The girls did some crying on the trip and Dad rose to the occasion; instead of handing off a baby as soon as they started fussing he started picking them up all on his own! It was great to see, and a big help! I know these girls are going to have Papa Doug wrapped around their finger, just as tight as Cassidy does!
Did I mention that Papa Doug pitched a tent in the room for Cassidy to sleep in...complete with a buffalo hide rug!
As great and fun as it always is to go to Dad and Mom's place, this trip had another purpose which was very hard for me. It was time for me to say good bye to my oldest friend Rocky.
Rocky has taken good care of me since I was 12 and has shown pride in taking care of Cassidy the last few years. He was an incredible partner, friend and therapist who has taught me so much over the years, not to mention hauled my butt over mountains in multiple states. I will never forget the feeling of letting him run and did he ever love to run
I am so grateful to say that all of my girls got to meet him and that he gave them all their first ride. I hope that at least one of the girls will have a horse in their life like him, there aren't very many and I know I'll never have another partner like him.
After I finshed this post, a good friend of mine e-mailed me this essay and gave me the words I didn't have...
What makes a little girl to wrap a tiny hand around a cotton rope, tug and walk away assuming that 1,000 lbs of muscle, hooves and bone will follow? Is it delusion? Arrogance? Clearly, this is hubris?
Our answer doesn’t matter because the 1,000 lbs at the end of the rope drops his head and follows that girl. He leaves the security of his food and his barn mates and simply follows that child.
No matter how many times I put girls and horses together, this amazes me. It’s one of those little miracles that happens every day of my career and sometimes, just sometimes, I make the time to honor it by watching and being amazed.Every horse story is a story about trust in spite of the evidence. Every horse understands that hope inevitably leads to disappointment, but that trust leads to new possibilities.
Some people will tell you that a horse is dumb. He’s a beast of burden that has been bred and broken until he accepts bit and saddle, spur and yoke with a resignation unique to prey animals. That theory melts away when I send out our 22 year old one-eyed Thoroughbred to teach a student to jump her first fences. He canters lightly to the fence, ears pricked, head slightly tilted to see the jump properly. He knows he could go around. He knows he could stop. But he never, ever does. He slows himself down after that fence and basks in the hugs and pats bestowed on him by the child on his back. She’s got pink cheeks from the excitement andshe’s just now taking her first deep breath since the beginning of the lesson. Call this lack of intelligence if you will, I will call it generosity.
There are people will offer to teach you to teach your horse to trust. They will sell you a book, a brightly colored whip (?) and a weekend seminar. They try to unlock the secrets of the horse/person bond. But it’s not until a girl’s heart has been broken, until her best friend has moved awayor until she’s been shunned by those she thought were supposed to love her, that she realizes the depth of effort that it takes for a horse to trust. Only then can she appreciate thefragile beauty of the horse and their power to let us “in.”
People ask me all the time what connects girls to horses. After 25 years of searching, I think Ifinally know the simple answer; trust. As girls, we recognize the ability to throw ourselves to the fates without resigning ourselves to defeat. We know how to keep certain parts of ourselves sacred while allowing the rest of us to be controlled, to be led, to be vanquished. Somehow we know in our hearts that the prancing horse in the show ring doing tricks manages to retain her own haughtiness, her own boundaries even while she dances for the crowd. We are forever awed by the fact that our own horse allows us to climb upon his back and urge him with impatient knees into places where predators lurk. We ask him to carry us over fences, down paved streets and through the scary corner of the arena. He will allow us to do it again and again. Each ride is an exercise in forgiveness.
Some of my least proud moments have come when I have rejected this lesson. I remember riding a young and flighty thoroughbred filly who one day would not go around a corner of thearena we had ridden in every day for the last month. I was hot, I was tired, I was impatient andshe was adamant. I pulled, I tugged, I kicked, I half halted, I FULL halted, I backed her into the corner to show her who was boss. She bolted forward no matter what. Finally, I hopped off her back, enraged and tired. I marched her into that corner to make her stand. And she stood,and she trembled and I, with my jaw set, growled at her “see, there’s nothing here!” I was triumphant as I looked into her panting face. I would win this battle of wills. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw movement. An angry mother bobcat and her babies crept out from behind a tree not eight feet away. The horse was right all along.
This is what bonds women to horses. This is what causes us to forsake boyfriends, money,clean clothes and mall shopping. This simple task of learning to trust is taught by the horse inthe most important way; not by lectures, not by assignments andtests, our horse teaches by example. He trusts not with the resignation of the defeated, but with the acceptance of the wise. And he is there to teach us again and again each day,each moment we spend with him.
Each of us has met the un-trusting horse. We know right away from his eye, from his posture,from his distended nostrils. Maybe he’s been abused, maybe, just maybe, he knows he doesnot need humans. We are fascinated, we need him to trust us, we need him to look atus and see something worthy of his trust, something good. Our favorite stories are the storieswhere this same horse chooses a human, sees something special that we can’t see and trusts, in spite of the evidence. This is the stuff of daydreams and fantasy. These are the stories that move us.
This trust is so profound that the same horse, on the day when you decide that her legs can no longer carry you, that her back will no longer support you, when her belly can no longer tolerate the dried, processed food that you feed her, lays her beautiful head in your lap as the doctor injects the poison that will stop her heart. She takes one last trusting look at you before she sighs her final breath.
by Joell Dunlapall rights reserved by the author October 2010
Joell Dunlap is the co-Founder and Executive Director of Square Peg Foundation, an adaptive riding program and horse rescue specializing in Thoroughbreds located in Half Moon Bay, CA For more information about Square Peg’swork, visit www.everyonefits.org or visit the blog at www.squarepegfoundation.org/blog.
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