The Soul of a Horse

by Joe Camp

  “You want to take Skeeter and go after him?”

  I thought for a moment and shook my head.

  “No.”

  It was the right answer, but not necessarily for the right reason.

  Skeeter could neither outmaneuver nor outrun Cash.

  But what to do? Cash could get lost. Stolen. Hurt himself. If he went far enough, he could be out on public roads. But I knew that chasing him wasn’t the right answer. Chasing any animal will only send him away farther, and faster.

  The right answer appeared back at the bend in the trail. Cash jolted to a stop and stood there for a very long time, eyes wide, huffing and puffing, but trying to come down off the adrenaline, trying to figure it out.

  We are his herd, I reminded myself. Skeeter, Kathleen, and I are his herd. Stay calm. Let him work it out.

  I asked Kathleen to ride slowly back up the trail, away from Cash, find a nice patch of grass, and let Skeeter munch away. Cash watched. But didn’t move. The wheels were turning. He was crawling back to the thinking side of his brain. He glanced back around the bend in the trail. I prayed that no other people were coming along. Finally, he trotted toward me, and for a moment I thought we might re-create Shy Boy’s return, but then he broke into a canter and carved a wide semicircle around me, up the hill, then back down again. I noticed that his eyes were no longer saucers. He had a plan.

  He slowed to a trot, then a walk as he approached Kathleen and Skeeter, stopping not ten feet away from them. He snorted once and began munching grass.

  “What do you want me to do?” Kathleen called.

  I considered asking her to reach for the reins, but thought better of it. A miss could mean starting over. And I was now back on the thinking side of my brain. And curious.

  “Just hang out,” I called back. “Take a nap.”

  Take the time that it takes.

  That’s a mantra of almost every clinician we’ve studied. Going slower is faster. Trying to hurry will always take longer.

  I didn’t move for quite some time.

  When I did, it was very casual. And straight toward Skeeter, not Cash, all the while trying to shove my adrenaline through the bottoms of my feet. As I approached, Cash glanced at me but continued to eat. When I reached Skeeter, I rubbed his face and turned my back partially toward Cash, shoulders slumped.

  He continued to munch.

  I took a couple of steps backward, paused, then another step. My hand stretched out behind me. The hairs of his nose were soon tickling my fingers. I felt a lip nibble, then a breath of warm air.

  It’s okay, Dad. I’m back now.

  I turned and gave him a rub. Then my hand closed around the rein. I cleaned some eye boogers out of his right eye. And it was over.

  Choice wins again.

  His choice.

  Thinking like a horse.

  Understanding his fears.

  Letting him work it out.

  The one-rein stop would continue to have a place with us. But only in the arena. For schooling. It would no longer be our emergency brake. We made a vow out there on the trail to go back home and read Curt Pate’s article, from first word to last. At least twice. Maybe more. The article would, as it turned out, make an immense amount of sense. It was very logical. And we would soon begin to work on the Cavalry Stop.

  Curt believes that a horse can think of only one thing when confronted by fear. When things go wrong, his primary thought is to find straightness and balance so he can fight or flee. In that respect, bending him in a one-rein stop is an ineffective response to the horse’s needs.

  “And it doesn’t benefit the rider trying to develop enough confidence and balance to ride through problems,” Curt says. The Cavalry Stop was developed to teach new cavalry recruits who were inexperienced with horses how to stop in an emergency. Kathleen and I agreed that if it can work for them, it should certainly work for us.

  I was ashamed that I had brushed it off so cavalierly. Both Cash and I could’ve been seriously hurt. Curt speaks in his article about several people who have broken their necks using the one-rein stop in bad situations. We were very fortunate.

  The big lesson, however, was all about keeping our minds open and receptive to new and better ideas. When we stop learning, we really stop living, because nothing propels us more effectively through life than knowledge. Knowledge is king. And when we become so stuck in our ways that we ignore available knowledge because we think we don’t need it, or we won’t go looking to see what’s new, or, even worse, refuse to put the knowledge we have to the test of trial, then how are we any better than those who said the earth was flat?

  I was not proud of the way I had ignored Curt’s article. But the lesson I learned was effective. I would not make the same mistake again. And I was very proud of the way we handled Cash’s escape to freedom. It was, in some ways, like sending your child off to college for the first time. You worry about whether all the stuff you’ve taught him has actually stuck. Did any of it stick? Will he make the right choices?

  It was a difficult decision to do nothing out there on the trail. But by doing nothing we were, in fact, doing something. We were proving once again, this time very dramatically, that the knowledge and philosophies we had accumulated were working. That we were a good herd, good leaders, and were doing at least some of the right things for the horses.

  Cash had told us so.

  27

  Coming Down

  The bay foal was becoming a colt.

  And what a fine colt he was. He would prance through the herd, head high, tail arched, like a budding monarch, and the golden stallion was proud of the way he was developing. He had a playful personality and was very confident, which seemed to leave him no need for meanness. The stallion had never seen him bite or kick or be ugly to any of his peers, a trait not often found in feisty young colts. And he had a funny little twist of his head whenever his father would do something the colt didn’t understand.

  He was very bright, as bright as his father. And the stallion was proud of that as well. He might have wondered if the colt had become friends with a mountain goat, for he was often climbing boulders no one else would venture near, just to retrieve one juicy sprig of dandelion or thistle.

  He would walk through a group of his siblings and half siblings and with no more than a look, a twitch of an ear, or the smallest flip of his head get respect and movement from everyone.

  Almost everyone.

  One sorrel colt, several months older than the bay, always wanted to fight but the bay would have none of it. He just ignored him, and played mostly with his golden half sister. Nothing could frustrate a young fighting stallion like the sorrel more than an opponent who would neither fight nor obey. It amused the older stallion, probably because he had used the tactic himself in his younger days.

  But at the moment, the big palomino was pacing and pawing, clearly worried about the bay colt. The young horse was perched atop a high boulder with no apparent way down. The stallion had no idea how the colt had gotten to the top in the first place, likely drawn by some tasty plant. The matriarch, ready to move on, was snorting at him, and pawing, but fear was building and the bay seemed caught up in it, unable to move. Several members of the herd were watching, waiting to see what would happen. The young sorrel couldn’t be bothered. He was nipping the last few blades of grass from under a rock.

  The stallion eased up next to the matriarch and issued a call of his own to the young bay. Had he misjudged this colt’s intelligence?

  The matriarch turned away, not pleased with the scents on the afternoon breeze. There was nothing specific, but all was not right and she wanted to move to open spaces. She began to prod the herd toward the east. The stallion lingered, watching the frightened bay. It was important that the colt not get tangled up in reactive activity. He needed to focus on the problem. If he made it down, it would be a good lesson that would serve him well in the future. Finally, the stallion snorted and turned away, leaving the colt alone with
his dilemma.

  The youngster whinnied and began to blow, his fear building. He knew that he couldn’t stay on top of the boulder, easy prey for a wolf or a cat. He needed to be down where he could run. He needed to be with the herd. He needed to figure it out now, and to do that he needed to stop snorting and blowing and start thinking.

  He couldn’t return the way he had climbed up because the jagged face of the boulder that allowed footholds going up would work against him going down; if he were to fall, they would rip his skin like the teeth of a wolf. So he picked the smooth side of the boulder even though it was steeper. He eased out one foot at a time until he was right at the balance point where one more step would send him to the bottom. He set his rear feet for a jump, squatted just a bit, then leaned forward just enough to start sliding. The next few seconds seemed like forever as he slid down the boulder, squatting even lower as he got closer to the ground. Right where instinct told him, his hind legs pushed against the boulder with all his strength, projecting his body out parallel to the ground. He reached and hit dirt at a dead run.

  In a matter of moments he pulled up beside his father, who was trailing the herd toward the east. The great stallion glanced at him and snorted, as if he had expected no less.

  28

  Mouse

  “We don’t need another horse!”

  The tone was emphatic, finality dripping from every word.

  “But sweetie…,” I sniveled into the phone, “this one’s had so many problems. She needs us.”

  “We already have six horses.”

  “But we don’t have a baby.”

  “She’s a baby???”

  There was a long moment of silence.

  “Wipe that smile off your face,” she said.

  Kathleen knows me too well.

  Mouse was just under a year old, an abused, neglected creature who had been shipped to Monty Roberts along with three others from the Animal Rescue League of Iowa to benefit from his demonstrations and behavior rehab. My stepson Dylan and I were auditing a weeklong course that Monty was teaching at his Flag Is Up Farms in Solvang, California. That’s how we had come to know this bedraggled little filly.

  Carol Griglione, president of the rescue league, told me the 4 horses sent to Monty were part of a group of 14 that had been placed in the league’s custody by the court, extracted from simply awful living conditions. Mouse, two other yearlings, and a mare who was blind from malnutrition were in a dry lot together starving when the league got to them. None of the horses had food or water. Two of the 14 couldn’t be saved. And there were 140 more they expected to get within thirty days. Thank God for people like Carol and her team. One stallion had been found leg deep in his own poop in a tiny little enclosed stall. His name was Defiance. I didn’t wonder why.

  Little Mouse’s feet looked like something out of a horror movie. Way too long in front and turned up in a curl like an elf shoe with cracks and chips galore. She was malnourished, skinny; her mane and tail were tightly matted and filled with burrs and stickers. It had taken six people to herd her into a small corral in Iowa to ready her for the trip to Monty’s, and then she jumped the corral! She was frightened to death of humans, until Monty went to work. Using his amazing understanding, and her own language, it took him less than ten minutes to have her following him around the pen; soon he was rubbing her all over, even lifting her feet. It was easy to see that she was hungry for a leader, a compassionate partner. And that deep down she was generous, willing, and very bright. I was in love.

  “She needs a good home,” I whispered into the phone, not wanting to interrupt Monty’s demonstration.

  “So do we,” Kathleen said, “and we aren’t going to be able to pay the mortgage if we keep adding horses.”

  “I’m sending you a picture I just took with my cell phone.”

  “I don’t want to see it.”

  But she saw it, and another I sent of a rear foot.

  “Oh, the poor baby,” she said.

  And that was pretty much it. Mouse would be in the third stall of our three-horse trailer when we left on Sunday. Monty had asked me to bring Cash up to Solvang so students could see what an idiot with only two years’ experience could do after starting with Join-Up. He didn’t actually put it that way, but I’m sure that’s what he meant. I resisted, because the last thing I wanted to do was to trot Cash out in front of a bunch of students who had been watching the master at work for several days. But in the end, I relented, if they’d allow me to bring along a buddy to keep Cash company. Kathleen was busy with an upcoming court case (did I mention that she’s a lawyer?) and couldn’t come along, so Dylan and Handsome filled in for her and Skeeter.

  I have wondered whether I would have adopted Mouse had the horse trailer not been with us. Had it not been so easy to get her home. Kathleen says now that she considered telling me to take a third horse so she wouldn’t have to worry about something like this happening.

  “Well, if you had been there like you were supposed to be…”

  “It wouldn’t have changed a thing.” She sighed, a reluctant smile spreading across her face.

  I can only conclude that it was meant to be.

  As Monty was finishing his first demonstration with Mouse, the students were all abuzz over the young filly. Several were asking if she was available for adoption. I slipped off the back end of the viewing stand and headed back to the classroom where the rescue league phone number was posted. I wanted to be first on the list. Suddenly there was a hand on my shoulder. One of Monty’s instructors.

  “Monty would like you and Cash in the round pen.”

  “Now?”

  “That’s what he said.”

  Just great.

  My adrenaline was going up. It needed to be down.

  And I didn’t need to be distracted when I walked in with Cash. He was already wired and nervous with all the unfamiliar horses around. I took several deep breaths.

  Monty’s round pen is completely enclosed so the horse cannot see out, and no one can see in. The students all stand on an elevated walkway encircling the pen six or seven feet off the ground. When the big wooden door swung open, Cash’s eyes looked like saucers. So did mine, I’m sure. There were fifty or sixty pair of eyes scattered around the pen. All fixed on the two of us. And one pair belonged to Monty Roberts, a man who was much better at what I was doing than I would ever be. I’ve spoken to hundreds, even thousands, of people before, but on this day I was way out of sync.

  Thank goodness for Monsieur le Cash. And Join-Up. And all the learning we had done together. Because in the end Cash did everything he was supposed to do as if it was second nature, totally ignoring my raised adrenaline level. He moved his hindquarters this way and that with no more than a glance from me. And his forequarters went left and right with a wiggle of a finger. He backed up and came forward, sidestepped both ways, and lunged (trotted) at the end of the rope, changing directions with a mere point of my finger. And, on cue, he gave everybody a big fat smile. A lopsided smile that turned up on one side. Who says Elvis has left the building?

  Near the end of the session, I unhooked the lead rope and turned Cash loose. He trotted straight toward Monty and stretched up for a rub. He had never met Monty before, but somehow he knew intuitively which one was the man.

  I spent much of the time in the pen just standing, talking to the students, answering questions, and Cash was always right at my shoulder, blowing in my ear and checking out my nose. And that’s what the class appreciated the most. Not the various maneuvers he had learned to do flawlessly, but rather that the two of us clearly had a very special relationship. Kathleen suspects that’s exactly what Monty wanted them to see: the kind of relationship that is born in Join-Up.

  “It was so obvious,” many of them said afterward. “This horse loves you.”

  I thought to myself how easy it is to get so wrapped up in the task at hand, the bit of training, the trick, the discipline, that we forget about the most important part
of the relationship with our horse, or anyone for that matter. The relationship itself. When you get that right, the rest is easy. I turned to Cash and rubbed him on the forehead.

  “What a good teacher you are,” I said.

  I slipped away from the group of students who were admiring my big handsome partner.

  “Excuse me.” I said. “I need to make a phone call.”

  Just a few weeks before I had been talking to Kathleen about how our leap into horses had been so feverish and obsessive that I was finding it difficult to remember those early days and the hours I had spent with each of our horses in the round pen and the arena. The relationship building, the training, the learning by all of us. All crammed and compressed into every waking moment. And all seemingly so automatic now. So accepted. So taken for granted. I thought it would be a good exercise to start anew with a horse we didn’t know, now that we had so much more understanding.

  “Almost two whole years,” Kathleen chirped.

  “You know what I mean,” I said.

  “Not exactly,” she said. “What do you mean?”

  “I suppose I must need some sort of confirmation that we don’t have six flukes.”

  “You mean we just got lucky?”

  “I suppose.”

  “Six times?”

  “It’d be nice to know.”

  “We know,” she said. “We don’t need another horse.”

  It wouldn’t be long before I would hear that line again.

  After putting Cash back in the turnout with Handsome, I went straight to the classroom and called Carol Griglione at the Animal Rescue League. During that conversation Kathleen and I received yet another chance to prove the concepts of relationship from the horse’s end of the lead rope—an undernourished, bad-footed, scraggly, sweet, bright, cute, fantastic little filly who had never had as much as a nice hello from a human prior to meeting Monty Roberts.