Listening

I was a passenger on my horse. We'd go off down the road with other people on other horses and she'd follow along, willing to be part of the excursion. Every once in awhile she'd spook, jumping at some real or imagined threat. I'd stay on, thinking, this isn't too bad. I can manage this.

It started to occur to me that I had no control over her. I'd had her for 3-4 months. So far she was willing, and it was fortunate that she, more or less, wanted to do what I wanted to do. If there were battles, they were minor, and I always lost. For example, if I wanted her to turn and go down that trail that led away from home, she'd just stop. "No thank you," she politely said. She would only go when the other horses went that way, and then she'd follow. Certainly not because I was asking her to -- and absolutely not because I was telling her to...because I wasn't telling her anything.

That wasn't particularly awful behavior in horse world. It's fairly typical. Some days she'd be a little more argumentative. Depending on personality, experience, and temperament, they will, to varying degrees, be the leader of the two of you if you are not up to the task. Their leadership can come (if you've abdicated the role, knowingly or unknowingly) in the form of stubborness, bucking, rearing, bolting -- all undesirable behavior that has different levels of danger and safety risks. Unfortunately, lack of leadership and its resulting behaviors tend to escalate.

The bottom line is that a horse willingly lets you onto its back, and does what you ask it to do, because it trusts you and wants to please you. It wants you to be its leader. I believe the Divine Creator asked Horse Spirit if it was willing to come to this world and act as our companions. Horse Spirit probably said "Are you kidding? They do not want companions. They would want slaves, and something to bully. They would want to use us in wars and work us until we drop. That's how humans see animals...not companions, but property."

Divine Creator must have done some fast talking. He/She said "But they desperately need you. Without you they will never learn to fly. They will never know the feeling of the wind in their face, or the magic that you will give them. They will be thoughtless, and cruel, and domineering. But they will one day come to see that you will make them be better human beings. You will teach them the wisdom that is Horse."

"Okay...but you know they have a hard time listening! That is because they make so much noise. We will have to teach them to be quiet, and listen." With that, Horse came to Earth. Perhaps reluctantly, but they came.

So, apparently, I was not listening to Autumn. She had to teach me how. One day coming home on a ride it was rather windy and cool. We were coming up a hill towards home and WHOOSH! Before I knew it, I'd flown off and had landed on my backside in a little bush. My first thought was "Well, so that's what it feels like to fall off a horse." My second thought was "I'm so glad my feet came out of my stirrups."

What had happened? I don't know. A stray sound, or smell or something spooked her. Me going off of her probably scared her as much as it did me. She stood there looking at me like "What are you doing down there?" At times like this you are supposed to get back on that horse. Cowgirl up!!!! I did not. I walked home, leading her. I did get back on once we were home. Briefly.

In one short moment my horse life changed. I'd gone from being a naive passenger, to realizing that I had to learn how to actually ride this horse. My baby steps, which I thought I'd been taking, just got smaller. Something new had entered the equation: fear.

How was I going to keep going and learn how to conquer the paralyzing knot in my stomach? Did I want to? Could I imagine not trying? The physical ouch was not nearly so great as the mental one.

What do I do now? She'd given me a message, loud and clear. I heard it. What I heard was "Now are you willing to be the leader?" "Because if you aren't, we're both in trouble."

Can you be a leader if you're afraid?

First Steps

My horse was in charge of the two of us. I don't think she was happy about that, but she figured out fairly quickly that I certainly wasn't in charge, and someone had to be. Since a horse's sense of self-preservation, safety and comfort is a very large part of what and who they are, Autumn had to express her needs to me, somehow. Too bad I really didn't know how to listen.

Since she is at heart a very sweet girl, and not aggressive in the least, this was no doubt a very big problem to her. "Oh, no!" she probably thought. "Here I was hoping for an owner who understood that I like to be asked very nicely what to do, and rewarded for being good by leaving my mouth alone and not kicking me. In exchange for that, I will learn to trust her and she can trust me and we will have many happy rides together to very wonderful places that are full of lush, green grass. Simple."

"Simple is right," Autumn must have concluded. "My new owner is simple. Doesn't she understand that she's supposed to be in charge? She's supposed to protect me from scary stuff and tell me where to go...and above all, not wobble around on my back. Then she really worries me because I'm trying SO hard to keep her on my back so she doesn't fall off!!" "She keeps telling me to go with half of her and stop with the other half. She must not know when she wants to go right or left, or stop or go."

Poor Autumn.

I, in the meantime, was so concerned with looking like an idiot. I had to come to accept that this steep learning curve I had undertaken was going to be on public display, with lots of opinions, judgements and concerns. THAT's what was worrying me. It was hard shifting from a world in which you learn to mask your truths about fears and doubts, to one in which you must be straight-up truthful with yourself and your horse.

We humans tend to practice a lifetime to create the "us" that goes out into the world. We pretend, we role play, we lie, we fake, we deny, we dissemble. That did me absolutely no good in starting to learn to ride this horse. She did not care one little bit about who I pretended to be out in the world. She was only concerned with why I was so nervous. If I was such a nervous wreck, then there must be a very good reason for her to be nervous, too. Still, she tried so hard to do as I asked.

Horses are really, really good at knowing when you are not being truthful. I think they can take the fact that you're nervous, or afraid, and work with it. What they have difficulty with is why you're lying about it! You are pretending to be one thing when they know you are another.

Like a wolf in sheep's clothing, that poses a very great threat to their sense of well-being. As it should to humans, too -- we've just become accustomed to duplicity. It's the way the human world works. No one says what they mean, they don't mean what they say and we all pretend all the time, to be richer, smarter, braver, younger, nicer...you name it.

In looking back to that beginning time with Autumn, I now believe she was doing exactly what I was asking her to do. This was when I thought she was completely out of control. I liken it to how I play golf. That ball goes exactly where I hit it. Often into a tree, water, or the rough, where I never find it again. Autumn was doing exactly what my body was telling her to do.

Sensitive. Autumn is sensitive. Well, that's nice. I didn't understand what that meant, however. And even if I did, and thought, "Oh, she's so sensitive all I have to do is breathe in one direction and that's where she'll go!" I didn't have any control of myself. My own body was just about as foreign to me as hers was. I didn't know what it was supposed to feel like. I didn't know how being balanced on a horse felt. I didn't know if there was more weight in my right stirrup than my left. I didn't know my hands kept creeping up higher and higher. My body and what it was doing on that horse was like an alien had taken me over and my mind was trapped inside of it somewhere, thinking, "Holy crap. There's a lot to think about all at once."

I started to understand the concept of baby steps. Really, really small baby steps. And to ask myself how badly did I want this. There was way, way more to this horseback riding thing than I thought -- and I knew it would be really hard. Just not this hard.

Did I have a horse I could ever learn to ride? How was I going to do this?

But, at least up to that point, I wasn't really afraid. Not yet.