by Jon Katz
10
“Good Morning, Equines”
Every morning on our farm, after we wake up, call for the dogs, put our boots on, and go outside, Maria turns to the pasture gate, where there is always a crowd waiting for her, and yells out, “Good morning, Equines!”
We are greeted with a chorus of whinnies and braying.
The new day begins.
When I first knew Maria, before she became my girlfriend and then my wife, we had an arrangement. In exchange for using one of my barns as a studio for her fiber art, she came to the farm on weekends to help take care of my sheep, donkeys, chickens, and barn cats.
Maria’s job was to make sure the animals had water and fresh feed and were all healthy and moving around well. She came twice a day, once in the morning, once at night. She would park her small Toyota at the base of the driveway, walk up to the gate, and let herself into the barn and feeding area.
At the time, I wrote in a small study that looked out over the pasture, so I could see the animals. I had this fantasy of having an office with a Dutch door—shades of Mr. Ed—so my donkeys, Lulu and Fanny, could stick their heads in from time to time, to get a carrot or a scratch on the nose, but that didn’t work out.
One morning, I heard Maria’s car pull in and saw her walk up the driveway. She waved to me (my office was close to the driveway) and then she opened the gate and walked in. Maria’s pockets were always stuffed with apples and carrots. The “equines,” as she called the donkeys, loved her from the first and came trotting over to her to sniff her pockets and let her brush them.
One of the first thing I learned from Maria about donkeys and horses is that they love attention; they love to be tended to, just like people.
And Maria was to teach me something else—equines love to talk.
As I watched, I saw Maria kneel down on the ground. Her head was just below the level of the donkeys’ heads. She handed out a few carrot chunks, and the donkeys stood close to her, munching their carrots.
I expected her to get up and bring out the hay, but she didn’t. She knelt before the donkeys, quiet and low to the ground. She closed her eyes, and Fanny and Lulu leaned in close to her.
The three of them stood that way for the longest time. I was nearly hypnotized by their intense connection to one another. They are talking, I thought. They are having a conversation. Maria was listening to them, and they were listening to her, their three heads almost touching. There was a shimmer between them, a peacefulness.
I went outside and waited for her to come out of the barn. I had my camera, hoping to capture the interaction between Maria and the donkeys.
“You seemed to be talking to them,” I said.
She nodded, flushed with excitement. “It felt like I was.”
“What did they say to you?” I asked.
“It wasn’t really in words,” she said, “more feelings. They felt close to one another, to me. It felt as if the three of us were one thing. It felt as if they understood who I was, who I am.”
That was all she could say about it that day, although her dialogue with these two sweet and intuitive creatures was to deepen beyond either of our expectations.
I started taking pictures of Maria with the donkeys, started watching closely. It was similar to my dialogue with Elvis, but also quite different. The donkeys seemed more evolved than the big Swiss steer, more intuitive, more open and naturally affectionate.
Maria was going deeper than I had. The animals had transmitted to her a feeling of peacefulness, of perspective and well-being. A healing feeling that she badly needed, as she was going through a painful divorce at the time. And she received a very clear sense that they trusted her.
Maria said she had cleared her mind. She felt a powerful and very healing kind of quiet, something she was receiving from them. A welcome, an acceptance, a purging of unnecessary words and assumptions. She was listening to them.
Six years later, we were married and living on our farm in Cambridge, New York, the second Bedlam Farm. When we moved there, we inherited Rocky, the blind old Appaloosa pony who had lived out in the pasture for fifteen years by himself. There were few fences, no shelter, no heated water tanks. Rocky fended for himself, and he did very well.
There was something both touching and heroic about Rocky. He seemed to endure every hardship with grace and instinct. He had made his own trails in the snow and mud and had his secret paths back to the streams behind the farmhouse.
Maria was especially drawn to Rocky. She instantly found ways to communicate with him. She would enter the pasture with apples and carrots and speak in a clear but soft and soothing voice. She would stand still and wait for him to locate her so he wouldn’t be anxious about where she was or startled when she came up to him. She would touch him, slowly and carefully, and scratch his neck.
For the first few visits, she always had a treat, and she always offered it while speaking to him, explaining who she was and what she was doing.
Rocky’s owner was more than one hundred years old when she died, and Rocky was alone for many years before we came to the farm. Like most equines, he loved attention.
When Rocky heard our car, he would whinny and come up to the fence. Maria would talk to him as she approached, and so would I. We always had apples or carrots for him, and he seemed to love being near us. He bonded closely with Red, my border collie, who started instinctively doing seeing-eye work with him, leading him down the paths the pony walked and steering him and around obstacles.
Rocky’s coat, mane, and tail were rough and matted, so Maria began brushing him. He was skittish at first, because he was blind, I think, and alone for so long. Quite often, Rocky would back away and trot down the hill to put some distance between himself and us when he sensed we were going to groom him. Maria was gentle, patient, persistent.
After a few weeks, Rocky got comfortable. Maria would lean down in front of him, let him sense her, feel her emotions. She would imagine herself grooming him, combing out his tail, walking with him around the pasture. It all came to pass. In a month or two, he was her horse, and she loved him deeply.
Maria intuitively did many of the things it took me years to learn and feel. She is an emotional person, and her emotions live close to the surface, where animals can read them easily.
Women are often more open with their emotions than men. But access to emotions is critical in talking to animals because animals are so skilled at picking up on them.
It is inspiring and instructive to watch Maria communicate with her “equines.” She never patronizes them, emotionalizes them, or sees them only as pitiable creatures for her to save. She sees them as partners, companions, fellow dwellers with us on the farm.
When speaking with Rocky or the donkeys, she clears her head naturally of all the words and narratives people love to put in the heads of animals—narratives that block understanding. And she clears head of anxiety, anger, or frustration. She approaches the animals with an open heart, her emotions available to them. She uses food skillfully to get their attention, earn their trust, open up the channels of communication.
Maria’s agenda, when she has one, is clear, simple, and easily discernable to the animals: she wants nothing from them but their attention—if they wish to give it—and an opportunity to exchange feelings and emotions with them. She never personalizes her communications. If the equines are distracted by fresh grass, or deer in the field, or the sexual vibrations and emotions of one another, and don’t wish to talk to her, she accepts that without complaint. She never tries to manipulate them into loving her or talking to her.
She is an active listener, a rare thing for humans in the animal world who claim they know what animals are thinking, and struggle to embrace the humility of accepting that we rarely do. Maria does not presume to understand their language or force words and thoughts onto their consciousness from the human language. She marvels in their alienness and respects it. She does not see them as brothers and sisters; she does not see the
m as dependents, as inferior or superior; she does not seek to impose human rights and values on these alien creatures. She knows it makes them uncomfortable, and she knows it is rarely in their true interests.
She communicates viscerally, imagining the relationship she wishes to have with them, the closeness, the quiet, the listening.
Maria brings an almost perfect package of skills and instincts and emotions to talking to her horse and donkeys. If she has a slight weakness, it might be that she is not fully confident in her abilities. Sometimes she has a hard time seeing how much these animals love and trust her. Sometimes she has to remind herself, or, as often happens, the animals need to remind her. And they do. They bray at her, whinny at her, rush to her, stand by her to await her grooming and brushing.
These are the threads and strands of communication, this listening and feeling and sharing of emotion, this use of food as the glue of trust and attention.
Rocky’s story took a sad turn when we brought our donkeys to the farm and they could not and would not accept a blind old pony into their herd. Equines in nature assault and drive off injured, old, and impaired horses. They are a grave threat in the wild because they attract predators and endanger all the other horses.
Simon, our male donkey, tried everything to drive Rocky away. He rammed the old blind pony, bit and kicked him, tried to drive him through fences and out of the farm.
Rocky was old, and greatly unnerved by these continuous and frightening assaults. He had no way of protecting himself other than to hide in the farthest corners of the pasture. For months we tried to separate him and Simon, keep them in separate pastures, give them time to get to know one another, but nothing worked. Rocky was acutely aware of Simon, and animals do not trust fences as much as people do. To Rocky, Simon was always there, always near, even if he couldn’t get to him. He was always aware of Simon. He could hear him, smell him, sense his rage and hostility.
Rocky began to weaken and fail, and our vet concurred that it was best to spare him another winter full of tension and struggle. So we put him down.
Maria was shattered by Rocky’s death. She and the sweet, old pony had became so close. They talked all the time. I loved photographing the two of them together, out in the pasture, Rocky soaking up the attention, the affection, the soothing voice and songs through which Maria communicated.
When you practice communicating with animals, one thing leads to another, one experience opens the door to another, one learned thing can be carried over to another.
As a result of our becoming involved in the campaign to save the New York City carriage horses, we were invited to Blue Star Equiculture, the ninety-acre farm in central Massachusetts I mentioned earlier. Blue Star was founded in April 2009 as a sanctuary and retirement home for the carriage horses. Two former Philadelphia carriage horse drivers, Christina Hansen (now a carriage driver in New York) and Pamela Rickenbach, are responsible for creating and funding this haven.
When Maria and I went to Blue Star, we found the horses had entered our heads and shaped our lives once more. The draft horses at Blue Star are enormous and beautiful to behold.
Since Blue Star was founded, Hansen moved to New York City to drive horse carriages there and to help in the fight to keep the horses from being banned by animal rights activists. Pamela and her late husband, Paul Moshimer, took over the farm and ran it in ways that greatly transcended the original mandate. It has become an organic farming center and workhorse rescue farm. At any given time, there are about thirty-two working horses at Blue Star. The farm is always looking to adopt the horses out for healthy and meaningful work, the kind draft horses have been doing for thousands of years.
Pamela Rickenbach is a fascinating person, a kind of horse historian, mystic, and spiritualist. From the first, I was struck by her vision for the future of animals in our world, and her amazing gifts when it comes to understanding them and communicating with them.
Pamela believes in the sanctity and value of the horses’ work with people. She believes animals should never be used to harm or hurt people, but to support them and share life on the earth with them. She believes, as I do, that it is not possible to love animals and hate people, and that the future of animals depends on the willingness of people to live and work with them, and on the support people are given to do so. There is a sharp and telling contrast between the tensions and rigid ideology of the animal rights movement and the powerfully humane vision of Blue Star:
Animals should not be removed from the everyday lives of humans, but kept among us.
Animals face near complete extinction on the earth; it is an environmental imperative that they be given opportunities to once again work with people and live among people.
The people who live and work with animals need support and understanding, just as the animals do.
I believe—and Blue Star preaches—this powerful idea: the more support people have, the better care the animals have. There is no better or quicker or more efficient way to help animals than to support farmers and carriage drivers and, yes, elephant trainers and pony ride operators, and the poor and elderly animal lovers of the world, than to offer them encouragement, assistance, and affection.
When she met the big horses of Blue Star, Maria’s connection to horses and other animals deepened. Building on her experiences with Rocky and the carriage horses, she began regularly visiting Blue Star and volunteering with the animals.
Despite these powerful and immersive experiences, the idea of bringing a horse to our farm was not something we seriously considered. But all that changed as a result of the death of our beloved donkey, Simon.
One morning, Maria and I got up and I looked out of the bedroom window that faces our pasture. Usually, the animals are all standing at the gate, waiting for us to wake up and bring them hay or apples or carrots. That morning, as I looked out the window, I saw Simon shake his head suddenly and severely. He looked confused, off-balance. He was always the first one at the gate, always listening for us. He loved his food.
“Something is wrong,” I called out to Maria. “I think Simon had a stroke.”
We rushed out to the pasture. I took a video of Simon with my iPhone and emailed it to Ken Norman, our farrier. I also sent it to Granville Veterinary Service, our large-animal vets.
Ken texted back me in seconds. He was in the hospital at the time, recovering from knee replacement surgery. Doesn’t look good, he said. Call the vet.
Dr. John McDermott, our vet, was already on the way.
Simon was getting wobbly on his feet and we helped guide him to the ground. His pupils were dilated, and he seemed completely disoriented.
Maria and I lay down next to him. I closed my eyes and laid my head against him. We had been through so much together. He was so loving and grateful. He had suffered so much.
Maria said she received what she thought was an image from Simon, a good-bye, an image of an open doorway. Then Dr. McDermott arrived. So did Deb Foster, our farm and pet sitter.
The vet examined Simon carefully, listened to his heart, checked his eyes. “He’s dying,” he said. “His heart has almost stopped.” Simon’s breathing was getting shallower; his eyes were closing.
We agreed to ease Simon’s passing. Dr. McDermott gave him an injection to stop his heart. Simon’s suffering would soon be over.
I closed my eyes and imagined a peaceful and quick passing for him. My mind flashed back to the night in the pasture when Simon first came to our farm, nearly dead from neglect and starvation. I had put his head in my lap and hand-fed him fresh grass. Now I felt his warm breath on my face. I had an image of happiness and release, of the next thing, even as I knew that Simon’s eyes were closed and he was gone.
In the country, when there is trouble, driveways and homes fill up with people. Ken Norman’s wife, Eli Anita-Norman, came to sit with us in the pasture with Simon’s body. So did several of our friends and neighbors. We never figured out how everybody knew, but that is also the way of the c
ountry. Everybody knows.
Dr. McDermott urged us to drag the body behind a tree. A secret informer of the “animal police” would surely call the authorities if they saw a donkey lying in the pasture.
“You don’t need the police coming here at time like this,” the vet said.
“But it’s nobody’s business,” I replied.
“Unfortunately, it is.”
We dragged Simon behind a hill near the hay feeder. A half hour later, a tractor pulled into our yard. Vince Vecchio, a neighbor, unloaded his tractor from the trailer, and asked us where we wanted Simon buried.
Vince dug a hole in the ground, and with Deb’s help we pulled Simon into it. We said our good-byes there.
Later, in the living room, I saw Maria and Eli connect with one another. Maria was upset over Simon’s death; Eli was worried about Ken’s surgery. She was also struggling to care for the more than thirty horses on their farm, many of them rescues. It was hard with Ken in the hospital.
We said we would drive up and visit her soon. She said that would be fine, and that there was a pony Maria might like to meet. Her name was Chloe. She was rescued from a farm whose owners could no longer care for her—a common story in the horse world.
A week later, Maria was standing in Eli’s pasture staring at a Haflinger-Welsh pony who seemed calm, affable, and alert to both of us. I could see Maria wanted to get a horse. I strongly encouraged her to do it. It was time, and it seemed to be the most natural flow, a continuum—Rocky, the carriage horses, Simon, and, now, Chloe.
Maria and I had both received messages from Simon. They were about acceptance of life and moving on, opening doors, continuing our work with animals. Two months later, Ken was walking around without any pain, Eli and Maria had become close friends, and Maria was taking riding lessons.
