by Lisa Wingate
“Uhhk, no-o.” The cheerleader coughed, throwing up her hands. “All the good horses are already gone, and, like, this one is a butthead.”
Jocelyn’s dark brows straightened thoughtfully. “So, because the horse is not reacting as you would like, he has a problem. Is that correct?”
“Uhhh, yeah. Ex-act-ly.” Standing up, she brushed off her hip-huggers, peeled a piece of horse hair from her shirt, and let it float to the ground. “It’s, like, impossible. I got a bad horse, you know?”
“Would it change your opinion to know that, last week, that very same horse—who is called Boggy, by the way—completed all five tasks of the horse therapy class in record time, in partnership with an elderly Chinese gentleman who grew up in Taiwan and had never been within twenty feet of a horse before?” Jocelyn asked. “In fact, on day one last week, Boggy was the very first horse haltered and taken to the other corral.”
The cheerleader flushed, properly chagrined for a moment before she lifted her chin with a defiant jive. “Well, it must be in a bad mood today. Maybe it’s PMSing.” Chuckles came from the other corral, and she snorted irritably.
Jocelyn answered with a patient smile. “Well, in the first place, the horse is a male, so PMS is unlikely, and in the second place, horses are who they are. They aren’t emotional; they are reactionary. They react to their environments. Boggy isn’t trying to prove anything, or make you mad, or hurt your feelings. His behavior is not aimed at you; it is a reaction to your behavior, which, of course, means that you have complete control over this situation.”
Jocelyn raised her voice for the benefit of the students in the other corral. “Remember that, in any encounter, the only thing you can control is your own actions and reactions. You cannot dictate the actions of the other person, or in this case, the horse, but you can send the right signals to get what you want. If you are often baffled by the reactions others have to you, it is probably because you are unaware of the silent signals you send through your posture, your facial gestures, your tone of voice, the amount of personal space you maintain, and so forth. Ever wondered why people don’t listen when you try to assert yourself, or why people back away when you’re trying to be friendly, or why you’re never the one people seek out in a crowded room? Body language. Silent signals. Mixed signals. The trick is to focus outward, not inward.”
Jocelyn retrieved the harness from the dirt and the cheerleader smiled, obviously assuming that Jocelyn was going to catch her horse for her.
Jocelyn only laid the harness over the fence, and said, “It’s not good to leave these lying around. The horse could step in it and go into panic mode, and then we would have a crisis.” Clasping her hands behind her back, she silently indicated that she would not be bailing us out. The last thing I wanted to be was an object lesson for a bunch of college kids. I made up my mind that, one way or another, if I had to jump on like John Wayne and tackle it, I was going to get the head harness on my horse.
Determined, I strode toward the animal and firmly said, “Hold still,” which seemed to work. He waited while I untangled the harness and inched forward, hoping, silently praying that he would put his muzzle in the noseband, so I could buckle the remaining part behind his ears.
I moved closer, one baby step, two, three, as Jocelyn worked with the cheerleader on the other side of the corral.
“Madison, do you often find that building new relationships doesn’t come as easily as you would like it to?”
Madison, close to her breaking point, sighed. “Yes.”
“And why do you think that is?”
“I don’t know. Some people are just jerks. They don’t like me because I’m … well … pretty.”
Jocelyn paused. I realized I’d stopped the advance toward my horse and was frozen with a cold sweat dripping down my back. I glanced over my shoulder at Jocelyn, and my horse swiveled and stuck his rear end in my face. He proceeded to pass gas and stroll off, looking self-satisfied.
The rumble of a vehicle passing the corral caught my attention, and I glanced up just in time to see Zach slowing down to watch me as I fanned away the cloud of methane. Glancing over her shoulder, the cheerleader noticed the truck, flipped her blond hair, and gave the cowboy a sexy smile and a little wave.
Zach waved in response, then turned his attention back to me. Stopping the truck by the fence, he had the nerve to point at me and my horse and make a hand motion that indicated we were supposed to be in the other corral by now.
Giving him a disgusted look, I held out the head harness and mouthed, Help.
He grinned and shook his head, then pointed at the harness and pretended to buckle an invisible version on his own head. Simple, see? his pantomime said.
Shrugging I let the harness fall to my side and sagged pathetically. For just an instant I thought he was actually going help me, but then Jocelyn delivered a territorial glare that clearly meant, Buzz off.
Winking, Zach gave me the thumbs-up, then let off the brakes and drove away.
I groaned, feeling like a failure as Jocelyn resumed her one-on-one therapy with the too-sexy-for-her-horse cheerleader.
“So, then, your focus is mainly on you in a given encounter. On how you look, and your perceptions of what the other party is thinking about you?”
Crossing her arms, the cheerleader jutted her slim hips to one side. “I dunno. I guess so.”
“Did you ask the name of the horse?” Jocelyn queried. “Did you consider that knowing his name might be useful in building trust?”
The cheerleader slouched. “Yeah, I guess it might have.”
“Do you often forget people’s names when you’re introduced, or fail to retain information about them after the conversation is over?”
The coed’s eyes widened in surprise. “Yeah, I do.”
Jocelyn nodded with the keen look of a spider luring a fly deep into the web. “When you enter a conversation, are you listening to what the other person has to say, or are you mostly focused on what you’re going to say and how you think the other party will react to it?”
“The second one.”
Jocelyn nodded. “You see, self-focus is death to personal encounters and to relationships. If, when you approach people, they perceive genuine interest, if they see that your focus is on them, they will respond positively, and I can promise that ninety-five percent of the time, it won’t matter how you look. The horse, obviously, is not reacting to your looks. He is reacting to your lack of empathic behavior, to your silent signals. Try approaching him this time with your focus on him. Say his name with interest and warmth. Think about what he is feeling and what you’re asking from him. The horse’s natural instinct is to flee from entrapment. You are asking him to submit control of his head, the most vulnerable part of his body, to someone he doesn’t know. He has to feel that he can trust you not to hurt him, to keep his feelings and needs and fears in consideration if he enters into this partnership with you.”
The cheerleader was clearly having what Oprah would have called a lightbulb moment. “OK,” she breathed, suddenly becoming animated. “I get it.” Lips parting into a broad, perfect smile, she blinked in astonishment. “I really get it.”
Jocelyn nodded with approval. “Good, then try it again.”
Shaking the dust off her head harness, the cheerleader moved toward her horse, talking and cooing, saying his name, looking him in the eye and promising that they were going to be very good friends. The treatment worked. After only a small misstep or two, she had successfully haltered Boggy and led him to the other paddock. Passing from the failure corral to the success corral, she stopped and jiggled up and down, giggling and saying, “Yes! Yes! Yes!”
Her boisterous exit left only me and the middle-aged man in the loser’s bracket. The man had somehow managed to lock his arms around his horse’s neck and was trying to get the harness on without letting go. Meanwhile, the horse was dragging him through the corral, occasionally stepping on the toes of his Nikes, while the man cussed a
blue streak.
Jocelyn redirected her attention to him. “How are things going between you and Snowflake, Robert?”
“Fine,” Robert grunted, his voice strained with the effort. “I’m just … trying … to get this—owww, my foot—thing on his—owww … head.” The horse yanked away, pulling the harness from Robert’s hand and dragging him across the enclosure.
“How are things going now, Robert?” Jocelyn asked patiently.
“Great,” Robert ground out. When the horse finally stopped, he fished for the harness with his foot, trying to snag it without letting go of the horse. Sensing the ploy, Snowflake dragged Robert a few feet farther away, so that the harness was out of reach.
Robert roared, then let his forehead drop against his arm and wiped the sweat from his eyes. “This is impossible. This horse is uncooperative. He knows what I want. He’s just trying to irritate me.”
Pursing her lips thoughtfully, Jocelyn commented, “Actually, Snowflake is a female.”
“No wonder she’s such a pain in the butt.”
Jocelyn smiled at the joke, then turned serious again. “Do you often find that people are uncooperative with you? Unwilling to consider your ideas or acquiesce to your wishes?”
Robert regained his footing. “Well … yeah,” he barked gruffly, as if Jocelyn were wasting his time and everyone else’s. “Some people get off on being a pain in the butt. I’ve been with the sheriff’s department for fifteen years. I ought to know.”
“So in your years as a police officer, did you find that some people were uncooperative, or most people were uncooperative?”
“Most people,” Robert answered. “Most people don’t want to do what you want ’em to do. That’s life. I don’t care what some candy-pants psychology book says; sometimes you gotta get tough.” He swiveled toward Jocelyn. “Listen, lady, I’m not one of your little college kids. I know how the real world works. I’m only here to get through this class so I can move up on the pay scale at the department, sabe?”
“Well, I can see how you would feel that way,” Jocelyn’s tone was sympathetic. “It’s never pleasant when you’re forced to do something you don’t want to do.”
“No, it ain’t.”
For the first time Robert and Jocelyn were simpatico. Scooping the horse harness out of the dirt, she handed it to him. “People generally don’t respond well to being bullied.”
“Darned straight,” Robert agreed, trying to sort out the harness while keeping his arms around Snowflake.
“In fact, the more someone feels leaned on, the more they resist. It’s kind of like Newton’s Law—for every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction, right?”
“Exactly. Tell that to the county commissioners. They’re always trying to cram this New Age, liberal, politically correct stuff on us. First they’re hiring a girl deputy because she’s got some ignorant college degree, and now they want us all to do this continuing-education crap. Like we’ve got time for that.”
Jocelyn watched Robert renew his struggle with the horse, the corners of her lips turning up. “People need to feel like they have … well, some control over things. Like with you, for instance. It probably isn’t taking the courses you resent, as much as the fact that you were forced into it.”
“Darned straight. And on my own time, too. You know, I got a life.”
Jocelyn sighed sympathetically. “Everyone does. Being bullied into taking coursework just to keep your job is bound to cause resentment, especially when you weren’t consulted first. It’s always more productive to try working with someone first, instead of descending into a confrontation. Given the situation, of course you’re going to be less than cooperative. I mean, it’s kind of like having someone walk into your corral, grab you around the neck, holler threats in your ear, and try to force a halter onto your head.” Without waiting for an answer, she turned around and started across the paddock.
Everyone in the far corral suddenly fell silent, and Robert choked like he’d swallowed an ice cube. Muttering niceties through gritted teeth, he released his hold on the horse, and Snowflake stood calmly as Robert untangled the halter and buckled it into place. No problem.
He led Snowflake away, which left only me in the corral. Lindsey Attwood, the biggest failure in horse psychology class. Outdone by a bunch of wet-behind-the-ears college students, two empty-nesters returning to college, and a disgruntled sheriff’s deputy. What was wrong with me? Had these last six exceedingly tame years of working at the museum completely asphyxiated the intrepid, independent woman who traveled the world seeking magnificent treasures? Where was the woman who ignored her fear of heights to scale a hundred-foot cliff, worked hanging from a belaying harness to unearth the remains of a woolly mammoth in Siberia, or dug up fossilized sauropod eggs on a riverbank in Argentina, with hungry alligators practically in her hip pocket?
Who was this sniveling weenie who let herself be intimidated by a horse?
“How are things going, Lindsey?” Jocelyn asked. “How are you getting along with Sleepy?”
“Just fine.” The horse even had a docile name. Sleepy, like one of the Seven Dwarfs. “I’m trying not to be too aggressive. I wouldn’t want Sleepy to feel forced into anything.”
Jocelyn chuckled at the joke, and on the fence the professor glanced up with a mildly surprised look, then went back to furiously writing on his pad. About me, I was sure. Thirty-something female, unable to capture horse. Obviously suffers from horse phobia. Displaying mildly uncooperative behavior and extreme signs of stress, possible symptoms of recent nervous breakdown. Note perspiration on forehead and damp, clingy nature of T-shirt, flush in facial region. May be suffering from acute embarrassment and—
“Well, that’s good thinking,” Jocelyn remarked. “But you’ve pretty much maintained a distance of several feet throughout this entire exercise. Have you any idea why that might be?”
I hate horses, and in particular, I hate this one. No doubt he senses hostility. “None,” I said. “When I get near him, he moves away. I don’t think he …” Remembering her conversations with the cheerleader and the cop, I astutely glanced under my horse’s belly. Boy parts. I didn’t know much about horses, but I knew enough to tell boys from girls. “ … he feels very good today. He seems to be a little flatulent.”
A puff of laughter burst past Jocelyn’s lips, cracking her therapist’s mask for a moment before she wiped away the grin. “That’s normal for horses,” she informed me. “So have you any other ideas as to why you and Sleepy are maintaining a distance?”
“Not a one,” I replied. “I’m trying to be as open, honest, nonthreatening, unself-centered as I can, but it isn’t working. When I approach, he walks away.”
Tapping a finger to her lips, Jocelyn did her pretend psychologist-think. “And have you noticed that when he stops walking, you stop advancing?”
“I do?” Squinting upward, into my brain, I tried to remember. I had the uncomfortable feeling that Jocelyn was right. The best thing, I decided, was just to admit the truth, and in a backhanded way, let Jocelyn know not to expect much from me in horse class. “Well, to be honest, I don’t like horses very much. I had a bad summer-camp experience when I was young. I’m afraid of horses.”
Jocelyn didn’t look surprised. “Do you follow this pattern with people, as well—pursuing contact only at a nonthreatening distance, backing off when it looks like the other person might be interested in closing that space, forming a relationship, so to speak?”
I turned to her with the strange sense of having my mind read. “Well, I wouldn’t say … I don’t … I mean, I have close friendships. There’s my sister, and Collie, my daughter, of course. I’m not afraid to be close to people, if that’s what you mean.”
“New people?”
A lump rose in my throat, and I swallowed hard, surprised by the sudden rush of emotion, or indignance, or whatever it was. “Well, not … I work in the basement of a museum, and when I’m not working, I’m shuttling Syd
ney to her activities. I don’t meet new people.”
“Don’t meet them, or aren’t willing to try to meet them? Do you think it’s possible that you’re letting past pain dictate present behavior? That you’ve decided to forgo relationships altogether, rather than suffer through another loss of someone you care about?”
Suddenly I felt like a drug addict at an intervention, or a defendant on trial for my life. A thirty-something divorced mom charged with willful injury to potential relationships. In the innermost part of my soul, I knew she was right. The breakdown of my marriage, and then Geoff’s betrayal when I needed him most, had left me emotionally raw. For eight years now I’d done everything I could to insulate myself from further damage. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
Laying a hand on Sleepy’s shoulder, Jocelyn stroked his hair as she spoke privately to me. “It’s absolutely up to you where you want to go from here, Lindsey—with the horse, I mean. It isn’t like you’ve any need to pass the course. You and Sleepy can continue circling the corral all week. No one’s going to force you to go any further.”
I nodded, feeling relieved. Even if Jocelyn’s diagnosis was right, she still remembered that I wasn’t really here for horse psychology class.
Winking, she patted my arm and started off, adding, “Of course, you could do that forever, and all you would have done is walk around the corral.”
She was gone before I could answer. I stood in her wake, feeling as if I were stepping outside my body, hovering overhead, watching the terrified dark-haired woman standing in dust with a useless bit of rope in her hands. For eight years she’d been wandering around the corral, dancing with various partners at a distance.
I slipped back into my body as Jocelyn rang the cowbell on the gate. “OK, people, that’s class. If you managed to complete the first task of the week—haltering your horse and beginning the bonds of a relationship—please take your horse through the corral to the pasture gate, give him a big hug, and turn him loose in the grass. Enjoy your time today journaling about your experience and completing the treasure hunt on today’s handout. I’ll look forward to seeing your answers. We’ll meet in the picnic grounds down by the river at three o’clock for our afternoon discovery and sharing session.”