The Soul of a Horse (14 page)

There’s no substitute for allowing the horse to make a choice, to choose you to be part of the herd, or choose to do what you’re asking rather than being forced to do it. There’s responsibility attached to these decisions. Join-Up is the ultimate choice, but not the only one. And good leadership only
begins
with Join-Up. The leadership must continue. To be able to engage the horse’s curiosity, his thinking side, while knowing when to back off when he does something correctly speaks volumes to him.

A request, instead of a demand, allows him to make a choice. And when he makes choices to do what you request, you become his trusted and respected leader.

Unlike the human fraternity, every equine herd has a detailed pecking order, from top to bottom. If there are twenty members of the herd, there are twenty places on the ladder, and everybody knows their place. If the leadership is not good, that place is often in question. One horse will move up a notch. This behavior has nothing to do with whether the horse moving up likes the other horse or not. It’s just the way it is.

Their way of life.

It’s difficult for humans to realize that a horse attempting to wrestle away the leadership role isn’t forsaking the relationship. But he’s not. He’s just rearranging it. Responding to genetic programming. We don’t have to understand the emotional dilemma humans would like to attach to such a conundrum. But to deal appropriately, compassionately, with horses we must know that it exists. And we must understand how to use this unique portion of the equine lifestyle and language to enhance our relationship and leadership role. We must
be
a horse.

To every horse, so completely concerned with safety and security, his leader is everything. With a good leader, he feels safe. With an ineffective leader, his genetics leave him but one choice. To
become
the leader. This is true when he’s dealing with another horse, or with a human in a herd of two. The minute the quality of leadership takes a turn for the worse, the horse is going to attempt to step into that role.

Always testing.

Checking on our leadership qualities.

Are some horses easier to lead than others?

You betcha. Just like people.

If, however, we have begun properly with the horse, if we’re at the top of the ladder, with the trust and respect that goes with the position, the horse will make little more than token efforts to test us, just to confirm that he still has a good leader. But if we allow the horse to take over, he will. From his point of view, he has no choice.

At home, Kathleen and I have spent an enormous amount of time working with our horses on the ground, teaching them to move one body part or another, ultimately with little more than a look or a nudge. This not only enhances our position as their leader, it enhances their desire to please and makes them safer, less apt to be challenging our leadership.

That’s what I was working on with Sonny Boy.

And what Kathleen was unable to work on with Painto. When we arrived at the trailhead the next morning, she was presented with a saddled, bridled horse, meeting him for the first time. A sniff of the hand and a couple of rubs on the face were about all she had time for before the troops were headed off down the trail.

Even with so little introduction, her first two days were terrific. Painto was very well trained, calm and responsive to the lightest touch. Kathleen was very happy with him and her confidence was soaring. Not just at the walk. There were many long trots.

“What’s a long trot?” I had to ask Red. “Is that referring to the length of stride, or the length of the ride?”

“Yes,” he grinned through his sagebrush beard. “Both.”

What neither Kathleen nor I was told was that both Sonny Boy and Painto had really strong ties to their pasture mates, both of whom were on the ride. One was being ridden by Red, and the other by Jimbo, Painto’s owner. But because we all spent most of the time in close proximity, chatting and enjoying one another’s company, there were no clues as to what might happen if Jimbo or Red were to vanish into the woods.

Until the third day.

Kathleen’s morning began a little differently from the previous two. Jimbo was convinced that Kathleen was in control and doing well, so he had taken off in the lead on Painto’s pasture mate while Kathleen was still saddling Painto. He became a different horse in a blink. Nervous. Concerned about his safety. Reactive rather than thinking. His only leader had disappeared up the trail, and it wasn’t Kathleen.

She fought him for two hours, afraid to let him go fast enough to catch up for fear she would not be able to stop him. Visions of her teenage experiences with Jack danced in her head. Then the trail boss rode by.

“Kathleen, you ready for the cattle drive?” he said.

“Absolutely,” she responded. “Bring ’em on.”

She had no idea he was serious.

I had no idea
she
wasn’t.

To all outward appearances, she was handling Painto just fine. But I learned later it was pure cover-up, an effort to not look wimpy in front of all the real Texas cowboys on the ride. Her fears had been rising all morning. And when fear begins to telegraph uncertainty to a horse, everything escalates.

It was not going well.

Then the trail boss brought everyone to a halt.

“Here’s where we all split up and start rounding up those longhorns. Now listen up for your assignment.”

“Rounding up what?” Kathleen asked.

Those words were barely out of her mouth when Jimbo got his assignment and loped off across the prairie. That turned Painto from a nervous, jiggy horse into a loose cannon.

Kathleen was done. It was all she could do to keep him in the vicinity.

“I think I should get off and walk back,” she said.

“He’ll probably be fine as soon as the other horse is out of sight,” one of the riders advised.

But Kathleen was having none of it.

No longer was she experiencing the tiny fears about details that she was actually handling quite well. Now she had a truck-load-sized fear about all the things that
could
happen.
Might
happen. The kind of fear that, properly stoked, can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Like on a ski slope when you are certain a particular hill isn’t wide enough for you to make turns. If you believe it, it’ll be true. And it was occurring to Kathleen that she might not be able to control a nervous wreck of a horse in the midst of an angry herd of stampeding longhorns.

In truth, this was definitely the kindergarten of cattle drives, barely an hour long, driving thirty or forty very calm longhorns from a pasture into Fort Griffin for the evening’s festivities. I think there were at least twenty of us to do it. One rider for every two cows.
Not
the usual odds.

But to Kathleen, even one rider per cow wasn’t enough. She had been arguing with Painto all morning, and now the vision of stampeding longhorns, all headed straight for her, was wedging itself into her imagination. She was beginning to lose it.

I would soon learn that Sonny Boy was also focused on a buddy. When Red and I rode out to take up our positions for the drive, Red and Sonny Boy’s pasture buddy disappeared off into the trees. Sonny Boy wanted to follow. He got nervous and jiggy, and called out to his buddy, his fear and adrenaline rising. But a few quick exercises reminded him that he was okay with me. He’d jig right, and I’d say,
Let’s turn a circle to the left.
When he’d try to go forward, I’d say,
Let’s back up,
And every time he did as I asked, I would rub him on the neck, tell him “good boy,” and put slack in my reins and legs to give him release and comfort. In other words, I gave him the choice. Be relaxed, pay attention, and remember that I’m your leader and you are safe with me, or plan on turning circles and backing up for the next hour. Get out of the reactive side of your brain and move to the thinking side.

It wasn’t long before he forgot about his buddy and focused on a sprig of grass. He had a good leader right here who understood him, and things were just fine, thank you very much. We stood there, a herd of two, no one else in sight, for maybe ten minutes. When the time came for us to move forward toward the cattle, he was calm, focused, listening, and ready to do his job. Which, parenthetically, he knew way better than I did.

Kathleen had all these tools, but when fear is on the rise, it tends to take over. She was about to dismount when an older cowboy, a very generous sort, took her reins and said, “You can just pony along with me up the road until he loses sight of his friend, then he’ll be okay. We’ll stay well away from the longhorns and just chat.”

Later she told me that as they walked down the road, the cowboy had carefully and calmly talked her down off the ledge until her fear was on the run. Interestingly, as generous as the old cowboy was, the thing that prodded Kathleen back to the job at hand was a statement he made about her relationship with the horse.

“I think you believe you can be buddies with this horse.”

The old cowboy paused. Of course she believed that.

“You can’t be buddies with a horse,” he said flatly. “All he wants to do is get back to the herd. He cares nothing about you, nor will he ever. He will tolerate you up on his back because you make him tolerate it. You give him no choice.”

Quite suddenly Kathleen was back in control.

She knew that she should’ve established her leadership with Painto from the beginning. She should’ve found transportation to the remote camp that first evening, or early the next morning. For two days she had been nothing but a passenger, albeit a knowledgeable one. She had mistaken Painto’s calm for relationship.

She did not debate the old cowboy because she knew he had never experienced the kind of relationship with his horse that she had experienced with hers. He didn’t understand that when you speak the horse’s language, and give him choice, you
become
the herd and he doesn’t need to get back to anyone. You are his herd and he’s already there. You are the trusted leader. But Kathleen realized that to the cowboy, such a notion was as implausible as a Marriott on the moon. And she wasn’t about to end the trail ride proving him right.

She had a word with Painto, running through a number of exercises to engage his intellect and establish at least some degree of leadership: circling, backing up, moving his hindquarters left and right. Ultimately bringing both horse and rider back to the thinking sides of their brains. Then she took sight on a longhorn, albeit a small one, and off they went.

Two horses.

Both with separation anxiety.

I had spent time with Sonny Boy. I’d gotten to know him, and him me. We had dug around in his thinking side, and he had realized that I could be trusted and respected.
Just remind me every once in a while,
he said,
and I’ll be fine.

Kathleen had done none of that, and when Painto’s pasture partner disappeared, he needed a leader and didn’t have one.

She had almost sixteen hours in the saddle during those three days, which helped her immensely. But the last couple of hours might well have been the most important, as she rose to the occasion of establishing leadership, and a true relationship. She and Painto definitely ended the trail ride as buddies. The best kind. We were both blinking back tears when we had to tell Painto and Sonny Boy good-bye.

Relationship makes a difference.

Leadership makes a difference.

Even with borrowed horses. Or rented trail horses, who carry folks around every day of their lives. You never know when it will come in handy for the horse to think of you as a leader.

And it’s so much nicer to know that you’re off on a ride with a friend. A partner who trusts you. Not some vacant-eyed mechanical device manufactured just to carry you around.

The rub, of course, is that leadership isn’t easy or free.

With horses or in life.

It’s earned.

But it
does
make a difference, and is worth every ounce of the effort.

21

Confined

T
he golden stallion stood on a small rocky knoll gazing at the canyon’s entrance. He sniffed the westerly breeze blowing lightly at his back, then turned a full circle, scanning the entire horizon. There seemed to be nothing to fear, but his senses wouldn’t relax.

Inside, through the outcroppings of the passageway, the canyon was green with grasses fed by a crystal clear stream that disappeared underground before departing the small gorge’s towering walls. This was grass and water much needed by the herd, and especially by the matriarch, who needed nourishment and rest for herself and the foal she carried.

But once inside, there was only one way out. The stallion’s herd had been trapped there once before by humans on horses and had lost several of their own. It was his job to make sure it didn’t happen again.

The stallion would’ve turned back, but the matriarch was tired, absent her usual spirit, and that convinced him to have a closer look. The uneasy herd was squirming and pawing the ground. They could smell the fresh grasses and wanted to go in. All had come too far without forage.

The stallion sniffed the air again, then eased down the slope of the knoll and walked cautiously toward the outcroppings that formed the entrance. The herd followed, but the matriarch spun with pinned ears and stopped them in their tracks.

Minutes passed.

The matriarch was growing impatient and began to paw the ground. She needed sleep. Finally, the stallion appeared and stood aside, allowing the matriarch and the herd to pass into the canyon.

The grasses were rich and full of sustenance. A good meal and sleep refreshed the herd. A few of the yearlings cavorted and kicked up their heels. The matriarch had much needed REM sleep and clearly felt better, her spirit replenished. She was ready to move on, but when she turned to the entrance, her blood chilled and her terrified scream spun the stallion in place.

There in the passageway, silhouetted against the afternoon sun, was a human. A man.

Terror raced through the herd like lightning through a thunderstorm. The stallion screeched and reared, striking out with fear. Images of his sister thrashing on the ground flashed through his memory, her legs bound by man’s lariat, her screams for help bouncing off the canyon walls. The great stallion’s front feet hit the ground at full stride, racing straight toward the man who was blocking their way out.

The man was not on a horse. He stood alone between the outcroppings with nothing but a bedroll under his arm. The muscular stallion slid to a stop mere yards away and rose to the sky, pawing and prancing, teeth bared, snorting and screeching.

The man stepped backward, seemingly mesmerized by the huge pawing stallion, then gathered himself and moved slowly aside, to the top of a large boulder, where he sat with his back partially to the big horse.

The stallion was not sure what to make of this, but he called to the herd and they raced through the entrance, their protector standing bravely between his charges and the man. When all had disappeared outside the canyon walls, the stallion turned to the man on the rock, still pawing and snorting, but also curious. This man was not like any human he had seen before. He did not look the great horse in the eyes, but kept his head lowered, toward the stallion’s feet. And made no attempt to approach him.

After a moment, the great palomino turned and raced off after his herd.

This venture into the canyon had ended well, but he would not go there again. He would not allow his herd back into confinement. They would have to find forage elsewhere.