The Soul of a Horse

by Joe Camp

  Watch them in the pasture when the sudden flight of a bird or a blowing piece of paper startles them. In an instant, they react. Flee. But, then, in two or three “instants” the adrenaline drops, they realize they are still safe, and it’s back to munching.

  Just a few days ago, Cash was standing near the fence nibbling on a weed. Suddenly he reared and performed a perfect 180-degree rollback. In a flash! Something had ignited the flight reaction. But before his front feet hit the ground, he was already back to the thinking side. Oops. Not a predator. At least I don’t think it was a predator.

  He turned to the fence and stretched to see over a boulder. Needing a better view, he took a few steps to his left, then stretched to see around the boulder. It was funny to watch. His ears were up and his expression was full of curiosity. Not fear.

  I walked over.

  “What do you see, Cash?”

  I followed his gaze. It was a rabbit, maybe ten feet away. Frozen in place.

  “Ah, it’s just a rabbit,” I said.

  But because the rabbit wasn’t moving, I don’t think Cash was convinced. He seemed to be waiting for confirmation.

  “Here, watch,” I said.

  Cash watched me pick up a small rock. I pointed toward the rabbit and he looked in that direction. I tossed the rock in the general vicinity of the rabbit, and when it hit the ground, the bunny scampered off across the dirt. Cash stretched even farther to watch it disappear down the hill. Then his attention returned to the weed he had been nibbling.

  It was a fascinating display of how quickly a horse can react, and how rapidly he can also come back down. Back to thinking. Even curiosity. How quickly he can desensitize himself to something that only a moment before had created a flight response.

  This was interesting to witness and was logged in for the future.

  We now have tie rings all over the place. And a couple in a tote bag to hang up when we’re away from home. And now if Cash, or any other of our horses, needs to be actually tied to a post or a rail—so long as it’s not a cute hitching post that could cause an accident—there are no issues at all. Tying is no longer associated with confinement.

  Well, except for Skeeter. The first time he was on a ring, we stepped into the tack room for a moment, and when we returned, he was up in the yard munching away on grass. He now gets two loops around the tongue of the ring. Enough resistance to keep him handy, but if something were to really freak him, he’d still get relief. Note that his departure from the tie ring did not involve flipping to the reactive side of his brain. He was definitely on the thinking side, using his eighteen years of experience to realize, Hmm…I’m not really tied here, and that grass is awfully green.

  Did somebody say horses can’t think rationally?

  I was telling a trainer about all this and he said, “You don’t need to go spending all that money for rings. Just saddle up your horse with the heaviest saddle in the barn, tie him to a rock-solid post, and leave him there all day. He’ll get the picture.”

  No jest. He actually said that.

  I prefer the rings. And so do our horses.

  One more trust issue put to rest by approaching the problem from the horse’s end of the rope. By understanding why he was afraid in the first place and addressing that issue. It took very little effort to dig out that knowledge. And even less to discover the tie ring. A shiny, bright, inexpensive, simple device that quickly and easily solves an age-old and complex issue with horses that no one I know in our community could’ve told me about.

  Why?

  Because they didn’t know about it. We had to find it on our own. We had to figure it out.

  Every time, without exception, that I’ve attempted to take the easy way out of something, to just go the traditional route, or let things slide, or let someone else make my decisions, I’ve always regretted it. Because it’s never the easy way out that makes things happen, that makes life better, that gets the job done.

  Dr. Kenneth McFarland, a noted motivational speaker, often told a story about driving up a Vermont mountain road and coming up behind a huge flatbed truck loaded with hundreds of big crates with little holes in them. The truck was just barely making it up the hill. It was a narrow, winding road, and Dr. McFarland couldn’t get by, so he settled in behind…and before long, the truck stopped and the driver got out with a short two-by-four, walked around to the back, and began beating the truck.

  The doctor’s mouth dropped open. Whatever could this guy be doing?

  A few more miles up the mountain, the truck stopped again, and here came the driver again with his two-by-four, beating on the truck.

  Well, the good doctor stood it just about as long as he could, and the next time the truck stopped, he got out and approached the driver.

  “Pardon me, sir. I couldn’t help noticing how you’ve been stopping every few miles and beating up on your truck there, and I must admit my curiosity’s got the best of me. How come you’re doing it?”

  The driver said, “Mister, I’ve got me a two-ton truck here, and I’m hauling four tons of canaries. Unless I keep half of ’em flying, I’m overloaded!”

  That man definitely did not take the easy way out of his predicament, but he was getting the job done!

  In my life, it’s up to me to get the job done. To make things happen. When life deals me four tons of canaries, and I’ve only got a two-ton truck, it’s up to me to keep those birds airborne! Not somebody else.

  Kathleen and I made the decision to care for these horses. They made the choice to accept us as leaders. We have no alternative but to always strive to make our decisions based upon our own knowledge, not someone else’s. To keep asking questions. To keep challenging traditional wisdom when it defies logic. To spend the energy to gather that knowledge and make every attempt to understand it.

  I’ve simply never found a better way.

  It’s true that Kathleen and I haven’t been at this horse thing very long, but I can promise you that our horses recommend this approach to problem solving.

  And shouldn’t that be what it’s all about?

  23

  The Legacy of Sojourn

  Assume the predator stance. Swell up like a balloon. Eyes wide. Eyebrows up. Be a horse. A leader horse.

  Now shake that lead rope and wag your finger at the same time.

  “Back up! Back up!”

  Some say that horses are not verbal so it’s best not to give them verbal orders. Restrict the teaching to body language.

  I say use everything you’ve got, especially in the beginning.

  Shake the lead rope. Wag the finger.

  “Back up!”

  Sojourn took a step backward and I dropped the pressure immediately. Release from pressure equals reward. Reward equals learning.

  This was one scary horse. Not because he wanted to be. Not because he was mean. Because he was big! And he was very smart. And I was very new to all this.

  And, unlike any other horse we’d met, he was very possessive. He wanted all of my time. All the time. But he was only one of four, soon to be one of six. I was beginning to wonder if Join-Up had worked too well? Was the bond too strong?

  Because he was so bright, he became bored easily and would destroy virtually anything in his stall just to have something to do. This was before we discovered that stalls and horses were an unhealthy mix. Sojourn was trying to tell us something.

  His relationship with the other horses also left much to be desired. He would become upset when anyone else received attention. He’s the one I allowed Cash to be stalled with, which resulted in a gashing kick to Cash’s forehead. It was becoming a problem.

  Still I persisted, working on relationship, doing lots of groundwork. Back up. Move your hindquarters. Come in. Go this way. Now the other way. He listened well and began to learn, and was quite willing to stay in the arena all day. Never mind those other nags, I could almost hear him saying. I’m your man.

  Very soon it became apparent that no one else in
the family wanted anything to do with Sojourn. Other than to rub him…from across the fence. I was the only one who would work with him, and, frankly, I rather enjoyed seeing the progress with such a high-strung, possessive horse. But he was keeping me away from Cash and the other horses.

  He was one of our first two horses, and a perfect example of what not to do when looking for a horse. He was young, gorgeous, very athletic, and would hang with you like a puppy.

  Awww, he loves me already. Look, he wants to be my buddy.

  This was before I knew that buddy was defined differently within the herd. Before I had learned how valuable it can be to spend time with the horses, just observing the language, the interaction. Before I had discovered that a strong and effective relationship with a horse required, in effect, the human to become one. This was back in the beginning, and I had a lot to learn.

  A lot.

  This was also before I knew that I could search deeply into a horse’s eyes and actually feel what was going on inside. Is this a kind horse? A gentle horse? Is it a willing horse? Will he accept a leader easily? All of that was yet to come. With experience. And lots of time in the pasture. As was the knowledge that we couldn’t rely on sellers to tell us what we were not experienced enough to see.

  But I did know how to get this horse onto the thinking side of his brain. Give him a task, or stir his curiosity. Divert him from the reactive side. And keep the adrenaline down. His, and mine.

  Sojourn was smart, but not a particularly quick learner. He didn’t seem to want to be bothered. I believe he figured he could take fine care of himself, thank you, and what was the point of all this anyway? Maintaining a leadership position with him was eating up all of my time. What I didn’t know then is that he was teaching me a very valuable lesson.

  It wasn’t long before Kathleen and I began to nibble at the edges of putting Sojourn up for sale.

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “He’s gonna be a great horse. He has a lot of issues, but I can do this. I can bring him along.”

  “At what price to the other horses? At what price to your own learning curve?”

  It was a conundrum. I actually liked him a lot. But he and I didn’t have the connection that Cash and I had. It was just different, and difficult to explain.

  I wanted to be with Cash.

  I enjoyed being with Cash.

  I wanted to teach Sojourn. The primary enjoyment from the relationship was seeing thresholds give way to progress. I suppose if he hadn’t demanded so much of my time, it could’ve been different. But the mission was becoming a chore and really began to wear on me.

  “He needs someone who only wants one horse, one focus,” Kathleen admonished one morning over cappuccino. We were watching the horses pace back and forth in their cute little stalls. “Someone who will fill his day and spend time only with him.”

  “I know. I know. But that would be like giving up. Like failing.”

  Another scorpion.

  I do hate to fail.

  Mistakes, unfortunately, are a natural consequence of doing. The only way to avoid mistakes is to do nothing. When you’re trying new things, taking risks, pushing for perfection, moving the ball forward, you’re going to take some hits. The challenge is to go ahead and take the hits, admit the mistake, swallow your pride, use the error as a learning experience, climb back onto your feet, and move forward.

  “I can’t sell him,” I said.

  Kathleen sighed.

  “You’re becoming obsessive about this. You know that, right?”

  Of course I knew it. But I didn’t nod. I think pout would’ve been the operative word.

  “So what if you do cause Sojourn to be the lightest, most receptive, most responsive horse in the state, what then? You don’t care anything about competing. And you’re never going to leave Cash. You enjoy him too much. So what then? You’ll either have to keep up the training to prevent him from slipping backward, or you’ll sell him to someone who’ll appreciate him. Why not do that now?”

  I studied on that for some time. “Because he’s so big he scares me,” I finally admitted. “I’m afraid to ride him, and I need to get over that.”

  That wasn’t easy. Males aren’t supposed to admit fear. I knew Kathleen had fears, but until that moment, she had no clue that I did as well.

  “I suspect you’re afraid because you don’t believe your riding skills are good enough for Sojourn yet. And that makes him the wrong horse to learn on. I would think you should learn on a horse that makes you feel comfortable. You cannot concentrate on teaching the horse while fear is running out your ears.”

  Where have I heard that before? Or rather, where would I hear it again, months later? Foreshadowing.

  “Don’t hammer me with logic,” I said. “It’s not fair.”

  Kathleen smiled.

  The decision was made, but I can’t say that I was ever 100 percent in favor of it. Consent was all tangled up in my feelings for Sojourn, along with a smidgen of ego, the notion of failure, and the fact that we had no idea where this journey was taking us. By this point, I was reasonably certain that something was up. That God was leading us down this trail for a reason. But, unfortunately, God has never felt obliged to keep us apprised of His intentions.

  Seven months after bringing Sojourn to our place, we decided to deliver him to our benevolent horse broker friend. Horses are her business. She is very picky and always makes sure the match between buyer and horse is a good one. If she didn’t like the buyer, she would not recommend a sale. This was the same woman who had presented Cash to us. We told her that Sojourn must go to a good, kind home with an owner for whom Sojourn would be the only horse. Not a one-horse household. But a one-person horse. It saddens me to note that he still wore metal shoes because we had not yet reached the barefoot junction of our journey. I promised Kathleen to send Sojourn’s new owners a copy of this book.

  Meanwhile, the decision to sell fueled other problems.

  We had to move him over to his interim home. And that meant we finally had to use our trailer.

  The trailer we had raced out to buy one short month after the first three horses came to live with us.

  “Why do we need a trailer now?” Kathleen had pleaded. “We don’t even know what we’re doing with these horses yet.”

  “You never know,” I said. “You never know when we might need it.”

  I thought at the time that perhaps the scariest moment of my life was pulling our new gooseneck three-horse-plus-tack-room trailer back home from the dealer. It wasn’t. The scariest moment was getting this twenty-nine-foot monstrosity up our driveway, a three-hundred-foot vertical rise from top to bottom that seems to go straight up in spots. One of the steepest points is a hairpin turn, at least 270 degrees, through a gate!

  For reasons that carry no more logic than my original belief that horses should wear shoes, it had never occurred to me that the trailer might not make it up the driveway, through the gate, and around the turn. That thought hit me about halfway home. Suddenly, pulling the trailer down a traffic-logged California freeway was no longer an issue. I was terrified that I would get halfway up the driveway and that would be it. Our new used 2001 Dodge 2500 pickup would just quit. It was not four-wheel drive. Why? Don’t even ask. For inexplicable reasons, my car is, but the pickup acquired to pull this huge trailer isn’t.

  If we had to stop for the gate to open, would we be able to start up again? And could we make the hairpin turn, which would have to be done very slowly to be certain the trailer didn’t trash the gate trying to squeeze through? And if it did go through and made the turn, would it continue up the steepest part?

  The good news is that the truck performed valiantly and the trailer missed the gate with at least two inches to spare. The bad news is that the trailer sat at the top of the hill for seven months before it ever moved again. I suspect I was more afraid of the trailer and the driveway than I was of riding Sojourn.

  “So tell me again why we needed this tra
iler way back in June?” Kathleen asked often.

  “Er…uh…practice?” I would squeak.

  Practice was actually a pretty good answer. It didn’t address the reason why the trailer hadn’t moved in half a year, but having it had enabled us to learn a new skill. Before purchasing the trailer, we had never loaded a horse, any horse, into any trailer.

  All of our horses responded differently to the experience.

  Some acted as if they had never seen a trailer before. Others—Cash—walked right in and started chomping hay.

  With Join-Up, and Monty Roberts’s trailering techniques, what apparently can often be a very stressful time for man and horse went very well for us. When the horse trusts and respects you as his leader, he is willing to try uncomfortable tasks. In the simplest form of trailering technique, after the horse is taught to back up, Monty teases him with the trailer, walking him up to the door, and then backing him off. Nope, we don’t want to go in that big old nasty trailer yet. No sir, we won’t make you do that. But let’s go up and have another look.

  The horse is walked back up to the door again, given a moment to sniff and look, then backed away again. Over and over this happens. Again and again. Until finally you can actually feel the horse wanting to go in. No more backups, please! At that moment, Monty keeps walking right into the trailer and most horses follow him right in. Those who don’t go back to the beginning and do some more backing up. It’s fascinating to watch, but even more fascinating to see how well it worked with our own horses.

  All six of ours wound up going into the trailer quite willingly, happily, within a few hours at the most. Not one was ever forced, even a little. The choice was always theirs. Even with Sojourn.

  Pocket gave us one of my favorite memories of these lessons. The first time I stepped into the trailer asking her to follow, she stopped short, looked at me for a moment, and stood straight up on her hind legs! A full-blown Roy Rogers and Trigger kind of rear. No pawing the air. No intent to harm. Just saying, I don’t want to do that just yet.

  I stood there with a silly grin spread across my face, less than ten feet away from this big paint horse who was suddenly about twelve feet tall. This is going to take a while, I thought. But I couldn’t have been more wrong. I backed her away once, then walked up and stepped into the trailer, and she practically ran over me coming in behind. No resistance whatsoever. Go figure.