Weekend Post--The Magic of Working with Horses

 I have been blessed to work with horses since I was very young.  My grandparents trained the big teams that are used so much on the farm.  I knew how to hitch a horse before I went to my first day of school.  While other girls were drooling after David and Shawn Cassidy (hey, it was the 70s) I was drooling over a tooled western saddle. One of my favorite ways to spend a day was to toss a few sandwiches into the saddlebag and head out with my horse, Jessi James and my mutt dog, Minx.  I didn't care about fashion, I felt I was cool when I could take my classmates on sleigh rides in the winter.  I have spent many a night taking cat naps in the hay when I sat, worried over a sick or injured horse friend.  I have taken many a cat nap in the hay as I sat waiting for a foal to be born (horse almost NEVER give birth in the day time). 

 

And lest you think that horses are hay burners who's time of usefulness has come and gone, there are some jobs that are just easier done with horses over tractors.  Pulling logs out of deep ravines is dangerous if not impossible with a tractor.  Many a person has been crushed to death when the tractor rolled over on top of them on the steep slopes.  In small spaces where power is needed, often a horse can maneuver easier than something with wheels that can only turn so far.  When a tornado hit one of the neighbors 3 years ago, it was my team that made the piece by piece clean up possible.  A tractor would have had to just pull the whole mess down at once, destroying many family possessions.  During the flood of '08, my uncle's horse helped set the pole for the wind sock for FEMA's helicopters to use for taking off and landing.  And I rode one of my big Belgium crosses, Storm, across the flood waters to take my cousin out of the valley because she was pregnant and we wanted her at a hospital .  Storm waded into that swirling water that kept rising and rising until she had to swim to get to the other side.  This is not something a horse likes to do.  Try asking a tractor to drive through water over its head and see what happens.

If logic holds, horses should not wade into water over their heads just because we ask them to. In fact, if logic holds, horses should not want to work with us at all.  They are a prey species, they dance on their toenails, their instincts are "run first, ask questions later", their eyes are on the side of their head, making their binocular vision non-existent, but allowing them to see danger coming up behind them.  They are built to be afraid and run away.  We humans are predators. We walked on the flats of our feet, we have individual digits at the end of our limbs for grabbing and holding, we have a facial disk with front facing, binocular vision eyes set prominently into it.  We are designed to push forward toward a goal, like a predator does.  The horse should take one look at us and run like hell.

But horses also evolved to live within a group.  They eat grass, and their long, powerful neck with muscles to give them even more speed, must reach down to get that grass.  When their head is down, they cannot see well.  By living within a group, some can eat with their head down, some can sleep, usually standing at the ready to run, and some can be on watch.  The horse knows she can not live without her herd.  And some humans have learned and worked with this.

See, we humans are a slow, clumsy species, but we have seen the animals run and we wondered what it would be like to run that fast.  We probably first tried jumping on the horses back like a predator does and found ourselves launched into the air by the bucking animal.  That didn't work.  Even professional bronc busters don't try to last more than 8 seconds.  They are big, powerful animals, we are small with a hide so thin, paper cuts it.  We aren't going to win too many arguments by brute strength alone. 

So somewhere along the line, one of us gave up our predatory nature enough to listen to the horse, find out what the horse needed to feel safe...and we gave it to them.  We stopped thinking like a person, seeing ourselves as the master of our domain, and realized we were simply one piece of it and if we wanted to work with other pieces of that domain, we need to do so by THEIR standards, not ours.

So when I walk into the training circle with a mustang horse that has never been ridden, I cannot be human predator, I need to be horse friend.  To do this I must first understand that I look like a predator.  My staring eyes are rude in the animal world.  To humans "look me in the eye" is a sign of strength and honesty, to ALL other animals it means you are trying to assert your dominance.  Staring at a horse means to the horse that you are sizing it up to find it's weaknesses.  That horse is either going to answer your challenge and grind you into dust, or try to run away from it.  You are not going to be making friends by doing the very human thing of staring.

So I let go of being human, I am not the strongest, most powerful, most important being in the universe.  I am a small, hairless animal that ungainly stands on her back feet so she can get her eyes up to a higher level.  I am slow, I am little, but I will do my best to keep you and the rest of my herd safe.  You can run with me, you can rest with me, you can eat with your head down with me, and you can let me see what it is to fly.  We can be herd, we two species that are so very different, and together we can do anything.  Once a horse understands this, that you are herd, that you are small but your heart is big enough to care for the herd, they will wade through flood waters for you.  They will pull you in a cart or drag heavy things for you.  They will let you sit on their back, a place where only predators have gone before, and they will let you taste the wind as they gallop across the land.

There is magic in letting go of that power that we humans have, of not trying to control it so tightly as to give us all our wishes or we will pout in the corner.  When we set it free, learn to live with all the other beings of the universe, we become so much more.  We transcend our humanness and become herd.  And once we learn to do that we can learn to be even more.  Working with horses sets that free in me.  I do not try to control the universe, demand it serves me.  I show my smallness, but promise to do my best with the power that I have.  And I am reward with flying hooves and flowing manes.

I received a new mustang today.  She has never been ridden. She has been taken from her home, her family, by people chasing her from helicopters and on horseback.  She has lost herd and has fears.  I do not like that this has happened, but I know she and many others would be shot if they were left on the range.  So I will do the best I can to give her herd.  I am on the computer in the barn, and I will sleep on a cot next to her tonight and for several night to come.  I will open my heart to her, let her know here she will be safe, and she and I will share our strengths and vulnerabilities and together we will be stronger.  It is the lesson horse has taught me, to be more, I must first let go and allow myself to be less. 

While I am called the trainer, it is horse that is the teacher here.  Every lesson I get from her lets me be more a part of the universe.  It lets me see what true magic and power is.  Not the power to control the world around me, to make it do my bidding...But the power to see the sacred in everything, even those things that might harm me...and work with that power to make everything better, not just the things I want. 

How sacred a lesson, how beautiful a teacher, how grateful the student.  I am blessed.

My new, yet unnamed mustang