I Cannot Stop

“Impermanence is the very essence of joy – the drop of bitterness that enables one to perceive the sweet.” - Myrtle Reed

One of the hardest things about finding the Path is the fact that it is your personal journey. And with personal I mean that no two journeys can be the same. As you travel, not everybody around you will travel with you. In fact, there will be many who will never even get on the Path; friends, family, fellow boarders, trainers, will continue to do all those things you are trying to move away from.

This, to say the least, can make matters complicated.

I can’t pinpoint the moment I took a turn onto the Path of the Horse, but I know the seed was planted years and years ago. Anybody who has followed my blog for a while knows that meeting the black mare called Little Love and having her as my guide and anchor in this process has been absolutely monumental. She pushed me to seek new ways; she stripped me down to the very core of myself, a place where you have no other option but to see things as what they are.

Unfortunately, Little Love’s owner does not quite share my vision.

I know I cannot force anyone down the Path, and I have learned this the hard way. Even if I ride bitless, it doesn’t mean people around me or even someone riding the same horse as I am riding, will stop using the bit. Even if I stop forcing the horse to work in the arena when she clearly hates it, doesn’t mean others will not continue believing in this sort of work and even enforce it with a whip. Even if I tell someone about all the things I have discovered, the emotions I have encountered, the self-reflection I have gained, the insight the horse has shared with me, I cannot guarantee she will believe me or understand me.

On the 13th of March I wrote a blog entry I called “What if”. I believe this entry is the closest I have ever in my entire blog, come to actually telling the truth of how I feel about Little Love. She has taught me so much and since that time last spring, I have made even more progress in discovering the truth about horse human relationships, which in itself has been absolutely priceless. This knowledge, however, has put me in an unbearable situation: between a horse and the horse’s owner.

I know, Little Love is not my horse, so in reality, I have no say in what her owner does with her. But, I cannot stop trying to influence the situation. I cannot stop trying to fight for what I think is the right thing for my horse friend and for all horses, for that matter. I cannot stop trying to shine the light down on her owner, in hopes of her catching the one ray that will transform her to see what horses really are about – for once and for all.

Do I have a right to do that? I’m sure there are people out there reading this and thinking I don’t. But how can I stop? How could I ever let myself give up? And how can I continue, when my emotions are clearly overriding all rational thinking? I realize I am far too deep in the woods to find my way out.

A few weeks back I took part in an Animal Communication workshop with Marta Williams. The workshop was about talking with horses and I was excited to see that there were a good twenty people present, some obviously very talented in communicating with animals.

During a group exercise I volunteered to share Little Love’s picture with five people. I gave no background information other than her name and age. The group did very well with the picture and relayed fairly accurate information back to me, information which I was able to verify. They had obviously been able to communicate with Little Love intuitively.

In the end the group asked if I had any personal questions to Little Love, to which I was looking for answers.

“Yes,” I said, trying to hold back emotion. “Can you ask her what she wants in terms of the future? Does she want to stay with her owner or would she like to be with me?”

Ah, such a selfish question, I know, but I couldn’t help myself. I have come far with my personal journey, but I have not apparently yet reached the completely selfless place we all hold within ourselves.

The animal communication team went to work and soon I had my answer: Little Love didn’t want to choose.

The answer didn’t surprise me. In fact, this was the same answer Little Love had given me, but which I had denied. I thanked the group, trying to not show my disappointment. What had I expected?

Then a young woman, who had demonstrated amazing communication skills during the course, reached her hand out and said: “I don’t know if this makes sense, but Little Love told me that she can’t leave her owner yet, because there is still work to do.” She looked at me. “Do you know what she means?”

Yes, I did know what she meant. Despite my own desperation over the situation, I couldn’t help but smile. Leave it to Little Love to put everything in perspective. For horses it is never about what they can do for themselves, but what they can do for others. There was a reason why Little Love had shown up in my life, but there was also certainly a reason why she had shown up in her owner’s life much earlier. Some nuts are harder to crack than others. Little Love was obviously not ready to throw in the towel when it came to her owner, even if I was.

I continue to support Little Love’s owner in her endeavors with her horse, even though it sometimes brings me to my knees. I never imagined it was possible to feel such desperation and pain over a horse, but apparently it is. I can try to guide her owner towards more humane ways of being with her horse, but how can I stop myself from feeling the way I do? Am I selfish to want to steel this horse away from the world and take it to a place where she can be a real horse again; stall-free, iron-free and even rider-free?

In approximately eight months I will be moving away. I do not know yet where, all I know is that we are moving to another country. This country may be relatively close or it could be on the other side of the world, beyond an ocean or two. The possibilities are open, the future is unknown. Where does that leave me and Little Love?

I don’t know.

All I know is that when I think of leaving her behind, I cannot stop my heart from breaking.

~K

“There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds.” - G.K. Chesterton

Wounded Healer

“The events in our lives happen in a sequence in time, but in their significance to ourselves they find their own order… the continuous thread of revelation.” - Eudora Welty

Last year I watched the movie Instinct with Anthony Hopkins starring as a man who leaves humanity behind to live with animals only to return to society under unpleasant circumstances. While in prison, he meets a psychiatrist played by Cuba Gooding Jr. The movie is inspired by Daniel Quinn’s novel Ishmael and gives the viewer valuable lessons about human and animal relationships.

In the movie there is a scene where Hopkins, who previously has lived with gorillas in the wild, is allowed to visit the gorillas at the zoo. Saddened by the state of the captive animals, he relives some traumatic memories from the past. He also, to make a point, opens the cage door of the imprisoned silver back male. Cuba Gooding Jr.’s character, who is there with him, is aptly horrified. He is clearly afraid the enormous gorilla will surely escape.

“He won't come out,” Anthony Hopkins says. “You see? Even if he can.” And it’s true; the huge male ape barely gives the open door a second look. Anthony Hopkins looks sad. “Not far from here is a fence, and on the other side of that fence is freedom, and he can smell it. He'll never try to get there, because he's given up. By now he thinks freedom is something he dreamed.”

There are many scenes in this movie that remind me of horses and the various ways we have taken their freedom, but this particular one reminded me of a certain gray mare I met two years ago almost to the date. My good friend Sam introduced us on a cold winter morning in California. My first impression of this little, gray horse was heart-wrenching; although at first contact she seemed sociable, I could feel an overpowering sadness welling up inside me. Her back sagged and the muscling on the underside of her neck told a story of tension and resistance.

“This is Sapphire,” Sam said. The mare turned her head and touched my hand, her ears carefully placed forward, her expression neutral. She was kind, but her gesture was slightly mechanical, as if she was merely behaving the way she had learned to behave to avoid trouble.

“Touch her mouth,” Sam said, nodding toward the mare’s head. I wrinkled my brow. What did he mean?

Curious, I slid my fingers down the mare’s nose to her lips. When my hand came to the corner of her mouth, I stopped. The flesh of her lips was hard, like it wasn’t flesh at all, but a solid piece of wood. I pulled my hand away, confused.

“What is that?” I couldn’t help but touch it again. Saphie turned her head and I felt the other side of her mouth. It was even worse, the hardness extending toward her cheek.

“It’s scarring,” Sam said.

“Scarring?” Even though I was already fully aware of the harmful effects of the bit, I had never actually seen such extensive tissue damage.

“Imagine what it took to produce that kind of scarring,” Sam said. He shook his head. “This horse has gone through a lot.”

And that she had.

In fact, she had several loose and cracked teeth from the heavy hands that had ridden her during her 14 years of life. She was spooky, nervous and had been labeled a crazy Arab mare at her previous home, a riding school, where she had been placed after what Sam called “her fall from grace” as a prestigious dressage horse. She had a reputation of being barn sour to the point that she didn’t want to leave the stall never mind the property. If you turned her out she would run herself into the ground.

Saphie didn’t trust people and was constantly in flight mode which meant reacting to everything around her. She was a horse that literally could not think about eating hay, grain, treats or even green grass when a person was anywhere near her. Not that humans wanted anything to do with her at this point anyways, not a soul seemed to care about this sad wreck of a horse.

Saphie came into Sam’s life at a time that he was starting to work with “natural horsemanship” something he now looks back on with a sense of sadness and shame. I know how he feels, having been down a similar road myself. We all start our path somewhere; many things we learn on the way make sense at the time, but often later seem harsh and even abusive. But, it is important to get on the path, and sometimes methods we abandon later can be, as Sam says, “doorways to something different”.

So Sam did what he felt was the right thing. He would let Saphie loose in the arena and interrupt her frantic cantering by demanding her attention, cutting her off and forcing her to change direction by waving a flag at her. He would let her run around him at the end of the rope halter and long line until she was worn down, exhausted and often dripping wet. He worked her in the round pen, he backed her up over and over again by wiggling or bumping the rope halter on her nose.

Later, in an email to me, Sam wrote: “All of these so-called natural ways of doing things involved (negative conditioning) persistent pressure, punishment or mental /physical pain. Needless to say Saphie was not impressed with the whole natural horsemanship system.”

When Sam moved to a new barn he decided to try expanding Saphie’s territory. This involved leaving her stall door open all day. How ingenious. I wished I could do the same. What would Little Love do in such a situation? What would any horse do? I had always thought a horse whom was offered such a possibility would rush out and run around. Wasn’t that why we kept them locked up in the first place?

But not Saphie. She was like the gorilla in the movie, who thought freedom was something he dreamed. It took the little gray mare weeks to merely peek out the open door. The slightest noise or perceived danger would make her bolt back into the safety of the stall. But, when you give something enough time, changes will start happening. Slowly, one step at a time, Saphie made her way out of her prison. Soon the barn isle became the place to meet boys and clean up spilled hay. But, although the barn doors were never closed, she never dared venture outside.

To give her some help, Sam decided to start leading her outside with a halter. He would walk her away from the barn and let her go. But as soon he released his grip on the mare, Saphie would panic and run back in. She was in such a hurry to get back to the safety of her stall that on one occasion she actually fell over. This was a clear message to Sam and he let her be.

Again weeks went by and although Saphie now seemed completely comfortable in the barn isle Sam thought she would never build up the confidence to go exploring. Then, one windy day, Saphie came out of her stall and marched with rhythm and purpose straight out of the barn. She walked calmly past a strange flapping blue tarp that had been placed on the fence to dry. She went all the way down the hill to say hi to some horses that where turned out in the arena.
“If I had not seen it with my own eyes I would never have believed it,” Sam said when recounting the story to me that cold California morning when I first met Saphie. “And after that day she would come and go at will. Just like that.”

I only met Saphie for a short time that year, but despite our short contact, I could not forget her, I could not forget her story. Hearing about Sam’s experiences with the mare had changed my perception of freedom. When we choose to cage an animal, we choose to take something valuable from them - for life. Setting them physically free will not guarantee setting free their spirit, for sometimes it is not just the bars that hold the caged animal inside. There is so much more to freedom than our environment and circumstances. Freedom is a state of mind.

The next time I met Saphie, Sam had moved her to his own property, where she lived outside with another horse. There was no more “natural horsemanship” i.e. moving her around in various ways. Instead, there was an increasing amount of time spent being together, doing nothing but sharing territory. Saphie seemed to me a completely different animal than the fearful, traumatized mare from the previous winter. Sam, too, had changed. The year before he had wondered why he had chosen to take in the “crazy” mare, and I had told him that he had it all wrong, it had been Saphie who had chosen him. She had seen his potential. Even in the midst of her own painful life, she had been able to recognize a kindred spirit, a person who could evolve to understand.

It never ceases to amaze me how generous and forgiving horses are. I believe I have said this before and I will not stop saying it: horses are the most forgiving creatures on earth. Take a horse like Saphie who had no reason to trust ever again; humans had only proven to take, never to give. Yet she chose to trust again. I am utterly speechless in front of such grace of character. Do horses innately understand that the only way to move into the future is to forgive the past? Are they all born to be wounded healers?

Recently I got an email from my friend Sam. Sapphire, the little gray mare, died a few weeks ago. According to Sam, she left our world in a true Saphie nature, suddenly and without a fuss. In his email Sam wrote: “I found great solace in that she was my first true teacher and that she was generous enough to show me a side of horses I did not know even existed before her. If you asked her she would probably have said I was a tough nut to crack but that I think he is starting to get some of it. I have walked a little way along the path with him and now it is time to move on.”

Saphie spent her last summer with Sam making many human friends, one of which was a six-year-old girl called Rosemary. Rosemary would invite Saphie out of her pen with a look and a call of her name. They companion walked (no tack) over to a flat area where Rosemary would spend time grooming while Saphie had a pre-practice snack. After this they headed off to the arena at liberty to see what would evolve. Some days they would run and trot together, others they would just lay in the sand. If it felt mutually right, Rosemary would slip a cordillo or a rope halter on Saphie and using body language ask her to come and stand at the mounting block. Rosemary would then clamber on bareback and the two would play for a short while until one would let the other know they wanted to do something else.

This, I believe, in Saphie’s world was called freedom.

In the Path of the Horse movie Linda Kohanov says: “They’ve carried us around on their backs for centuries waiting for us to notice that they aren’t here just to help us evolve in terms of mastering nature and moving around the planet. They are actually waiting for us to get to the point where we are ready to evolve to a higher level of consciousness and awareness.”

The little gray mare came into Sam’s life when he needed a teacher. I met her just in passing, but yet her wisdom followed me across the world. She reminded me that every horse has wisdom to share, but especially the wounded ones; those horses that have seen the dark side of man. This is an important message to pass on to anyone who dares listen and so, by telling Sapphire’s story, I am passing it to you. It is a message of friendship, love, freedom and forgiveness – it is a message of hope and healing.


~K

Photos by Julie Mummerlyn for Discovering Horses