Congratulations, you finally bought your dream horse this year. Now, six months later, you’re beginning to wonder if your horse feels the same way about you. Here are some thoughts to consider.

Sign # 5. Butterflies are Pretty, But…

You’ve had the horse for six months, yet each time you pull up to the stables you get a sense of being in the top chair on the Ferris wheel. Excitement—or anxiety?  Whichever you call it, you horse will sense that heightened energy. Some horses won’t be affected much, but if your horse is reactive enough to become energized around you, take responsibility for the state in which you show up. Instead of proceeding on in an anxious or tense condition, take some time to hand walk your animal, curry brush in hand, and let him graze while you concentrate on breathing, dealing with ANTs (automatic negative thoughts) and being present. In research studies of horse/human interaction, the human’s heart rate can lower significantly simply by being with the horse in a non-demanding way. Let Dobbin do his magic and then proceed on with your plan for a relaxed, fun ride.

Sign #4. The Name Game’s Gone Lame

If what you call your horse keeps changing, even after five or six months and several times through the alphabet, not to mention annoying all your friends and ignoring all the suggestions on your Facebook page, you need to look at what is keeping that name at bay. It doesn’t matter to the horse what you call her, but the act of selecting then rejecting a series of stable names suggests that things just aren’t settled in someone’s mind. Remember, the horse looks to you for leadership and stability. If she doesn’t find it, you will lose value in her eyes and she will tune you out (see Sign #1).

Sign #3. Arrested (Trust) Development

Warm up your horse by riding in a relaxed but correct frame the first mile of the trail ride.

After six months you are still spending a half hour to 45 minutes “warming up” your horse in the round pen or on a lunge line. Really? Did you know that working cowboys and other professional riders mostly don’t do that? They catch, saddle, and get on. The “warm-up” happens on the way to the cow pens. If you are simply going down the trail, the warm-up can be the first mile of the ride. Why else would you need to exercise a horse before getting on? Is the chasing and harassing him into a lather in the round pen before saddling up designed to give you a false sense of control? Real control needs closer contact, either on the ground or in the saddle. Control means asking for the left hind foot to move forward or backward on cue. Wearing down a horse into obedience is not control and ultimately will only result in a tired yet fearful horse. One last point: If your horse has become more exuberant over the months, do a nutrition check. Most pleasure horses can survive just fine on grass hay. Poor keepers should have teeth and worm checks. Feed high calorie food only after a good relationship has been established.

Sign #2. Absentee Owner

Spending undemanding time with your horse will help the both of you bond.

Horses don’t text, email, have smart phones, or even a snail mail address. They can’t do Skype and really don’t understand the concept of delayed gratification, all things we use to communicate and make promises to spend time with our human relationships. A horse relies on consistent, in-person contact in order to develop a trust bond with a human. If, after six months of ownership, you are still only spending about two to three hours per week with your horse, there is no mystery about why you might not be confident in your relationship. Consider taking a day off from work (they’re called “mental health” days, I believe) and spending it at the stable, just hanging out with your horse. Come early, bringing a book and chair, and just inhabit his space. Take her out several times, sometimes for demanding activities and then some for just grazing and sight seeing. If you can’t pry more time away to bond with your horse, then it’s time to examine whether you have enough time to be a horse owner, or whether a half-leased or rented horse wouldn’t better serve your needs.

… and the #1 Sign: That Faraway Look in his Eye

If, each time you ask him to perform a task either on the ground or in the saddle, your horse’s gaze strays over to his stable mates, the neighbor’s green pasture, or the ranch dog walking by, he may not be impressed with your leadership. The next thing that happens is that he forgets he has YOU, his rider, on his back. Then chaos arises as he finally wakes up on the trail, realizes he is ALONE and develops happy feet trying to get back to safety. Bottom line? YOU are his safety and need to make every attempt to let him know that, as much as possible and as early as possible in your relationship.

©2011 Bonnie Ebsen-Jackson  T.H.E. Ranch (Teaching Humans with Equine)™

www.t-h-e-ranch.com

Q: If you could choose one event in your life that set you on your path to becoming involved in equine-assisted psychotherapy, what would it be?

A: Oddly enough, it was getting fired from a job that I had ardently loved—writing for and editing a horse magazine—and realizing that what I really wanted to do at that point was work with people and horses in a more healing and experiential environment. At first, I thought this was going to look more like becoming a natural horsemanship instructor, but that was just the start of my journey.

Bonnie and Nikki at work

Shortly after becoming unemployed, I took an online interactive course called The Labyrinth that was created and facilitated by Dr. Stephanie Burns (www.stephanieburns.com/articles/). She was the adult education expert that Pat and Linda Parelli turned to when they began to provide Parelli Natural Horsemanship in home study courses. Stephanie has a Ph.D. in Adult Education, bases out of Sydney, Australia, and wrote the book Come Closer, Stay Longer which chronicles Burns’ own struggles to learn to horseback ride despite a phobic fear of all things equine. The Labyrinth is a course in self-leadership and, while it isn’t specifically about horses or for the equine-assisted community, completing the daily tasks allowed me to clarify what it was I wanted to do with horses and people. It was also my first exposure to how exciting experiential learning could be.

At that time, I only knew of the NARHA (now PATH) model of horse therapies, but I soon discovered that there were a variety of groups doing the kind of work I had in mind, namely working with mood and mental disorders. I found my way to an EAGALA training in Reno, Nevada and knew that I had found a solid direction.

Q: Why did you choose to align your practice with EAGALA?

The great thing about the EAGALA model for people just starting to do equine-assisted work is that it is a clearly stated model. There will be two or more facilitators, one covering the equine responsibilities and one covering the mental health responsibilities. It is very hard to misunderstand the practice, once you have been through the all six days of the full training (Parts 1 and 2). Now, you may disagree with EAGALA policies (for instance, there are some people who don’t see the need for a mental health facilitator when doing straight experiential education) but Lynn Thomas has made it very clear that an EAGALA team will always contain a licensed mental health professional. I’m not so deluded that I don’t know a lot of other types of equine-related therapies are going on without licensed staff. The point is, EAGALA closely follows the cognitive behavioral therapy model, which means a lot when you are doing third party billing.

The therapeutic horse-human bond

Q: How did you choose your equine partners?

A: Oh, I held nation-wide auditions…lol. Actually, I use a combination of the horses I previously kept for lessons and horses I’ve rescued from situations. My feeling is that most horses can do the EAGALA model, as it is very undemanding of the animal. Basically, a horse can’t be aggressive or too naughty toward people (i.e. offering to kick or bite without provocation). I’ve only made one exception to that rule: When my AQHA gelding Travis first arrived, I had the idea to use him as a dual lesson/therapy horse, as I’d done with a couple of others. However, the first time a group of people approached him at liberty, his response was to gnash his teeth, shake his head, and jump at them like he was cutting a bunch of cows! Of course, once everyone jumped back, his ears came forward and he looked at them curiously. We’re pretty sure he had never been loose in an arena with a group of people before (he had been a performance horse with about a decade of reining and cutting under his belt) and this new experience was blowing his mind. That was two years ago and he has since learned to be more comfortable with the liberty work (he’s always been well-mannered when haltered or under saddle). He’s the one I use as an object lesson when the adjudicated kids first arrive. They see he’s kind of this bad-ass and they need to negotiate a peace treaty. Then they see that it’s all an act and we get to talk a little about attitude and external appearances.

Q: What has been your biggest roadblock in establishing and maintaining your practice?

A: As gas has grown more expensive, the drive out to my ranch from Prescott and the quad-city area has become a roadblock to individual one-hour sessions. That’s why I do mostly groups in 2-plus-hour blocks right now and am creating some full-day and weekend retreats that I think would be a good fit for my place. I have a bunkhouse for overnight accommodations as well as grounds that allow for comfortable daylong workshops. Also, the overhead to running an equine-assisted facility is prodigious. The ideal therapy herd is 4-6 horses; factor in feed, vetting, and farriery and it’s not a great business model from an economic standpoint. To be honest, I always envisioned being part of a consortium, where different therapy teams could come in and work on different days. I don’t know of too many people in this area who are working at full capacity and it would just make sense to consolidate resources.

Q: Can you describe your most poignant learning experience in your equine-assisted work?

Paloma in flight

A: One of the hardest tasks as an Equine Specialist is to mentally and emotionally separate yourself from your herd in order to allow for the process of discovery. I had avoided using my draft/cross Premarin rescue Paloma for any close-up work, especially with kids, as she can be highly reactive and spooky. We think this is a problem with her vision—her eyes appear mismatched. This had really set back her general training and usefulness and I had mainly been using her for liberty work—Life’s Little Obstacles in particular—since she is quite the jumper.

Then one day, we had a group of detention kids and I had them pair up and sent them to the horse pens to choose a horse and bring it back. Paloma’s pen was way in back and it didn’t occur to me that anyone would walk past other horses to get to her. When the smallest two in the group, “David” and “Maria”, ended up at Paloma’s stall my heart sank. I moseyed over to where the three were standing, the horse sniffing at their hands. I watched as the boy inched the lead rope over the towering mare’s neck and waited to see what she would do. Normally, she waits until she feels the halter start to slide onto her nose and then raises up to her full 16.2 height, eyes wild, nostrils flared. However, somehow it must have felt differently to her than the training sessions with me, because the kids managed to slowly coax her head into the halter and fasten it up. Was it that they hadn’t brought any trepidation or negative outcome expectations into the pen with them? I hovered as “Maria” led the mare out to the grooming station in the arena. Paloma stood quietly as she was brushed and even allowed her feet to be handled—tasks that had been sources of contention for years. Periodically, she would sniff their heads and then look over at another horse as if to say, “See? I finally got some kids of my own!” Eventually my attention drifted to other teams until, later, I caught a glimpse of “David” leading Paloma through the obstacle course. When Paloma stepped regally up on the two-foot high platform and posed, I don’t know who was prouder—kid or horse. I made a mental note not to prejudge my horses’ abilities and to always, always stay open to the possibility of transformation.

upon the virtues of the horse?

They are too numerous to tell.

save when you have a horse to sell.”

—J. Billings

I got a desperate call from some acquaintances a few weeks ago. See, it was tax time and the husband was in a lather to come up with some green stuff to keep the IRS wolves from the door, and was hoping to do so by selling their “spare” horse. I politely promised to get the word out and suggested they post on a few websites that specialized in that breed of horse. In reality, I find the manners and ethics some people employ to market their horses as disingenuous and off-putting as parking your Mercedes on the street where you intend to panhandle.

It’s one thing, in my opinion, to call your friends and seek a good home for a horse that genuinely needs placement; it’s quite another to state, “We need to get $7,000 and, oh yeah, a good home.” When the recipient of the call asks if you’d negotiate on the price, it’s poor cricket to respond icily, “Well, I’d like to get my money back out of him.” Get your story straight—the horse either needs a good home or he doesn’t; either it’s a fire sale or it isn’t…

Two years ago, this same couple “impulse bought” the horse in question—for the afore-mentioned sum of $7000—because he was such a nice match with the other horse they have. Not that they do a lot of parade riding, mind you, which is the only reason I can think of for a matched set of parti-colored geldings. But don’t get me started…

Said horse was soon languishing in the couple’s backyard and being ridden by the wife about once a month. In truth, he was too much horse for the husband, who was too proud to either put him in training or take some lessons—or both. Finally, the wife felt sorry for the gelding and got permission to turn him out in a neighbor’s pasture. There, he proceeded to get the daylights clobbered out of him by a few alpha mares, who eventually succeeded in chasing him through some fencing. This is what opened the two-inch deep gash on his hock, which took the better part of six months to heal (mostly due to attention deficit disorder on the part of his owners). The wound left a rather large, unsightly, and permanent nodule of proud flesh on the front of the gelding’s hock and an ever so slight hitch in his stride. (In the horse-trading world, this is where your initial investment begins to spread its wings and soar out the window.)

For half his original price, the horse still could have a good home with someone who wanted a pretty trail horse with a lot of “go” and was prepared to do some training to improve his now-ghastly manners. However, these people are determined to get their investment back out of the animal. Forget that he’s already racked up $4000 in vet and medical bills. (Did I mention he broke the wife’s nose when he stepped on his reins and sucked back?)

This is an animal fully in need of a karma makeover. I’ll bet he looks in the mirror (okay well, his water trough then) every morning and fervently prays for a plain brown wrapper, a winning personality, and a decidedly less than spectacular pedigree. Why? Because maybe then someone would love him for who he is and not what he represents. In short, I bet he wishes he could trade places with my little PMU filly, Twinkle, who I bought for a song and wouldn’t trade now for the entire Beatles catalogue (okay maybe, with the rights to “Yesterday” and “Hey Jude” included.)

Every week, my teenage volunteer Chelsea and I put hours into ground training, desensitizing, trail walking and generally messing with this two-year-old. She accepted a bit at a year and was being saddled at 18 months, all without flap. By the time she’s ready to ride, Twinkle will have been taught to drive, mastered the seven Parelli Games and will have spent a few years working with special needs clients in my therapy horse herd.

I truly believe that it’s what a horse knows and not what he costs that measures his value. I set out to give a home to the plainest PMU foal I could find because I wanted to put my theory to the test. Learning is the “work” of the young, and making sure they’re taught is our work. Teach as much as you can, as young as you can, of the behavior and skills you desire in your horses, (and yes, it works for your children too) before they become grownups. You will be building value into your animals (and values into your humans).

I’d also urge people to stop investing in horseflesh as if they’re investing in the commodities market. But if you must spend tens of thousands, remember that savvy investors keeps a sharp and constant eye on their portfolios, lest they take a downward turn and lose their worth. Rant over.—bej

One event in particular stands out for me: I was eleven and had been riding my mustang mare for nearly a year, feeding her grain to help her gain weight after being in an emaciated condition in the wild. We were cantering—bareback—over some large mounds of manure at the boarding stable where I kept her and suddenly she was airborne in series of rodeo bucks. I was airborne as well, finally coming to land on the soft ground with my head just missing a cement block. A few inches more would have meant a life-changing, perhaps life-ending accident. As it was, even though I blacked out for a few moments, I walked away from the crash otherwise uninjured. The fall was kept a secret; I knew that I could never tell my parents or my horse might “go away.” I’ve gotten to spend a lifetime wondering how that lucky but unprotected fall and others may have impacted my mental processes.

I hold no illusions that wearing a helmet would have prevented me from going off the horse or that a helmet would have prevented me from breaking my neck, back, ribs, or limbs in the fall. I simply know that neuroscience has proven the value of head protection in falls related to riding, snow skiing, cycling, and any other sport where your skull could come in contact with a hard surface.

Wearing a helmet doesn’t lull me into a sense of false security any more than wearing a seat belt does in a car. Both can be argued to be “uncomfortable” and a nuisance. Helmets can be an additional expensive. However, just as we purchase cars with safety features and insurance policies for what we hope never happens, we need to consider the costs of not doing so.

My favorite comment about helmet wear came when I was riding a frisky 4-year-old gelding through a state park in the 1990s. By then, my helmet was a firm fixture on most rides, thanks to the discovery of the sport of Endurance. A hatless gentleman in a large cycling group asked me, “What’s with the salad bowl on your head, lady?” The group got a good laugh from his reference. I smiled back and said, “I guess I just value my brains more than you value yours,” then trotted off still grinning.

BOTTOM LINE: As an instructor, I consider helmets mandatory for students under 10 for riding and groundwork; under 18 years while riding at the ranch. Those students over 18 get to make their own, hopefully informed, decisions. Helmets in all sizes are available at T.H.E. Ranch for student use.

When I was two, my father moved his family of five from Darien, Connecticut to Los Angeles, California in the hopes of being a part of a burgeoning new industry—television. We traveled by car, mostly along Route 66, which we picked up after a brief visit with my mom’s family in Chicago.

These were the halcyon days of the 50s, when life was easy, the future hopeful, and the road clear and uncluttered for these two military veterans and their three young daughters. When we reached the Southwest—our last leg of the journey—my dad could almost smell the crisp Pacific ocean air through the waves of summer heat. But we were about to take a unexpected side trip

Somewhere between Flagstaff and the California state line, the folks pulled over their Rambler station wagon at a campground and began preparing a picnic. Dad started a fire in the barbeque and Mom let the little girls stretch their legs and get rid of some “puppy energy” before lunch. Because it had recently rained, she removed our shoes and socks, not wanting the added chore of cleaning the bright red mud off them before loading us back up.

So, wearing little more than a diaper, I did something I would become known for doing my whole life: I strayed from the pack. Well, there was just so much to see in this strange world of magenta clay earth and vibrant green plants that poked you back when you touched them.

The actual event of the rattlesnake biting me is tucked away in a secret part of my mind. At best, I can imagine that I ran up on it, startled it, and was bitten on the foot before I had a chance to toddle around and go back.

Mom says she heard me before she saw me. I was babbling and hysterical, pointing at my foot. Here’s an interesting plot point Because, as an adolescent, she had traveled from her suburban Chicago to work on a ranch in Joseph “Joe” City, Arizona, my mother had picked up some first aid tips on dealing with poisonous snakebites. Unfortunately, they required the use of a straight edge razor and the drawing out of poison with someone’s mouth, a practice that has thankfully fallen into ill favor today. (Numbers 4 and 5 on the National Library of Medicine’s Do Not Do list.)

I could have told her it was a bad idea myself, had I been able to speak real words. As it was, all I could do when I saw my once serene, now fierce-eyed mother quickly approaching with the sharp blade was to reach out and bat it away. In doing so, I succeeded in neatly lopping of the tip of my right index finger.

Drawing on the help of my reluctant father, my mother finally managed to subdue her writhing, nearly naked, now bloody youngest daughter while the deed was done. Then, we flew in the old family wagon (as best a Rambler can fly) to a sleepy Sonoran desert town called Wickenburg, where there was an emergency room staff waiting.

Twelve hours after the initial bite, I was pronounced “alive” and only mildly poisoned. My mother cried, my older sisters dined on Hershey bars, and my dad quietly fed the raw steaks he’d salvaged from the grill to a starving German Shepard outside the clinic.

Despite all the , I hardly have a scar on my foot, but the finger has never looked quite right. Although, really, only a fraction of an inch is missing from the fleshy pad, it ends abruptly in a thick, squared-off nail and has a peculiar scar bisecting the tip where the two sides were sewn together. Let’s face it, I’ll never be a hand model and manicurists haven’t exactly gotten rich off me.

The one redeeming feature is the fingernail’s toughness—so tough, in fact, that I use it to slash open feed and shavings bags. Instead of having to wield a pair of scissors or a knife, I simply drag the plastic bag of shavings into the pen or stall and zip, zap—I can cross cut and open it in a few seconds.

Enter plot point #2. Three weeks ago, my husband and I took ten days to cruise the western Caribbean for our 25th anniversary. We flew to Cozumel, Mexico in preparation to board the cruise ship. What with the hassles of what you CAN and CAN’T have in your possession on board a plane, I dumped all the sharp metal items out of my makeup kit, including my fingernail nippers. Upon my return I hardly noticed that my “slashing” finger now had grown to twice its normal length of nail. (Had the airport security known of the capabilities of this nail, no doubt they would have insisted my hand ride in the luggage hold.)

The morning after our return, I went down to the stables to feed and set about opening a new five-pound bucket of supplements. These can be tricky: First you have to remove the plastic sealing strip and then unhinge at least three of the four tabs that hold the lid in place, without the other tabs re-latching. This one was giving me quite a challenge, but I gave a great heave-ho with both hands grasping each side and the lid popped off.

The initial feeling was just that I’d chipped my fingernail on something stationary—obviously the lip of the pail. There was some brief unflattering language directed to the pail. Then came a deep, dull nerve pain that told my brain, “Warning: Not an ordinary nail break.” I looked at my finger and saw that the nail was standing up on its right edge like a tiny fibrous sail; it was ripped clear from the quick on the left side. There was more language, followed by gasping intakes of breath. (Torturers concentrate on fingernails for good reason.)  I clamped the nail back down and ran to the house to consult friends by phone. The consensus was, don’t go to the ER (you laugh, but the thing was pouring blood and wickedly painful), do clean, anti-bacterialize, cover, and take some ibuprophen.

Since then, I’ve had time and occasion to meditate on my fingernail. I’d turned its flaw—stubby toughness—into an asset at the barn. Yet, trauma and scar tissue had made it too tough to break when it needed to… so it was wrenched off. Not to put too fine a point on it, we were obviously designed with some parts stronger (and weaker) than others. When we grow too tough, too strong to manifest our weaknesses, brokenness can occur in other, more devastating ways.

Translated literally, the term means “crowd of people.” It embraces the best of both the Anglo and Hispanic cultures in its implied meaning—“the ability to be at ease when relating to strangers in social situations.” Frankly, I never thought much about how the term might relate to horses until the first time I contemplated handing over the reins of my errant Paint Goodman to another rider.

Goodman was a horse that lacked any sort of social skills when he first arrived on my place as a green-broke three-year-old. Kicking, biting, rearing, bucking, charging—it was all there on his rap sheet. But of course it came encased in the most engaging and attractive exterior you could wish for. I often joked that if you combined the looks of Brad Pitt with the comic timing of Robin Williams and the instincts of a mafia hit man, you’d wind up with Goodman.

Gradually, as our training sessions progressed, I was encouraged by the positive changes in the gelding’s behavior. His dark ugly past seemed to be fading away like a distant nightmare. Still, while I often offered horseback rides to ranch guests, it was never on Goodman; I always made sure he was my mount for the ride. After all, you wouldn’t lend out a car with faulty brakes and uncertain steering, would you?.

Then came a visit from Tom and Mary of New Hampshire. Even with a February snowstorm approaching, there was no deterring their long anticipated week of horseback riding in northern Arizona. The only problem was that their visit had coincided with a serious equine shortage at the ranch. Only that morning I realized that Goodman would have to be pressed into guest horse service.

Tom and Mary arrived at the stable, resplendent in their 10-gallon hats, down jackets, thermal gloves, and batwing chaps; dangling from their boots were his and her pairs of jingle-bob spurs. In addition, they each carried a yellow slicker and a set of saddlebags.

“So, this isn’t your first trail ride,” I quipped as I adjusted the stirrups and guiltily help Tom onto the “devil” horse. Striving to reassure myself, I recalled how the man had spoken glowingly of training his own colts to ride and drive back in New Hampshire. Surely he would know how to stay on through one of Goodman’s wild bucking episodes. Conversely, if the Paint tripped on a mountain trail and plunged headlong toward the edge of the cliff, couldn’t an expert rider like Tom be counted on to jump to safety?

For the rest of that day, I would split my attention between being trail guide—secretly watching the Paint’s ears for warning signs—and fervently praying that this lovely couple didn’t spend their 30th wedding anniversary in the waiting room of the local urgent care center.

About two hours into the ride, I eased my misgivings about loaning out my miscreant gelding. This was due in part to Goodman’s stellar behavior—for once. Still, I couldn’t help attributing the Paint’s compliance to my being close by. I was like a guardian angel “vibe-ing” him into doing the right thing.

Midway through the week, I had to go into the office for the day and I heard myself magnanimously tell the couple to saddle up and ride out without me. What was I saying? Had I lost my senses? Did I really think anyone else could control that horse but me?

The day crept by and finally I was on my way back home, half dreading what I would find. My husband informed me that the couple had headed out some three hours ago and had not returned yet. Like a worried parent, I fussed and tidied around the barn until the little mustang’s whinny told me her mates were returning. Covering my relief at seeing Tom return so obviously unscathed, I busied myself with untacking the horses when they arrived. Suddenly, I sensed the tall man at my side.

“He didn’t do a single thing I hadn’t seen before,” said Tom. “Really… so stop worrying.” He reached out and stoked Goodman’s sweat-encrusted neck. “We got along great once he realized who was riding whom.”

I finally took a good look at the half-dozing gelding. He seemed to have matured years in just a few hours.

From that day on, I made it a point to have as many good riders as I could find ride Goodman—and all my other youngsters—on the trail. The way I see it, it’s free “gente” training.—BEJ