The Soul of a Horse

by Joe Camp

  Perspective is everything, I was discovering. And I wanted desperately to change the perspective of the old cowboy. But what did I know? I was a newbie. A novice. Why would the cowboy or anyone else listen? I felt so helpless.

  It would get worse.

  As Kathleen dismounted, I looked deeply into this horse’s eyes. I rubbed her, and the closer I got, the more she would turn her head or step away. I tried to get her to sniff my hand or my nose. That’s what horses do when they greet each other. Sniff noses. All six of ours now go straight for the nose when we approach. Blow a little, sniff a little. And we return the greeting. Much nicer than the way dogs greet each other.

  I reached out one last time to rub Mariah on the face, and she pulled away. Just enough. I turned to leave and quite without warning she stretched out and nuzzled my hand. Well, maybe it was more of a bump than a nuzzle. But as I turned back to look at her, it became very clear to me that this cute little mare had received everything I had given, she just had no clue what to do with it. Trust had never been part of her experience with humans.

  On the ride home, I asked Kathleen, “So…what did you think?”

  “No,” she said flatly.

  The silence telegraphed my surprise.

  It seems that during Kathleen’s ride Mariah had spooked a couple of times at the dogs barking on the far side of the arena. That, plus the lack of any kind of warmth, had done it for Kathleen. Her blink, her first impression, was no.

  Two weeks before she had been right on the money. I was all wrapped up in a palomino because he was gorgeous, but I was overlooking at least forty-six shortcomings.

  “What don’t you like?” I had queried.

  “Why would you even ask?” she said. And she was right. It was the wrong horse for us.

  Kathleen and I had a deal. We would buy no horse that we didn’t agree on.

  But Mariah was different. I had finally seen a tiny light in the window. Until later I would have no idea how much she had been saying with that one little bump of my hand. How much of a call it was to take her away. Away from the cowboy.

  I told Kathleen about the smidgen of connection, trying to open her mind, but it was locked tight. I felt depressed. I was certain this little mare, given the choice of Join-Up, along with time and good treatment, would come around. She would begin to understand what trust was all about. But I dropped the subject and it was very quiet on the long road home.

  The next morning as we sat with our cappuccino looking out over the horse stalls, I brought up the subject again. The next morning as well. And the next. I was haunted by that vacant look in Mariah’s eyes and the little bump of my hand. A cry for help. Which I believe to this day it was, but probably not as passionate a plea as I was portraying to Kathleen.

  Finally, I’m sure just to shut me up, Kathleen said, “If you really feel that strongly about her, go ahead and get her.”

  She arrived the next day.

  I was excited and anxious to get started, confident that the sincerity of my desire and my extensive working knowledge of the Join-Up concept—which I had been practicing almost a full month now—would win over this cute little mare immediately. I took her straight to the round pen.

  No deal.

  It didn’t work.

  She ran around and around, just as she had done the day we met. But no signals of any kind were forthcoming. After several minutes, she clearly wanted to stop, but she had not given me an ear. No licking and chewing. Nothing. So I kept her moving, wondering what I might be doing wrong. Perhaps she didn’t know the language of the herd. Maybe she had never known a herd.

  Doesn’t matter, I objected. She’s a horse, with fifty-five million years of genetics. It’s in there somewhere. Has to be. I was beginning to reel with dizziness as Mariah continued to run circles around me. Finally, I gave up, put her in a stall, and retreated to the house to watch Monty’s Join-Up DVD again.

  I watched it twice.

  If I was making a mistake I couldn’t find it.

  Maybe Kathleen had been right. Maybe we shouldn’t have purchased Mariah.

  Maybe she’d had so much bad treatment that she simply couldn’t respond to anything else.

  Think persistence, I kept telling myself, remembering the story of an Aborigine tribe in Australia who boasted of a perfect record when it came to rainmaking. They never failed to make rain. When asked how they managed to accomplish such a feat, the king simply smiled and said, “We just don’t quit until it rains.”

  Back to the round pen, and more circles.

  Two days of circles! Still no “rain.” I was determined that she was going to figure this out. But I was also becoming more and more convinced that she might very well have never been exposed to a herd; perhaps she was one of those horses who had spent her entire life in a stall, with no need for her native language. No opportunity to communicate with horses, and no desire to communicate with people like our friend, the cowboy.

  Finally, on the third day, there was a breakthrough. Something clicked. After she made eight or nine trips around the pen, her inside ear turned and locked on me. Then came the licking and chewing. Soon her head dropped and she began to ease closer. I let her stop, turned my back, and lowered my shoulders. Nothing happened for several minutes and I was about to send her off again when suddenly she walked up to me and stood, nose to shoulder. Not sniffing, like Cash had done. But at least she had touched me. Of her own choice. And now she was just standing, instinct in control, but with no apparent understanding as to why.

  It was enough. I was grinning from ear to ear.

  I turned and rubbed her forehead, and this time she didn’t pull away. As I walked across the pen, she followed, right off my shoulder, making every turn I made. I gave her a good rubbing all over. Belly, back, hindquarters, everywhere. And I blew in her nose and sniffed. She didn’t respond, but she didn’t move away either. I could almost see the wheels turning. Do I know this greeting? Why’s he doing that? I don’t hate it really, but I’m not sure what it means. It does seem familiar.

  Somewhere, deep down in her brain, her genetics were finally bubbling to the surface, freed at last from the perspective of the old cowboy.

  The next morning when I went down to the stables to feed and muck, I realized for the first time how completely the Join-Up process had transformed Mariah. She was a different horse, waiting by her stall gate, head stretched toward me, and she didn’t move until I came over and gave her a sniff and a rub. A scratch under her jaw at the bend of the neck was her favorite. It became ritual. Every morning. And I dared not ignore her or she would scold me with a soft whinny or a snort. And then pull away when I finally came over, just for a moment, to let me know I had been naughty.

  The simple act of giving her the choice of whether or not to be with me, of viewing all of her issues from her perspective, not from mine, had changed everything.

  The new Mariah is as affectionate as Cash, as willing and giving, as anxious to see us…and until Skeeter came along, she was Kathleen’s favorite.

  I can’t help but wonder what the old cowboy would think if he knew that Mariah had learned what it means to trust.

  5

  Raison d’Être

  The herd was tiring. The big mare could sense it. They had run for quite some time. But it was working. She had discovered the concept quite by accident.

  The last time man had come after her herd, there were only two choices: a box canyon where they had gone once before and been trapped or the wide-open plains. She had chosen the wide-open run and the pursuers had finally given up. To the matriarch’s surprise. Was her herd that much better than the horses chasing them? She had no way of knowing how living with man might affect them.

  Whatever it was, it was also working this time. The herd’s pursuers were slowing down and dropping off.

  As they ran on, the stallion was becoming concerned. Would the very youngest among his herd be able to keep up the pace? But just as one little filly began to drop
behind, the last of the pursuing horses stumbled, almost losing his rider, and they turned back, quitting the chase.

  The mare slowed to an easy canter, but kept moving for a while before bringing the herd to a halt. She scanned the horizon in all directions. Night was falling. Would the pursuers be back tomorrow? Would they try to sneak up on them during the night? She would be prepared.

  She showed the herd that she was relaxed, at least for the moment, and they began to graze. All except a small sorrel mare who was designated sentry. She would be watching, always watching. And listening, aware of everything.

  The big palomino shook off the chill of night air settling upon his sweaty body and wandered through the herd to check for injuries. As before, there were none. Not even among the young. He was proud of that. His herd was well conditioned, and their feet were rock solid.

  A harsh nicker drew his attention. The young colt was at it again and the matriarch was dealing with him. The stallion would leave it to her. He was tired, and perhaps a bit of sleep would be good.

  Good sleep. Not the standing kind.

  He made his way into the middle of the herd and eased down onto the ground. The herd would keep him surrounded until he woke.

  6

  The Starting Gate

  “That horse is mean. He was born mean!”

  It was a trainer at the local horse club speaking.

  I didn’t believe him.

  There was a time when I would have. But Monty and well-known natural horsemen like Pat Parelli, John Lyons, renowned equine vet Dr. Robert M. Miller, and a host of others say no horse is born mean. They are made mean by humans, usually because the human doesn’t understand or doesn’t want to deal with the concept that the horse is a flight animal. Flight is so embedded in their genetic makeup that reaction is automatic. Any sound, or smell, or flicker of movement that is unfamiliar can cause them to erupt. React first, ask questions later.

  And some folks read this as being bad tempered. Mean.

  Mariah once freaked out over a squirrel in the brush and leaped three feet sideways, straight into Kathleen, knocking her to the ground. She wasn’t being mean. She wasn’t trying to hurt Kathleen. She was probably trying to jump into her pocket. Save me, Mommy! Because Kathleen had proven herself a good and trusted leader.

  The trainer mentioned above would’ve likely beaten the horse, without even considering the fact that she was simply afraid, and reacting in the way that horses have reacted, automatically, for millions of years. A beating would cause more reaction and one thing would lead to another. Soon the horse would come to believe that humans are mean. Predators. And anytime one gets near, it will most likely mean pain. So they become even more fearful. They try to take flight, and if they cannot, they resort to a last-ditch attempt to protect themselves from what they are certain is about to come.

  Kathleen kept her adrenaline down. Which, in turn, calmed the horse. She picked herself up and rubbed the little mare, letting her know that she was safe, that nothing was going to harm her. And she made a mental note to always do what renowned Australian clinician Clinton Anderson preaches: Don’t stand right next to a horse until she’s well along in her training and desensitization! In other words, stay out of harm’s way and be prepared. Then slowly teach the horse. Desensitize the horse to whatever makes her afraid. Let her know that in your presence she’s safe. All the while, teaching the horse to respect your personal space, and teaching her to focus; to get back to thinking instead of reacting, keeping ever in mind that, like us, horses have different makeups. Some are very sensitive, and some are not. Some are more freaky than others. Some learn fast, some slowly. Some are more mischievous than others. But if they have made the choice, on their own, to trust and be with you, with that comes a willingness to learn and to follow your lead.

  They need only to understand what it is they should be learning. Which puts the ball squarely in our court. How do we become clear communicators? Without domination, intimidation, meanness, cruelty, or pain.

  Monty Roberts has scores of tales about horses no one could go near, horses most folks would place well inside the mean category. But they are now happy, well-adjusted partners. One in England took three full days to come around, but come around he did. This was a horse who had obviously been badly abused somewhere in his history and had decided that all humans were agents of pain. Monty convinced him otherwise.

  Yet with such positive results coming from so many different directions, why are we still where we are today, with so many owners of horses living in the dark ages? The reason, I believe, is that most people do not begin at the beginning. They want to start halfway around the track, instead of in the starting gate.

  I now have a horse. I want to do something with it. Go riding. Compete. Something!

  We humans are in such a hurry that there’s no time to build a relationship. To learn to communicate. To gain and give understanding. To walk in the horses’ boots, so to speak.

  To begin at the beginning.

  The beginning for us was our discovery of Monty Roberts and his Join-Up process.

  And Kathleen’s fear.

  She was petrified, and I had no idea.

  That birthday trail ride was not something she was looking forward to. It was a gift for me. I was suffering from the so-so results of the last Benji movie and she had wanted to find something for my birthday that would be a diversion and make me smile. That’s the way she is.

  But when her fears began to creep out of the closet, I became even more committed to making sure our new horses were safe and our relationship with them well founded. Begin at the beginning. Take whatever time it takes.

  Clinician John Lyons says that there is a real reason for fear: “Fear is recognition of loss of control, and it subsides when control returns.”

  That’s why so many of the DVDs and books begin with the art of gaining willing control of the horse’s body parts. Moving them this way and that. Backward, forward, and sideways. Both on the ground and in the saddle. That control buys safety, and respect from the horse because you are speaking the language of the herd. Who moves who.

  But looking back on Kathleen’s fear, I would adjust John Lyons’s phrase to read “Fear subsides when you believe that control has returned.” Because all too often I would watch Kathleen do a splendid job of controlling her horse, only to find out later that she didn’t believe she was in control. She was going through the motions, doing what the DVDs and books said, but she didn’t believe she was actually leading the horse. There was no connection. She was merely executing a learned exercise without understanding the point of the exercise.

  My fear threshold was much higher than Kathleen’s, probably because at some unconscious level I was actually relating to the horses. Perhaps embedded from my decades of work with dogs, of living inside their hearts and souls trying to draw you in. When Cash walked up behind me and touched my shoulder in that first Join-Up, there was an emotional exchange. I gave absolute trust to him when I turned my back. He returned it when he touched me on the shoulder. I know now there was no such exchange when Kathleen did her first Join-Up. She went through the motions but was petrified that the horse might walk up behind her and knock her down. There was no offering of trust. She knew it, and, unfortunately, the horse knew it as well. As wacky as it might sound to anyone who hasn’t been there, they do read these things. Unerringly. Horses will never be dishonest with you, and they will always know when you are dishonest with them.

  But I wouldn’t learn most of this until further down the line. At the time I was just beginning to realize that something was amiss, for both of us. Kathleen was having trouble giving trust to receive it, so she was unable to actually believe she was in control. I knew I was in control, but had no idea why. And when logic is removed from any equation, it makes me crazy.

  Our growing library of books and DVDs all said to begin at the beginning, which meant standing in the arena teaching my horse to back up or move sideways. Or co
me to me. These exercises would give me control, said the DVDs. And once I had complete control over how, where, and when the horse moves, I would then have a safe horse. And only then should I climb aboard.

  But I wanted to know why.

  I was also anxious to take the next step with Cash. After Join-Up, he was now looking to me for leadership, so off we went to the arena.

  I hear we learn by our mistakes.

  One of the training DVDs had spelled out three different ways to teach backup:

  See Cash back up, Method One.

  See Cash back up, Method Two.

  See Cash back up, Method Three.

  Why, I wondered, did I need three? Especially here, beginning at the beginning. One method would’ve been quite enough to confuse both of us this first time out.

  See Joe look like a circus clown.

  Clumsy and awkward do not adequately describe the moment. I had Cash’s lead rope in one hand and a three-foot-long Handy Stick in the other. A Handy Stick is a plastic rod used to extend the length of one’s arm so that, hopefully, one can stand back far enough to avoid the kind of knockdown Kathleen got to experience. The stick, sold, of course, by one of the DVD trainers, is not to be used for discipline, only for guidance. According to this particular DVD, I was supposed to be doing one thing with the lead rope and another with the stick.

  It was like trying to rub circles on your belly with one hand while patting your head with the other.

  I felt like an idiot.

  Those droll cocks of the head and quizzical looks from Cash were coming at me like machine-gun fire. I expected him to burst out laughing any minute. I was clearly not getting through. But something else was bothering me, something beyond beginner’s clumsiness. Cash and I had bonded just a few days before in the round pen, and this exercise was not strengthening that bond.

  I was trying to learn a specific task, or, rather, trying to teach a specific task.

  Or both, I suppose.