The Soul of a Horse (4 page)

Somewhere, deep down in her brain, her genetics were finally bubbling to the surface, freed at last from the perspective of the old cowboy.

The next morning when I went down to the stables to feed and muck, I realized for the first time how completely the Join-Up process had transformed Mariah. She was a different horse, waiting by her stall gate, head stretched toward me, and she didn’t move until I came over and gave her a sniff and a rub. A scratch under her jaw at the bend of the neck was her favorite. It became ritual. Every morning. And I dared not ignore her or she would scold me with a soft whinny or a snort. And then pull away when I finally came over, just for a moment, to let me know I had been naughty.

The simple act of giving her the choice of whether or not to be with me, of viewing all of her issues from her perspective, not from mine, had changed everything.

The new Mariah is as affectionate as Cash, as willing and giving, as anxious to see us…and until Skeeter came along, she was Kathleen’s favorite.

I can’t help but wonder what the old cowboy would think if he knew that Mariah had learned what it means to trust.

5

Raison d’Être

T
he herd was tiring. The big mare could sense it. They had run for quite some time. But it was working. She had discovered the concept quite by accident.

The last time man had come after her herd, there were only two choices: a box canyon where they had gone once before and been trapped or the wide-open plains. She had chosen the wide-open run and the pursuers had finally given up. To the matriarch’s surprise. Was her herd that much better than the horses chasing them? She had no way of knowing how living with man might affect them.

Whatever it was, it was also working this time. The herd’s pursuers were slowing down and dropping off.

As they ran on, the stallion was becoming concerned. Would the very youngest among his herd be able to keep up the pace? But just as one little filly began to drop behind, the last of the pursuing horses stumbled, almost losing his rider, and they turned back, quitting the chase.

The mare slowed to an easy canter, but kept moving for a while before bringing the herd to a halt. She scanned the horizon in all directions. Night was falling. Would the pursuers be back tomorrow? Would they try to sneak up on them during the night? She would be prepared.

She showed the herd that she was relaxed, at least for the moment, and they began to graze. All except a small sorrel mare who was designated sentry. She would be watching, always watching. And listening, aware of everything.

The big palomino shook off the chill of night air settling upon his sweaty body and wandered through the herd to check for injuries. As before, there were none. Not even among the young. He was proud of that. His herd was well conditioned, and their feet were rock solid.

A harsh nicker drew his attention. The young colt was at it again and the matriarch was dealing with him. The stallion would leave it to her. He was tired, and perhaps a bit of sleep would be good.

Good sleep. Not the standing kind.

He made his way into the middle of the herd and eased down onto the ground. The herd would keep him surrounded until he woke.

6

The Starting Gate

“T
hat horse is mean. He was born mean!”

It was a trainer at the local horse club speaking.

I didn’t believe him.

There was a time when I would have. But Monty and well-known natural horsemen like Pat Parelli, John Lyons, renowned equine vet Dr. Robert M. Miller, and a host of others say no horse is born mean. They are made mean by humans, usually because the human doesn’t understand or doesn’t want to deal with the concept that the horse is a flight animal. Flight is so embedded in their genetic makeup that reaction is automatic. Any sound, or smell, or flicker of movement that is unfamiliar can cause them to erupt.
React first, ask questions later.

And some folks read this as being bad tempered. Mean.

Mariah once freaked out over a squirrel in the brush and leaped three feet sideways, straight into Kathleen, knocking her to the ground. She wasn’t being mean. She wasn’t trying to hurt Kathleen. She was probably trying to jump into her pocket.
Save me, Mommy!
Because Kathleen had proven herself a good and trusted leader.

The trainer mentioned above would’ve likely beaten the horse, without even considering the fact that she was simply afraid, and reacting in the way that horses have reacted, automatically, for millions of years. A beating would cause more reaction and one thing would lead to another. Soon the horse would come to believe that humans are mean. Predators. And anytime one gets near, it will most likely mean pain. So they become even more fearful. They try to take flight, and if they cannot, they resort to a last-ditch attempt to protect themselves from what they are certain is about to come.

Kathleen kept her adrenaline down. Which, in turn, calmed the horse. She picked herself up and rubbed the little mare, letting her know that she was safe, that nothing was going to harm her. And she made a mental note to always do what renowned Australian clinician Clinton Anderson preaches: Don’t stand right next to a horse until she’s well along in her training and desensitization! In other words, stay out of harm’s way and be prepared. Then slowly teach the horse. Desensitize the horse to whatever makes her afraid. Let her know that in your presence she’s safe. All the while, teaching the horse to respect your personal space, and teaching her to focus; to get back to thinking instead of reacting, keeping ever in mind that, like us, horses have different makeups. Some are
very
sensitive, and some are not. Some are more freaky than others. Some learn fast, some slowly. Some are more mischievous than others. But if they have made the choice, on their own, to trust and be with you, with that comes a willingness to learn and to follow your lead.

They need only to understand what it is they should be learning. Which puts the ball squarely in our court. How do we become clear communicators? Without domination, intimidation, meanness, cruelty, or pain.

Monty Roberts has scores of tales about horses no one could go near, horses most folks would place well inside the
mean
category. But they are now happy, well-adjusted partners. One in England took three full days to come around, but come around he did. This was a horse who had obviously been badly abused somewhere in his history and had decided that all humans were agents of pain. Monty convinced him otherwise.

Yet with such positive results coming from so many different directions, why are we still where we are today, with so many owners of horses living in the dark ages? The reason, I believe, is that most people do not begin at the beginning. They want to start halfway around the track, instead of in the starting gate.

I now have a horse. I want to do something with it. Go riding. Compete. Something!

We humans are in such a hurry that there’s no time to build a relationship. To learn to communicate. To gain and give understanding. To walk in the horses’ boots, so to speak.

To begin at the beginning.

The beginning for us was our discovery of Monty Roberts and his Join-Up process.

And Kathleen’s fear.

She was petrified, and I had no idea.

That birthday trail ride was not something she was looking forward to. It was a gift for me. I was suffering from the so-so results of the last Benji movie and she had wanted to find something for my birthday that would be a diversion and make me smile. That’s the way she is.

But when her fears began to creep out of the closet, I became even more committed to making sure our new horses were safe and our relationship with them well founded. Begin at the beginning. Take whatever time it takes.

Clinician John Lyons says that there is a real reason for fear: “Fear is recognition of loss of control, and it subsides when control returns.”

That’s why so many of the DVDs and books begin with the art of gaining willing control of the horse’s body parts. Moving them this way and that. Backward, forward, and sideways. Both on the ground and in the saddle. That control buys safety, and respect from the horse because you are speaking the language of the herd. Who moves who.

But looking back on Kathleen’s fear, I would adjust John Lyons’s phrase to read “Fear subsides when you
believe
that control has returned.” Because all too often I would watch Kathleen do a splendid job of controlling her horse, only to find out later that she didn’t
believe
she was in control. She was going through the motions, doing what the DVDs and books said, but she didn’t believe she was actually leading the horse. There was no connection. She was merely executing a learned exercise without understanding the point of the exercise.

My fear threshold was much higher than Kathleen’s, probably because at some unconscious level I was actually relating to the horses. Perhaps embedded from my decades of work with dogs, of living inside their hearts and souls trying to draw you in. When Cash walked up behind me and touched my shoulder in that first Join-Up, there was an emotional exchange. I gave absolute trust to him when I turned my back. He returned it when he touched me on the shoulder. I know now there was no such exchange when Kathleen did her first Join-Up. She went through the motions but was petrified that the horse might walk up behind her and knock her down. There was no offering of trust. She knew it, and, unfortunately, the horse knew it as well. As wacky as it might sound to anyone who hasn’t been there, they do read these things. Unerringly. Horses will never be dishonest with you, and they will always know when you are dishonest with them.

But I wouldn’t learn most of this until further down the line. At the time I was just beginning to realize that something was amiss, for both of us. Kathleen was having trouble giving trust to receive it, so she was unable to actually
believe
she was in control. I knew I was in control, but had no idea why. And when logic is removed from any equation, it makes me crazy.

Our growing library of books and DVDs all said to begin at the beginning, which meant standing in the arena teaching my horse to back up or move sideways. Or come to me. These exercises would give me control, said the DVDs. And once I had complete control over how, where, and when the horse moves, I would then have a safe horse. And only then should I climb aboard.

But I wanted to know why.

I was also anxious to take the next step with Cash. After Join-Up, he was now looking to me for leadership, so off we went to the arena.

I hear we learn by our mistakes.

One of the training DVDs had spelled out three different ways to teach backup:

See Cash back up, Method One.

See Cash back up, Method Two.

See Cash back up, Method Three.

Why, I wondered, did I need three? Especially here, beginning at the beginning. One method would’ve been quite enough to confuse both of us this first time out.

See Joe look like a circus clown.

Clumsy and awkward do not adequately describe the moment. I had Cash’s lead rope in one hand and a three-foot-long Handy Stick in the other. A Handy Stick is a plastic rod used to extend the length of one’s arm so that, hopefully, one can stand back far enough to avoid the kind of knockdown Kathleen got to experience. The stick, sold, of course, by one of the DVD trainers, is not to be used for discipline, only for guidance. According to this particular DVD, I was supposed to be doing one thing with the lead rope and another with the stick.

It was like trying to rub circles on your belly with one hand while patting your head with the other.

I felt like an idiot.

Those droll cocks of the head and quizzical looks from Cash were coming at me like machine-gun fire. I expected him to burst out laughing any minute. I was clearly not getting through. But something else was bothering me, something beyond beginner’s clumsiness. Cash and I had bonded just a few days before in the round pen, and this exercise was not strengthening that bond.

I was trying to learn a specific task, or, rather, trying to
teach
a specific task.

Or both, I suppose.

But what I wanted most was to understand what made this huge wonderful beast tick: how he learns, how I could communicate clearly with him, what it meant to him when I did this with the rope or that with the stick. Only then could I better figure out how to get Cash to understand what he clearly wasn’t understanding on this particular day. I was trying to follow a DVD’s instruction, move by move, when what I felt I should’ve been doing was experiencing this from his end of the rope.

It wasn’t long before Cash sent me straightaway back to the books and DVDs, which, I soon discovered, had no intention of teaching me how to understand Cash until I first knew how to back him up. And move him sideways. And so on.

Truth be told, I actually went back to determine whether the stick was supposed to be in the right or left hand. As if it made a difference to Cash.

But I found myself skipping ahead, to the end of the series. Looking for some conceptual meat. Then to the end of the next series. Racing past the task-based learning. Searching for comprehension, meaning. Something that would connect the dots. What I found is that all these programs pretty much never get there until the end.

How backward, I thought.

Now that you’ve come this far, we’re going to teach you why all these tasks we’ve taught you work. We’re going to show you how to understand the horse so you can figure things out for yourself.

But I didn’t want to wait. Not that the tasks don’t have good and proper purpose. It’s just that they would mean so much more to both of us, to me and the horse, if I understood why he was getting it, and why he wanted to. Learning, then, would surely happen so much faster. His
and
mine.

The early lessons in the books and DVDs never said: Before you start this program, go spend a few days out in the pasture just watching the interaction of the herd. Make note of how the smallest of gestures, when delivered accurately, can get the desired result.

Wow! Why wasn’t that up front?

I went immediately to the pasture. And watched.

Again and again.

The DVDs didn’t explain, in the early lessons, that when a leader horse swells up and pins her ears and moves toward a follower’s butt, it means move that butt. Now! And that such a move doesn’t mean
I don’t like you.
Or
I want you out of my pasture.
It simply means,
I am the leader here and I want you to move your butt over.
That’s it. A few minutes later the same two horses will be huddled next to each other, head to tail, swishing flies out of each other’s faces.

This is a difficult concept for humans to grasp. We are such emotional beings. We don’t like to hurt another’s feelings. Usually. So it’s hard for us to realize that with horses, such behavior is simply leadership in action. And is actually building respect for the leader.

It was important for me to learn that the horse was not going to think less of me if I swelled up like a predator, pinned my ears, and pointed at his hindquarters. He would actually think more.
Hey, this guy knows the language. Cool. I respect that.

And then it struck me: These horses accepted me in Join-Up. I’m
supposed
to be part of the herd. It stands to reason that I need to know how to behave like a herd leader.

The hard part was remembering to swell up. And I had trouble pinning my ears. I suppose that’s why we have fingers. And eyebrows. Eyebrows are good.

I was beginning to understand that, in effect, we must find a way to be a horse. We shouldn’t even try to relate horse behavior and communication to human equivalents. Or even doggie equivalents. Horses are not humans. And they aren’t dogs. If you treat a horse like a puppy, you will never be his leader. I’m not saying you shouldn’t give your horse a hug or a rub. But a dog will do virtually anything for a hug. A horse will do virtually nothing for a hug. But he will do virtually anything for his respected leader. And he will continually test that leader to see if he or she is still worthy of the title.

It was in the pasture that I learned all this, and began to understand how to be a horse. I had finally found where I was to begin. I was ecstatic.