Requiem for Grace
I’ve never really been a fan of mares. My earliest experience with a mare resulted in a broken wrist and I’d often said I never met a mare I really liked. As a result of my attitude toward them, most of the mares at the rescue didn’t seem to like me very much either and I tended to avoid working with them. But that was before I met a little Arabian mare named Grace.
Like many of the horses that come to our rescue, the horse who arrived at our doorstep was nothing like horse described to us by her desperate owner. Grace’s owner had fallen on hard times and could no longer afford to pay the board. When she failed to find a buyer for the mare she called our rescue, telling our director that Grace was a quiet mare who had “done it all” and would make a great first horse for almost anyone. As described by her owner, Grace was a pretty little bare mare with a while blaze and soft eyes, but she turned out to be a nervous little animal that was about a green as a horse could be and we knew right away that we had a project on our hands.
I hadn’t been studying Parelli for very long before Grace arrived and most of my experience had been working with my quarter horse, Sonny. Sonny is a confident horse who can be pushy and stubborn and is easily bored so I had learned to escalate phases rather quickly with him in order to get a response. My lack of experience also meant I was a bit mechanical when first using the seven games and I wasn’t sure what to do when a horse didn’t respond to my cues.
After introducing Grace to the carrot stick and string, I tried to play with her they way I had been playing with Sonny but this approach with Grace went no where quickly. Rather than being confident, Grace was timid. When I applied the slightest pressure, she became tense. If I escalated the pressure, rather than moving away from the pressure, she froze. Nothing I tried seemed to work. As I got progressively stronger, she just seemed to shrink into herself. After 30 minutes of pure frustration it seemed to me that all of my prejudices against mares were justified and I thought she was both stubborn and stupid.
But on my drive home, I kept rerunning the tape of our session in my head and the more I thought about it, the more convinced I was that maybe the problem was me and not Grace. Suspecting that I was in over my head, I called a friend who was a more experienced Parelli student, described my session and asked for suggestions.
“Sounds to me like Grace is more unconfident than stubborn and you are probably putting too much pressure on her,” she said. “It probably felt to her like you were yelling at her. Just try to stay with a really gentle pressure and wait for her to respond. You may have to wait a long time but when you get the slightest response, release immediately and retreat. And whatever your do, wait until she is looking at you before you do anything. If she can’t look at you, you’ll know you are giving her too much pressure.”
This turned our to be good advice and in our next session, both Grace and I made progress. I slowed down, used minimum pressure and waited. Although it seemed to take forever, Grace gradually relaxed and began to trust me and to respond. She needed a lot of reassurance at first and I would often let her come in and stand next to me during our sessions. She seemed to want to be touching me at those times, leaning into me like a cat when I stroked her and pushing her head into my chest or my hand when I stopped. But she proved to be a quick study and before long she was moving backwards and sideways, squeezing between me and the fence and doing nice circles on the 22 foot line.
Grace under saddle was another story altogether. Although her owner had told us that she had shown Grace in western pleasure and had even barrel raced her, Grace didn’t seem to know what to do with leg pressure. Even though she was yielding to pressure in her ground work, when a rider was on her back she would freeze completely at the slightest application of pressure. Since she was going so well on the 22 foot line, we began working her on the line with a rider on her back. Slowly she was beginning to relax and we were making real progress when, Elena, the director of the rescue, found a permanent home for Grace in southern Delaware.
I am always happy when we find a good home for one of our rescue horses but when Elena told me about Grace’s adoption, it hit me hard. I hadn’t realized how fond I had become of the little mare until I learned that she was leaving. I really loved this little horse and while I was happy she had found a good home, I was really sad to see her leave the farm
. We want all of our rescued horses to live happily ever after so it was a shock two weeks ago to learn that Grace had broken a leg while out playing in the snow. She had been kicked in the shoulder by one of her pasture mates and the resulting fracture couldn’t be fixed. At the recommendation of the veterinarian, Grace was humanely destroyed. When I read the e-mail from Elena, I put my head in my hands and cried.
If every horse that comes into our lives is meant to teach us something, then Grace taught me a really important lesson. Working with Grace had shown me how mistaken I had been about mares and as a result of my change in attitude toward them, the mares on the farm seemed to have shifted their attitude toward me. Even Elena’s mare, Bugsy, a aged quarter horse who is the head mare on the farm and has tried to nip me more than once has softened her attitude toward me and will even come over to me occasionally looking for a carrot or a scratch on the neck. This was Grace’s gift to me and for that, I will never forget her.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
The Thing About Fear
Fear is a funny thing. An emotion programmed into humans as a survival mechanism, fear helps to heighten our perception to danger and keep us safe. But fear is not always a rational emotion and irrational fears can keep us from doing things we want or need to do. I once had a roommate who was so afraid of spiders that she would become completely immobilized if she saw one. It seemed to me to be a completely unreasonable reaction to a non-existent threat, but to her, the fear was very real. Now I consider myself to be a pretty sensible person but I have an irrational fear that has been getting in the way of my riding for a long time. I’m afraid that every horse I get on will run off with me.
When I was young, before I had ever had any riding instruction, I did have a horse run off with me. She was a mean little bay mare that belonged to Carol Ann Worrier, who was a grade ahead of me in grammar school. The minute I climbed up on her back, she could tell that I didn’t know what I was doing and she took immediate advantage, running back to the barn, dumping me in the process. I ended up with a broken wrist and a bruised pride. The event resulted in no permanent physical damage but buried deep in my psyche is an irrational fear, a little voice that whispers to me whenever I mount up, “You better watch out or this horse is out of here!”
The last time I heard that voice, Sonny and I were out for a trail ride. It was a beautiful day and we were riding in the hay fields that boarder the rescue property. My horse Sonny is a big, lovable quarter horse that definitely has more ‘whoa’ than ‘go’ in his nature. His idea of a good trail ride is one where at least as much time is spent eating as moving, so he is probably the last horse in the world who would actually “run off” with me.
But on this day the weather was brisk and Sonny was feeling friskily. We trotted along tree line until we reached the river. By that time, Sonny and I had worked up a sweat and I wanted to cool him out so I turned him toward home, expecting to have a leisurely stroll back to the barn. Sonny had other ideas. He was headed back to his buddies and anxious to get there as quickly as possible he started to jig and pick up the pace. I sat down and asked him to walk. He walked for a few steps and then started to trot. I trotted him in a circle headed away from home until he settled down into a walk, then turned him toward home again, whereupon he started to trot again.
At this point, the little voice in my head began to whisper. “Better watch out, he’s going to take off with you” the voice said. Feeling a little anxious, I took up on the reins. Sonny shook his head in annoyance and started to jig harder. I held him tighter in response. Pretty soon we were in a full blown argument and I could feel the tension in my arms and the knot in my stomach growing with each contested step. What had started out as a pleasant afternoon ride was turning into Armageddon and although I knew I was making things worse by taking a stranglehold on my easygoing horse, I couldn’t seem to stop myself. The voice in my head was winning.
At this point I should probably confess that while I am a reasonably competent rider, I am not the most confident rider. I was a lot more confident where I was younger and would often ride my horse, Max, in from the field with only a halter and lead line but when Max died, I adopted a 12 year old thoroughbred from a horse rescue. He was a RBE and way too much horse for me. The nine months that I had him delivered a serious blow to my confidence and by the time I got Sonny, I was pretty much of a basket case.
It didn’t help that in the first few months that I had Sonny, I fell off of him twice. Both times I was riding him along a hedge row and we scared up a deer that must have been bedded down. With the sudden, loud noise, Sonny jumped sideways and I didn’t go with him. Sonny’s reaction to seeing me suddenly on the ground was to come over and put his head down to me as if to say, “What are you doing down there?” And since then, he has been an absolute rock when trail riding. We’ve had deer jump right out in front of us and he has hardly flinched, but that little voice in my head still whispers occasionally, “You can’t trust him. You never know what he is going to do next.”
Sonny and I have been studying Parelli Natural Horsemanship™ for a little over two years. We’ve achieved level 2 freestyle skills and are working on level 3. He’s soft and responsive to my leg and seat and I can ride him with a loose rein in a hackamore. I know in my rational mind that this horse is not going to run off with me and that I have the skill to control him without putting him in a strangle hold. So why did I let the little voice in my head get the best of me? Why did I over react to a situation that wasn’t really all that big a deal? I’ve been asking myself that question and while I don’t have a really good answer I think I did gain some insight.
I think the thing about dealing with an irrational fear, particularly one that is rooted in a childhood incident, is first recognizing and acknowledging the underlying cause of the fear. It was only when I asked myself why I felt like I needed to restrain Sonny, rather than use some other correction method for his jigging that it occurred me I was worried that he would run off with me. As soon as the thought popped into my mind I started to chuckle at the idea. Sonny just isn’t the running off kind. It was in trying to figure out where that idea had come from that I remembered being run off with by Carol Ann’s little mare. All of a sudden I could almost taste the helpless, out of control feeling I’d had as that mare dashed back to the barn and how I’d tried to stop her by hauling back on the reins before finally losing my balance and coming off. So there it was, the source of that nagging little voice in my head.
Now that I see the fear, I know I am a long way from that helpless little girl clinging to the back of a runaway mare. I know it will be easier for me to recognize and acknowledge the voice in my head without giving into it. I’ve been visualizing the situation over again and visualizing having a different reaction. I think I will feel, if not more confident, at least less anxious and I know Sonny will thank me.
When I was young, before I had ever had any riding instruction, I did have a horse run off with me. She was a mean little bay mare that belonged to Carol Ann Worrier, who was a grade ahead of me in grammar school. The minute I climbed up on her back, she could tell that I didn’t know what I was doing and she took immediate advantage, running back to the barn, dumping me in the process. I ended up with a broken wrist and a bruised pride. The event resulted in no permanent physical damage but buried deep in my psyche is an irrational fear, a little voice that whispers to me whenever I mount up, “You better watch out or this horse is out of here!”
The last time I heard that voice, Sonny and I were out for a trail ride. It was a beautiful day and we were riding in the hay fields that boarder the rescue property. My horse Sonny is a big, lovable quarter horse that definitely has more ‘whoa’ than ‘go’ in his nature. His idea of a good trail ride is one where at least as much time is spent eating as moving, so he is probably the last horse in the world who would actually “run off” with me.
But on this day the weather was brisk and Sonny was feeling friskily. We trotted along tree line until we reached the river. By that time, Sonny and I had worked up a sweat and I wanted to cool him out so I turned him toward home, expecting to have a leisurely stroll back to the barn. Sonny had other ideas. He was headed back to his buddies and anxious to get there as quickly as possible he started to jig and pick up the pace. I sat down and asked him to walk. He walked for a few steps and then started to trot. I trotted him in a circle headed away from home until he settled down into a walk, then turned him toward home again, whereupon he started to trot again.
At this point, the little voice in my head began to whisper. “Better watch out, he’s going to take off with you” the voice said. Feeling a little anxious, I took up on the reins. Sonny shook his head in annoyance and started to jig harder. I held him tighter in response. Pretty soon we were in a full blown argument and I could feel the tension in my arms and the knot in my stomach growing with each contested step. What had started out as a pleasant afternoon ride was turning into Armageddon and although I knew I was making things worse by taking a stranglehold on my easygoing horse, I couldn’t seem to stop myself. The voice in my head was winning.
At this point I should probably confess that while I am a reasonably competent rider, I am not the most confident rider. I was a lot more confident where I was younger and would often ride my horse, Max, in from the field with only a halter and lead line but when Max died, I adopted a 12 year old thoroughbred from a horse rescue. He was a RBE and way too much horse for me. The nine months that I had him delivered a serious blow to my confidence and by the time I got Sonny, I was pretty much of a basket case.
It didn’t help that in the first few months that I had Sonny, I fell off of him twice. Both times I was riding him along a hedge row and we scared up a deer that must have been bedded down. With the sudden, loud noise, Sonny jumped sideways and I didn’t go with him. Sonny’s reaction to seeing me suddenly on the ground was to come over and put his head down to me as if to say, “What are you doing down there?” And since then, he has been an absolute rock when trail riding. We’ve had deer jump right out in front of us and he has hardly flinched, but that little voice in my head still whispers occasionally, “You can’t trust him. You never know what he is going to do next.”
Sonny and I have been studying Parelli Natural Horsemanship™ for a little over two years. We’ve achieved level 2 freestyle skills and are working on level 3. He’s soft and responsive to my leg and seat and I can ride him with a loose rein in a hackamore. I know in my rational mind that this horse is not going to run off with me and that I have the skill to control him without putting him in a strangle hold. So why did I let the little voice in my head get the best of me? Why did I over react to a situation that wasn’t really all that big a deal? I’ve been asking myself that question and while I don’t have a really good answer I think I did gain some insight.
I think the thing about dealing with an irrational fear, particularly one that is rooted in a childhood incident, is first recognizing and acknowledging the underlying cause of the fear. It was only when I asked myself why I felt like I needed to restrain Sonny, rather than use some other correction method for his jigging that it occurred me I was worried that he would run off with me. As soon as the thought popped into my mind I started to chuckle at the idea. Sonny just isn’t the running off kind. It was in trying to figure out where that idea had come from that I remembered being run off with by Carol Ann’s little mare. All of a sudden I could almost taste the helpless, out of control feeling I’d had as that mare dashed back to the barn and how I’d tried to stop her by hauling back on the reins before finally losing my balance and coming off. So there it was, the source of that nagging little voice in my head.
Now that I see the fear, I know I am a long way from that helpless little girl clinging to the back of a runaway mare. I know it will be easier for me to recognize and acknowledge the voice in my head without giving into it. I’ve been visualizing the situation over again and visualizing having a different reaction. I think I will feel, if not more confident, at least less anxious and I know Sonny will thank me.
Friday, February 5, 2010
Getting Ready For The Snow - Again!
It is snowing in Delaware and Maryland and for the second time this winter season, by all reports it’s going to be a whooper. The weather forecasters are predicting 18 to 24 inches with 40 mile per hour wind gusts and at the rescue, we spent the past two days getting ready for the snow.
Our rescue, located in Warwick, Maryland, is situated on the Sassafras River. It is a glorious setting. In addition to our horses, there is a resident nesting pair of bald eagles, a large herd of deer, a blue heron rookery (very noisy in the spring) and various smaller animals, including a healthy looking fox who occasionally observes the activity from a rise in the lower pasture. We have 60 acres of fenced horse pasture with run-in sheds and our horses enjoy lush grass for 3/4ths of the year.
Most of the time, working at the rescue is just plain fun. We get to play with a variety of horses and have the satisfaction of knowing we are making a difference in their lives. But yesterday and today, preparing for the storm, Elena, Meredith and I had our hands full and it was just hard work.
How do you prepare a horse rescue for a serious winter storm? Since our horses live outside, the priority is always making sure the horses will have plenty of food, water and shelter. This winter, we planned to convert one of our run-in sheds into a seven stall barn but between the non-cooperative weather and lack of funding, our project is running behind schedule. Unfortunately, the current state of the project is making one of our larger run-in sheds unavailable so when we heard that there was going to be another large storm, shelter for all of the horses because our first priority.
So the first thing we had to do was to find temporary housing for several of our horses. Fortunately we were able to send two horses to our other farm in Hartly, Delaware. A neighbor down the street took one in for the storm and a friend of the rescue took another. But that meant that Meredith had to pick up the trailer from Hartly and drive it to Greener Pastures. Then we had to load two horses so Meredith could deliver them to their temporary housing and return for the other horses needing transportation. Of course, one of the horses we wanted to move absolutely refused to get on the trailer and that mean changing plans once again, but finally all of the horses were situated in their temporary housing.
With that taken care of, the remaining run-in sheds had to be cleaned and the four stall barn was stripped and re-bedded with shavings for the four horses that were coming in. Once the stalls were ready hay and grain were moved to the barn from the feed building. Sonny, Bugsy, Daisy and Ozzy then had to be walked down the hill to the barn. They all seemed to be happy to be bedded down and when I left the barn, they were busily munching hay.
Some of the other horses were redistributed among the fields to make sure there would be no crowding in the run-in sheds. Blanket were checked and repaired or replaced as needed. Water troughs were cleaned and refilled, a task made more difficult by the fact that some of the hoses were frozen. Water for the barn stalls had to be carried from the house. Water heaters were checked to make sure water wouldn’t ice over in the severe cold.
The final task was moving hay bales into the fields so the horse would have plenty to eat during the storm. This year most of our hay was put up in round bales. These are much larger than the normal bales of hay and more difficult to move. In fact, these bales are so large that we can only fit one at a time in the bed of the truck and moving them around is awkward. Fortunately Meredith’s husband, Keith, and Elena’s dad, Tony, were around to help with that task.
After six hours of hard work, we were as prepared as we possibly could have been and feeling tired by satisfied with our preparations. When I headed home to get my own house ready (checking the snow blower was my afternoon priority) I was feeling good about our preparations but it was also clear to me that things will be much easier when we finish the barn project. Hopefully this will be the last big storm of the year for the mid-Atlantic region and by next year, our barn will be finished and more of our horses can be housed in cozy stalls when it snows.
Maybe by Sunday the sun will be out and we will be able to take a trail ride out in the snow. That would really be fun!
Our rescue, located in Warwick, Maryland, is situated on the Sassafras River. It is a glorious setting. In addition to our horses, there is a resident nesting pair of bald eagles, a large herd of deer, a blue heron rookery (very noisy in the spring) and various smaller animals, including a healthy looking fox who occasionally observes the activity from a rise in the lower pasture. We have 60 acres of fenced horse pasture with run-in sheds and our horses enjoy lush grass for 3/4ths of the year.
Most of the time, working at the rescue is just plain fun. We get to play with a variety of horses and have the satisfaction of knowing we are making a difference in their lives. But yesterday and today, preparing for the storm, Elena, Meredith and I had our hands full and it was just hard work.
How do you prepare a horse rescue for a serious winter storm? Since our horses live outside, the priority is always making sure the horses will have plenty of food, water and shelter. This winter, we planned to convert one of our run-in sheds into a seven stall barn but between the non-cooperative weather and lack of funding, our project is running behind schedule. Unfortunately, the current state of the project is making one of our larger run-in sheds unavailable so when we heard that there was going to be another large storm, shelter for all of the horses because our first priority.
So the first thing we had to do was to find temporary housing for several of our horses. Fortunately we were able to send two horses to our other farm in Hartly, Delaware. A neighbor down the street took one in for the storm and a friend of the rescue took another. But that meant that Meredith had to pick up the trailer from Hartly and drive it to Greener Pastures. Then we had to load two horses so Meredith could deliver them to their temporary housing and return for the other horses needing transportation. Of course, one of the horses we wanted to move absolutely refused to get on the trailer and that mean changing plans once again, but finally all of the horses were situated in their temporary housing.
With that taken care of, the remaining run-in sheds had to be cleaned and the four stall barn was stripped and re-bedded with shavings for the four horses that were coming in. Once the stalls were ready hay and grain were moved to the barn from the feed building. Sonny, Bugsy, Daisy and Ozzy then had to be walked down the hill to the barn. They all seemed to be happy to be bedded down and when I left the barn, they were busily munching hay.
Some of the other horses were redistributed among the fields to make sure there would be no crowding in the run-in sheds. Blanket were checked and repaired or replaced as needed. Water troughs were cleaned and refilled, a task made more difficult by the fact that some of the hoses were frozen. Water for the barn stalls had to be carried from the house. Water heaters were checked to make sure water wouldn’t ice over in the severe cold.
The final task was moving hay bales into the fields so the horse would have plenty to eat during the storm. This year most of our hay was put up in round bales. These are much larger than the normal bales of hay and more difficult to move. In fact, these bales are so large that we can only fit one at a time in the bed of the truck and moving them around is awkward. Fortunately Meredith’s husband, Keith, and Elena’s dad, Tony, were around to help with that task.
After six hours of hard work, we were as prepared as we possibly could have been and feeling tired by satisfied with our preparations. When I headed home to get my own house ready (checking the snow blower was my afternoon priority) I was feeling good about our preparations but it was also clear to me that things will be much easier when we finish the barn project. Hopefully this will be the last big storm of the year for the mid-Atlantic region and by next year, our barn will be finished and more of our horses can be housed in cozy stalls when it snows.
Maybe by Sunday the sun will be out and we will be able to take a trail ride out in the snow. That would really be fun!
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