The other day at the Ranch, I had time to actually work with a horse. Or rather, with a mule: the talented and attractive Mr. Zane Gray.

Jay told me to go get him out, and I’ll admit to having to work through some nerves getting him out of the stall—performance anxiety. Da Boss hadn’t seen me work with a horse in a long time, and like any student, I wanted to impress my teacher.

We’ve seen how well THAT usually works out, so I was a little worried….

But it went fine–better than fine. Jay was gone for a bit, and while I was waiting for him to come back, Zane and I did all kinds of groundwork in the arena. He’s as good as Galahad at the basics, except for leading—he gets “mulish” and stalls out a lot, but that could be fixed pretty quickly.

When Jay returned, he made me get up on the top of the round pen (and I’m afraid of heights!) and try to get Zane to step up to me there as though I were going to get on his back. It was quite a challenge, given that I was perched on a rail ten feet off the ground and clinging like a barnacle. It got a little easier once my grip relaxed just a bit.

Zane came over the “regular” way with no trouble, but he wasn’t prepared to come up to me on the off side. I had to get pretty creative with my cues, given my precarious location, but he did come pretty close, and I was able to move him around a LOT in the process of trying.

The coolest thing was that Jay was impressed. That felt SOOOO good! It’s something I needed: Da Boss to tell me I’m doing a great job. He complimented me on my timing—I was rewarding Zane for even thinking of moving a foot in the direction I was asking.

Then Jay said, “I think that mule likes you.” Which, of course, is what they always say about him. Too funny!

I left the Ranch floating about five feet above the ground.

I ran into a couple of riding friends at the barn this morning—my instructor and her mentor. They had a meeting with the barn owners about a project. My instructor had never actually met Galahad, and I was anxious to show him at his best.

While they were in their meeting, I got Galahad cleaned up, as best I could clean up a horse who’d been rolling in mud. He smelled like a fish tank, I swear. Then I put his boots on. He loves his boots, and lifts his feet voluntarily for me to put them on.

We did a little groundwork and some trotting in-hand, as a warmup. I noticed that he was doing more head-tossing than usual, even while we were just running together on the ground. The weather, in part—this is perfect horse weather. 40-some degrees, overcast, and very little wind. Yay! Let’s run!

Then I put his bitless bridle on. He hasn’t worn it in several months (I usually ride with the rope halter) and he does not like it. He just doesn’t, and I’m not making that up. He stands nicely for me to put it on, but carries on a running commentary with his lower lip the entire time. But he looks so good in it, and I’m supposed to use a bridle, right?

He did agree to come up to the mounting block, though not happily, and I got on.

That was my first “bending” of our rules. Normally, if he balks at coming to the mounting block, I don’t ride. Instead, we do something that he finds more fun, like groundwork or exploring the ranch. But today, I wanted to show off for my friends. And he was cranky! It’s not that he doesn’t understand the rein cues—in fact, he’s very light and follows his nose readily, when he feels like it. This morning, he didn’t feel like it.

Now, in reality, on a scale of 1 (super good horse) to 10 (crazy bronc), even I will tell you he only rates about a 3 at his worst, with me at least (he has bucked a few folks off). But I don’t feel safe when he’s doing that and I’m bareback. I’d need a saddle before I’d do any serious work with him when he’s in his “bad-boy” state of mind.

And of course, he does not like saddles, either. We’re working on that.

I got on and off him several times, each time having him move forward nicely and then back up. If he didn’t, he had to yield his hindquarters, and then we’d give it another go until he did what I asked. Then I’d get off and do some more groundwork.

He wasn’t terrible, but I didn’t feel confident, and of course, he took full advantage of that by tossing his head and “offering” to trot. We did a lot of figure-eights (small ones) and lots of backing up, and he did pretty well overall.

Our last “ride” was into the small arena, where he proceeded to tell me he was a spooky wild pony and was going to jump around and run away. Again, I made him yield his hind end and then back up—that was the best I felt I could do. Then I got off. How embarrassing, I thought.

So this was an interesting test of the strength of our agreement, which says that we ride only when he’s in the mood. He clearly wasn’t in the mood, but I made him do it anyway. Then once I was on his back, I felt like I had to require him to mind for my own safety in the moment and going forward, which meant that I did insist that he do what I asked. We always “finished on a good note,” though they were tiny “wins” on my part.

I suspect the argument wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t been so anxious to make a good impression. I was listening to my own needs, not to his opinion or to the state of the relationship at that moment. My insistence on riding was because I had an “audience.”

Things got worse when my friends finished their meeting and came over to greet Galahad. They noticed his plumpness and suggested that he needed exercise. True. Then I told them that he was being stinky this morning and wanted to run. Their response (they are both excellent riders and trainers) was, “Well, run him then! Or lunge him first. Run the nonsense right out of him!”

I could certainly do that. I used to do it all the time when I was riding him regularly a couple of years ago. Blow the stink off, get him to mind, by round-penning him before I rode him. If I do that now, though, where is our agreement? It’s impossible to do things the way a traditional trainer and rider would do them and still be true to our agreement. At least that’s how I see it.

So I was left feeling inadequate and bummed out on two counts. First, I felt like I’d let my horse down by making him do something he really didn’t want to do just because I wanted to show off. Second, I looked foolish in my friends’ eyes, because by their standards, I’m spoiling my horse.

Hmmm…. How strong is my commitment to my contract with Galahad? How firmly do I want to have a relationship of mutual respect and mutual pleasure? How strong is that? Can it withstand the disapproval of my experienced friends?

When Galahad tried to blow me off in the small arena that last time, I got off, took off his bridle, and decided to round-pen him right in there. As punishment. I was angry with him for “misbehaving.” But as soon as I put the bridle on the fence and moved in his direction, he offered, on his own initiative, a beautiful sidepass toward me along the wall—just gorgeous. And whatever I asked him to do without tack, he was willing to do.

How can I be angry with him? He’s happy to do anything I ask on the ground. It’s the riding part, or actually not so much the riding, it’s the tack that he objects to. And if it’s uncomfortable for him, doesn’t he have a right, under the rules of our contract, to object?

How interesting! What a journey we’re on!

Yesterday about 1:00 I got ready to leave for the barn. The weather had not been sunny and 50 degrees, as the weatherman had said. I was whining, whining, whining.

Whining about the ugly weather: 40 degrees, windy, spitting rain and sleet. Whining about the fact that it would be COLD at the barn. Whining that I wouldn’t get to have much time with Galahad because I had an appointment with a friend at 3:00, some distance away. Whining about the fact that I hadn’t gone to the barn earlier in spite of the weather.

You get the idea.

Well, it was COLD and windy and spitting rain—really raw! So I decided not to go until it got warmer. But I couldn’t just be OK with that decision. By the time I finally left the house, I had worked myself up into a really bad state of mind.

And then I momentarily misplaced my keys just as I was getting ready to leave. That was too obvious a signal to be missed: I slowed down, realized what was going on, and said (finally), “OK. That’s the decision I made, that’s the time I have, let’s just go.”

And really, that little snippet of time with Galahad was the sweetest half-hour!

He came over to me as I crawled through the fence. We did a little follow-the-leader, like we always do—walk, stop, turn, back up, go the other way…. Then I walked to the hay bale. Galahad seemed to think that I wanted more from him, and it took him a while to get back to eating. But he finally did, and we just stood there: he and his buddies crunching and grinding, me just watching. It was blissful!

It occurs to me now, looking back, that it would NOT have been blissful had I gone out there earlier. I would have been standing there in the cold and the wind and it would have been miserable. With more time, I would have felt compelled to DO something with him, work with him, whatever. What was really called for was BE-ing, not DO-ing—and that’s what I got to experience.

That half hour was all that I needed—it completely changed my mood. Another learning experience, but a good one this time!

Well! This has been a quiet month for the Alchemical Horse, and a bad month for illnesses of various sorts. Finally feeling better….

The big news here is that I’m moving our horses and our operations to a new barn in Fenton. This is an exciting change that will mean more convenience for my clients and more time with the horses (instead of on the road) for me.

I’ll be updating the site in the next couple of days, and will put up our Winter/Spring Newsletter at the same time. Spring officially begins in March, and so do our horse-related activities. Watch for the new appointment schedule.

Thanks for following our adventures!

The other night we decided to try again to get Midnight to walk over the “scary bridge” at the ranch. It seems to be made from an old boxcar, with girders attached and boards fastened securely over it. Though recently renovated and quite safe, it’s noisy, and you can see the creek below through gaps between the boards.

Midders has already made it clear that he doesn’t like the bridge. Over the past year or so, several of us have tried to lead him over it. He won’t cross it. Instead, he insists on coming and going through the gate that leads from the creek up to the road. Walking through the creek is fine; going over that noisy bridge is just wrong.

That evening, we led Midnight’s two pasture buddies, “Mike” and “Starman,” across it with no fuss at all.  Midders, following us at liberty, stopped just before the bridge and waited. His friends, once back in the pasture, turned to look at him.

Now, Midnight is a virtually bombproof, experienced trail horse. In his 25+ years, he’s seen and done just about everything. His owner, P.C., has lots of stories from their years of trail riding together. But there’s one in particular that always amazes me, though I completely believe it, knowing the two of them:

One day some years ago, he and Midnight were out for a ride, and P.C. wanted to find the tunnel that goes under the Interstate to the trails on the other side. Some of his friends used it frequently, but for some reason, P.C. had never been with them.

So he and Midders set out to find it for themselves. Down the trail and across the creek they went to get to the area where the tunnel was said to be. P.C. spotted a big, metal-lined opening that he and Midnight could easily walk through. This must be the tunnel, right?

P.C. recounts how the tunnel kept getting smaller and smaller the farther in they went. Midnight was reluctant, but P.C. urged him on. The tunnel got so narrow that P.C. had to duck his head…and then, Midnight finally had enough and refused to go further. But there was no room to turn around, so they had to back out the entire way.

Once they got out, P.C. says, they went on a little farther down the trail and found…the tunnel: wide, high, and cement-lined. Oops. That first one turned out to be a stormwater drain from the highway.

So you see, Midnight has done WAY scarier things than walking across this bridge.

That evening, my friend and I tried for nearly an hour to convince him to cross it. We tried leading him. We tried circling him, then leading him. We tried bribes: “Here’s a cookie, Midders! Come get it!” We tried encouragement: “Come on, Midnight! You can do it! You’re such a brave guy!” We tried shame: “Midnight, both your buddies went over it! Are you a chicken or a horse?” We even (I am embarrassed to say) tried traditional techniques: signal a “send,” swing the butt end of the lead rope with increasing velocity, then eventually tap him on the fanny with it. He just turned and looked at me.

He refused to budge. He would put one foot on the first board, then remove it and decline to put the second one on. He was very polite and not the least bit upset, but he made it completely clear that he was NOT crossing that bridge, no matter what.

So eventually we gave up and led him back to his normal gate. He looked at me reproachfully—I am not kidding!—and I felt like a real heel, doing that stuff to him.

My trainer friends would laugh at me, I suspect. I “should” have been able to get that horse to cross, if I hadn’t spoiled him so much and if I weren’t such a softie.

But here’s the thing: Midnight is a wise old horse, dependable, honest, and true. How important is it, actually, to force him to cross that bridge, when there’s no real need? He chooses not to cross. I suspect that if his life—or mine—depended on it, he’d go. That’s just the way Midders is. So I’m just going to accept his decision and not impose my own need for control.

After I took his halter off, I apologized to him, and he nuzzled me as if to say, “Are we OK now?”

Yup. We’re OK, my old friend. This is a partnership, and you get to have a say. And he wandered off over the creek and rejoined his buddies. Love that mean little black horse.

I had a great workout yesterday in my group lesson at Ladies Morning with my trainer, Sarah. I rode a fun, spicy little Arabian mare named Amira whom I’d never met before.

It took me a few minutes to get the rhythm of her energetic trot. She’s more than a hand smaller than the big horse I’ve been riding in lessons; smaller than Galahad, too, so it’s not surprising that it was an adjustment. I haven’t had enough butt-in-saddle time for it to be automatic.

Among the things we practiced during the lesson was a slowed-down, basic version of something called a “spiral spin.” Amira knows how to do it, but I’d never even heard of it. Sarah describes it as “a little, tiny circle.” As I understand the move, you gather your reins into your outside hand (closest to the rail as you travel), sit on your outside jeans pocket, slide your inside hand down the rein, and tip your horse’s head slightly toward the inside—you should only see the eyelashes and nostril.

Then, as the horse begins to turn toward the inside, you sit back and away, and pull up the outside rein slightly to signal the horse to stop forward motion and, instead, to move her front end around the back end in the spin.

The first couple of times Amira and I tried it, it was not pretty. The first time she just kind of walked around that circle. I realized I hadn’t pulled on the outside rein at all, so she didn’t get any help from that cue. Clearly, what we accomplished wasn’t a spin by anyone’s standards.

I swear, at one point I heard Sarah say, “Pull that outside rein up toward your boob.” (I could be wrong about that.) So the next time I tried pulling that outside rein. I pulled it! Amira stopped and looked at me with that inside eye as if to say, “Yeah? So you’re yanking my mouth both directions. Just exactly what is it you want me to do, lady? I’m going to stand here until you figure it out.” She stood there, glaring at me, until I let up the pressure. Then she walked in a circle again.

Hmmm….

The third time, I remembered hearing Sarah say, about another maneuver, to “pull the rein more softly than you think she can feel.” OK, I’ll give that a shot. So I gathered the reins, tipped Amira’s head just a tiny bit, sat back and away, and then carefully moved the outside rein to ask more quietly than I thought she could possibly feel.

And dang! We did it! That little mare sat back on her haunches and moved in the tiniest imaginable circle all the way around. Yup, I can honestly say that she “spun” (slowly) on her hind legs. It felt like magic. I am not kidding.

It’s really hard to describe just how magical it was. I kept thinking, “How can that possibly happen? How can that tiniest of tiny suggestions be enough to get this horse to respond in that way?” I found myself sitting atop the moving horse with my eyes as big as dinner plates and my mouth hanging open.

Looking back, I think the most astonishing part of the entire wonderful, exhausting 90-minute lesson was realizing how softly I had to ask in order for that mare to do what I was asking–and how willingly she did it when I got softer. That’s a lesson I’ll never forget, though it will likely take me the rest of my life to be able to be that soft on a consistent basis.

That experience was the closest I’ve ever been to “dancing” with a horse from on its back, and I’m really jazzed about it. It makes total sense when viewed through the lens of “dancing,” though. For me as a dancer, there’s not much worse than a rough-handed lead: How many times have I wanted to stop, glare at my partner, and say, “Buddy, you just do NOT get it. I’m outta here.”

It did make me realize that most of the time I’m horribly clunky and rough—but I have to learn, and I’ll get better fast. And I wonder what the effect on Galahad will be? And, for that matter, on my behavior as a leader? To be continued….

This post may not seem to have anything at all to do with horses, but if you read through it, it may make it a bit easier to understand the way I make sense of my work with horses, and life in general.

I’m trained as a depth psychologist, and that means that I pay a lot of attention to the symbolic and, yes, “archetypal” nature of the world and my life as I experience it. Dreams are important as sources of information, and so are events in my waking world. I watch for patterns, and for “synchronicities” that show up and practically beg me to look for their meaning.

My worldview has been greatly influenced by Carl Jung’s ideas, and in this post, I’d like to give you an overview of some concepts found in Jungian psychology that I’ve found useful. I promise to keep it short and sweet.

Continue reading →

A good friend posted this on her facebook status this morning:

I just LOVE learning from master horsemen…. [Their] teachings are showing me incredible parallels in my horsemanship journey and my own inner journey…changing the thought changes the emotion/feeling which changes the action/behavior…

That got me to thinking about how my relationship with Galahad mirrors larger issues in my own psychological journey.

Right now, the big issue between me and Galahad is fear, and the effects of that fear on my relationship with him and my capabilities both as a rider and as a partner in relationship. I hadn’t thought much about that last bit until just now, but clearly, fear does affect us in relationship.

How? It causes me to shut down my senses to everything other than what I perceive as dangerous, doesn’t it? I’m only aware of, and reacting to, what seems to be a threat. This is just the way our animal brains and bodies work to keep us safe. And it works that way not just with physical threats, but also with perceived emotional threats.

I have noticed lately that I perceive Galahad differently than I used to, maybe in part because I’m working on, or through, my fear of him. And I don’t just mean my fear of physical harm, but fear of intense emotional bonds/bonding, even with a horse who so clearly is in my life for the very purpose of relationship.

I noticed an increase in the intensity of our connection the other day, walking down the road after a day of hiking and riding. We were both tired, in a good way, and we had had a very pleasant interaction. We had been through situations, like being in the huge, open meadow, where he had to choose between trusting me and running off in a panic. Every time, he chose to trust me and stay by my side. So I think that demonstration of trust opened things up between us to a greater-than-normal extent.

When I think about it, it feels like it’s fear that keeps me from relating to anyone, human or equine, in a deep way because I fear being hurt. I fear losing emotional control. My experiences early on with relationships, with people I loved—or for that matter, with animals—were not good ones. My father was a often a beast, my mother was usually unavailable, and my beloved pets kept being taken away from me because of my allergies. All were profoundly painful experiences, and not ones I would willingly repeat. For a long time, I have been to some extent imprisoned by fear of relating.

That’s interesting on many levels. Although I’m much better now, how many times in years past have people said to others, or to me directly, how influential I have been in their lives, and how much “our relationship” has meant to them—but I didn’t even remember them, much less anything deep or meaningful about our interactions.

That, and my “face blindness,” which has apparently been with me from childhood. People in my dreams never had faces (though they usually do nowadays). It’s terribly embarrassing when, for instance, clients with whom I’ve sat and talked and listened intently for hours are unrecognizable out of context, and not because I don’t remember practically every word that was said, but because I cannot remember faces.

And to think this may all have been the result of my emotional defensiveness! (“Duh!” right?)

In some way, maybe Galahad is inviting me to discard the armor and the baggage and be in relationship with him, deeply and willingly. That is a scary thought. But if I could do it with him, maybe I could do it with people.

Hmmm…. That’s not an easy task. Even just thinking about Galahad, I’m aware of fear. Wow—I did not know that.

What does the fear feel like? I feel it in my stomach, and around the sides of my abdomen. I feel it pulling me backwards. This could easily—EASILY—be the source of much of the procrastination I engage in: a fear of moving forward into relationship with my horse. So it’s fear, all right, but not so much, or not only, fear of getting physically hurt; it’s fear of what comes next if I do step forward. Who will I be? What will I be like?

This is very interesting indeed: This feels exactly like the fear that causes me to procrastinate about doing anything “spiritual”: What changes will be required?! Who will I be if I begin to meditate each morning, if I willingly invite my Guides to have a more active role in my life?

Oh heck. I can feel the tiniest bit of a smile—the kind that says, “Busted!” from somewhere deep inside. Oh, this is NOT GOOD.

No, actually, it’s REALLY good. The journey continues.