The red mare takes a journey.

Today, I had the dazzling good fortune to take the red mare up to HorseBack to work with Robert Gonzales.

I knew that I was at the very beginning of my journey, and I understood, humbly, that I was in the foothills whilst he bestrode the mountain peaks. Even so, when he took the mare in hand and showed me all the things that I had been getting wrong, in the gentlest and politest way possible, I did feel a moment of chagrin. I’ve been learning this new kind of horsemanship with the dedication of someone taking a university course, and I had felt that I had made some strides forwards.

In fact, I saw at once that I had been mimsing about. One of the things my father disliked most was mimsiness, and he was a horseman to his bones, and I should have damn well learnt that lesson by now. I’d been staying in a safe comfort zone, and letting the mare get away with things that I should have corrected. I write a lot here about rigorousness, but I had sadly lacked rigour.

When I had got over the bruise to my amour-propre, I felt excited, because a new door had been opened, and I could step through it. We’ll go on learning and I’ll go on getting better, and when you start from such a low place, the only way is up.

The mare, once she dealt with the slight shock of having someone work her who really was not messing about, had a lovely time, and when her lesson was over, rested happily, ground-tied, whilst the ex-sprinter Brook went through his paces. When they were formally introduced, she took to him with a faint degree of shamelessness, breathing into his nose and batting her eyelids at him. Often, when two strange horses meet, there is a degree of squealing and tail-swishing and a little dance as they work out the hierarchy. There was none of that. Just a gentle, questing hello, as if he were an old friend she had been missing. It was very touching.

Apart from not being firm enough, I think I have let emotion get in the way. The thing I notice about Robert is that he brings a delightful, calm neutrality to each horse. He does not get frustrated when they do the wrong thing, just keeps on persisting until they give him the right answer. When that answer comes, he does not, as I am prone to do, shriek and whoop and fall on the horse’s neck. He merely exudes a quiet satisfaction and gives them a good rub.

The love I have for this mare gets in the way of working her well. She does not really need human love; my bursting heart is all to do with my delight, not hers. She wants a place of safety and a sense of ease. My new resolution is to leave not only my worries and tensions at the gate when I work her, but to leave the love there too. I may indulge that when we have finished. It’s one of the hardest lessons in the world to learn, but I must learn it – it’s not, not, not all about me. It’s about her. That is the very least she deserves.

Oh, and PS. I was so inspired by this revelatory lesson that I cast away any shyness about saying the thing. I looked the great horseman right in the eye, smiled my goofy smile and said: ‘Robert, you are a giant among men.’ And that is no more than the truth.

 

Today’s pictures:

Resting, after work:

Despite being in a new and antic environment, she settled very well, just casting the odd look out of the door, where she could hear the rest of the herd moving about in the fields:

It was quite tiring:

I love this picture for about eighty-seven reasons. First of all, you are popularly not supposed to be able to do any of the things that we are doing here with ex-racehorses. One is standing quite happily by herself, with no human constraint, whilst another horse and several humans are working away about her. The other is going easily on a loose rein in a rope halter, stretching down his neck to find the place of softness, whilst his human rides him bareback. He is also in the middle of doing an exercise which he would never have learnt in his racing days, of yielding the shoulder, so he is having to concentrate very hard. Despite that, the softness is there. I also love the  look on the mare’s face:, a little bit dozy but a little bit thoughtful, as she processes everything she has just learnt:

Oh, those hot-blooded thoroughbreds, those crazy ex-racehorses; can’t do a thing with them:

She worked so hard she actually got sweaty, which is not what normally happens, so on went her cooler, making her look like a proper show pony:

I didn’t take any pictures of Robert working the mare, because I was avidly absorbing everything with my human eyes. Here he is with Brook, waiting for softness. He’ll wait, and wait, and wait, and wait. As long as it takes. That patience is one of the great lessons I take from all this. You can’t rush this, or skip parts, or think that half a loaf is a good enough. You’ve got to wait for the golden moment:

I try not to fall into anthropomorphism, but my idiot brain says the mare is flirting. I don’t blame her. Brook is a very handsome fella, as well as a very nice one. Actually, she is not really flirting, she’s just saying hello. But there did seem to be some sweet sense of recognition in her. They are related, after all. You have to go back four generations on his side, and three on hers, but there it is – Northern Dancer, in black and white, the grandaddy of them all. Maybe that good Canadian blood really is thicker than water:

Thank you to HorseBack, and thank you to Robert. It was a huge day.

The art of doing nothing.

Author’s note:

It’s been a long day, and I did a lot, rather ironically, considering the title of this post. As my brain entered its traditional fugue state after too much pumelling, I suddenly had angst about today’s blog. Too long, too wandering, too much red mare. Get to the point, I hear the voice of my strict prep school teacher shout. She longed for me to get to the point, and I never did. I almost deleted the whole thing. But I’m going to post it anyway, with caveats, because the whole point of this place is that you get me warts and all. I’m not quite sure why this should be the point, but it is.

Here we go then:

 

Quite often, out on the horse forums which I sometimes frequent on the internet, I see poignant posts about people having problems with their dear equines. There is a disastrous ride, a catastrophic failure of nerve, a crushing setback. The forum I like the most is for people who have ex-racehorses. Everyone there is very supportive and empathetic and kind. Many helpful suggestions are posted, and a lot of shared experience offered. This exact thing happened to me, say the ladies (and they mostly are ladies); I know the feeling so well; you are not the only one. It’s one of the more touching sides of the internet.

Quite often, even though I feel very bogus doing so, since I am no expert, I offer my two-pence worth. Have you thought about giving yourself permission not to ride? I say. Have you considered just spending time hanging out with your horse? Have you wondered about doing nothing?

To me, now, this seems very natural and obvious. I grew up in the old school, which was all about riding. The ambition was to get really, really good at being on a horse, so that if it tanked off or bucked or would not stand still, you could ride it out. Ride through it, that was the cry. Obviously horses were schooled, but there was a notion that certain characteristics were built in – some were pullers and some were buckers and some were spookers - and there wasn’t much you could do about it except not come off.

This new kind of horsemanship, which goes by many names – natural, intelligent, empathetic – has the novel idea that you can teach a horse not to do any of these things. You can desensitise it, so that it will rarely spook. You can do the kind of groundwork which inspires trust and establishes you as the good, kind leader, so that the horse will listen to you and not get distracted. You can work on lateral flexion and changes in direction and slow transitions, so that it will learn not to want to pull. It’s not a question of learning to stop it, the thing does not happen in the first place.

Of course, sometimes the odd disaster will still happen, because human error is built in. Whenever something goes wrong with Red, it is because I have got cocky or am not paying attention. The other day, I let her out to graze in the set-aside when the sun was shining and the wind was blowing and she had twinkles in her toes. I should have done some free-schooling to settle her first, but I didn’t. So off she went on a hooley, and roared about with her tail in the air, and it was a while before I could get her back. She is very, very good at giving me lessons in hubris.

In her wild racehorse scramble, she scratched herself up a bit, so we’ve been off for a couple of days, her patches of purple spray reminding me of my own folly. But the lovely thing is, and there is always a lovely thing, that it’s given us a chance to do absolutely nothing together. I’ve been riding so much lately and thinking of teaching her things and trying out new approaches that we’ve been all work and no play.

Today, the sun shone and the wind gentled, and the Horse Talker and I went to hang around with our girls, doing bugger all. We gave them some hay and used special implements to remove the thick winter coats, and chatted and chatted. The dogs ran around, screaming under the horses’ legs, whilst the two clever mares did not turn a hair. (The dogs have proved our most excellent desensitising tool.)

Red stood happily, untethered, whilst I deployed the special implement, which she turned out to love. It has a good scratching action, which mimics another horse’s grooming. She blinked her eyes and had a little doze and occasionally turned her face for love.

And there it was again, the harmony. There was my beautiful, Zen, dozy donkey, come back to me. There will always be the odd hooley day, because she is a thoroughbred after all, and that empress speed and spirit are bred into her. But teaching her this way means that her default mode is stillness and peace. It is taught; it is circumstantial. It comes from her feeling safe with her human, knowing that she can trust my direction, understanding that I will be the one on mountain lion watch. And a huge part of this comes from sometimes doing absolutely nothing.

I love this idea for many reasons. But perhaps the most acute is that I am aware I ask a lot of her, and she gives me so much. It feels like good manners, a simple reciprocity, an act of grace that on occasion I ask her only to be a horse.