Relationships with horses in my life have always been working affairs – partnerships that took me competing cross-country courses, slithering scree slopes researching or for whatever competition best suited that particular horse. 'The Best', the now pure-white mare who features on the front of the backcountry guidebook, is undeniably the most difficult horse I've ever re-started. Hot-headed, angry, she was probably the first horse that I couldn't 'see' where she was going to shine. At all.
The backcountry trails and something-to-do, a purpose, eventually changed her. Immeasurably. My idea of hell, right from when I first ever swung a leg over the back of a horse, has always been 'to go out for a ride.' I may school horses in arenas or those apparently pointless circles on wind-blown prairie wool pastures but in the back of the mindset is always something to be geared towards.
To my way of thinking my horses pick that up. Really! Flatwork to them, whether we're on a trail practising balanced transitions from trot to canter, or a still halt to pirouette around a gate fenceline, becomes a means to an end – they know the winter indoor arena work is only a phase, a partnership being fine tuned and then, oh joy! there are jumps or trails or fastwork.
Joy's an important number to horses. Spoken praise to young horses, neck rubs that, as relationships mature, become a sly scratch on the wither even in midst of a difficult dressage test as an acknowledgement, a thanks for a movement well executed.
Gratitude. Joy. The two trot together.
To 'The Best', carefully named as I was asking Fate to make sure she would be the best at something as yet unknown, I owe much. An equestrian column that ran for five years in which she often featured. A guidebook where her ears, often photographed from the saddle, are always pricked and where she even hammed up looking down a rock slide apparently horrified, that she'd nonchalently been down 20 times before.
She's been used in demo-work since for horse language simply because her face is unutterably expressive – 'I am happy,' 'I am darned annoyed,' 'this Small Person is standing in exactly the right place'........... there's never any doubt what mind-frame she's in and for that she's priceless.
And, on winter's night a few years back, she woke me up, so strong now is the telepathy between us. Personally I get a little tired of women romanticizing their relationships with their four-leggeds these days but the bond with the white mare and myself is not that.
It's a respect, a trust hard earned. So, here is her and my Christmas gifting to you – I wrote this small short story, that most difficult of writer's disciplines straightaway after, so almost surreal did it seem. No editing, just straight as it happened.
“Coyote teaching.........”
“Midnight, a whisker before. I wake up, the kind of wideawake with no dreams still lingering. The barn's yard light is on, casting shadows across the old Turkish rug. I fumble for spectacles, none that I can locate in the darkness and right now I want no turning on and off of electric lights.
Binoculars, from bird watching down to the water meadows, are on the old Victorian pine table. Gratefully I flip off their covers and focus through the window. The white mare, sharp as ever, has her head up and scanning; I follow her gaze and for the next five minutes there is enchantment.
Two coyotes dancing on the lawn. Feinting, circling, front paws asplay and crouching, a look cast sideways across a shoulder. The mare's head is up but I notice the frosted plumes of her breath are steady and slow. “No threat just right now,” drifts into my mind from hers and but I notice she has blocked her body between the coyotes and her stablemate appaloosa still picking at hay snippets from their late night feed.
The coyote pair slam dunk, roll over each over, then stand, face to face and noses a whisker apart. One leans forward and licks the top corner of her mate's mouth. They grin, panting foolishly, join shoulders and minds suddenly decided, trot briskly toward the darkness and the creek.
In the morning I stop on the way to the barn and there in the snow are their tracks, a dance still.”
Copyright Pam Asheton @2010
