All I Want Is a Well-trained Horse

On Saturday, I wanted to go horseback riding with my neighbor, Sally, who just moved in a few months ago. She and her family have built a gigantic addition onto the small barn that was on the property, and they now host a beautiful six-stall stable. They have two well-behaved horses, Maggie and Cinnamon. My horses, on the other hand, have been turned out to pasture for nearly two years, and in that amount of time they have been ridden less than ten times. To make a long story short, they have reverted to wild, animalistic, insane, unpredictable behavior when faced with a human.

Issac, Sam, and I drove my car out into the pasture (so that we wouldn't have to chase the insolent beasts on foot) and had fun bumping along in the grass. We rolled the windows down and approached the "horse pile," the place under the trees where the 6 horses stand swishing flies all day. A shake of the bucket, and we had six soft noses sticking in the windows. It was like a drive-through petting zoo. Issac was enthralled and we were having a blast. I should have left it at that.

But nooooooooooooooooo. I had to catch one and her back to the barn. I helped to raise her from a foal and thought I knew her well enough, but apparently, I didn't. I let Sam climb up on her back, expecting only the usual pissy head tosses and foot stomps in protest to leaving her friends, maybe a shrill whinney or two, a few antsy circles, some hesitation and pulling on the rope. What Annie chose to do instead was to start running backwards as fast as she could, while rearing in the air. (No warning). She eventually fell over backwards (I was devastated, as I thought she had landed on my 8 yr. old cousin Sam). Luckily, he missed near death by a few inches. After she hopped up, and I saw that Sam was OK (crying, but OK), the scene was over. Annie was calm and resigned, breathing heavily, shaking a little. (Mind you, I was holding Issac the entire time).

I've been around horses my whole life, and I know what to do in such circumstances. You are supposed to move with the horse, give them a little slack (otherwise the horse will obviously win, and you will have a horrible rope burn). But I couldn't keep up with her while holding Issac, and I wasn't willing to let her go and run away at break-neck speed with Sam on her back. So I ended up with a really nasty rope burn on my hand (it could have been worse--a common mistake made by inexperienced horse handlers is holding the rope the wrong way. If you don't hold it right, the rope can get caught around your wrist or fingers when a horse pulls back like this, and you can end up getting dragged to your death). All of the skin (and I mean ALL of it) has been removed from a spot on the top part of my palm and the inside of the top of my middle finger. It's almost all the way down to the muscle (Humans have 11 layers of skin; I estimate that 9 layers were removed). Rope fibers don't "wash" out of a wound, either. They stick into it, and you have to remove them with tweezers. Yeeouch!

Looking back on my life with horses, I am very lucky to be alive; I'm lucky that a fall hasn't left me paralyzed or that an errant hoof hasn't dashed out my brains. I love horses, I think they are beautiful, they smell good, and they are wonderful companions. But I have to admit that I've always been a little afraid of them, and for good reason.

The root of all my horsie problems comes from the fact that they make very difficult pets. They require attention nearly every day, or else they become unruly and potentially dangerous. I have too many memories to count of trying to force a horse to load onto a trailer while it she flailing about with all of her strength, ropes and guy-lines wrapped around her buttocks to pressure her into the small and dark compartment. I remember getting the first two hooves on it, then watching her violently revolt, eyes rolling back wildly into her head. Mom used to order me to hold the end of the line, (which was wrapped around the horse's butt and carried under the trailer, then twisted around the tongue for leverage) and take up the slack when the two people pushing the horse made any progress. I hated it, because it forced me to watch something unbearable. I wanted nothing more than to run and hide when I saw a horse getting so close to crazy. Shame on my family for not training the horses to load, and then forcing them to do it on the day when they needed to be moved!

But the training didn't work so well either. We tried that. Mom fed the yearlings on the trailer every night for a few weeks, each night pushing the bucket of feed farther and farther back into the recesses of the trailer, so that soon, the horses were voluntarily walking all of the way in to eat their dinner. But one night, she moved too fast. She close the butt-chains behind them, and then went to shut the doors. Sonnie was fine, but Annie had a cow. She started freaking out, rearing and bucking and nearly killing herself in her fright. The whole trailer was shaking; I thought it was going to flip over. Mom promptly opened the door to let her out, and Annie slid under the chain before Mom could unfasten it, scraping her back pretty severly.

Annie was orphaned when she was seven weeks old. Her Mom died unexpectedly while at the breeding farm (what she was doing there, I am not sure. She had excellent bloodlines and I think my Mom was trying to beat her biological clock and get one more baby out of her before it was too late). So Annie has psychological problems. We had to feed her formula and we even milked another mare (which was not fun--the mare really didn't like that). Mom made me hold the twitch around the mare's nose while she milked her, because the mare would try to kick and bite whoever was doing the milking. What's got to be done has got to be done, Melissa. Now just DO it. Farm mentality is tough, and never really very fun.

How about the numerous times that I was bucked off, sent flying into the sun? How many times have horse's hooves danced close to my aching head, as I lay in the grass, breathless? The galloping, out-of-control, bit-in-the-mouth, hang-on-for-dear-life run-away breaks across the long fields, the horse jumping over wide creeks and thick logs? I was usually able to stay on until the horse abrubtly stopped at the fence, at which point I would end up thrown over the horse's neck into a fence-post.

Catching the horses was an entirely different sort of adventure. At times, the horses were kept in a 350 acre pasture with a herd of cows, and at others, they were in our own ten acre pasture next to the house. Whether in 350 acres or just ten, it's hard to catch a horse that doesn't want to be caught. When in the big field, we had to worry about making the cows angry, especially in the Spring when they were calving. It's been more than once or twice that I've had to quickly climb a tree or jump into an empty silo to escape the angry wrath of a mother cow!

In the small pasture, the horses would mob you for feed, circling around you and snorting hungrily and greedily, and then proceeding to fight with each other. This is really only a problem when you are caught in the middle, with hooves flying all around you as noses nudge you to and fro. If you try to run, they chase after you. When I was little, and more easily panicked, I would get so frustrated and scared that I would eventually just throw the bucket on the ground and run.

Once the horse is caught, the rider faces many more problems before even getting the saddle on. Like the horse that won't tie--it's absolutely terrifying to tie a 1,200 lb animal to a tree, and then watch him freak out and try to break his own neck in his attempt to get free. It's even more terrifying to run in toward the flailing animal and release the slip-knot.

Once, Annie and Sonnie were tied to the boards of a stall. Hannah was visiting us for the weekend, she was about 6 years old then. She was sitting on the top rail, and the horses were being saddled and groomed. Everything was peaceful. Hannah thought it would be nice to feed them, so she was giving them handfuls of grain. The horses started to fight about who was getting the most, and Annie kicked Sonnie. Sonnie got indignant and started pulling back on his rope, trying to get away from Annie. Then Annie thought some imminent danger was near, and SHE began pulling back on the rope too. The end result was that the board broke off from the post, Hannah fell on the ground in the midst of frightened hooves and had her hand pinched, Sonnie's rope (he was near the end of the board) came loose, and Annie was running across the yard, her lead attached to the board, the board knocking between her flailing legs. She ended up running out of our yard, down our long driveway, and out onto the highway. We had to chase her several miles, the whole time afraid that she was going to break her neck or cause a horrible, bloody car accident. Of course, I had to be involved in the "chase." I was terrified! When we got her, her legs were bruised from the board. We spent the next few weeks soaking them in epsom salts.

I am afraid of horses. They are gigantic, magestic, graceful, beautiful animals, and they are also very strong and powerful, and at times unpredictable. Please make sure that you ALWAYS ride with a helmet (as I did NOT). I will continue to have a healthy respect for equines, maybe I will continue to be a little afraid. Oh, that I could go back in time and erase those painful memories, that I could have ridden only well-trained horses!