January 1, 2009

Wishes to all for a good New Year. I suppose my resolution, a running joke really, is trying to write on this page more often. Folks I know try to give me the benefit of the doubt, but it is procrastination at its best. Too bad there aren't more positions in life that call for good procrastinators, but then, I think I'd be in a competitive field. I'm tweaking this page a little from the design I did for the rest of the site to make me more inclined to visit here.

When we were driving back from Sydney, with perspective after a week far from horses, I was talking with Ross about how hard our job feels sometimes. What we don't advertise, and what is often our job, is too reconcile the reality of a situation between horse and owner and the human emotions complicated by that that same relationship. The horse world is full of words that I find difficult to accept but I think the hardest of all is the term "rescue".

Over the years, we have met a lot of folks who feel it is better to take a horse from a bad situation and try to offer them a better one. I think this is a tough but very laudable cause. Trouble is, more often than not, the person is not capable of giving the horse a real alternative to the life it was living before. Feeding is an easy and rewarding form of rescue. But afterwards, that is when the mission should really begin. Horses come to us in many states of trouble. In most cases we are able to get a horse to a state where the trouble can be managed. The emotional mess can be quieted to the point where a horse feels it might offer more that it felt safe to do before. But getting the human either confident enough or skilled enough to recognize and continue that management, it is simply the hardest part. When it comes to the horse, if it were mine and time was no option, the job is not hard. But these are limits we are always constrained by, and sometimes it feels like an impossible position to be in.

In the last six months, I have been playing with seeing how little I can do to get the biggest change in a horse. I get a change and leave it alone, circling back to it when the time is right. It's a real kick. I guess I think of Tom Dorrance a bit when I say this, only because a few years ago, I had the thought in my mind that I could do enough to get a horse confident in me in a short space of time, that what I asked would be all one and the same. Either lining up on a fence, carrying me or learning to back over a tarp one step at a time. Anything. But I think to prepare a horse in this way really takes time on my part to think from the horse's inside out. I don't know why Tom brings this to mind, but I guess his infirmity in his old age and the amount of time he allowed a horse is a powerful thing in my mind.

In these last months, I have reached a different spot in my horsemanship where this is more accessible to me. I haven't talked about it much to anybody-not even Ross, though I always tell folks to see how much fun it can be to do as little as you can without waiting too much or asking too much. I suppose I am taking it a step further. The trouble with it is, that most folks don't play with horses as often as we do, and the little places where you might wait or where you might ask aren't so apparent. I have some strife over this because it feels like the more I see, and the more I experiment and think, the harder it gets to educate people to see what I'm looking for. It's hard when the horse makes such a thrilling try, a kind of effort that makes you laugh out loud, but you know if you missed the moment when he made that choice, you'd never see that kind of beauty again. It's easy to see when you have a tight hold on the rein and a horse is backing up, or jamming up into a frame. Easy to see you can kick them to go, learn to sit a buck and ride out the rough patches. A lot harder to ask a person to wait while a horse is working it out. Help him to to let go of a darker, harder thought by doing that much more if you know he could see some light at the end of the tunnel. In the end, it's all for the horse.

My cat is here on my lap seeking some refuge from the wild weather outside and I'm about to spend my last free afternoon for a bit with my violin. Got the veggie garden weeded-not too much work there, and I have a couple of broody hens. 2009 is looking like it will be a year of some real joy, some sorrow, some greatness and a lot of emotion. I am looking forward to feeling it all. I hope you are, too.