11/16/2025
yes
I have this really vivid memory of a time I was working with a trainer and a very anxious mustang. I had little self confidence in those days. I put my stock mostly in other people’s opinions, and in lessons, spent more of my energy trying to satisfy the teacher than I did connecting with the horse. This, of course, is all obvious in hindsight, but at the time I only felt an unnamable discomfort.
This mustang held her breath almost all of the time, and would bolt if I so much as sneezed. She was on guard and extremely flighty. My lesson was in the round pen, and I had been working on getting her to allow me to touch her. In retrospect, of course, the approach was all wrong - what scared creature benefits from having “the wrong thing made hard” repeatedly, the wrong thing being self preservation? She was forced between a rock and a hard place- protect herself and run, or shut down and freeze in place. The lesson was not going well, though I followed all the instructions I was given.
At one point after she allowed me to touch, I gave her a break. She started bobbing her head up and down, and shaking her head. At the time, I’d never seen these calming signals and did not know what they meant. She then began to paw, shake her head, and lick and chew repeatedly.
“Get after her!” My teacher yelled. I was perplexed. I had been pulled into observing her with such curiosity that I’d forgotten about my teacher.
“Get after her!” He yelled again. I was genuinely surprised so much so that I could not react. For the first time, I asked why.
“Why?”
“Get after her! Don’t just sit there and let her disrespect you! Pawing is disrespect!”
My eyes were opening to her expression, it’s meaning, feelings stirring inside me that could not be ignored. The mare had no one to defend her at that moment but me. The concern for my teachers opinion was completely overridden for the first time in my life by something else, a stirring sense of injustice, anger, the real me deep inside begging to come out. We don’t just follow instructions blindly like some fool, the real me said. We ask why! We listen to the truth.
“Why?” I said again, louder.
This time, my teacher got up from his seat by the round pen and stormed off, leaving me and the mare in the round pen alone. For the first time, she let out a sneeze, and after that, I was never the same.
