Hope Horsemanship

Category: horsemanship

  • Twisted.

    Twisted.

    There was a time when a beautiful day was not complete if I couldn’t ride my horse. If I had to work or was otherwise occupied it was hard to not imagine myself in the woods with my mare and be sad about whatever it was that kept me from that experience. My work is pretty great. I run a rural area music education program teaching K-12 age violin students. I am also on faculty at a local college teaching violin and chamber music. So it wasn’t about having a dead end job that was torture to log hours at. It was about where my mind was, how it became mysteriously separated from my body on particularly nice days, and about the tension of having a mind and body in two different places. I had quite lost my mind and was struggling to function without being present in the good work I had in front of me because of it.

    I currently have this island of misfit toys herd that I adore. I jokingly tell people I have a good horse, a bad horse, and a sick horse. It’s an oversimplification, and thus isn’t entirely true, but it makes for good conversation. 

    Anyone who follows my writing can connect the dots: my good horse is Ireland’s Khaleesi, the mare I took in as a feral four-year-old in 2014. I started her for better and worse, learned with her and grown alongside her. She is my endurance horse, and in June we finally conquered the single-day 100 mile race on one of the toughest courses the sport offers. I can get done just about anything I need to and she fills in for me a lot. She is a highly confident leader and makes me look pretty good much of the time. She is a beautiful gift to me and I enjoy her constantly. My challenge with magnificent K is I’m decent at getting things done with her in the natural horsemanship direct pressure style of working together that has left places our relationship can improve. The hard part that requires some vision is going back to learning new pathways together when things “work out pretty good” the old way. I know there’s more for us, but it’s going to take some time creating new experiences.

    The lovingly identified bad horse is Wyoming the wild (by the way I also have a bad dog I adore, so this seems to be a pattern for me!). She of course, is not at all a bad horse, she is my complicated challenging horse who does not fill in for me, who is not confident in herself or my leadership, and has required a lot of consideration, thought, growth, experimentation, and help in order not to give up on her and find some wilderness area to release her back into and wish her good luck. She’d probably survive; she has the skills. In fact, all she thinks about is her own self-protection and survival since she doesn’t trust it to me, yet. And why should she? Truthfully I haven’t proven adequate of that trust to her yet, and so I refuse to give up and am determined to keep growing into the kind of leader a horse like her requires. She is constantly demanding I get better. She has been a valuable gift to my development.

    The horse I hate to label but truthfully, in fact, IS the sick horse is darling Redemption’s Hope. She’s a discarded quarter horse that went through many hands before ending up in my barn. I took her knowing she was a shut down tangled mess, without realizing how big a mess was really in there. My plans for her were to help her feel better, learn the world of humans wasn’t such a terrible place, and voila, she would be a sweet natured horse kids or adults with less developed skills could get to know horses and learn to work with safely. She did that work about a year while her health devolved into such places where I have more than once been certain she would not survive. She has been the most expensive horse I’ve ever owned through vet bills and nutrition supplementation and support care in general. 

    I have come to see the gift she has brought me is an opportunity to love and support a creature who has zero ability to give back, and for an extended period of time. We are entering a third year of her very slowly coming into some kind of stable health, but due to the neurological signs from the EPM (I believe), she may well never be ridable, or even a horse who can physically respond to a request in a normal way again. I simply don’t know yet. Only time will reveal what little Hope’s redemption story will be.

    Loving Hope has cost me emotionally and financially. I am limited with my herd, at the moment I cannot expand to more than three horses and she is taking up valuable real estate. She has taught me the long process of showing up every day to what often feels like a hopeless situation and staying engaged. She has taught me what it is like to invest and care and love with no reliable expectation of gaining from that relationship. How often are we given such an opportunity to love in that way? I haven’t always seen it, but recently it shines of a glory I cannot fathom, how did I get so lucky to have this horse come to me and teach me this important lesson? The lesson of showing up even when there seems to be little hope, to love anyway. This does not come naturally to me. I needed some help, and she came.

    All of this came to mind recently as I rode my good horse around a local recreation area along the Jackson River. I am fortunate to live in a pristine and beautiful area that is still so rural and unpopulated we have not one traffic light in the entire county, the animals outnumber the people, and our pubic national forest land is somewhere like 75% over private property. I am insanely blessed, and also quite intentional about living here. I went out solo, rode about 7 miles around this beautiful park and in the couple of hours never saw another human. It was exquisitely perfect and I reveled in it not taking one moment for granted. It was perfection in the experience of riding a fabulous horse, on well kept trails, in a place of untouched beauty.

    As I pondered this, I realized something has happened to me over time. 

    I enjoyed this ride, however, today it occurred to me that I equally enjoy the time I spend working with Wyoming the Wild, even when a decent percentage of our time together she is threatening me because I’m pressing her comfort zone (necessary to give her the experience of seeing she can trust me and her life is not actually in danger). I am helping bring her lost mind back to the present reality in order to help her feel better about her life, and about our connection. At the moment in our re-started education program I have begun again at the point of not being able to put the halter on her without her feeling threatened. So I don’t. If one cannot halter a horse reliably I think that reveals just how far we are from being a riding partnership. 

    I don’t know what will become of Wyoming the Wild one in her education. I am stubborn and I generally refuse to accept that a horse cannot come to an understanding and work with a human- there are just ones where the bar is set too high for many (sane?) humans to consider reasonable… I am considering that she could be one of these special creatures. The alternative, which is also possible, is I’m just not skilled enough… but each year I’m finding that less and less likely the root problem. Let me assure you no pride in my skill level… She certainly has required I gain experience and understanding in order to succeed in helping her. I know how much I have to learn is deep and wide, but my hunger to grow covers a multitude of sins in the process. I don’t think it’s only my inexperience anymore. She’s a unique and complicated horse. How have I gotten so lucky to end up with her? I don’t believe in coincidences, I know she is just as much a gift as the good horse is.

    I have found that anymore I do not care nearly as much that I’m able to ride this horse as that we come together. I do want to be able to ride her, but I have found I love the time I spend with her, learning to show her she does not have to protect herself from me, that I am here to help her, and she is just perfect just the way she is, right now today. We will simply keep spending time together until things come right and then we will see what that looks like.

    I thought of the time I spend with Hope now, every day walking her slowly and intentionally, watching how she struggles to lift her front end and thus her front legs paddle around not to drag the ground. How can I help her to think about lifting first even her eyes off the ground and begin to think lighter in the the front? How can I help her start to rebuild her atrophied muscles that would support her body in better balance? We do tiny weight shifting requests just to begin the form of thinking the change that someday will mean she can walk normally again. How can I work with her so she isn’t stressed out which is when she begins to panic and her feet begin to cross over unnaturally like a horse who has neurological damage (she doesn’t do this if she is not in a panic).

    What creates this panic state for her? Her life has given her the experience that humans will demand things and then punish for non-compliance. Somewhere along the way I believe this horse wasn’t saying: No, I won’t… but she began to have physical limitations that meant No, I can’t. And when that happened her reaction leads me to guess she was punished. Now when I begin to ask things of her I can see the stress and worry set it. She either completely shuts down and is non responsive, or she begins to offer up anything she can muster getting her limbs all crossed and in a pretzel. The answer is not to quit asking anything of her (though I basically did this for almost a year thinking she needed the rest and recovery which may or may not be true), but instead to begin to ask her things she can do and to give her the time to think and do it, and not to punish her when she takes a long time to get there. She has been taught not to think but only to respond and quickly- my hope is that I can teach her she can think, she must think, and I will help her along the way.

    What I am realizing is I am finally beginning to find the real gift in being present in the reality of each horse, and asking how I can help them. My own mind is letting go of the idea that I have to have a riding (or teaching) goal for each horse and each day we do not get significantly closer to that goal brings frustration or irritation. As I let go of that way of thinking, I find not only peace in the process but a deeper joy in every moment we share. Even the struggles of which there are many right now. I am able to see opportunities where there were only roadblocks. I am curious about things instead of annoyed by them. 

    I recognize fairly quickly when I am getting all twisted up again.

    I have riding goals for Khaleesi. These are good. I believe the road I am on with Wyoming will include riding her again- and successfully – as well. I have a goal that Hope will someday have a body that works again in balance and be able to help humans to learn more about horses in some way.

    I think having goals is important. 

    Sometimes we have to adjust the goal.

    With Wyoming, I had the goal to be able to safely trail ride her including loading her on the trailer to transport. This year I’ve seen that she has way more deep anxiety that if I don’t address, none of that is going to function in strength. I’ve done the “grown up” thing and adjusted my goals to honor her needs… 

    This is where it gets so dicey and on a good day I can laugh about it…

    I adjust the goals to helping Wyoming get feeling better working with me and pat myself on the back for being such a highly developed horse person who truly puts the needs of my horse first and is willing to patiently work with them in the way they need.

    And then I find myself occasionally frustrated and annoyed when we have an “off” day and she comes at me with more violent snark than the previous day… or I had gotten to lay the rope over her back and she relaxed, whereas now if I stand in her zip code with the rope in hand and she pins her ears and threatens.

    Why? If my only intent was truly to help her, there would be no frustration. Frustration comes because I’m not getting my way and that reveals that I’ve made the new goal the central thing and I’ve once again gotten all twisted up around the good thing that isn’t supposed to be the ultimate thing and now I’m frustrated that she isn’t getting better!!! I am not making clear progress toward the goal of her getting better so help me mare you MUST GET FEELING BETTER WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM!?

    Lord. Help me. Every. Day.

    I still get twisted up.

    Do you ever get frustrated? I heard that a prey animal’s basic job is to frustrated a predator. Think about this… Predator wants a meal, so it chases the prey animal. Prey animal wants to live so it does all it can to evade and outrun the predator. The very definition of being frustrated.

    Frustrated: feeling or expressing distress and annoyance due to inability to change or achieve something.

    When we feel or express frustration we are acting like a predator. In the human world the definition of predator is: a person who ruthlessly exploits others.

    This is not the dynamic I want in my barn. This is not the dynamic I want in my life. Therefore I have sought to become more aware of when I feel that frustration rising in the dark space of my heart and it is now a warning signal: you have become twisted again. Stop. Regroup. Begin again and ask: how can I help?

    The good news is we are all given a certain amount of self-control and if we begin to use it, we can strengthen it! Each time that twist shows up in my relationships I can notice it and make a decision to change myself and my approach. I can decide not to be a frustrated predator.

    Not controlling another (horse or human) to manipulate or force into what goal I have that day is a much slower road to my goals, but it is the only way to my ultimate goal. I know there are many who won’t understand (why take the slow way of freedom and love? It’s incredibly ineffective), but when we get there it’s a million times sweeter, and the roads and detours are more peaceful and full of life.

    It always begins with me. Untwisted.

  • I thought I understood…

    I thought I understood…

    When it comes to any relationship, boundaries matter. I think Danny Silk has some great books out about powerful individuals, the importance of connection, how to love well (even your enemies) and the trap of confusing boundaries and punishment. He has a great book titled “Unpunishable” that addresses what he calls our culture’s addiction to the punishment paradigm and how to let go of this in our human relationships. I’ve read the book. I’ve put effort into understanding and walking this out in my own life.

    Then there are relationships with horses. I remember hearing Mark Langley say that boundaries are fixed and they don’t chase you. If you think you have a boundary with your horse but your boundary is in fact chasing your horse then it is not a boundary. 

    To make a finer point, I’ve heard Harry Whitney give an illustration about electric fences. I’m pretty sure Tom Moats has written about this too, but since I’ve recently read a handful of his books I can’t remember which one it’s in and who might have borrowed it… Harry explains that horses graze peacefully near an electric fence, very close to it, even sometimes reaching under it as far as they can without touching the strand. Most horses familiar with an electric fence are not afraid of it although no horses like the shock of coming into contact with it. Their experience is that the fence will not surprise them, ambush them, or chase them. Certainly the fence can be moved into new positions, but once the fence is fixed, the boundary is firm, clear, and potentially most importantly: not personal. There is no question if a horse gets shocked by the fence it was unemotional and non-judgemental. The fence isn’t angry, frustrated, fearful or otherwise emotionally embroiled in the process. No horse need be shamed or considered a “bad horse” for touching the fence and getting shocked; not very smart, maybe, but evil or bad are not part of the equation. Horses figure out quickly that the shock is a direct consequence of running into the fence and once they do it a couple times, it’s usually enough for them to avoid the strand in the future.

    Harry helping a horse with fear around its ears in a clinic in Vista, CA 2023

    This all makes perfect sense to me. 

    I thought I understood what a boundary is…

    Then I began to press into dangerous territory by interrupting Wyoming’s very strong thoughts — which opened the can of snarky-threats where she began to threaten me with dragon ears and teeth bared. What do I do about the violent threats?

    I had to think this through and I regularly found myself changing my position on what to do about it. Clearly this is NOT OK. I don’t care how you feel Wyoming, you cannot threaten to harm a human and continue to live here. In Mark Langley language “That is not available.” And in Harry-land “Let go of THAT thought mare.” 

    I thought: there is a boundary needed where that behavior is not tolerated and has an electric fence style wire that is tripped when you go there. On the other hand, it’s not as simple as setting up a “snark fence” that sends an electric shock clearly, effectively, and unemotionally at exactly the right time when the snark threat shows up. I have to set and enforce the boundary, and with my human limitations this could easily end up being unclear, questionable on its appropriate firmness, and most importantly could be rife with emotion no matter how hard I try not to be. There is a thin line between a boundary and a punishment, and this particular horse is quite sensitive to knowing which it is, and punishment always makes things worse between us.

    In June when I started over once again, I’d see her go volcanically violent when I asked for her attention on me while she was in her stall, and I’d stand still outside her reach as she would snake her ears and snap her teeth a few inches from my face. I’d say: thanks for giving me your attention, this is a start… And she would cuss me out in equine, threatening to chew me up and trample my carcass when she had the chance. But, I reasoned, I had all of her attention in that moment. Of course the hope was to get her to feel better about it, and I don’t think that interaction felt very good for either of us.

    The problem seemed to get worse. There were times I would be doing something completely unrelated to her in the next stall and I had to pay close attention to the eyes in the back of my head because she’d stick her nose over the gate threaten me even when I wasn’t asking her for anything. Even my presence began to get under her fur. It seemed to be increasing, so maybe allowing her to have these fits was not the best way forward. If I want to help my horse let go of hard thoughts, I reasoned, I need to find a way to basically say: LET GO OF THAT! When she turns to violence. The violence needs to not work out for her. Right now, I’m not so sure if it is or it isn’t working for her in her mind. So I tried answering the violence with what I hoped was a boundary. If I had my rope, I’d be ready when she circled back to rush the gate with her teeth bared to meet her with the rope as adapt as I could get with my timing in the hope she would begin to think whenever she had snarky-violent outbursts, she ran into something when she came at me and it was not pleasant. Like an electric fence ideally, one that only came on when you have a bad attitude. 

    I would have to be very consistent, as unemotional as possible, and match her in firmness as closely as I could. I wanted her to learn there is a boundary here and violence will never be tolerated.

    I had a couple lucky opportunities meeting her exactly when she came at me but it seemed to only make her more angry and more threatening, and if she backed off it was harder to see a change for her to soften and relax. I could get her to act less on her wish to chew me up and spit me out, but I don’t think it changed the fact that she wanted to. This approach didn’t seem to help her feel any better about being with me. In fact if anything I think she got better at planing quick sneak attacks in the hope she might get through the barrier. I liked the idea that I was trying to clarify that this aggressive behavior was NEVER acceptable, but it didn’t appear I was making real progress with this.

    It did not seem to be working out for me.

    The next shift back came one day when I was innocently cleaning the middle stall and Wyoming came over the gate with her head and began snapping her teeth at me. I wasn’t looking for her attention or demanding anything of her. This also means I was completely unprepared to meet her violence with what I hoped was a decent attempt at a boundary like a rope or a flag, or any useful tool.

    So I just stood there. 

    I stood there and watched her, inches from my face. She pulled back, did her little ramp up circle, snaked her ears and stuck her nose at me, teeth clacking away. I stood unmoving and completely unemotional, and slightly at a loss. I wasn’t “working” with her, I was just at the barn at that time. I simply observed her and paused in curiosity to watch what she would do thinking that I had screwed up the consistency of meeting her behavior with a clear boundary every time. Now what?

    As I watched she repeated the cycle which always included pulling back, doing a little circle, reflattening her ears, and throwing her head over the gate at me, teeth clacking. However, as I stood unmoving and completely curious (not upset, frustrated, angry or afraid) each time was less enthusiastic until finally she threw her head over the fence, froze with no bared teeth, softened her eyes and her ears perked forward. Now it was her turn to just stand there starting at me, curious.

    An example of Wyoming feeling softer and relaxed.

    It was this experience combined with the revelation about the cowardly lion who desperately wanted courage, that had me re-evaluate my attempt to “boundary” this behavior by meeting it with a tool of some sort. 

    First, I realized as I stood quietly out of her reach, there actually WAS a boundary. It was the gate that separated the stalls. That boundary was secure and clear. The truth of this scenario was that she cannot hurt me while the gate stays in place, and it’s screwed to posts with brackets, so it’s not going anywhere. 

    Second, my attempt to meet her violence with some kind of equal “boundary” with a rope or flag she would ideally “run into” wasn’t the wrong direction entirely, but in reflection I had to be honest with myself: I was meeting her fear with my own fear. I wanted to believe I was unemotional, but though I was decent at stuffing the emotion in the moment, it was there. I was afraid if I didn’t curb this behavior someone (probably me) was going to get HURT. I don’t think this concern was unreasonable or wrong, but regardless it was an underlying emotion. No matter how hard I tried, the boundary I wanted to put in place was smelling to her a whole lot more like a punishment.

    Third, though I wanted her to “run into her own pressure” somehow when she came at me, having the rope or flag or stick meet her physically was still “at” her. I started experimenting with creating a big sound instead where she did not like the shock of the noise, but it didn’t hurt. These details are obvious to me now, and really important, but I suppose that’s what a life of learning is about- the mistakes and the fixing of them and the growth from them.

    I know that we cannot meet fear with fear and ever find a better place. We can build a wall of self-protection and we can find ways to not get hurt when we meet fear with fear, but we cannot build connection that demands vulnerability and we cannot strengthen relationships. I pondered all that I’ve read and learned about these things and asked myself the million dollar question: so then, what must meet fear to dissolve it and heal the brokenness? 

    Only LOVE.

    Don’t give up on me here as you assume I am about to suggest going into the shark tank with no protection and singing to the creature who has promised me physical harm a refrain of Kumbaya as my only hope. That is not what I mean by love. Love in fact, must have boundaries because connection is worth protecting. I believe Wyoming when she’s told me she is in enough fear to hurt me if I press her, and me being attacked is not good for either me or Wyoming. If I love her and I’m seeking better connection with her, I will not put us in that situation.

    Danny Silk asks the question: how many pet rattlesnakes do you have? None.

    Because wise people don’t bring dangerous things into our houses- the place we feel safe, can be vulnerable and expect not to be attacked if at all possible. This is a boundary. No rattlesnakes in the house. We can love rattlesnakes and not invite them inside to play. Rattlesnakes can be loved at a distance.

    While Wyoming sees me as a rattlesnake and I see her a threatening dragon, we need to find a way to connect without expecting we will be in each other’s vulnerable place. My job is to find a way to connection with her, to answer her fear with love, and ideally have us not get hurt as we work through this process toward more trust. Both of us need more trust in the other. She has learned that I am wiling to drive and punish when I want something from her or when I am afraid, and I’ve learned she threatens violence when she is out of her comfort zone.

    During this process something began to change that was helpful. Wyoming went from always trying to kill the flag to relaxing when it touched her. The flag became the first tool she not only started to accept without violence, but if I did touch her with it she immediately quieted and would relax as it rubbed her. If the flag was floating along nearby, that made her nervous, but once it made contact she calmed down and began making suggestions where it might scratch and rub her. This gave me the ability to “pet” her without getting in the strike zone. This enabled me to begin to build trust not to punish while staying across a good boundary which kept us both more safe.

    Response to me asking her to give me her attention…

    Thus another shift in approach began for me. I kept myself outside her reach and began asking for her attention. When she would circle, turn, pin her ears and come at the gate I would say under my breath to her (in order to remind myself what she needed from me) Courage! and I would give her a hug instead.

    Me offering the ‘hug’ as a response while staying at a responsible distance for us both.

    Once again, I’m not a total idiot. The hug looked like me lifting up the flag and getting right in there and petting her as close to her head as I could (usually on the neck at first since she wasn’t a fan of the flag strips in her eyes and ears, but that is also changing). I could be a foot out of reach, completely without fear, and only responding with love.

    She considers my response…

    The love was saying: I know you’re afraid and you don’t trust me not to punish you. I know you haven’t felt very good about us working together, and you are like a porcupine walled up with layers of self-protection. It’s exhausting to manage your entire space like this all the time. Let me help you. Give me a chance to try things differently, to connect and care for your needs. And then see if we can work together as a team. Here, I’ll start.

    She softens as I refuse to meet her fear with my own fear and choose not to punish

    I realized that I have wanted to express that to this horse for years. I wanted her to trust me and allow me to help her. However when I was working with her in the punishment paradigm of direct pressure my words and actions were, to her, incongruent. I wanted to say: I am here to help you and I care about you, but my actions were saying: if you don’t do what I’m asking I will hurt you. I need you to comply with my program regardless of how you feel about it because I am the human and you are the horse and this is how it works.

    The flag-hug plan is showing positive changes in our time together. One immediate shift is I can walk around the barn and in her stall again without wondering if she will get flipped to angry-mode even if I’m not paying any attention to her. That was a disturbing phase we went through demanding me to be on high alert (more than normal awareness)— I’ve never been concerned about simply being in the barn with her ever before. I had not trusted being in her space enough since June to trim her feet and they had gotten way too long. Now I’m able to work on her feet and I do it a little each day. I do this without halter or lead rope right now as we are still trust building and she does not trust me yet to feel good about being haltered. For the time being I’m choosing patience on that as we sort out more pressing things.

    She loves being scratched with the flag so lately, our routine goes like so: I greet her, she comes into the barn “aisle” area on her own and I give her some good scratches with the flag. I do a little cleaning and trimming on each hoof and intermix flag scratching. After I get that work done I switch to using the flag to ask her to do something, take a step forward or backward, move away from me, look a different direction (this is beginning to influence her thoughts when they are softer which is a great step!). These things are very small and the scratching reward for giving me something simple is a part of the way we are building trust. All of this she can do and stay in a good feeling place. Almost no snark-threats come from these activities.

    Next I push a little deeper by getting in front of her and ask if she can let go of her vigilance to give me a moment of her attention, center up, and straight on me. I get different degrees of “not really” at this point. I have a little distance, and can effectively block a straight on snark-attack with my flag hug right between the eyes. She doesn’t love that kind of hug yet, and it redirects her to choose a response less violent- sometimes she stays with it and tries again a little softer (she IS trying!), sometimes she chooses to go back into her stall and disconnect with me entirely. That is ok. She gets to make that choice, and it opens the door for me to close the door, allow her the “safety” of her bedroom, and then to stand outside the door and knock so to speak. 

    Right now this is our most intense level of interaction, but I think it’s also where the most important work is being done. In her stall, with a boundary in place for both of us, I will press in to a deeper ask where I know she’s going to be less comfortable. If we never press into here, she can’t have the experience to see it’s going to be different than she expects. With a horse, one cannot use words to explain, we have to change the experience. I can’t change the experience without creating the situation she is afraid of and showing her it will not destroy her.

    I ask for her to let go of whatever else has her attention and give her full attention to me. She reverts to dragon attack, threatens me and doesn’t even stay long enough to bite at me over the gate. She dismisses me immediately and turns her hind end to me going back to the more important thing. At this point I make the biggest slam noise I can with the flag against something (plywood wall, or an unopened bag of shavings is pretty loud too!). She hates this noise but it is not a threat of pain. I am not coming at her, I’m not driving her hind end around, I am staying outside her stall. In essence I’m setting a bomb off right outside her door. I want to be worthy of her full attention. I hope to draw her over because nothing is more important than the sound of a bomb going off right outside your door. Appearing enraged, at first she comes back with her dragon act and each time she dismisses me to turn away I make the sound as full and loud as possible until she realizes this will happen until she makes a different decision. If she threatens, I give her a flag hug. Eventually all I have to do is make a clucking sound with my tongue and she squares up looking directly at me over the gate and each day sooner and sooner she relaxes and looks at me curiously.

    Well ok then? What is so important then you need my full attention?

    I just want a connection with you. Thank you for that. 

    Then I pet her on her forehead with my hand as she relaxes there, and I open her gate so she can choose to stay or go- this is the last part of our time together so I want it to end with her feeling soft and relaxed, but also as I am leaving, she can put her attention wherever she likes. 

    Most often, if I have the horses locked in their stalls, and then I come (not to interact) only to release them, Wyoming is respectful enough to walk past me, clearing my space before she bursts into the field at a full on canter to be freed at last. When I release her after we have connected she stays in place for a time. Sometimes, after I walk off to leave, she will leave her stall at a walk, sometimes she circle back into her stall and munch hay, but she never blasts off, because her mind and her body at that moment are united where we had connected.

    This is a place of peace, a place she feels good. 

    And that is what we both want for her.

  • The devil in the details.

    The devil in the details.

    In the last post (Complicated), I posed the root question:

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

    Over time I have been given advice about Wyoming suggesting a few basic horsemanship concepts. I was told You’ve got to make the “wrong” thing difficult and the “right” thing easy. Also This is a horse where you have to get it to be her idea if you want to succeed.

    This is all well enough… but somehow I wasn’t able to get a next step from the well meaning clinicians and horse-folk who suggested these better ways, to actually sort out exactly how was one to do this? The devil, they say, is in the details.

    As for the first premise, I have been astounded at how easy the “right” thing can be (walk quietly in a circle) to find this mare will choose ear pinning, rearing, and even trotting or cantering in order to NOT comply with my “easy” request. Have you ever heard that it takes more effort to frown than to smile? I’m certain that ear pinning and rearing take way more effort than quietly walking relaxed a turn or two around me.

    Khaleesi had this figured out pretty quickly. She did the math and came to the conclusion complying with my general requests were going to be the path of least resistance. I think she also knew my heart (is that a stretch to write about?) for however a horse knows these unseen things, I think Khaleesi has always known that for better or worse, overall I am trying to do right by her. This horse seems to reward the least try by her human, and she seems to have a lot more grace in my failings. Khaleesi is the kind of horse of which it is said: they will fill in for you… a lot.

    Wyoming is not such a horse. She may or may not know my heart is to do right by her, but she tells me every single time I am not quiet enough in a request, every single time I get impatient and don’t allow her the time to consider and choose. She responds to my energy and where I am looking and if my body is not exactly angled in the ideal way to ask that thing. She responds in a huge way if I am at all confusing to her in any signal. Wyoming has a very low tolerance for mixed signals or confusion.

    As for the second piece of advice, the making it her idea. I never got someone to show me effectively what that would that look like with her. In the past I figured it’s obviously one of those things you have to struggle through on your own (what are you an idiot to have to ask that follow up question of HOW to do it? Or maybe it was like the force… you have to find it on your own grasshopper). That was another assumption. I should have probably asked better follow up questions. Maybe someone might have been able to show me.

    Observing Harry Whitney and Tom Moates, it seems altogether less magical and more practical. The horse gets to choose and whatever she does IS her idea now. And as I’ve heard Harry say: when it’s her idea, then she will own it, then it’ll stick.

    Harry Whitney in TN patiently allows for the horse to come to the idea on her own

    Oh, I thought. So I must not trick, force, or otherwise manipulate and threaten her into doing what I want. And yet somehow I have to help her make better decisions? Which then follows that if I’m dealing with her honestly and not manipulating or otherwise controlling or punishing her… then it actually has to work out better FOR HER when she chooses the thing I am presenting. Which might incentivize her to truly seek to join with me because… it works out for her when she does.

    The devil is in the details.

    I hear a lot of talk in horse circles about putting the horse first, then watch the presentation of folks’ interpretation of that in action and am skeptical. Let me clarify a finer point, often I observe my own presentation of my own interpretation of putting the horse first, and I am highly skeptical even of my own stewardship of this concept.

    And yet, as I perch outside the round pen as Harry helps a horse, I think there is actually a simple truth in… well… put the horse first? Harry Whitney, in the scant week or so I’ve spent around him in California and Tennessee, puts an emphasis on how the horse feels above everything else. 

    Harry in Vista, CA February 2023 helping a horse center and find peace in the midst of distraction

    I am pretty good by now about sorting out what a horse does. I can see the way a horse steps over a hind foot, or if the horse’s body moves backward, or if the horse is walking, trotting or cantering. I am even good at seeing a weight shift and feeling which foot is lifting underneath me. It is not that hard to sort out: I asked you to walk, and you are not walking. This I need to “fix” somehow. Harry wants to know how the horse feels.

    As I circle back to the question, can I help Wyoming FEEL better about her life, it seems now to rise above all the other questions I have asked: Can I get Wyoming comfortable on the trailer? Can I get Wyoming to respond to a simple request unoffended? Can I put on a halter without her nipping at it as I put it on? Can I convince her to carry me as a rider without being so pinched up inside?

    And so I went to work last week, and the devil is in the details.

    Day one and day two were spent with Tom sorting out the fact that Wyoming is not only complicated, but that she does not feel good most of the time. Even in the herd she is never fully relaxed, she is the one who appears to take on the role of defender of any possible harm. This is a heavy load to carry. Any new environmental stimuli, even a chainsaw a mile away in the woods across the street is cause for concern and alert. 

    Khaleesi has a more balanced sense of what is concerning, and what can be noticed and let go of. Same herd, same stimuli, still aware of her environment and sometimes on alert, but quicker to let something go and relax again.

    If I were to consider Wyoming’s “worry cup” (as in the amount of anxiety a horse is building up until it runneth over – usually in a negative expression of some sort), Wyoming is not a cup half full kind of mare… she is like 5/8th  most of the time and now has learned to carry that kind of worry in everything she does. This would mean when I want to do something together I have precious little room to press her before her cup runs over. I think this constant anxiety is a big part of this not feeling good all the time.

    If she lives at 5/8 full, I think me showing up puts her at 6/8 (or 3/4 for those who prefer to simplify their fractions) then whatever we begin to sort through together leaves only 7/8 and then bam… self-protection at all costs shows up in fight/flight with the fight being unusually high on her list of options.

    I am considering the possibility that her 5/8 full worry cup at all times being a way of life could account for why she is so quick to flip over to fight/flight and the fact that we’ve had to get decent at dumping out the part we just filled if we both want to survive together. If this is an accurate hypothesis, then it follows that I have not been effective at getting down into the bottom 5/8 of the cup she carries constantly in order to empty some of that and give us some emotional space to work in.

    If I had to find an analogy to compare it to, it’s like working with a machine that is not running quite properly and you have to learn how to manage it without it overheating and blowing up if you want to get anything done. We exist too close to the red zone as an every day functioning.

    I think until I find a way to dig into some of the chronic discontent/anxiety she carries as her normal and help her to let go some of that somehow… then I’m constantly in the zone where every move I make could be the thing that takes her over the edge. It’s an eggshell kind of life. My guess is she would rather not live that way either. If she knew there was another way.

    As Tom says: this is the horse she would rather be.

    This winter and at other times I’ve put her into the benign neglect zone, first because I didn’t have any promising answers to bring a change. Second, in the winters I’m busy with my teaching work and have far less time for the herd.

    I used the think caring for her basic needs, allowing her to settle into a herd in a life of basic freedom could not only do no harm, but would help her reset again and feel better in order for us to possibly try again after that refreshing time off. Maybe the horse can drain the cup on her own? Since meeting Harry I am convinced that they actually DO need intervention in a different experience in order to make a change. Leaving them alone to “be a horse” if they are troubled will not fix the trouble. 

    The biggest take-away I had from Harry in Tennessee this spring was: 

    Our understanding runs our emotions, our emotions dictate our actions.  If you want a change in the horse, you must change their understanding. 

    Harry Whitney

    After Tom’s visit it had come into focus for me, somehow Wyoming needs new experiences to get that cup drained enough that she could withstand a little pressure in order to grow and expand her world. Leaving her alone to a world that gets smaller and smaller due to fears is not kindness. Creating a shake up in order to help her was going to be necessary.

    No Wyoming… tell me how you really feel?

    And the devil is in the details.

    This is where the hoof hits the dirt. The first question from the last post was: can I help Wyoming feel better with new experiences that will change her mind. Once everyone was gone and it’s just me and the mare I now to have to ask: How on earth am I going to do this?

    I have a feeling this is going to demand more from me that I currently possess in knowledge, skill, creativity, grace and most of all patience. As I got started, I realized this horse is probably going to be the kind that makes me or breaks me – meaning I will either grow and learn, or she’ll be too much for me and I will truly fail her. I can not at the moment accept the latter as a possibility, so I’m prepared to be changed from this process. 

    And so we begin… again… again.

  • Complicated

    Complicated

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

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

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

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

    Enough of that. Back to the complicated wild one.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    This is an example of how things would come apart. 

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

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

    A soft moment with Tom after we worked a while on getting her to center up her mind

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

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

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

    Yes. Please. 

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

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

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

    Abigail & Wyoming a few years back

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

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

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

    She’s complicated.

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

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

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

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

    Great moment at the end of the session when Tom was checking out if she can tolerate some “dead weight” while carrying the saddle.

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

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

    we don’t want to export THAT

    Indeed.

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

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

  • Nutrition Chat… the basics

    Nutrition Chat… the basics

    We have been working with Stephanie Carter NTP for over a year to get an individual look at their nutritional deficits, heavy metal loads, and ways to support the horses for better health and performance.

    Stephanie agreed to have a conversation with us about some basic nutrition ideas including inflammation, adrenal fatigue, and gut health and how to get started looking at the cellular level.

    We hope to get a follow up conversation sometime to go deeper into some of these topics! Submit your questions in the comments and we will try to get to as many as possible!

  • Kate the mare.

    Kate the mare.

    I was able to steal away for two days to catch up with Harry Witney in Rogersville, TN. He had taken roost for a few weeks at Mendin’ Fences Farm, a Horsemanship Education Center somewhere between Johnson City and Knoxville. The short trip was well worth the effort as I loved how Mendin’ Fences is set up and functions and got some good ideas about how I’d like to set up a location whenever that becomes a reality. I was able to watch and chat with Harry and the gathering around him for two days- and the gathering included Tom Moates who has become a Hope Horsemanship friend and comes to work/play with our horses from time to time- but also made a new friend from SC (Sue) and got to chat with Molly Sanders who does great interviews on her podcast: A Learner’s Journey.

    I had a few good take aways this particular trip I plan to write about, but the one that felt most compelling for me personally was watching Harry work with a beautiful strong independent mare named Kate.

    The way Harry worked with Kate wasn’t any different than other horses I’ve watched him work. Kate wasn’t all that particularly different from other horses either. Why this story particularly touched me was probably as simple as timing. Recently I have found myself distracted from my own path and my own story and though I knew it was happening, sometimes knowing doesn’t solve the deeper problems. Sometimes being aware is only the first step and not enough to make an internal shift that brings about change. I knew I was becoming anxious because my mind was not centered on my current place in my current journey. I knew this shows up in my wanting to start rushing around…

    What brought new clarity and impacted me came from seeing a story unfold that revealed to me, in a simpler version, what I was happening in my own life. That story enabled me to shift back to where the peace would be. Here is what I observed:

    Kate the mare.

    Kate was 26, not young for a horse. She’d had a life of performance, hurry and worry. Kate had been there and done that, her new owner explained, including long miles on the Appalachian trail, racing barrels and various other jobs in her life. She seemed now to get resentful about being pushed to perform. Sometimes she would dig in her heels and refuse to connect with a human and work together anymore, if pressed she would rush and go fast to get it over with. I just want her to have a happy rest of her life now, her owner said, that’s why we’re here.

    They brought Kate into the round pen and set her loose. She went about hurrying and worrying… and didn’t see any value in checking in with Harry. When he’d make a suggestion that she could let go of her anxiety and the thoughts that took her mind away from the roundpen she’d respond in a cloud of dust.

    Harry took his time with her and never encouraged her to add energy or up her effort. He kept it all slow. After a while of working in this relaxed slow way someone asked: Would you start working her at faster speeds now? (The horse before Kate Harry had done a lot more work at faster speeds) Harry responded: No, she just needs to get realizing that she can feel good right here. We don’t need to rush.

    The mare took a fair amount of convincing that Harry had anything at all to offer her. She was independent and strong willed and didn’t seem to need or want a leader in her life. When the mare let her thoughts wander away from what was happening at the moment in the pen she would get anxious and rush around. And yet Harry’s convincing was quiet, soft, and patient. He never chased her around to get her attention. He wanted her to work it out. If she could come through working it out herself, he explained, it would be more meaningful to her.

    She considers her options from across the sand

    When the time was right, Harry asked the mare to let go of the thoughts that took her away from being present: Be here now he said. Be here now. And he would wait, and help her notice him, help her see she could relax and feel good if she would choose to let go of the worries and choose to be with him, present in the pen. Yet she had to choose. When she would momentarily choose to pause and even consider connecting he would say: Good for you mare, good for you.

    She gives Harry a chance…

    I couldn’t help but think: who wouldn’t want to be one of Harry’s horses? Who wouldn’t want a leader who has the steadfast patience to do what the horse needs when the horse needs it to help the horse feel better about themselves and their world? Who isn’t looking for guidance on how to be here now, and someone willing to care enough to firm up to help, never to punish, and to encourage the freedom to work it out in your own way? Who actually cares that it’s meaningful for the horse not just that it’s effective to get to a goal? Who doesn’t want a leader in their life like Harry- whose priority is first that the horse feels better? 

    I reflected how when Harry works a horse he doesn’t consider what he did with the horse before her or what the horse after her will need. He doesn’t consider what will entertain those observing. Each is unique and he focuses only on that horse and what she needs at that moment – and at this point in his experience he’s gotten pretty darn good at knowing – for each horse, their story, and their needs. 

    I reflected how beautiful it is that in truth, I do have that very thing. And it was at work in that very moment. How healing it is to have an experience that changes an understanding, that changes emotions, that changes how I function and respond. What a piece of hope right there at the round pen. 

  • The motions of emotion

    The motions of emotion

    I spent few days with Harry Whitney last week. I hope I will never be the same.

    I have been to a handful of horsemanship events and clinics ranging in size and popularity and I did not know what to expect from a Harry Whitney clinic. Harry doesn’t have much media out there to get a detailed understanding of what he is doing, though it’s not difficult to get the basics, so if you want to learn from him, you’re going to have to go find him.

    Brandea and I did just that and we flew across the country to catch him in Southern California on a week we both could manage to get away. It was well worth the investment.

    I was surprised and soon delighted to find how intimate the group was. Harry does mainly one-on-one sessions and the clinics are limited to 5-6 horses. Auditors (or fence sitters and rail hens as Harry chuckled at the different terms for a clinic observer in other parts of the world) are also limited, but this clinic was below even the limit. At any given time there were less than 12 of us gathered around a round pen close enough to touch the master horseman hardly having to raise a voice to have a question heard.

    Intimate group around the round pen

    I have been in clinics where questions were “legal” but I’ve never seen anyone else address questions so willingly, easily, graciously and genuinely as Harry Whitney. He seems to invite questions because in order to learn, I think he wants those engaged in the process to be seeking and if we are seeking we should have questions. Harry creates a safe environment to ask any honest question, never leaves the human feeling stupid or embarrassed though he might lead you in a direction that brings a good natured laugh from everyone but always in a way that keeps us from Ftbecoming too serious about ourselves or the horses and his puns, jokes, and teasing take a potentially long exhausting day of mental heavy lifting and bring some lighthearted joy to mix into the kettle (pardon the vulture reference… one day to break things up Harry let us know if he could be any bird it would be a vulture and why).

    Possibly the thing I will remember the most in my first experience of Harry Whitney is the way his face can go from an attempt at very very serious to the grin that spreads so far and wide it always reaches his eyes. In a world of frustrated, annoyed, exhausted, exasperated, disillusioned master horsemen, the environment around Harry is true lightness and joy mixed with a weight of wisdom and experience. Where many well known horsemen seem to have compassion for the horse and disdain for the ignorant people who ruin them, Harry appears to have as much concern for the people who come for help as the horses who brought them. 

    I won’t try to encapsulate his approach in one blog post, however in some ways I could. There is an integrated core that roots beneath everything he does, and if one could get a handle on that it seems there isn’t anything that wouldn’t be possible. It reminds me of the “seek ye first” idea because when you sort out what that thing is… “and all the rest will be added unto you.”

    If I were to attempt a boil down to that core treasure it is about the mind and emotions of the horse. If you seek a present, calm, integrated mind and body (which will mean the horse feels good, has peace or in in a good emotional state), then you can have it all. There is nothing you couldn’t do together.

    The bad news is also the good news: it’s a lifetime in how to get there.

    In four full days of notes I skimmed through them to see if I could organize something out of the many hours of conversation and observation of Harry working horses and Harry walking others through working their horses. One quote seemed to rise through the roundpen dust:

    We must get more familiar with the motions that come with good emotions and the motions that come from negative emotions.

    Harry Whitney

    What Harry Whitney offers to those who have the patience, is a vision to see what a horse looks like when it truly feels good and how to see the signs of when a horse is doing the thing, but doesn’t feel good about it.

    I might have said before that identification of the problem is key, but today I will go to another place and say identification that there IS a problem is more key. We have so normalized… no… we reward and celebrate getting things done with horses when they are worried, shut down, or elsewise functioning in tension through the highest international levels, that I wonder how many people actually even have the eyes to see what it looks like to have a horse moving freely, in balance, with it’s mind and body aligned to commit willingly to the work it is engaged in. I long for the day when it is unusual to see a troubled horse in work instead of unusual to see a relaxed confident horse competing or even pleasure riding. 

    Lest anyone take this statement to suggest that I have sorted this out and point the finger around me, I will clarify that though I have been desperately seeking this without even knowing it was possible for years, I saw even today just how far I am from bringing my horses forward a shining example. But we will take ground together in this because I am committed to it. I am dedicated to learning and disciplining myself to the shifts necessary to be the one who is able to make my horse feel better about everything we do together.

    I have never been to a clinic where someone made what I’ll call an adjustment when I didn’t see a horse move a nose hair or whisker. I have previously thought (maybe I made this up, but I think I got some help from many sources over a few years) that if a horse didn’t move in their physical space then we don’t have anything to correct or adjust. And yet as I watched Harry in the round pen with a particularly bothered gelding the first day, I saw him knock the coiled up lead rope against his chaps making a decent striking sound and I hadn’t even seen the horse move.

    I had some ideas but I don’t want to assume. So I asked. I wanted to understand.

    Harry explained he created a kind of interruption or distraction at the point he saw the horse’s thoughts begin to move from present in the round pen with him to back to his stall and buddy in the shed row. He wasn’t trying to punish or correct the horse for a change of thought, he was interrupting or even blocking that thought because the horse had basically two options available: he could be present and calm, or he could allow his thoughts to meander (or lope directly!) back to his stall which would mean his mind would not be present with his body. When this happens he will be anxious until he is able reunite his body and mind. Considering we had no plans of taking his body back to his stall quite yet, bringing his thoughts back into the round pen and keeping them there bringing peace to the horse and all of us was Harry’s aim.

    Furthermore, it is preferable to reconnect that mind to the body at the soonest possible opportunity. It is exponentially more difficult to bring back a mind when it has gone far or gotten very hard in it’s direction. Harry Whitney is a master at helping a troubled horse come back to being present and feeling better about himself, and he has developed the understanding of noticing when a horse has just begun to have it’s thought leave to ask the horse: Hey there, let go of that and stay with me. He does it in a way the horse feels better about things.

    The things that can come from this cornerstone is infinite. People are so used to horses working while they are troubled that it takes a special circumstance to get a good look at what untroubled looks like. Compliant, obedient, slow, or snappy to give us what we ask for – these are not in themselves signs of a horse that’s untroubled. Horses can do very high level activities even without a rope connected and still be troubled on the inside about the work. Many dull shut down horses who are so troubled they have “gone away” when humans are present are considered perfect bomb-proof kid horses of high value. This horse might be quiet and basically compliant but it doesn’t mean it is relaxed and happy in the work. And that bomb proofing creates its own kind of danger. Someone will in time be hurt by it- the human or the horse.

    On the other side of the coin horses that wear their emotions on their outsides and who begin dancing around in giraffe mode every time they are asked to do anything are not shut down the way the dull horse is, but snappy reactive activity even if it’s responding to our cues does not mean willing and feeling good. Horses are fantastic at avoiding us in a myriad of ways and yet convincing us they are “on board” in order to get us from bothering them more. They are incredibly smart and as Harry said more than once through the week:

    It’s amazing they haven’t killed us all off by now.

    With so many examples of troubled horses competing and winning across the board of horse sports. I have wondered if I was just being overly sensitive, or if I was not reading things clearly, or if this is necessary if one wants to do things with horses.

    I have wondered if it might just be true that horses want in their hearts to be left alone to graze and be in their herd and feel safe and everything else we do is going to bring trouble…

    If so, maybe the best we can hope for is to do our things with them and then apologize and set them free again and at least try to give them as much horse life as we can in between the work?

    Now I don’t believe that. I do believe much of what we do troubles them, but from the glimpse of what I saw, it IS possible to actually be a force for peace when the horse gets anxious. The question as Harry put it is:

    Can we actually be effective at going into a situation where the horse is bothered and help the horse feel better?

    I saw that yes. This is possible. But it’s not for the faint of heart.

    Not because it’s a dangerous process at all, in fact Harry joked one day one that he doesn’t get a lot of auditors because his clinics are too boring for people to sit that many hours and watch. I thought he was kidding… he might have been, but there was more truth in it than even I realized. In fact there were many hours of things getting done and getting addressed at a level where you’d have to be watching closely to understand. No one is discouraged from getting firm or having a meltdown in order to do what needs to be done to bring a horse back to present with us. So these moments did occur- there is no tiptoeing around a horse allowed- however once the horse returns the moment is over and the leading onward continues in a quiet and relaxed thoughtful way. Harry took horses that were feeling scattered and fragmented (hot) and helped them relax into beautiful transitions that were soft but had life, and he helped horses that were dull and shut down to bring up that life without driving them around with force and pressure that worried them into the movement.

    The reason this is not for the faint of heart is because I observed the people present all had a very LONG view on their paths. They talked over years not days yet without losing track of the day to day and what can be done in a short time if done with quality, feel, and a quiet mind. This both takes a ton of patience because real change (which absolutely has to begin within the human and that is a process too!) takes real time, yet also once the shift happens it is astounding how other problems melt away without focusing on them. It is both a painfully slow and a ridiculously effective way to live. I think it brings hope.

    So for anyone else out there who has had enough horses (and for some people one is enough) to have come into one that the other things seem to hit a roadblock, or work for a while and then unravel, consider finding Harry somewhere as he gets around the country pretty well in a year, and sit along the fence and see if there might be something there that could change your life.

    I highly recommend it.

  • Avoidance

    Avoidance

    Have you considered avoidance?

    In my somewhat “off grid” experiments with Wyoming this fall, I am changing my approach to her education away from the direct pressure paradigm and trying to lead her mind and emotions by guiding instead of driving. I am finding myself yet again back at the basics with this mare. Last winter I spent four months with complete liberty and no halter-lead rope where she had to choose to engage if we did anything. This winter I suppose we’ve stepped it up as now I find us in the step of putting the halter on and teaching her to be led.

    I had a friend take a video Monday of the process on a challenging high alert day because the farm cows were being moved around in the horse field so her environmental antennae were fully tuned and her ability to focus on me and consider being willingly restrained was very difficult. What a great opportunity to see how deep the cracks are in this trust foundation.

    What I saw in great clarity when I watched the video was avoidance. 

    In the video you can see Wyoming is not comfortable with the idea of being confined by wearing the halter attached to a lead rope. Her personality is fear based and her flight mode is easily triggered. Her freedom is her most sacred need. [Hm, they say our horses teach us about ourselves….] If she is attached to me I would interfere with her perceived need to move those feet (fast) when she feels enough worry to flip to the sympathetic nervous system and go into flight. I have come to understand more than ever for this mare to partner with a human it is going to take massive trust on a higher level than the average horse.

    When I position myself in the place I would put the halter on her, she is pressed to discomfort but not thrown over her threshold. This is an important factor in the work with her. If I break through her threshold I push her into full on flight-fight-freeze mode and we cannot do any mental work there. Note that with many horses you can work in that mode, but you are training reactions not responses and neither of you can access the horse’s brain when they are in sympathetic response mode. What I hope to find is the place where she is slightly uncomfortable because I’m pressing on that bubble but haven’t exploded it. This is where she can think and learn, and my hope is finally get some traction on progress with our partnership that is lasting.

    How I know in this video that I have not gone into full flight mode is she is never attached to a tool (she has her freedom) and she doesn’t exit stage left. Still it is clear she is pressed into discomfort because she does “leave”, but in more subtle ways. 

    Avoidance.

    I knew it was happening but I saw it with more clarity from the 3rd perspective eye of the video. She didn’t want me to put the halter on and I could see this in the ways she would disconnect from being present with me. She would turn her full attention to the cows (mental). She walked a few steps away (physical). She “nipped” at me with her lips (emotional). She tried to ignore me through eating grass (how many of us have avoidance issues that turn us toward food or drink?).

    My response to these was not punishment. The goal of punishment is to change a behavior. While I am pressing on her comfort zone it only makes sense she is going to have to sort out what to do about it and telling me she is uncomfortable. I don’t want to change the behavior, I want to change her mind.

    In order to do this I will stay in the place where it’s pressing in but not exploding and make sure she knows I hear her. I let her know I hear her by not crossing the line she is most worried about. She is not uncomfortable with my presence around her body in any place. She is uncomfortable with the next step of losing her freedom to me (halter). So I stay in the conversation with her and let her know I will not force her to make the next step. This is how I build trust with her. I stay present with her exactly where she is until she can make the change mentally that she is safe with me and can relax.

    In the video I talk through the conversation I have with her as she uses various avoidance ideas to disconnect and not stay present with me in the uncomfortable place. I can tell you for sure- I can see that this mare is afraid of punishment. She is afraid of correction. I have to communicate with her so the correction is helpful and gentle while still guiding her toward a better path. If it’s too much she overreacts and goes into flight-fight. So when she “leaves” me mentally I do something to bring her back. This is part of the experimental part for me because I have to always find that sweet spot where she feels heard and led into a better place not thrown into sympathetic response mode. I wiggle my lead rope sometimes, I annoy her grazing attempts with my boot (and you can see how that works out!), I stay in step with her when she takes a few steps. 

    This kind of work takes unique understanding of each horse because there is no set answer to all horses. I would have to get much bigger to break Hope out of a shut down state and get her back to present in ways that would send Wyoming to flight. My relationship with Khaleesi is much stronger so I can do a bigger correction without her taking it as personally- she doesn’t have an unnatural response and we can move forward together more efficiently together.

    At some point the change I hope for comes and she releases the tension and worry she had been holding in her body with a big neck shake. On this particular day that is a great place to finish and I tell her thank you and walk away. I don’t pierce into the next level with the halter although the session before this (which was over a week before due to being out of town) we had put the halter on and done some leading work without worry.

    Each session I must take the horse I have and do what she can tolerate or I will create relationship damage. That is the thing I am coming to realize more and more as I “grow up” is that yes, we can go forward when we don’t have agreement and connection- but do we fully understand the damage that is caused? I wonder.

    This is the case with the humans around us as well. Some are more geared toward progress and goals and some are naturally geared toward relationship and connection. I see that both are strengths and weaknesses. Those goal-progress oriented can do a lot of damage as we believe the prize is worth it and everyone will see that eventually. We run over others mostly for their own good. And yet the relational-connection folks can get so stuck in the messy imperfect relationship questions that they don’t get the strength of relationship because they don’t press into the challenges with courage and intention.

    If I never ask anything of my horses it does not create any relationship. Asking them to do things they don’t understand or are not ready to do mentally destroys relationship opportunities.  

    I see great value in this work and will continue to experiment with it. 

    Wyoming has by far required me to understand new ways of thinking or one of us was eventually going to get really injured. Yet as she has kept me in the curious mindset (I am too stubborn to just give up on us) I am seeing an early harvest with this line of work with Khaleesi and Hope as well. Because these two are less of a challenge for every day “simple” tasks (like wearing a halter without anxiety) their changes have been deeper and exciting.

    As always, I appreciate the clarity working with these horses gives me on my own life. I have begun to see in others around me to deeper layers of questions below the surface behaviors and it helps me have more compassion and not get so focused on the “unwanted behavior” and realize it’s the deeper heart and mind cracks that are behind the behavior. I can’t always help each person depending on our relationship and connection, but I can have more freedom in my own responses and not go into sympathetic self-protection responses as quickly.

    More transformational still, it’s brought awareness to my own avoidance behavior. When am I uncomfortable and want to distract myself with “the cows over there” or trying to eat or drink (or pick up my phone to check emails and messages rather than engage a troubling situation or thought), when do I nip at those around me hoping to send them away so I can self-protect? Truly not everyone should have my full submission and trust and that must be built, but I’m certain I can do this more intentionally and made decisions instead of reactions if I slow down and try to understand why I am feeling so anxious, angry or afraid. I can sort out my own cracks and look for greater truths to strengthen with, and maybe stop some of the cycles around me of irresponsible relationship behaviors that leave people wounded and lashing out in self-protection (creating more wounds in others).

    Link to YouTube videos:

    Avoidance video

    Fear of pressure video

  • Am I safe? (conclusion)

    Am I safe? (conclusion)

    In part 1 and part 2 of Am I Safe? I wrote about some observations and questions that connect to conversations I’ve been listening to around the neurological system and healing. Hopefully in the wrap up below (part 3) I can give some thoughts on what we can do with these questions.

    First the elephant… It is very hard to see borderline (or outright) abuse happening in situations where very clearly the people involved see it as normal. The more I learn the more clarity comes with my own herd- and the world around me. I am grateful for the horses in my own herd because they are constantly reminding me that humility is my superpower… this doesn’t mean I am amazing at humility, instead it means I can always choose humility and every time I do it empowers me and those around me where pride is ALWAYS ALWAYS destructive. I am convinced it is pride and ego that are the deepest roots of the pain we cause horses day to day.

    Early in my career riding endurance with Khaleesi I was certain she was not giving me her best  (she’s being lazy) and I was determined on this particular ride to insist she give me all she had to see what we were capable of. Around the last loop of the ride she really began to slow down. I INSISTED she get moving! We only had so many miles left: you can do this, come ON why are you slowing down you are not that tired! I know you! You have more to give!!

    The more I insisted the more she resisted. I can still feel the red-angry frustration that was welling up in me, I was not thoughtfully making a decision anymore I was infuriated that she was refusing to get this done. I grabbed a stick and whipped her butt- I MEAN IT!

    She began to comply and try (this story still breaks my heart to retell it) and I began to notice something…. When the ground got sandy and soft she ran and trotted her best, and she always slowed down when the ground got hard and rocky – still trying to show me she was going, but CLEARLY not as comfortably. She wasn’t softly giving me her everything, she was doing the whole thing with brace and not exactly an attitude (she never threatened to buck or fight me) but not a willing happy heart.

    It began to come together and I softened. No, I was right she wasn’t tired. Her feet hurt.

    She was in pain.

    We were now close to the finish and I let her walk every rocky surface and she would trot on sand- but the damage was done. Both physically and mentally. When we got to the finish, it was a hot day, but it took her 20 minutes to come down in heart rate. We used ice water and hand walked her. This horse generally pulses if she is fine in minutes after cantering into camp. The ONLY reason she does not pulse is physical pain. There have been three times in our career I’ve had pulse issues. We did get her down in enough time to final vet. She didn’t look great and got a “C” on gait but the vet noted it was not clearly a lameness- she was just looking all around exhausted so we got a completion. 

    Grace I did not deserve.

    We got back to the trailer and I was devastated. What had I done? Ego. Pride. Never again.

    I learned a lesson that day and in the years since I have NEVER repeated that by forcing Khaleesi to give me more than she was willing and able.

    The trailer loading debacle I wrote about in part 2 was that NEVER again moment between Wyoming and me. I tried to use force to move her forward in the process. That choice that jacked up my trailer, could have gotten her killed (as she broke off the chest bar leaving enough lead rope to hang herself over a hinge like a fish on a line) and left me some wicked rope burns to remember it by. Again I know I got off easier than I deserved.

    I took this picture that day when I “hung up her halter” for a time. I comitted to work within her threshold regardless of what it was and not to listen to the voices that say I should just “get it done” by force, whatever the thing is. I did not use a halter with her for months.

    Now that I write this… some of that deep trauma in her poll and neck that she was resisting could very well be residual from that wreck I caused.

    So there are two of my most dramatic, but not the only, moments of when my ego or pride and ignorance created trauma for a horse in my own herd. But for the grace of God go I again over those paths and every year I learn more I can look back more recent than I’d like and see ignorance or impatience creating problems I preach so hard against.

    Humility is my superpower.

    Yet humility does not mean never speaking about what I see, and what I’m learning because it might create discomfort. It means I don’t do it in a “me against you” conversation, but always a “I am with you” conversation. With compassion. And with the knowledge that we can only do the best we know at the time. And pride is so insidious- it attacks at a deep root level and is very hard for any of us to see in the mirror, and easy for others to spot looking in. My best advice if you care to grow, is to find a few people you trust and give them a hunting license to help you see what you cannot. 

    In all fairness, I still fail a lot. But I refuse to quit. 

    In the case of Hope and other horses I see in broken down states, I don’t think any one of the people in her line was an evil genius trying to wreck a beautiful creature physically, emotionally and mentally. I think every one of them wanted what most horse people want with a horse. They want good things right? And yet people created the deep rooted problems in this mare by ego and ignorance. It’s how most problems start. Not one person in her line of owners took the time to listen to her and then do what it took to help her. They saw her as obstinate and unwilling. I can say she is neither of those. She had finally been… broken.

    What then can we do?

    I asked the question in part 2: What can I do to make Wyoming feel safe enough to let go of her trauma? I will never had a successful relationship with her while her nervous system is on overdrive. She cannot communicate, connect or learn if she is only on survival/react mode. Wyoming wears her emotions on her outside. We always know how she’s feeling, and she doesn’t have emotional stability and well being. On the other side of the coin is Hope. She is equally traumatized but her reaction is to withdraw and shut down, comply as much as she is able. She hides deep inside herself. Horses willing to go this route are often considered respectful and obedient. Bombproof and ideal… until they simply cannot.

    I had hoped to find another expert conversation to tell me in a nutshell how to fix all this for my herd. No such luck. Instead I heard another quote ringing in my ears: 

    You cannot come to a horse intentionally thinking you want to fix something. If you come with the goal of fixing it your horse will internally brace against it and you won’t be able to fix it. Instead let go of the idea that you are fixing something and simply find a little place to release tension here or help them to relax there and before you know it thinks get better and you have fixed things. You have to let go of your agenda in order to help the horse. 

    Jim Masterson

    I have three personal takeaways from all of this. The order isn’t key as much as they are all interconnected so they work together in a synergistic way. I trust you can sort out what it all means for you and your horse journey.

    1. Get better than you currently are at understanding horse communication. And put it into practice by listening better. Everyone says that of course they listen to their horse. Just as no one was setting out to destroy Hope earlier in her life, my experience is those owners would say the same thing- of course they understand horses and of course they listen, many many people who have own horses and ride horses do not have accurate understanding of what is going on in their horse’s communication. I see most riders- especially ones who have “been around horses all their lives” making assumptions about what they think the horse is saying that is often pretty inaccurate. This brings up another quote:

    Horses survive by being incredibly adaptable. They adapt to the way we work with them. They are so adaptive we often miss what’s really there because they are so good at accommodating.

    Jim Masterson

    Keep in mind have a real disadvantage in this from the start because of how accommodating horses are by nature, but that is a survival skill not a healthy way of being.

    Horse people have taken pure communication from the horse like ear pinning, evasion (evasion can be trying to step away from mounting, bucking, rearing, spooking, running away etc), pawing, pushing, nipping and kicking and turned those into “unwanted behaviors” that we train out so they can be “good horses”. This begins early on and then is continued through their lives. We have taken away their negative communication channels. We as a culture training our horses not to share when they have a problem. No one wants a horse to bite them including me. If we were more adept at seeing early subtle signs they wouldn’t have to bite us in order for us to understand. 

    Part of helping a horse to understand it is safe is ensuring a horse feels seen and heard. Accurately. Acknowledge when your horse is trying to communicate she is not OK and see if you can find out why. Then commit to a change- do something about the problem.

    2. Accept that one cannot separate behavioral (mental and/or emotional) from physical issues.

    Of course there are issues that begin behavioral and there are issues that stem from physical problem but it is always more complicated and they will always connect. If you have a physical issue that isn’t addressed it will always show up as a behavioral issue. If your horse is experiencing physical discomfort they will do things like refuse to make that jump, not be as eager to do upward transitions, try to evade being caught, pin their ears or nip while being groomed or saddled, etc.

    On the other side, if your horse is having mental or emotional issues (isn’t confident to leave the herd, confusion over what is being asked, feels like it will never get released or there is never a right answer, is over stimulated) that will show up in time in the physical body as ulcers, joint or tendon injuries due to not moving in a relaxed and proper form for the work, or acute injuries from flight responses when they aren’t thinking but reacting and get themselves hung up, cut up, or in some other wreck.

    If you always assume there are connections between behavior and the body you will have more data to work with in assessing what is really going on and have a leg up on finding problem before they are a big financial and time investment to sort out. 

    3. Assume your ego and pride are your biggest enemy and that both are working against you and then seek out ways to fight against them. Humility is your superpower too.

    We all see our horses as friends (well anyone reading this blog for sure does), and we want to do what’s best for them. That is our high value (high values are how we talk, core values are what we walk). I hear most people say “I always put the horse first.” It’s in the core value where things get dicey. Are you willing to do what is best for your horse when it costs you the resource you have least of… for some that is money, for some it is time. 

    I was fascinated listening to Anja Beran who has been teaching classical dressage in Germany for over 25 years. She has been a voice against poor training in modern dressage (at very high levels) and is a great to seek out in the conversation of creating a powerful willing horse that can compete in any discipline much longer than the norms we see today. When the interviewer asked her how long it usually takes her to work with a client horse that comes in with some trouble (when you get good at successfully fixing problems, you see a fair amount of them) and even I was a bit surprised at her answer: Well, you see usually we find it is a minimum one year, and often we will keep them and work with them up to three years to help them come back into a healthy way of moving again.

    Here in America we expect results in a weekend to maybe 30 days on the outside. Unfortunately you can get a horse looking to an uneducated eye (that would be 80% of the horse-person population if you go with the rule of the Pareto principle) in 30 days training, but there are so many holes in these horses that someone is eventually going to crash through physically, mentally, emotionally or all of the above- it’s only a matter of time.

    Anja explained that a very high level circus in Germany uses her exclusively to train their Lippizaner team and she says they bring them to her for seven years. The reason they are willing to invest that kind of time she explains is because they perform well into their thirties when they are trained properly. A healthy balanced horse will also cost much less over time in vet bills and missed work.

    Money is a limited resource for most of us. It is true we have to make decisions thoughtfully when it comes to how much we can allocate to a horse, but I have seen people throw tons of cash around if they believe they will get a quick fix to a problem. Time is usually the more treasured resource and we appear as a culture not willing to give our beloved horses the time they desperately need to learn how to carry their bodies properly, to think and make choices instead of hurry up and react to my pressure (obey) so we can get on with what I want to do. We also need time – to get better in our own knowledge and skills so we can actually help the horses instead of always talking about how they are so good at taking care of us.

    And so I circle all the way back to that first question… why is that horses — when they are given more supportive care and a place that will hear them ask for help do they appear to get so much worse?

    From the neurological perspective I have been learning more from, I think when they begin to feel safe they will begin to heal. And no healing can take place without the revelation of brokenness. One must feel in order to heal. With any person or horse or any living creature- survival often means setting aside a wound in order to get through now. When we are given a safe place to peel off the survival mechanisms the only road to wholeness is by revealing the brokenness and then letting it go or getting the professional help required to walk through the healing.

    It makes more sense to me now that it would take Hope some time to believe she was in a safe enough place to fall apart. It also makes sense that Wyoming has deep layers she does not feel she is safe to release yet. Knowing that means I can be more attuned to making her feel heard and that her worries and concerns while I might think on human terms are overblown and inaccurate, to her they are enough to jack up her nervous system and that’s all that matters.

    In both cases I have come to see that I cannot approach this as a new (oh that ego is tricky!) goal for them. I am a driven person and I can take their healing and turn it into it’s own goal that then becomes a new source of stress and pressure.

    When Hope first came back from her stay with Dr. Hancock I was very excited to see her bloom into a healthy mare. I was great at doing all the things I was told would help her recover. But she seemed to be getting worse after a week or so. I was able to recognize that I had dumped my expectations of her coming into health on her and she was straining under the pressure. I tried to let her know that I believe I had done all I could for her professionally and now it was up to her to get better. I would help all I could but she would need to go at her own pace in her own way. I was committed to be with her and support her. 

    She has good days and bad days, and stress is more likely to create a bad day. I don’t always have control over stress in a horse herd. My healthier horses are less affected by it. Overall I see clear trends toward better. She more stable in her balance. She is moving better in her body. She has less mucous and infection recurrence. She is brighter in the eyes. She has more “personality” and preferences coming out. When we brought her home in December of 2020 I would never have guessed she could have so many deep layers of brokenness it came close to costing her life; she held it together pretty well for months. The very limited work she was for a few months in could not have caused the depth and seriousness of her condition. The downhill freefall actually came while she was in pasture rest with her herd through her second winter here. A place she probably felt the most safe in a long time.

    I look forward to what healthy Hope will be like. I look forward to her becoming more her own horse and getting to know her. And I will continue to find ways to help Wyoming believe she can let go of the trauma her past life and I have caused. I will get better at hearing their concerns and answering how I can. I will assume less and be curious more. I will honor them with the time they need and set aside my own goals and plans for them regardless of what people on the outside think. And hopefully I will look back at this series someday with a more complete picture and have some corrections to make- 

    For now, I think that is the best I can do.

    Hope before I brought her home December 2020
    A little morning trot in July 2022 after returning from functional vet care
    Hope now (October 2022)

    I would like to conclude by bringing up that one cannot give what one does not have. I also have seen in myself wounding and brokenness that made it hard for me to be the whole healthy balanced person who could set aside my ego and goals and the external pressures at work on me to have the grounding and confidence to allow these horses to fall apart. Because there was a time when them falling apart was too close to my own identity and I could not be the stabilizing factor and have the patience and grace to not need the horse to perform for me in order to make it’s life worthwhile. I also consider the complexity of a world of wounded people who are part of the cycle with traumatized horses. I hope someday HH will be able to help encourage increasingly more powerful horses AND powerful people in richness of mental, physical and emotional health.

    Thank you for reading this series and I hope it gives you some things to chew on and encouragement to find ways to improve your own herd toward increasing excellence, connection, and deeper relationship.

  • Am I Safe? (part 2)

    Am I Safe? (part 2)

    This is the continuation from Am I Safe? (Part 1).

    Mulling over some of the basic ideas I shared in part 1, I headed to the barn to experiment with Jim Masterson’s simple initial video of the bladder meridian to see what my herd had to say about it all. I have three diverse mares to explore:

    Ireland’s Khaleesi I’ve had 8 years now. She is the horse that began the grand experiment. I started her myself as a basically untouched 4-year old that was born into a herd running the western Virginia Mountains on a large property on St. Patrick’s day 2010. I wanted a horse that didn’t have much human interaction and all the mistakes in her development would be mine… I had little information and fewer tools, but I wanted to learn and grow. Boy have I gotten what I asked for. It’s had highs and lows, but the relationship between that mare and me is, if nothing else, authentic. I think that also makes it strong. I’ve been as honest as possible warts and all, and she’s had to put up with a massive learning curve. She has also been pretty honest with me and thankfully lets me know when it’s not going well on her end. If she held her thoughts to herself and just complied I would not learn as quickly.

    Every year I’m sure I write in one of my blog posts that we are finally connecting and what that tells me is there is always more- because every time I wrote it I believed it. I was sure we had come to a new level of connection. The truth as I look back is it was always right, and there are way more layers than I ever dreamed. So this year, including so much freedom, choice, and physical strength we have a lot more harmony of thought and movement and it’s a glimpse for me of the dream: that horse that feels like you’re one with when you think and she responds… and then there’s the day when she looks right at you and trots away down the trail you just finished riding and for what reason you cannot imagine decides to go back out and explore when you dropped the lead rope carrying the saddle to the truck hoping to get home before dark… or at the trot out for the vet at a ride you see an old friend and wave and find your attention snapped back when she nips at your elbow letting you know you’re not present… Regardless, we are friends and all the mess that goes along with it.

    Wyoming who I’ve had about 6 years now (who’s counting?) and have gone through many questions and confusion as to how she’s put together. I have had success with her but it always  falls apart at some point without me understanding why. She appears very physically healthy- in fact my friends and I tease nothing COULD kill that horse (not even a hand grenade) she is a tough wild BLM mare who is a little too adept at survival. However she appears to like me, and other people. She is the friendliest animal I have and loves to interact, she is unwilling to take much direction and is quick to take her toys and go home if you cross her threshold which seems to be amazingly a low one. She has been my greatest teacher. She makes me better than any other horse I’ve met so far.

    Redemption’s Hope is the rescue who has been quite sick in her second year in my care though she is on the long slow road to recovery now, she is quiet and came to me on the shut down side. She has a sweet nature and a soft eye but the lady has a vein of marble running through her and when she gets to a certain point you slam against the wall and nothing moves. 

    I purposefully brought her in to see if I could learn to help a shut down horse- one who had not been heard and had learned to cope by withdrawing and cooperating. This is a horse who (my best guess recreating from the pieces I’ve been given and physical evidence I’ve accumulated) probably tried hard to do what she was asked and was trained with pressure to some degree (like most horses today). She had trainers, owners, or handlers who did not realize they were causing her confusion, stress or pain mentally and physically. She likely didn’t have a real choice, the double-blind I mentioned in part 1 (comply or become more uncomfortable, where comply might have been physically painful, physically awkward, or confusing and unclear), so she began to learn to react rather than respond, to seek release instead of follow a feel or invitation, her right to think was taken away as was her right to communicate that she was confused or hurting. She shut down and seemed like a respectful obedient horse. She had all the signs of being that fabulous natured horse we all want for our kids to ride, until she really couldn’t anymore and then she’d dig in her heels and unable to continue finally say no until it looked like bucking and rearing. She was likely sold early on as a problem or injured horse, discarded to rescue, then returned twice to rescue (this I was told), picked up by a teaching stable operation, and failed out of teaching with two different instructors. Then abandoned to a field where the new owner hoped to figure out what to do with her at some point- glad to sell her to me for a song to have one less mouth to feed.

    My definition of a shut down horse.

    I began the Masterson experiment with Khaleesi because we have the most solid relationship and I should get an honest read from her. She is like my baseline case. True enough, I found his method of watching for reaction as I traced my fingers down her line seemed to work as he said it would. She didn’t have a lot going on but occasionally would have a reaction/tension spot and if I waited there she would respond with a release usually in a working of her jaw and tongue occasionally in a neck shake or deep sigh. 

    I did shorter pieces of the work with Hope and found her resistant at first in the way of being distracted and fidgety, but when she began to figure out what I was doing- and that it was helping her not expecting something of her that she couldn’t understand – she began to get still and engage in the process. 

    Hope was so sick physically in the late spring that I am certain if I didn’t get her to True North Vetrinarian Services I would have been digging a hole for her. I had routine standard vets look at her the summer and fall before as I observed issues that I knew weren’t quite right, but the standard vet answers of antibiotics some chiropractic adjustments didn’t address the healing of the root causes and the effects of them always wore off. True North does functional integrative veterinary care and Hope ended up staying with Dr. Hancock for a month (this was not our initial plan!) as they peeled back the layers to get to the roots and help her.

    She has been home three months and it’s a long road but she is improving. She came home after many sessions of osteopathic body work done slowly as her body could handle it, and many blood tests and radiographs to rule out diseases and injury, and ended up needing a dental adjustment to release pressure in her sinus cavity that was causing a constant low grade abscess. Right now her body is in much better shape except chest area is still holding deep hard tension —- gradually I see it releasing. When I began to do some of the Masterson work with her I was a bit surprised to find so much releasing around her hind end and less in the neck/shoulders. But she did seem to enjoy the process and even stopped eating grass to participate. She gave many release moments and I could see a change in her movement later that day when she trotted around the field with the herd in a more relaxed gait. She is also walking more fluidly as I do this work on her little by little. 

    I think Hope has come to trust that she is in a safe place and that I am here to help her. I hope that she has released the worst of the root damage in her physical and emotional system and is now on the road to healing and becoming truly better for it.

    It was Wyoming that had me the most intrigued.

    One morning I went into Wyoming’s stall while the herd was hanging in the barn in a relaxed way. I gave her a rub and told her what I was going to do and began at the poll like I had seen and didn’t get very far before I saw her eye blink a few times. So I made a note of the spot and moved my fingers lightly back up to see if that was coincidence, flies, or that spot would have the same reaction. I saw exactly the same eye blinking when I got to that spot. There was something going on there.

    In this method you only need observation and patience. First get good at observing very subtle reactions from the horse, then be prepared to wait with a very light touch calling attention to the place the tension is being held, if anything lighten the touch releasing your own energy to encourage the horse to let that tension go. When they release the protective tension they allow their body more into alignment which will enable the horse to move more freely.

    So I gently let a breath out, waited in the spot and whispered almost to myself: It’s ok, you can let that go whatever it is…

    This is where Khaleesi and Hope would have yawned, breathed out, shaken her neck or some sort of relaxing movement to release tension. So I waited for something to happen. But instead she stood quietly but not exactly relaxed. Her lips and eye looked tight.

    Then she moved her lips but it was not a release, it was more to make a kind of nipping in my general direction: I’m not comfortable with this, whatever it is…

    So I got softer, breathed out and whispered so my intent was clear: It’s ok, I’ll stay with you, you can let this go now.

    Again she stood still but not soft. We both waited, I tried softening my gaze and also looking other places to leave her feeling the least pressure possible. Then I saw her ears begin to pull back and she bared her teeth in my direction clearing telling me: I said I AM NOT comfortable with whatever it is you’re doing.

    There was no misunderstanding in this. She was saying NO and she was getting louder.

    Because I have been offering real choice and freedom whenever I can, I set aside my goal of getting Wyoming to release her tension and/or trauma and I stepped back and gave her a friendly rub and told her: Ok, you don’t have to do this now, but I’m telling you, you can. It’s safe here. I am here to help you. When you’re ready.

    I left her stall and went into Khaleesi’s and noticed Wyoming had turned away from toward the wall and was snaking her head in interesting angles and yawning- working her jaw in all kinds of ways. She was releasing or processing something over there way outside the normal. I don’t know that she was releasing that tension I brought her attention to. I think it’s more likely that she was processing the unexpected response I gave her when she said No thank you to my healing plan. It might have been both. I know that I did the right thing for her in the moment- I honored her prerogative to choose not to let that tension go and find more healing. I did not force or even press the issue, especially not telling myself it was for her own good. I walked away.

    It seemed abundantly clear to me she did not feel safe to do that healing work with me in that moment.

    As I left that barn that morning it was like additional lights pinging to create dots in a constellation that finally began to take recognizable shape. Wyoming has been a mystery to me- and she still is. I am far from ready to share my brilliant understanding of the neuroscience of healing of trauma. However the fact that all the good horsemanship I’ve studied to help us become more successful has only worked between us for a time and then gone backward and unraveled every time has been confounding. 

    I’ve had some truly stunning moments of riding this powerful mare — stunning in her balance and grace under saddle, stunning in her athleticism to buck and dance in protest, and less stunning as I stood next to her on trail in confusion as she laid down and tried to roll in a pile of leaves (she got so good at this I’d barely have time to jump off before she was on the ground!). I have video of her running with me around an obstacle course at complete liberty and I’ve had her threaten me violence for asking for some simple circles and figure 8s. I’ve gotten her to ride on the trailer – twice in 6 years and also had her almost kill us both trying to do loading practice last year. I’ve looked at our experience together and wondered if I am simply a terrible horsewoman or if she might be demon possessed.

    At this point, I’ve accepted that Wyoming is atypical and is not here at the moment to be a trail riding companion, but is excellent at her job if she was sent to teach me patience, humility, a higher level of observation and response, and make me laugh – at myself and her. For all the danger we have gotten into over the years with her willingness to try and then zero to sixty in a millisecond emotional threshold responses, the thing that has kept me from turning her into dogfood (in a manner of speaking) is that she apparently likes me, and she is both the most difficult horse I’ve yet come across in my limited experience and also the most friendly with me and other humans. She is not actively plotting to kill me, but she comes to a place of survival where she cannot think rationally. On the flip side, she is everyone’s favorite in the herd and she’s never met a stranger.

    So this interaction of Masterson’s technique revealed to me something in her poll-neck area she was holding tension and refused to allow me to be a part of that release process gave me another clue: she does not feel safe to be that vulnerable with me- even today.

    I have had this horse for 6 years, and I have always done my best with what I have known at the time to create a safe place that took her needs into account. I have learned a whole lot in those 6 years to know that early on I missed a lot of things I understand differently today. So it wasn’t six years of heaven for her, however I have had Khaleesi for 8 years and was the same person Wyoming had to work with. Though it’s completely clear to me that doing my best until recently was actually falling short of the horsewoman I hope to be next year, Khaleesi has been able to shift with me and I’ve seen her bloom in the atmosphere I’ve learned to cultivate in the past year and season while Wyoming is still stuck.

    The question isn’t as much is Wyoming safe as it is does she FEEL safe. 

    I walked away with a new clarity that she likes me and she is willing to try, but what I saw the last time I tried to push my way through with the trailer loading debacle is that she will try and try and try and then comes a point where she is past her safe zone and then survival kicks in and as a wild horse it becomes life or death regardless of if she likes me or not- we both might get killed because she is not responding she is now reacting. The lizard brain of fight-flight-freeze has taken over and we are way past freeze.

    It was that day after the trailer incident that I made the decision not to listen to the people who told me I was just not getting it done with her and she needed to see it would be ok if I just put enough pressure on her and forced her to comply. From now on I knew with Wyoming, we were going to have to honor her emotional threshold and I was going to have to get a whole lot better at reading the very early signs, and this mare was going to have to go at the speed of what she felt she could do without fear. Which it turns out seems to be not all that much…

    The potential was high that this horse could have deeper emotional trauma layers both from my ignorance and from her previous experiences being wild (there are plenty of trauma opportunities in the wild), rounded up, penned up, and then transferred around for the mustang makeover program, which she failed out of due to an injury, resulting in her ending up with a TIP (trainer incentive program) to get her gentled and started in TN before I adopted her and relocated her to VA. You can imagine plenty of opportunties for trama in this mare’s life.

    If she has never felt safe to release the deeper things and allow her nervous system to rest and heal, it would make sense to me she would try to assimilate and get so far and then failure would set in when she couldn’t hold it together. It really was like watching her come apart on me. In fairness she would give me clues she was not doing ok, but they are subtle and as a human I would think they were small so we could handle that. Over time I’ve come to see it’s best not to blow by the small signs because trouble would be ahead when they got bigger in exponential fashion. The worry cup was filling up… and eventually it runneth over!

    And yet this horse still looks to me as her friend, she still comes to me for help if she’s in trouble, and she knows I am here to make things better. So the question I had to ask is:

    What can I do to help her feel safe enough to heal?

    And that maybe I can wrap up in a part 3…

    Read part 3 here…