find better ways to use the halter than force, and last year when I heard Mark Langley talk about guiding horses instead of driving them it impacted me as kernels of truth tend to do when I hear them. Being prey animals, horses can be driven into things especially if we have a halter/lead rope that prevents real escape. I have driven her over the years to do a lot of activities, but she has never felt good about it, and no matter how pretty and snappy she looks trotting or cantering around me, she is not relaxed or happy.
I didn’t not love her. I wanted what was best for us both, which is a cooperative relationship with her humans. She lives in a human world now. The wild life is not all it’s cracked up to be so I do not agree that she would be better off left on the range. There’s starvation, drought, predators, and extreme weather there. I doubt she would be less fearful than she is here when she goes into high alert when the deer roam through at night.
Still, I didn’t know how to help her or me, and I flailed around with various levels of success and unsuccess and the mysteries remained out of reach.
As I continued to regress this summer to the most basic fundamentals, I once again asked: can you be ok with me putting the halter on you? I found myself summoning the courage (thank you Tom for being the guinea pig and flag man) to open the stall gate and stand in the gap, vulnerable to attack,and offer the halter to her knowing she could choose to take me out. But oddly enough, if I came in with too much self-protection, she felt the fear brace in me, she would brace right back against me, and we could not breach the impasse. I had to make the choice to risk being hurt and show up with a white flag (actually no flag) instead of a weapon. With some basic safety in mind, I would hold out the halter from one knot away from my body so the noseband draped open and allowed her to make the choice to put her nose in on her own.
I did not encourage her to bite at the halter. It’s not good manners at the minimum, and I don’t want her nipping at my tools to “work out for her” but the other problem is, her reaction to that piece of equipment is actually that strong so I also had to acknowledge that without punishing her. I don’t want her to spend her life thinking it’s ok to bite at my equipment- or at me, and I don’t want to send the message that I don’t want to know what she’s thinking or feeling. It was a very fine line, how to express ones thoughts and feelings in an appropriate way! I’m sure I did not always successfully navigate this delicate balance and it takes impeccable timing. She must think it’s her action of nipping at the halter that creates the reaction that might be a poke from my finger at her cheek, but that she has control of not being poked (try not nipping at the halter!). The right instant timing is action-reaction; just a moment too soon in anticipation is picking a fight; enough delay becomes punishment (which we NEVER want). However, as I began to care more about how she felt and helping her, than getting my task done without being injured, something shifted.
It seems that letting go of what I really wanted was the path toward actually receiving what I really wanted.
Harry and Tom both talk about creating an imbalance that the horse will work to correct. Take for example how a bit works. When the human takes “hold” of the bit in some way, it creates an imbalance that the horse will move its entire body around to fix, which is how we can control so many things along a huge animal’s body with a small piece of metal carried in the mouth.
I had come to see that just my presence creates a strong imbalance for very sensitive Wyoming. I can stand in Hope’s stall doorway a very long time before she bothers to find out why I’m there. I might need to make some noise to get her to care at all. With Wyoming it’s different. Even without the halter, just standing at her stall gate, it did not take long before she stopped munching on hay and began to move. She looked out her window… but she was not unaware of me, she was trying to find peace, and if she could send her mind out the window it might help, but, as I waited I saw it did not work for her. My presence was still too disruptive even if I did nothing but stand there.
I added the halter and this was even more disruptive without making a sound. The same looking out the window was her first try to make things right, then she would look at me, then look back out the window, then look at me again. Then she would take a step in a circle toward me, and pin her ears giving me threatening dragon face. Maybe she could scare me away. Nope. I just stood there with the halter held out. She would step toward me and nip toward the halter, I would do various things to discourage that without picking a fight. Then she would stand with her nose over the half wall/gate to khaleesi’s stall, a position that would be very hard for me to force the noseband on her. And I would still wait. Someday, I hoped she might choose to allow the halter. If she would choose, it would change everything.
In the process of this I could see the depth of how disturbing this was for her. It didn’t make sense in my human brain, but I could not disregard what was in front of me. I began to be intensely curious toward this dynamic. She did not go back to eating hay. She would occasionally cycle back to the window, but never for long. For most of the time she would stand very close to me, I could touch her with the halter on the neck, or other parts of her body, but she did not want that noseband to capture her. In all this I did nothing to force her to participate, and yet participate she did, in the all the ways she could.
I had begun paying more attention to what the truth was for her, as strange as her truth seemed to me, than what I was trying to do or get done.
Gradually I was able to halter her with increasing relaxation. This process wasn’t a dramatic moment where she chose as I hoped to put her nose in the halter voluntarily. It started with a shift in position where she seemed to suggest: I cannot bridge this gap yet, it’s too much for me, but if I stand here quietly you can put the noseband up my nose and I will try not to fight you.
The reason I believe this is accurate, is because when she did begin to position herself allowing room where I could put on the noseband, she had minimal nippy reactions, and once the halter was on and tied she began to relax there in the stall with me. This is a time when I would stand there in the stall with the halter on, rub on her, scratch her, breath deep, and make it a really nice place to be together. It was here I began to notice just how much tension she carries in her neck. She has such a level of self-protection about her it’s no wonder she feels terrible.
Some of the work this summer staying in tune to how she is feeling in the work
As summer melted away to fall, I had a shift in routine that meant I had to bring the horses in and out of the barn across the yard to a remote pasture which meant I had to halter them. I knew this would come and it concerned me- having to take my life in my hands to manage the wild thing did not sound fun (in the summer I could get the halter on or walk away and it didn’t really matter, now I had to get this job done in order to move her). However the foundation we built through the summer set us up for success.
At first I’d move the herd one at a time. I liked spending the time and attention on Hope solo, who is slow, as we did the walk together. Khaleesi is pretty manageable at whatever pace or need, but Wyoming benefits from focus and clarity in everything we do, so walking her alone was preferable. This meant some days I would start in the barn and take Khaleesi into the remote field. When I returned Wyoming was already becoming stressed because of the imbalance in her environment (herd separation). She is smart enough to realize that it was the halter that was her pathway to rebalancing in rejoining her lead mare. Instead of a mess or violence I would step into the stall and she would come to me and dip her head at the noseband (very willing) and I had to ask her to slow down and not revert to autopilot with her brain already in the other field and her body stuck with me (this the the condition where a horse has lost her mind). In this way she began to invite the haltering process because it had meaning attached to it she wanted to engage in. Similarly in the large field where I worried I might never catch Wyoming again, she was usually the first one who came to me and agreed to the halter to go back into the barn for breakfast and a break. This new routine I worried might get one of us killed actually helped us establish some good patterns.
One of the days I moved them all at once for necessary efficiency…
Looking back however, it was one of the days I was rubbing and scratching the mare in her stall trying to help her see she could let go and relax and trust me even with the halter on, that the rock hard muscles in her neck simply would not relax. Even as her eyes began to soften and she was reveling in the butt and underbelly scratches she was getting, the tension was rooted deep, and it was here that something broke loose inside me.
Harry Whitney says it would really help horse people if they could learn to recognize the motions that go with good emotions, and the motions that go with negative emotions. As I stood next to this wild creature who has lived with us for seven years, I realized looking back how much tension and brace this horse carries all the time. Tears stung my eyes as I considered the depth of the worry she carries around, and I felt overwhelming compassion for her.
I have not loved her like this before.
I didn’t want to fix her issues. I didn’t want her to have safer “manners” for all the human interactions that would be required of a normal horse. I didn’t want to know I could get her on the trailer… I didn’t want to solve the problem of why I’ve had this horse seven years and can’t ride her still. I didn’t even want to know I could halter her without her nipping at me. (Although I did want those things, they became highly insignificant)
I wanted to know how on earth I could intervene in her world in a way that could help her let go of some of what she was packing around, and that she would feel better about her life. I found myself begging for the insight that would help her to feel good for maybe the first time in her equine life since being rounded up on the range all those years back.
This is when something began shifting anew.
What changed?
Me.
I have always loved this horse, I thought.
But not like this.
George Washington Carver was knows for his humility and service. He cared so much for the people that were struggling, forgotten, rejected, or oppressed, that he went into his lab with the peanut and love poured out of him. A kind of love that opened up the secrets of the soil, the peanuts themselves, and in that place revelation came and revolutionized agriculture forever. Crazy and unscientific as it might seem, it was in his posture of love and not ego or fame or self-interest, the secrets were revealed.
I had a glimpse that day in the barn with Wyoming, when my heart broke for the years I’ve seen her gallop across the field with tension through her body brought on by stress, neck raised and stiff, instead of that beautiful fluid movement that comes with relaxation and a stretching out of the muscles and joints, and I grieved that I hadn’t yet figured out how to help her. Not for my ego. For her.
Hope Horsemanship carries a verse instead of a tagline or motto. It is Jeremiah 33:3 Call to me, and I will answer you, and will tell you great and hidden things that you have not known. I then pondered another truth in the same big book of wisdom: If I had a profound understanding of God’s hidden secrets… but have not learned to love, then I am nothing.
We are not worthy of the deep secrets, we are not trustworthy of them, if we don’t love first and foremost.
Wyoming, and most people around us- know the difference between saying we love and having that love authentically pouring out of us. You cannot fake what is in the heart. Not to a horse at least. Until she knew that love coming through me authentically, her secrets were kept under a tough braced up shell. She couldn’t trust me with vulnerability. This is a road. I have not arrived. Still, I can see progress.
Wyoming trusts enough to willingly ride in the trailer for the first time.
I wanted to say she didn’t have much choice, as a horse she couldn’t choose another owner. But the truth struck me that I also didn’t have much choice! Considering she wouldn’t get on a trailer to save her life, I didn’t have much opportunity to sell or give her away either! We have been bound together for some greater purpose. Now she appears to be at least somewhat loadable, but it’s too late to go back now. I am hers and she is mine. Hopefully the mystery will continue to reveal and it will be a good story when it’s all told.
Things here in Hope-town this fall have been packed in with some unexpected twists and turns.
This little post is to share the ride video from the Fort Valley 50 on October 20, 2023. This was our scheduled final ride of the season and looking back I could not be more pleased.
Photo: Becky Pearman
I like to hold my event plans loosely through the year and leave room for recalibration. This year not only did my tentative ride calendar run as it developed in early Spring, we added the fall Biltmore ride to it for a total of 5 rides this season. I believe this could be our first year for 100% completion on all rides we entered.
We completed over 300 miles this season and the rides for 2023 were:
(OD) No Frills 55
Biltmore 55
(OD) Old Dominion 100
Biltmore 50
(OD) Fort Valley 50
Of course this was also the year of our first 100 mile completion, and our first season of finishing all three Old Dominion (OD) series rides which earns our first triple crown award.
I could not be more pleased. For those who have followed us any length of time you will know it’s been a long road that was not always certain to have this kind of success. But I do believe in the long process and building up a powerful horse over a long road it’s taken many puzzle pieces, team members, and trial and error to put it all together so she is truly running in her strength now.
The Fort Valley ride had nothing particularly special about it. It was what we in the Harry Whitney circles like to call a ‘non-event event’ — meaning it just worked like you’d hope. Maybe it was the ride I didn’t learn anything in particular, we just celebrated and ran along with joy!
Meanwhile there are updates about Wyoming who is really coming along into a new connection and we are truly becoming friends. So the next updates will be for the fans of Wyoming’s journey.
As for the endurance plans… I have come to a good place, and I’m certain there will be new mountains to climb next year, but it’s too far away to get wrapped up in that story yet… there are stories in between that need engagement first. Khaleesi is on a well deserved break for now with her herd.
Enjoy the show… and ride along our last ride of the season with us:
Last weekend I went solo to the Fall Biltmore ride. I suppose Khaleesi might have something to say about calling it solo since technically we went together, and she might even contend that she’s the one who counts. Regardless, I hadn’t initially planned on this ride when mapping out my tentative calendar, and as it approached, and I kept seeing no reason not to go, my usual crew were all otherwise engaged. I used to ride crew-less fairly regularly years back and it seems the Biltmore is a good ride to take on without help since the vetting and crew area is the same throughout the ride and is near camp. Thankfully, Brandea and Abigail live in the area and though they weren’t available to crew on the Saturday, they met me in camp Friday afternoon and helped me get the crewing area set up.
Crew area
Biltmore is a “fun” ride for us so to speak where we aren’t so concerned about each minute counting and being concerned for the clock. The difference for us comes down to the footing. There are tons of loose rocks dispersed around gravel roads and paths, but no rock climbing or embedded rocks in the wooded areas that slow us down. The elevation, though it adds up, is never a five mile grueling climb over a mountain. Rolling hills take their toll, but the climbs are reasonable and followed by a recovery plateau or a downhill in short order.
Our last event was the Old Dominion (OD) 100 in early June and most of my readers might notice that the summer has been spent on the herd with more focus on Wyoming than Khaleesi, so with a few exceptions here and there to get her out for a hike or a ride, and the fabulous Harry Whitney clinic in August, she’s been on a break. I thought this ride would be a good prep for the (Old Dominion Series) Fort Valley which is more challenging due to the infamous OD rocky technical terrain and the trail of tears climb that historically happens in both the first and second loop up the rocky side of the mountain. I wasn’t sure what I would find as she increases in fitness and strength over the years so the Biltmore would give us a dry run, revealing what we were going into the fall with under the hood.
Overall I was pleased with what I found. In May the ride was a 55 mile but basically similar overall to the September 50 mile ride. I calculated an overall ride average of 7.3mph for the May ride and a 7.5mph average for the September ride, so comparable all in all.
Photo credit: Becky Pearman
The difference that was glaringly clear to me after a few days looking back was in the post-ride. After the May ride I had a horse that stood longer with a foot cocked taking rest naps. Eating off and on, but moving around generally less. In walking her later that evening she was slightly shorter strided and a little stiff. Her return to the herd and home field was average, walking around like normal, taking a roll, getting a drink, but in no hurry. Because we live in a river valley and do a lot of climbing in our home riding, and we see a fair amount of rocky terrain, I find the Southeastern rides wear her out more physically because though we do train on the scenic river trail a fair amount adding long trots and cantering intervals, it’s not our normal jam so she is less accustomed to speed over long distances like that.
After this ride she was less “nappy” and spent more time wandering around her pen as I organized our gear to leave the next day, curious about what I was doing, asking for carrots, taking a few bites of her food, picking through the hay for favorite parts and looking for some grass that might have been overlooked in earlier perusals. When I walked her later she was more energetic, clearly limber, and considerably less stiff. The following day we hauled the six hours home and I took her into her stall intending to remover her leg wraps before setting her loose.
I hadn’t noticed her rope lead had worked it’s way to the end of the rope in the halter and as I walked her into the stall from the trailer, I turned to close the outer stall door and saw her leaving the stall into the field while the rope was still in my hand- her end limp on the stall floor. She headed out to greet the herd and I was amazed to see her floating around trotting the field. I grabbed my phone to catch some of it. She wanted to roll and Wyoming (too excited to have her leader return) was crowding her so I watched K warn her, then kick and then in a graceful front-feet-stand send both hind legs toward her asking for some space to roll. Well she can’t be too sore if she’s pulling those acrobatics today.
Then she got up, trotted around almost in a sort of homecoming victory lap, then around toward the water trough to drink before she returned to me in the stall to have her leg wraps removed as if to say: It’s sure nice to be home, I got the herd in line out there, but I’m back. Can you take these leg wraps off?
Not only did I like seeing her floating around the field doing acrobatics, but I like that she presently returned to me before I had to retrieve her. Not only did the ride seem to do little harm physically, it seems we’re still on friendly terms.
As for the ride itself, it was basically smooth, peaceful, and quiet with no problems or snags from doing it without crew. The details aren’t particularly interesting, except the following two experiences that I took particular note of.
In chronological order, the first vet check was easy. All day she had ‘A’ scores and good heart rate recovery (52, then 56, then 64). I was ready to leave a few minutes before my out time in the hope I might be leaving around the same time some of the riders who finished the first loop roughly when we did. This would make leaving camp a little easier for us as this is the biggest challenge for me. After a great 15 mile first loop and returning “home,” my horse is never very excited about leaving again at the Biltmore. Oddly enough, I don’t seem to have this same issue at Big South Fork when she almost seems to drag me back out on trail… The long gravel road along camp seems to have a magnetic draw that is unusually strong in this ride and I think it’s always been this way for us.
Considering we were in the front third or so of almost sixty riders, I didn’t have much to worry about finding other horses going out on trail. We were released with a couple other riders, and there were a couple just behind. This seemed set up well to help us motivate out into the long middle loop, and if we could just get past the magnetic thought field of base camp I knew she’d go along fine. Or so I thought. Within a few steps, we began to trot along with the small group and to my horror Khaleesi began limping at the trot. This was not a questionable, am I imagining she might be off, this felt practically three-legged lame. We walked a few steps and tried again only to find the same limp and immediately dismounted. We were still next to the crew area and I was sure she had a big rock in a hoof that was painful. I inspected all four feet, and just as I had checked them earlier, there was nothing there. That worried me even more. Another crew person I didn’t know at all was near us, saw me, and brought over a stool so I could get back on. Meanwhile my small group was already gone as they weren’t riding “with” us as much as we were overlapping. Now for the time being we were alone, but it didn’t matter because it seemed to me we were not going out regardless.
I took a few minutes to walk and consider. The next few riders went out and jogged by. I wasn’t sure what to do. This is odd, because it seems obvious. My horse was lame. Unquestionably lame. Yet, I had this nagging in that inner place that said walk a bit more, and lets see what happens.
The other voice said: this is the long loop, it’s 20 miles and lots of climbing, aren’t you kind of glad you have a good reason to bail, clean up your stuff, and hey, I even bet you could get on the road today and get home a day early… your own bed… a nice bath… You had a great first loop, considering a good training ride… pull out and don’t do any more damage…
And more quietly, the other voice stood firm: walk a little, get on the grass, see if you can get a decent trot, and you can always turn around, it’s early in the day and even if you hand walk her back a mile or two you have time. Let us see what happens.
And so we left camp slow as molasses not only from the challenge of leaving camp alone, but the concern of a potential lameness nagging me. Alone (as we so often are!) I prayed for wisdom: God, I have nothing to prove and neither does this horse. We have been blessed with a huge victory this season completing the 100 in June, and everything else is gravy. I do not need to complete this ride and I am willing to pull out, but I sense an urge to not give up just yet. The last thing I want is to damage my amazing horse- who is a gift from you that I always want to honor. Please give me clarity on what is best to do here. And if you’d like to just fix it and heal her issue, that would be great. Whatever you decide just please let me know so I can get on the same page.
And I kept hearing that quiet, still small voice urging me not to quit yet.
So we got past the gravel road now almost a mile out. We hit the grassy “runway” and she began to trot-walk transition. I was not convinced she was sound but she was less lame than she had been earlier. I kept thinking we can always turn around if it lingers, maybe she hit a rock just right and it hurt at the moment but it’ll work itself out.
Photo along the grass runway leaving on the second loop by Becky Pearman.
As we continued, a trio of riders came up from behind at a nice steady pace and now about 2 miles out of camp she let go of the anchor her mind had been and seemed to worry less about both leaving camp and whatever was painful and she fell in with them. As we picked up a steady pace I was hypersensitive. First, a little heavier on one diagonal, then in another mile increasingly more even. I worried slightly because she offered to canter more throughout this loop and I don’t know if it felt better on a sore hoof or if she just came round and was feeling good.
Our little band stayed together the entire twenty mile loop which made it less lonely for both of us — I always feel Orange West is longer than the mileage somehow. I figured the next vet check would give us some information if she seems at all off in the trot, but she passed with flying colors again and we were released to finish the ride.
From this, I felt a reminder that sometimes the still small voice doesn’t align with common sense. I felt an encouragement that sometimes we’re called to do things that go against what we can see clearly on the surface in front of us, but when we listen to the guidance which is often the softer deeper message, we may be surprised at what miracles can come if we follow. I tend toward the conservative when it comes to my horse and her needs, but in this case, playing it safe was not the call. I’m a bit astounded by it. I’m not sure if it was a miracle or simply a knowing that this was distraction and not injury. Regardless I am grateful.
The second take away from this ride comes in leaving camp for the last loop, again alone. It’s like variations on a theme! Harry Whitney has a saying that there is nothing heavier to move than a hard thought, and there is not much lighter than a willing thought. Anyone who has tried to drive a horse across a bridge, a river, on onto a trailer when the horse’s mind is convinced otherwise knows, this is a deep truth.
There is nothing heavier to move than a hard thought, and there is not much lighter than a willing thought.
Harry Whitney
Somehow the Biltmore events host the most magnetic ride camp of any we face. Every single ride here, leaving on the third loop is the greatest challenge we face. Last year, on the third loop, before I found the horsemanship strain of Mark Langley, which led me to Harry Whitney, and then to Tom Moates, I had to absolutely DRIVE her down that mile long gravel road and DRIVE her into the grass runway that leads toward the river and out into wooded lime trail where she begins to free up.
Now I have better tools to influence her thoughts, and I ask her to let go of hard thoughts in our day-to-day world anytime it’s helpful. I also have experience helping her find a FORWARD thought since our August clinic and this is a case where her body will comply with my driving forward while her brain is cemented back at the trailer and that means tension, brace, and a fight. With this particular horse it’s a fight I can win, but I hate fighting with her. It’s exhausting.
I was able to guide her thoughts forward without driving her this ride. I was able to get her thinking in transitions to bring her BACK to me at the present place and present time. I was able to bring her mind along sooner and with less disruption than in times past. It felt like trying to leave a magnetic field, the grip the thought rooted in camp had, loosening as the yards went on, and her mind breaking free and starting to roll again. This has happened in the past as I drove her body onward- eventually she would begin to reunite her brain and body in the place I had forced her body to go. This may seem obvious but some horses who have become experts at clinging death grip-like to their own thoughts, can run their body through an entire ride and have never brought their mind from the buddy or the trailer or the food they’d left behind, only rejoining mind and body once they completed the loop.
Last white west loop went along the lagoon and vineyards it was beautiful!
This final 14 miles we did largely alone though we leapfrogged a bit in the final miles with two riders who we ended up crossing the finish line with. There was no sign of lameness for K, and though it was the hottest part of the afternoon, and this tends to be our slowest loop, we hung pretty steady once the mental ball broke loose around a 6.5mph easy trot.
The final vet out was solid, and she maintained the ‘A’ scores and good gut sounds. Nick congratulated her (wryly) on appearing not to lose a pound in the 50 miles. (In fact she lost 40 total if the scale is correct, but that’s not much in an 1100 pound creature).
In another small miracle, as I looked somewhat unhappily to hand carting my crew stuff the 1/2 mile from crew to trailer in a few trips after finishing 50 miles, I was offered a ride by a new friend that was next to us in camp. That was a blessing for sure.
I think Khaleesi’s stronger recovery from this ride is in no small part due to the help Harry Whitney gave me to increase awareness of when my horse isn’t moving in her most relaxed state. When brace or tension creeps in we are not in best form, and tension creates way more muscle soreness that simply the workload alone. That also goes for me as I felt pretty good after the ride and made a concentrated effort to keep my own body in softness as much as possible.
When we work at our home territory along the river scenic trail, I have been able to keep her softer with good forward motion in the upward transitions into a loose powerful movement. Things on the river trail that creep in to destroy maximum relaxation are usually environmental —like when we pass the handful of homes with tarps, lawnmowers, goats, barking dogs, etc. Her head and neck raises and gets harder in brace as she becomes alert and concerned. I use those moments to influence her, inviting her to let go of her worry, trust me, and relax again. I have various levels of success in this, but the usual distractions are more regular for us as we travel that trail often, and it’s the same goats, the same tarps, etc. most of the time. She can “let go of that” and come back to me more easily because it’s less novel.
View of the Biltmore house from the trail
In the Biltmore ride there are novel concerns all over the place. None of these has her fleeing in fear, but they have her more alert and less relaxed than ideal conditions. Not only the other guests on trails with baby carriages, bikes, and whatever other ways they move about, but the property is a working farm with large equipment in the distance banging, pigs, sheep, goats, and even other horses in other areas to pull her attention. In last weekend’s ride, because I’m more aware of how this affects her quality of physical movement, I was able to influence it more often. Her relaxation in movement Saturday was better than in any ride past I believe, however it’s not going to match what I can get working in ideal circumstances.
This would be point three if there was a third point. A reminder that any event is going to take the highest level we have come to either in control, attentiveness, relaxation, or focus and it’s going to take that down a few pegs in the least, or blow it out of the water completely in worst case scenarios, or simply accumulation of factors. Whatever issues we are working to improve with our horses (and I hope I always have something I am working to improve!) the ride will test it, and I will always be less effective than under ideal circumstances. This reminder encourages me to work even more with focus in ideal conditions to improve to a point that losing ground in the real test will still leave me with high quality performance. Not only do I head back to the river scenic trail to work on longer trot segments and canter- walk intervals, but I’m insisting on quality relaxed transitions and holding softness in all the gaits to increasing levels each visit.
No wonder I ride alone most of the time…
Aside from the fact that my horse continues to gain in strength and endurance as her years accumulate (she is now 13 and continues to gain momentum as she heads into her prime years), and the fact that she came through a 100 in a lot of strength this year — which means she is in a good year for building, I believe that the increase of relaxation and softness in movement and being able to increase that softness into transitions and higher speed (speed is usually where we find the breakdown) is why her recovery was so drastically improved over past rides.
This is exciting for me because I believe it will open yet another layer of increased performance as we build on it going forward.
If you’re interested in the principals of guiding over driving, of working first with the horse’s thought and not only focusing on the horse’s body, I highly recommend checking out Mark Langley because he has so much available to get started online from a really good podcast to videos on how he works with indirect pressure and guiding.
Mark’s materials are the quickest and easiest to access, but Tom Moates has a 5-book series that is a raw, honest journey into this mental focused horsemanship following Harry Whitney. The journey begins with book 1: A Horse’s Thought. Tom has written hundreds of articles for publications from Equus to Western Horseman and Ecclectic Horseman. He’s studied and followed around most of the “important” recognized horsemen and interviewed them while walking out his own horsemanship journey. Years ago, though he still does plenty of interviews, he began to follow Harry just about exclusively. Tom is a fabulous horseman as well and if you’re not too far from him here in VA you might be able to catch a lesson or put together a clinic with him!
Though Harry Whitney is, as far as I’m aware, the most gifted at sharing this mode of horse work, and has a heart for the humans as much as the horses (which I have observed can be rare) – he is the most challenging to learn from because you simply have to get a seat around a round pen in a clinic, or if you’re fortunate a spot with a horse. He only works one-on-one in his clinics so the participant spots are limited, but I find them pretty paradigm shifting. No one seems to limit auditing spots, so as long as you can get to a place he’s teaching you should be able to find him! If you can get to meet him sometime I can’t recommend it enough.
Happy trails from the Biltmore!
Regardless of where you are on your horsemanship journey- or if you’re one of the readers who enjoy following my stories and don’t even have a horse… I wish you the best, and the guidance of the still small voice as you go along the way.
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I have three horses who lack for a forward thought and I can see how it’s shown up with different looking issues in each of them. One of them I haven’t had all that long, but the other two I have. Is this something in me? Am I causing this problem in horses because of a way I’m working with them?
During the week at Harry’s clinic in August as it became more clear to me how important that forward thought is, I saw not only my herd, but a client and friend’s horse that I’ve been working with about a year all exhibiting facets of this issue. If there is something I’m doing that is causing or increasing this issue, I sure wanted to address it!
Harry considered a moment and answered:
No, I don’t think you cause it as much as you’ve missed it. You haven’t recognized it for what it was and addressed it is all.
Working on the soft forward thought with K while being coached by Harry Whitney; Floyd Clinic, August 2023, photo: Tom Moates
In the last blog entry I wrote about how I began working to generate a forward thought in Khaleesi. I am seeing some nice progress with her at home. I love now seeing moments where she will stretch that neck out in front of her relaxed and take on a forward walk without carrying the tension about she has in the past. The biggest issue with a lack of forward thought in her was the amount of tension in her body in movement. I don’t think she was deeply distressed by our way of being together, but she wasn’t moving freely and relaxed. This change will allow her to feel better about our time together and that will improve our connection.
As for Hope, I have been working with her this summer with the goal of engaging her mind in a way that will help her become more available and less shut down. I have seen gradual but significant changes in how she walks and holds her body. I had not previously addressed her mind as lacking a “forward thought” in movement as much as I saw she simply was not mentally present to begin with. It is somewhat challenging to take a horse who doesn’t have good balance, has suffered from EPM (unclear what issues are blocking her ability to comply physically), and appears to have been mistreated over her life in direct pressure and punishment training… it is challenging to take that horse you have a ton of compassion on, and to make a big enough “meltdown” with the flag in her stall to get her to simply look up from the ground at you and have to deal with you in her world. To get big enough that she will come out of the only place she probably has felt safe and has retreated into for years now… (inside herself). The initial stress of that interaction on her is real. I’ve found it difficult to generate that pressure at first because the stress does affect her. Yet it takes that much to get her to come alive, be present, and then try to offer her the best place of security and sweet spot you can give when she does.
I have not had the tools to do this for much of the two and a half years she’s been in my care. I suppose it’s good that I’ve left her to benign neglect for the last year as she was not well, because I didn’t know how to help her, so letting her rest was probably not a bad season. It seems she’s come to a holding pattern where she hasn’t told me she’s ready to die, and yet she is still quite unwell. And I can’t see leaving her alone there any longer. As the quote goes (from the Shawshank Redemption by Stephen King) It’s time to get busy living, or get busy dying.
So I’ve begun to enter her world with enough pressure, and demand she come out of that far away place, to look up once in a while, and to come, and be.
I’ve considered this forward thought idea and it struck me that she has been chased around, probably kicked and pulled in western lessons, punished for slow or wrong responses, that she has given up trying to think with humans. I observe that her “go-to” is to freeze and go away down deep, and if I insist she not tap out in that way she will start throwing me what might have worked for her in the past about turning herself into a pretzel. Watching her it seems like I either get no thought at all, just a vacant frozen robot, or she’s giving me two thousand things with thoughts bringing around like a pinball in stress and fear. Something I have not seen is a simple, clear, forward thought.
She came to me with her spine literally compressed and roached up toward the end of her back; her neck, compressed and tight, was unable to move freely, and her body compensating to function. Imagine that braced up wall that either came from I can’t or I won’t got cemented more strongly in place and riders and instructors kicked and drove her forward into it- I heard she began rearing which is not a surprise since her forward was blocked that would be a potential direction for the force imposed upon her… up. Upon coming to live with me, I saw a compressed ball of a horse that has been smashed into that wall she was now trapped inside.
I thought we’d simply help her free up and she’d be fine. I now wonder if this change in how she moves is like becoming an entirely new being, taking years of painstaking work as the changes happen. And the mental part of it cannot be left out if we are going to succeed in helping free her.
Hope walks forward with her front feet dragging the toe, she backs with her back feet pushed against the ground, dragging backward. If she’s stressed she crosses and uncrosses her front feet threatening to fall over in a pile of spaghetti like she doesn’t know where her legs are or how to move her feet.
Occasionally, I have observed her heading somewhere with interest and she almost looks normal. She can’t totally pick those feet up, so they paddle slightly and sometimes she looks slightly off like a lameness is present, but if she is headed somewhere with interest, not being chased by the herd or stressed in any way there is a glimpse of the real horse she might become. It’s in these moments she’s not afraid, not shut down, and I’d say she has a forward thought. Her body is freely going where her mind is sending it!
As I’ve continued our work together, and she is trusting me ever slightly more, to come out and join me in the land of the living, I’ll get her outside on the lead line, and only ask her to stand quietly but ready. I watch her stand there facing me with a panic buzzing through her. She begins crossing those feet, getting unstable, and starts offering me things- circle left? Circle right? Back up? Oh gosh, what what what what??? And I respond by slamming down my flag not at her but on either side of me to block all the different thoughts that are now pouring out like chaos to do anything to avoid punishment. One of these has to be the right answer!!
I have to get big to break through the chaos of her brain, which seems counterproductive when I have so much compassion on her and what she’s been through, that I want to pet her and say “there there… just relax… it’ll be ok, I don’t want to stress you out- you’v been through enough..” but I now see how that has not worked at all to help her. It’s like someone whose gone into another mental space, and the only way through is to make a big enough disruption they have to be slammed back into the present and see they are not back in the warzone, they are right here with you, now.
I have seen her finally come center, look at me, and stop the chaos. Where I can pet her and give her a sweet spot to relax and release all the fear tension she carries- well, at least what of it she can.
When she begins to go around me to circle, one might think she’s having a forward thought. However she’s moving in flight and fear, and her brain isn’t quietly thinking about forward, since I have insisted she not go into freeze mode, she’s in panic flight and her brain is all over the place. She’s all bunched up- just like her spine looked when she came to me.
After she came to being momentarily centered and quiet, I started with getting her to LOOK and put her attention to the left and right, not walking off, only asking: can you move your attention. This is interesting because it’s hard for her to not look at me. If you were worried if you took your eyes off the teacher you could be ambushed and not be ready, you’d have a hard time looking away too! Without a question, when she first came to me, out of ignorance of what I was doing, I added to that experience of worry with her. So we have some recovery to do.
Once I can get her to look away – that would be the direction I’m about to ask her body to go… I start to suggest a walk. I do this with my energy, with my body, with a cluck cluck, with the flag rustling (not at her but in general at my side), and she doesn’t pick up on it. This is not driving, and she hasn’t been asked to take her attention and though to a direction, look that way, then lets head in that direction you are looking. She is more used to keeping her eye on the handler and moving her body the way she is being driven.
Asking her first to look where we will be stepping
In this case I begin to pet and rub her with the flag, to help her relax- I’m here to help you and I won’t ambush you. Then I lift and lower the flag in a calculated way, smooth and not like a driving as much as a signal, it’s gentle but clear… on the third time I drop the flag with gravity to land on her rump and she scoots forward- not relaxed yet, but I was shocked to see how she carried herself momentarily almost with grace. Then I rewarded her and rubbed her again with the flag- told her how awesome she was, standing still. I want her to think about moving forward- not to drive her on and on. I want her to be curious, and not afraid. I want her to start thinking and making decisions, not reacting. And I want her to have some time to respond thoughtfully not in fear of punishment.
The dropping of the flag onto her rump is not scary (I can tell because when she’s in fear she gets all befuddled) and it’s new to her. It’s not whippy it’s like dropping a stone on the ground (but not as heavy as a stone), it has weight but not a feel of being chased. And it makes contact- not floating around threatening. These things I have played with and observed they make a difference. The horses have told me they do- in how they react to them.
Now I ask her to look, I ask her to think about walking, I rub her with the flag and if I lift the flag up into the air she can walk off and I’m amazed at the difference in how she moves this way. I return the flag to her body while she walks and I rub her with it, I want her to stay present and not check out into auto pilot mode, and the flag is a “here and now” sensation that helps to keep her present. It should help her relax and encourage her to be connected to me, and to know the flag is a help – not a threat.
Flag lifts to help her come out of freeze and to think to try something (forward would be great!)
I still don’t know what Hope’s future looks like. She is far from healed of the many broken things in her mental and physical systems. She still has good days and not so good days. However her good days seem better levels of good. She can be found closer to the other two horses when in the field. I see her trot and canter into the stall from time to time to join the herd for a meal and some work-play. I notice she stays present more than she used to, her eyes aren’t as dull. And from time to time I see her laying down but it is less often. She still has not so good days too. Days when she seems less balanced, more lethargic, and more shut down. Days she drags her feet more and can’t seem to stabilize in standing still.
I’m going to continue to demand she be here more and more. I hope I can give her the experience that this life doesn’t have to be terrible when she engages. I hope that her mind can come into a place where she finds peace, and balance, and that she can feel good.
But I don’t need her to.
Recently Emma Faith came over to give Hope some love and to pray for her to get better soon. Emma now prays for Hope’s healing every night.
I’ve come to terms with the truth that she may never be the horse that helps me teach other people about horses as I thought she might be when I brought her home, and I may never put a saddle on her again.
Yet she has taught me deep things about my own expectations, and what a gift it can be to invest in something that may never bring a return. I’ve learned the reality of connection to mind and body, and the complexity of trying to do the “right things” and yet not getting the “right outcome” like you’d hope. I’ve learned that the “right thing” is not always so obvious! And I’ve been learning sometime the compassionate thing to do is firm up, and get big to break through the walls to connect – even when it seems traumatic for a moment. When done in love, not in self-service, it can be an expression of love. I suppose Hope has continued the process to humble me as I stand before her wanting to help, not willing to give up, but not having clear answers, and the willingness to step forward into the place where I must accept:
I don’t actually know what to do, but I am going to try, and stay open to the reality of what is in front of me (even when it’s confounding and difficult) and walk this out no matter the outcome. Even when it’s painful.
A year from now I might look back on this chapter with more experience and wisdom and bemoan what I don’t know today that I don’t know, but for now, onward we go into the best I’ve got. And the knowledge that love does win, even when the victory is not what we expected.
For want of a nail the shoe was lost. For want of a shoe the horse was lost. For want of a horse the rider was lost. For want of a rider the message was lost. For want of a message the battle was lost. For want of a battle the kingdom was lost. And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.
This proverb dating back to the 14th century came to mind as I considered my week with Harry Whitney (and Ronnie Moyer, and clinic host and friend Tom Moates). It is amazing to consider what something seemingly insignificant can affect. A simple nail missing begins a cycle of events that ends with the loss of a kingdom. Missing a thought in a horse has in fact culminated in otherwise undiagnosable lamenesses, plenty of distressing behavioral concerns, and depending on circumstances can lead to various potential train wrecks that cause damage to horse and rider.
For want of a forward thought the relaxation in movement was lost. For want of relaxation the physical balance was lost. For want of balance the strength in movement was lost. For want of strength in movement the soundness was lost. For want of soundness the usefulness of the horse was lost. For want of usefulness the horse and rider partnership was lost. And all for the want of a forward thought.
Last week, finally, the appointed time came when instead of finding Harry Whitney working with folks and horses and sitting with only a notebook around the round pen or arena, it was my turn. I brought a horse and got in the circle myself, in hope of being guided into some changes.
I love this candid while we were setting up the group shot – within a week we were so like a family 💛
I brought Khaleesi who isn’t complicated, who I don’t have large pressing problems. Khaleesi the magnificent, my special K. The horse who gives me grace and fills in for me when I fall short. The horse who recently carried me to a solid finish at the Old Dominion 100 mile single-day endurance ride. It’s not difficult to see the problems with Wyoming. If I ask something of her and she threatens to kill me, that seems pretty much pre-school in identification level. Helping Wyoming to a better place will take some finesse, but the thing about a horse that obvious: you don’t have to wonder how you’re doing. There is probably more risk to my safety involved at times because she has big feelings that can be explosive, but no one has to be very adept at reading horses to know what she thinks.
As for K, she’s gotten along with the training I’ve offered and she’s become obedient. Yet I know there’s more available to us that I’m not accessing, and I know I could offer her a better deal if I knew what that would look like.
Khaleesi waiting for her turn in a stall at the clinic
It takes a bit more understanding to see the difference between obedience and willing responsiveness. It takes someone with more observation and experience to recognize the difference between light and soft. I figured out that I had a fair amount of obedience, but responsiveness and softness I was pretty sure I did not have. If I’ve gotten it from time to time it is more rare than I want. I wanted more and I knew Harry is someone who could help me even see what that could look like.
On my first day in the round pen with K, Harry observed two fundamental things: first he noticed I wasn’t all that important to the mare. This did not surprise me yet I wasn’t sure how to address it. I’ve heard a helpful suggestion that we should be demanding of our horses, but never critical. This line is not so easy and it can seem to shift depending on the horse and their understanding or education level. Some people struggle being demanding… not me. I’m great at demanding a lot from my horse- problem is I merge right over the line into critical and that creates a negative association, an ill feeling. Therefore I find myself swinging purposefully too far into a place where I’m not so clear, not firm enough, and not expecting enough. I let her futz around in an attempt not to be too critical and she begins to see that she can blow me off if she futzes around toward my request generally even if she is in no great concern to comply. Like a teenager who says: Yeah Yeah, I’ll get to it when I’m ready. Thing is, she is capable of being more present and attentive and she was able to relax and responded to me expecting her to simply connect with me, NOW. This doesn’t mean I have to get her to DO something as much as it means she should be mentallycentered and ready.
Photo: Tom Moates
Next Harry mentioned he hadn’t seen her have a forward thought yet. The forward thought concept held the keys to the kingdom. This was something I’d been fascinated by and unsure how to work on for months. It was, I believe, the first question I asked auditing my first Harry clinic in California (February 2023). Harry how does one create a forward thought?! He smiled the now familiar wide smile and said if I watched they’d work on that. Still, I had a long way to go from the round pen in Vista, CA to the square cow pen outside the barn in Highland County, VA.
Considering horses are generally “forward-a-holics” they move forward more often than any other direction; this means seeing what a horse moving with a forward thought looks like, and being able to identify what a horse moving forward without a forward thought looks like. I’ve ridden many miles with a horse not having a forward thought, and my tools to work on that were creating in many instances a bigger problem instead of solving it.
Harry Whitney encourages his students to lead and guide their horses instead of driving and punishing them. Boundaries and consequences are real, but they are really different from punishment and driving with direct pressure. I had learned basically “natural horsemanship” tools over the years and it’s amazingly simple: if you want your horse to move forward, you ask it to go, then if it doesn’t go you add pressure in the area that will “drive” the horse forward. The driveline is generally easy to find in the rear half or third, or even behind the horse. If you apply pressure at the front of the horse it’s less likely you’ll get the horse going forward.
The problem with this work, is a horse can run forward in flight from something they are concerned with or bothered about. In this case the horse’s mind is actually on the thing worrying him from behind– not set on where he is going – which would be forward. A horse moving worried or in tension lifts its head up (a little, or a lot) holding those levels of tension in the body (if you are worried you are about to be hit, slapped, ambushed, or otherwise attacked don’t you brace for impact?). Tension is no one’s friend. We know in a wreck, fall, or even assault, if we were able to absorb impact without tension we would fare better, but our sympathetic nervous system has to be overridden in order to change! We can sometimes, in great moments of self-control, override our own reactions but it’s virtually impossible to convince a horse not to brace for impact or attack and stay relaxed as I pop your hind end with the lead rope because you didn’t move out when I asked.
Yesterday I knew my little herd was concerned over something environmental I could not sort out. They were returning to look out the big doors from their stalls eyes focused on the distance. When I was finished there and released them they walked out of the barn politely, then once out in the field both Wyoming and Khaleesi began to pick up some speed and were clearly on alert. They sure looked pretty, but their heads were high and they were NOT relaxed in movement. They did not have a soft forward thought out there, they had stress and tension because something in the environment had their flight response kicked up a notch. They also did not move in a straight line… they meandered like drunken sailors in arcs and zig zags as their brain pinged around potential concerns in the environment.
Horses agitated by environment…
Meanwhile Hope was behind as usual. The two had settled a bit into a place to graze seeing there wasn’t anything dangerous to run from immediately. Hope sauntered out of her stall at a walk looking around, then saw the chosen grazing spot and with a forward thought headed right toward the herd. She wasn’t worried and she wasn’t in flight. She knew where she was going and she took her body right in the direction her mind was pointed. Her neck was forward and her line was straight as an arrow.
Hope with a forward thought.
If you have a horse whose head and neck goes up in movement, especially if it needs to be tied down by any mechanical device (or even “held down” by rein pressure), it is highly likely that horse is moving in stress or anxiety and brace of some sort. The effort to tie or hold the horse’s head down as a solution will increase anxiety because the horse now is anxious or tense and also unable to move freely- being literally tied down. A horse who is forced or trained to keep its head down but never helped to understand better how to move in relaxation is going to end up eventually with injury or shortened career than otherwise. The horse may learn to hold that physical shape to avoid fear, confusion and pain, but the tension will be as great or greater than if the head were moving like a giraffe. It regularly amazes me what they are capable of… even in a state of being handicapped by tools and tack. Horses are stunning creatures of strength and grace. Imagine what they are capable of when given the power to move in softness, understanding, and giving willingly in freedom? It blows my mind to consider it.
Khaleesi is Arab, TN Walker, Saddlebred and Racking Horse. This is a mixture of breeds that might suggest a horse genetically inclined to moving with an elevated neck-head position. I asked Harry about this and as he worked with her on day three from authentic curiosity…
Another thing I love about these clinics is there truly is never a dumb question. I have heard questions in these clinics I thought might actually be dumb questions– and every time been amazed by something unexpected in the answer. I’ve learned to ask anything I’m curious or in doubt about.
…The answer to my curiosity about different breeds holding their heads and necks in different angles came out of watching Harry work with K in real time: it was completely clear that when she relaxed her body she lowered her head and neck, when Harry was able to get her to walk off with a forward thought, not in anxiety, her neck stayed relaxed and her body moved in freedom (and significantly more balanced). I think each horse has their own place of holding balance in softness so we are not looking for a particular angle or position, only watching the body to see when the neck gets longer as the muscles release and the movement frees up. Her neck only came up higher (it contracts or shortens when this happens) when she began to worry, get distracted (what was that noise over there? Did a horse call? Is that a deer?), or stress over the request to transition up into a higher gait. Her entire body changed when she switched from relaxation to distraction or stress. It was not a change for the better.
Harry taking some time to explain a concept (probably for the gazillionth time)
Roughly three to four years back I went through a period where K had intermittent lameness, we were increasingly pulled at endurance rides for mild lameness- often the vet couldn’t really tell where it was coming from, which foot? I never argued about these pulls, I could see she wasn’t traveling right, but I also struggled to sort out how to help her. I had vets do radiographs and nothing in them seemed an obvious problem including sole depth and bone surfaces or angles. I worried about grasses (this likely played a role when she was on too much rich grass and some of the lameness would clear up if I pulled her off the grass and hand walked her a few days). The heaviness on her forehand could have paired with sensitivity from the rich grasses to create discomfort. The lameness would come and go, but in that period it was more recurring especially at the trot (she was almost always sound at the walk) so I spent a year walking her everywhere.
I walked her up the mountain, I walked her down the mountain. I walked her around the mountain, in the woods, through the valleys, and along the river. In this time I did my best to learn about true straightness, better balance, and this began to solve some problems. I got some good guidance from Emily Kemp in these years to bring her into better physical balance and it really helped. She had more stress and anxiety at higher gaits and speeds (this is true of almost every horse), and so by committing to walking everywhere and finding the best balance and straightness possible at that walk (I wasn’t bored and wandering around at a walk, I was active considering my own body, joints, tension, balance as well as hers).
In some part I had inadvertently begun to help her relax and spending so much time walking freely also lowered her stress and anxiety. Stress comes from many places but it is always a condition where the mind and the body are disconnected, and in that case the horse is also disconnected from me. Though I was doing better on the physical front and it made great strides to reversing the mysterious lameness, it would be limited wherever anxiety and tension appears.
Tension in the body is also brought up when the horse is feeling pain (ulcers, joint or muscle soreness, inadequate hoof protections for the horse’s needs, uncomfortable saddle fit, worry about the bit and how the rider uses it, metal clips connected to the metal bit clanging, a particularly tense rider inhibiting freedom of movement…). If my walking work was going well but my saddle was pressing or pinching there won’t be true relaxation available.
Stress is also mental. Leaving home and leaving the herd are often stressful for horses. Confusion and inconsistency in handling is incredibly stressful on horses. Training that uses punishment keeps them always concerned they might do the wrong thing and get swatted by a lead rope, a stick, or chased by a flag. It’s hard to be relaxed when you are worried about what seems to you an ambush by a training tool (and until we are perfect in our communication which I have certainly not achieved, some of this is inevitable if we train in this way).
Fear or adrenaline of unfamiliar or distracting environments are huge factors for prey animals. Because we are high level predators I think we discount how great an impact this is. I’ve seen my share of horses running around at an endurance event who are moving fast, but without their mind present. They are either stressed, distracted, in pain, fearful of any number of rational or irrational things, or have been trained when in doubt go faster which bring on usually more tension in movement. I find my normally calm easygoing horse more alert and hot minded at a ride, especially on the start. Fortunately for me she starts from such low energy that her heightened state is still pretty under control. I am excited to have new ways to seek out relaxation as she presses into her work engaged in what’s going on around her.
So what can we do?
I was amazed at what 20 minutes with Harry Whitney in the saddle in a round pen accomplished. I feel incredibly fortunate because though he was coaching me personally through how to help her relax, be present, and learn a new way of moving he could see it would take me till Christmas in on my own especially because I hadn’t experienced this feeling and was having a harder time building on tiny moments she found it. She had to find it. It can’t be “trained in.” A horse can stick it’s head in a certain position through a training and still not be mentally present or relaxed. This is the rub- to know the difference.
Jaime watches Harry and K in the round pen (Photo: Tom Moates)
Harry worked with her and then invited me back to feel the change.
Harry helping K find a place of softness
Christmas had come.
Moving in relaxation was like a newly greased bearing that could go every direction without resistance. Moving off a forward thought when it happened was like a new German engineered engine was installed. I didn’t even know it was available until I rode it. Now I could feel the difference when it wasn’t there, and that made it easier to say: Hey hey there, we don’t have to go back to that! There’s a better way lets try again and accept only that.
We have not had one questionable vet check in the last two years for lameness. Still, that funky step, that tossing up of her front end on an upward transition or that off balance movement appears like a ghost of Christmases past here and there. I am not afraid of it anymore and treat it exactly like that… a ghost that has no place here. The problem is fleeting, but I know it still lives somewhere in there to rear up in a moment then be gone again.
I was pleased to see it show up in the round pen a few times as we worked in front of Harry. It’s helpful when problems you want to see addressed actually appear in a place to have them seen and considered. Though the mare was clearly NOT lame, she would do a circle looking quite lame and I could hear the murmur of questions from the group watching. I knew what they were considering but only Harry’s reply came clear through his mic: oh that mare’s not lame, it’s tension. When she starts carrying more tension it creates that imbalance of movement.
Sure enough, as we worked out the tension the lame-looking imbalance would dissipate. Also due to the many hours and miles of riding in tension in the nine years she’s been mine, there is a physical imbalance that occasionally means she strikes off with more power on one hind leg than the other. When she does this it also looks like a lameness. Seeing this also fascinated me. Once Harry explained what was happening, again, it was impossible not to miss it.
The beauty of this is now that I have seen it and felt it, and I can’t un-see it or un-feel it, I also can see it from the ground. Now I begin our work, after our connection is established and I become important to her with her focused attention, and I ask her to walk off onto that circle and if she does it soft and relaxed we walk. If she doesn’t, I check the connection (was she distracted? Did I put too much energy into the request and disconnect us with too much or too jerky communication?) and ask again (did she need to remember what it feels like to do it in softness? Longstanding physical habits take many repetitions in a new way to change). I now don’t accept something as simple as walking off with a head popping up, neck contracting, and tension in the body. I don’t have to punish her, I simply say no thanks to that and we try again. If I had to, we could repeat that 100 times until she gets a good one, or a change in the better direction, and reward that. It’s going to feel good to her too which is the beauty of this work.
They key is that as I make it available to her, as I expand her list to know that is possible, she will seek it out more often and search it for herself because it will feel good to her.
At home, seeking relaxed and forward walkPretty good transition up staying soft
Horse training often does not feel good to the horse. If we are (as Harry says) moving the meat and not the mind we end up with a horse who can look basically right, and do the obedience, yet feels pretty crummy about it all and move about in various levels of tension trying to get their body to do the thing we are looking for.
Moments from video of transitions I don’t want. This is not soft and does not carry a forward thought. Brace in her mind and body creates upward movement and tension. You can see I am already dropping down my body and request to start over.
This work focuses first on how does the horse feel? Is their mind centered yet not shut down and zoned out? Are they standing in tension or relaxation to begin? Are they breathing? Are they worried? What can you do to connect with them and help them to feel better first? If they feel better and are relaxed they trust, if they trust they will try. If they feel the freedom to try, to get things “wrong” and have us guide them instead of punish them- and yet be firm enough to keep them engaged when need be, they begin to feel good about being with us. When they begin to feel good in movement, they begin to gain in strength and power in relaxation, this leads to increased confidence in themselves and in us. This is the magic of working from the mind first.
Here she is more lengthened and going truly forward (the flag is rubbing not driving)Another sticky braced moment, neck up and tension higher.
There were many discussions over the week about how exhausting it can feel to be so aware of every moment and every time the mind begins to leave while we are with the horse, every time they take a step in tension and to stop and try again. The demand for consistency in ourselves is incredibly high if you want a horse that moves relaxed in strength. To carry that kind of awareness when you are used to zoning out with friends on a trail ride chatting about everything except what’s actually there in the moment, this is a big shift. How often are our own thoughts not present, and then we would like our horse’s to be. We must be as engaged as we expect them to be. I suppose if you own a horse because you want to go ride with your friends and talk about everything except being there on the horse at that moment in that place is a choice we all have the freedom to make… I’ve ridden many miles like that. But I know the difference now and I find I can’t anymore. Not because it’s “bad” but because what’s available is so much greater. There IS magic in connecting on this level with such a generous and intelligent creature who has so much more to give, but won’t give it to me if I’m mindlessly riding along like a dummy. There is a cost.
I want to find as many moment of soft relaxation as I can and then carry them into movement.
I’m hungry for the deeper levels and the higher places we can find together. Especially after Harry helped my horse see what she was capable of and then offered that to me, to us as a gift to enjoy- not to squander or let slide right through the sieve my minds can become if I am not staying aware.
Because of that gift, though I agree it takes more effort at first to be that present all the time, but like anything if intentionally practiced, it gets easier, and in time, becomes a way of life. We get better as we engage. An entire kingdom available to us that begins with a thought. For me and my herd, it seems to require a forward thought.
Hope Horsemanship 