Friday, January 17, 2014

walking with horses

The way a herd moves, assembles, ebbs and flows, relates to its members, is a work of social art among horses. When I watch the horses here, only five of them now, I am a distant being, like a bird in a tree just watching and listening to their equine community. This particular group has been together since 2005 and six, they are so familiar to each other and dependant, the way horses are, upon the movements and affect of one another. The comfort and alarm by each other and correct or errant behavior. All shared with the slightest gesture in posture or gaze. It's marvellous to observe and i feel like a tiny outsider until they spot me. Then they will come up to me, seeking food or maybe just some touch, some reassurance that i will care for them. Horses are followers, even the most strident alpha seeks a leader and will follow a person through the most unnatural applications of their strength and power as long as one is clear, consistent and fair in the asking. They are 'feelers', always judging the content of our character and responding accordingly. For all of my life, they have captivated my imagination, curiosity and awe. That a full grown horse would allow me to mount and ride or drive and make course mistakes with their sensitive natures always leaves me amazed and humble as i grow older in years, increasingly aware of that trust and responsibility to them. For most of these horses, they are 'rescues' from the high stress industry of horse racing. They came here because their owners wanted to send them some place safe and know they would have a chance at a 'good' life. We used to retrain them and seek out forever homes where they would be the center of someone's universe...These last several years, I stopped actively seeking such homes; few and far between, they were sometimes honored, but often used and then forgotten like a novelty toy. Not always the case, but it happened enough times that I have largely given up on people that are transient with horses. So here they stay, on eleven acres of lousy soils, nasty hollows and deficient grazing; but they are largely free to do as they please as long as they honor the fences, the thin crinkled electric wire that keeps them in. Yet they are so happy here; unaware of such rustic keeping, happy to chose who and where they will stroll with in this way. No to low stress for these slick coated horses who once performed  peak athletic endevors despite their breaking hearts as they were deprived of herd living and dusty wallows to roll in. For this tight band of horses, knit together over the last eight years, this is home.  I am wracked with guilt when I think of tearing it apart, sending one away; its actually easier to end their life here, to let them die among friends and be buried where they have been so happy. This is were their heart is. To laze away a day, and walk with these horses is the highest privilege i can enjoy as a horseman. I wish that others could live that dream-like way of being with horses.
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Tuesday, October 8, 2013

for Fable

a photo shoot for her memory

The day was right. the weather was cool and windy, shaking the golden leaves lingering high in the popple trees. It was a good day to die. For my beloved Fable to die.
What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they are joined - to strengthen each other - to be at one with each other in silent unspeakable memories.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/g/george_eliot.html#1AcolQHGIj1S1Usy.9al trees. The grass was still green and lush as autumn loped easily along in its parade of color on the hillsides of the Lamoille Valley. It was exactly the kind of day that i had hoped for. It was a good day to die, for my beloved Fable to die. 
    She would be 29 in January, if the math was right when she came to me in 1991 as a seven year old, un-raced, Standardbred mare. She was the most delicious mahogany bay at 15.2h, the color of dark chocolate with straight, scar-less, legs and the most correct hooves a farrier could love. Her neck was feminine, powerful, elegant, sporting a 'torn shirt' whirl. She held her fine head high with broadly set eyes in a child like gaze. She had a small scar beneath her right ear, from a bridling injury gone wrong when she was a younger filly. They tried to confine her, restrain her...to tame her with misguided power.
   She came  back to the rescue program, newly under my care then, because she fought back, they were afraid of her, she would not acquiesce to their clumsy attempts at horse training. So she came back, into my barn and made her way into my heart.
  It was a good sized herd here, back then. Eight to ten horses on 18 acres of various pastures. She had room to run, buck and rear. How she loved to rear and challenge the other brown horses. Not so keen on Fable's lust for 'reindeer games', Big Kate would snap her a quick kick, a smart tap to remind her to behave.
   As those summer weeks went by, Fable learned when and where to be rowdy, a little less impulsive. She would gallop to and from the little band of brown horses and check in at the barn for water. She wouldn't allow a halter or a brush at first, then she gave in, asking for some love with a still body.
   Her coat was like satin, smooth and warm and silky to my hand. She liked a steady, firm stroke with my palm and would not tolerate feathery lite movement on her hide. Ten minutes or so of rubbing with my hands and she was off, just like the wind across the grass. Our pastures were lush in those days, not over grazed or trampled in mud-season year after year. Her coat burst forth with glowing dapples from the good food, herd living and a life without restraints.
    When i groomed her, she would be on a loose rope, unhitched so she could  walk away if she needed. She was so very sensitive, her hide would shudder at the lightest touch; out of her eye she would study my every movement. By the end of summer, I felt ready to back her and feel how she rides. I start most of my ex-race horses in an eggbutt snaffle on a simple English bridle. I remove the cavasson, and fit the bit the way a very wise man had taught me. I figured 2 wrinkles at the corner of her mouth would be a firm but soft fit for the gentle bit. Fable said I was wrong, very wrong and we had our first fight. I lost.
   So I pulled out my western bosal and slipped it over her ears after some negotiating with grain. Acceptable to her, and she willingly learned to neck rein with ease. That was the beginning. Our time, our miles, our adventures and silent memories got better and better. She hated shots, but agreed with the farrier. She loathed dogs but would allow a chicken to roost on her thick winter coat when temperatures would freeze the footing beneath them.
   She would pony freshies, break trail and gallop a lane or a field with fearless grace. Fable was a gaited beauty who could single foot for miles. She would have raced as a pacer if they could have held on to her. But for me, with my foot front of center in the stirrups and riding full seat, she would give me the sweetest single foot. Gliding like a light breeze over the grass. Her canter and gallop were clean, meaning like any other horse, not always common for a Standardbred, but she would trot over the covered bridge then onto the cornfields where I could let her break into a canter then  a gallop on the soft, empty lanes between high summer corn standing like soldiers as we raced along the secret, green alleys.
   She was light and nimble on ledge or mud; careful with her footing on the flats or the steeps. She once brought me through a hunter-pace timber race saddled in a heavy western rig, while i wore black gauchos, satin vest and a black western hat and she went in her classic bosal. We took the lower rails, hopped brooks and glided up and down hills easily. With our Fjord mounted team-mates, we came in second.
   On a good day, before so many children filled my life, we would ride for hours covering miles of Vermont trails. One September day, I noticed she was very intense, hyper alert as we poked along a lost trail through a sugar bush. I couldn't hear it, or smell it but she could. When the trail broke out to the road, we were not ten feet from a black bear snacking on black berries, her twin cubs feasting beside her. Fable froze but never flinched. As the bears sat up to ponder the two-headed beast before them, I let my breath out and reined her gently to the left, to  the other way of that road; no need to cross the mama bear's path. Fable stepped lightly but never in a panic and we strolled all the way home. If charged, could she out run them with me in the saddle? I believe so and grateful that it wasn't proven that day.
   So many more glittering moments with my Fable, my silent partner. She didn't have to talk, neither did I. We would ride in silence and we learned to listen to each other. I learned that listening is love. I loved our rides, I loved this horse. Our last years together were as casual friends. She ran with the band of horses, maintaining her rank as senior mare racing out to the round bales to meet the herd once finished with her grain. Power laced in poetry even as grey hair crept into her face.
my Fable on summer pasture 2011

   I could have let her carry on another year; she was still looking sound, still lite on her feet and a lady to the end. But arthritis was in her coupling and her hocks. It was hard for her to hold weight, her once powerful neck was a lite wisp of its once glamorous arch. I did not want to , would not, let her fall off her bones in old age. I would let her go this year, before the ground hardened and snow piled high while bitter north winds howled, before she became afraid to live. I would wait for a day that had a brilliant sky, and shimmering leaves with a rustling wind in the grass.
   When she fell to her knees I would fall to mine and lay my head on her warm neck for the last time, I could listen to her heart beating out its life and sob for the good times, the lost times and all the glistening moments that will never be again. Riding Fable was like riding the wind, and today the wind has died.

   Fly high and away Fable...no more winters, no more worries.

 a week later, in mourning for Fable, i came across a message from Pema Chodron:

 “Things don’t really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together and fall apart again. It’s just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.”

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Friday, September 6, 2013

the why and wherefore


That's it, exactly it. When I came across this picture of a very vintage Harley and its young gun slinger, dismounted...it finally made sense. Why, back in June '09, I kept dropping the motorcycle in the BRC (basic riders course). While I've spent decades riding, training and handling horses, it didn't mean that experience prepared me for riding a motorcycle. And while a bike will stay where you park it, doesn't steal a nip or hide in the farthest corner of a pasture when you wish to ride it...a motorcycle has its limits. In the class, I had extreme difficulty with right hand turns, sudden stops and null speeds period. With momentum , a bike will balance itself; but at very low speeds, nearly stopped or not moving at all....well, it needs support from its driver! Forty plus years of straddling horses, I can guarantee  they never needed me to hold them up in a turn, of any direction, regardless of speed. They never needed me to put my feet down when they stopped. In fact, well trained, they would stand patiently still, while i chatted with other folks around me. But this is not so with a motorcycle, they must be supported, a reality and expectation that I was never prepared for as an equestrian. Hahaha, it only took me 3 and a half years to understand that. huh.
Bet this young ranger feels kinda the same way; the bike may be barely faster than a horse, and it may not need as much attention...but it damn sure ain't gonna hold you up to take proper aim when you have to stop. Now that curiosity is solved, I can go to bed.
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