by penny | Jul 11, 2021 | The Horsey Life
Best First Horse Ever
I celebrated a monumental occasion yesterday. 50 years ago, July 10, 1971, I got my first horse. I was 12, and a total horse addict. All of my Scholastic Books orders contained horse books. I had read every horse book in both the school and town library by the time I was in 5th or 6th grade. It was clear to my parents that this was not something I was going to outgrow.
Unbeknownst to me, my Dad had been driving around rural northwest Connecticut on his lunch breaks looking for a horse for me. One day in July, 1971, he stopped by a dealer’s farm and happened to notice a bay mare (although he wouldn’t have been able to name the color or the gender at that time). He spoke with the dealer and made arrangements for us to go try out the horse that Saturday. I was over the moon excited!
When we got to the yard, the dealer asked me a few questions:
Dealer: Do you ride English or Western? (Read – let me start working on my sales spiel)
Me: English
Dealer: Have you ridden much? (Are you likely to get killed by the horse if I let you ride her?)
Me: I can walk and trot and I’m in 4-H and want to ride in horse shows.
Dealer: This horse is going to be perfect for you!! She was owned by a girl who showed her in 4-H shows until she went off to college and had to find a new home for her.
The truth, we discovered much later, was that this horse arrived on a box car from Montana just a week or so before I went to try her.
The $400 was paid, and my horse was to come home in just a few days once we had everything ready for her. Like fencing. And shelter…
Neighbors of ours whose horse I had been riding, had an extra stall, and that’s where she spent her first few nights as my horse. My Dad, being of Irish decent and Scottish birth, suggested her name should be O’Malley, due to the OM brand on her left flank.
My Dad and I spent the next couple of days mowing the field, and putting up 1 strand of electric fence to surround it. Dad had already begun construction of a small barn to store his outdoor tools, and half of the 10’ x 20’ structure became O’Malley’s stall.
O’Malley was a wonderful first horse. She loved life in general.
- She went English beautifully. (I was ignorant enough not to realize that this could have been a problem).
- She went to horse shows – in the back of a pickup truck! We didn’t have a trailer, so we went to show with friends of my Mom’s. They put a wooden rack (for lack of a better description) on the back of their pickup, had a makeshift ramp, which she’d go right up and then stand trying to peek over the sides. (I was ignorant enough not to realize that this could have been a really BIG problem!)
- She LOVED trail riding and jumping cross country. We used to climb the Appalachian Trail which went up the side of a mountain a little way from our house. There was a State Forest at the top, and we poddled our way through it. Mostly on trails, sometimes through brush.
- She had very good horse sense. More than once on one of our mountain poddling adventures, (mostly when we were bush whacking), I’d lose track of where I was; but I never felt desperate or afraid. I knew (in general) which way our house was, and if I wasn’t sure I’d just let O’Malley choose the way home. We made it every time. And usually before dark. (Did I mention I was doing this at age 12 all by myself? Yeah – those were the days…)
- She was safe as houses. When I was a freshman in High School, our VoAg (Vocational Agriculture) department had an open day, and I got to bring my horse. But, we still didn’t have a trailer… So, I got to miss classes on a Friday to ride my horse the 12 or so miles to school. Fortunately, she didn’t object to the enclosure we made for her out of farm gates under an overhang of the building (possibly due to the amount of hay I gave her…) The plan was for her to stay overnight, be ready for the open house on the Saturday morning, and then we’d ride back home on the Saturday afternoon. Until it snowed… All in all, I believe she spent 2 or 3 nights at school, and never once tried to escape from her little covered corral.
The list of her positive traits was long, but there were a few she had that drove me nuts.
- She hated to be inside. The barn my Dad and I built didn’t have a door, just an opening where we were going to (eventually) put a door. O’Malley loved the whole no-door experience. Which was fine… except for the night before I was going to a horse show and I was trying to keep her as clean as I could. I used all sorts of barricades that I thought would work… Invariably, I’d get up at 6 only to find that she not only had gotten out, but had also rolled. Oh, and she didn’t particularly want to be caught, thank you very much. We only ever missed one show. She refused to load in the trailer that someone was picking her up in. She planted her feet and that was kind of it (despite royally pissing off the person trying to load her.) When the royally pissed off person kicked her in the stomach, I took the lead rope and took her back to the field. I didn’t want to show that badly…
- Oh, remember that horse sense? Yeah, there was a shadow side to that. We had an electric fence that made a steady tick – tick – tick noise. And it never took her more than 10 minutes or so to realize that there was no ticking, and she’d immediately escape.
- And the difficult to catch issue? She knew when I went to catch her after school that I was going to ride her, so she became rather difficult to catch. I can’t remember the number of times my Mom would come home from work, and O’Malley would be at the fence before Mom even came in the driveway. O’Malley knew the sound of the car, and that my Mom always brought her carrots. (The easiest way to a horse’s heart…).
As I mentioned earlier, O’Malley had an OM brand on her flank. It just so happened that a person who worked with my Mom (the wife of the man with the pick up with the rack), had an old brand book. Just on a whim, she looked up O’Malley’s brand – and it was listed!! I was so excited!
I wrote down the address (on the Montana/North Dakota border) and went home wrote a letter (it was 1976 at that point – pen and paper were still a thing). I could not believe it when I received a reply a week or so later. They had bred O’Malley, and still had her Quarter Horse dam Lady, although her Arabian sire had been killed by lightning a few years before. They sent pictures and we began communicating. The summer between my junior and senior years in High School, my parents and I travelled in their motor home out to visit the Moe’s and see where O’Malley had started her life.
We were welcomed into the family, and I got to ride Lady on a roundup 2 days after we arrived. Fortunately, I had been getting O’Malley and myself fit for a Pony Club rally, so I’d been spending quite a bit of time riding. But not in a Western saddle… Let’s just say it was a long (and amazing) day. Lady decided to go after a stray cow at one point. I figured she probably knew what she was doing better than I was! Once Lady was satisfied with getting the cow going in the right direction, I looked around and couldn’t see anyone. Which is kind of scary when you’re riding a horse in an area called the Badlands. But I figured O’Malley had to get her horse sense from someone, so I let Lady choose the way and we were back together with the main group within about 5 minutes. (5 looong minutes!) .
I should probably close now. I could keep telling stories about O’Mally for hours. It’s hard to believe that that horse that “a college girl rode English in horse shows” turned out t be a much better horse than that dealer could even imagine.
by penny | Jun 8, 2021 | Find Yourself on a Horse, The Horsey Life
Whether you’re an adult new to horses and horseback riding, or you’re returning to the equine world after a long break, there’s a bit of a learning curve to understanding a horse. (Trust me – I’ve been a professional for over 40 years, and I’m still learning :-).
There are some easily recognizable signals, such as the horse nickering when he sees you coming (and he knows you have a treat), or putting his ears back when he’s cranky (it pays to learn this one early on in your Horsey Life!); but there is also a myriad of other signals that you may be missing. And the best way to learn them may surprise you. Learn to understand yourself first.
Self is a four-letter word
There are a lot of times where “self” has a negative connotation: self-absorbed, self-centered, selfish – even self-confident has been given a bad rap.
Self-Awareness, on the other hand, is a good thing. By becoming aware of our bodies, our thoughts, and our emotions, we’ll not only gain insight on how we’re perceived by horses, but also why we perceive horses the way we do.
We all have built-in self-protection behaviors – it’s how we’re wired. They spend their days toiling away deep in our subconscious. They have a huge part in running the show in our lives, and we don’t even realize we’re relying on old habits of processing fear, anxiety, or doubt. Our sneaky subconscious has become pretty good at hiding in plain sight.
With a smile and denial
Think about a time when you were around a horse and you felt a little fear tugging at the edge of your mind. You brush it off. Why worry? This is a horse you’ve taken lessons on for a year – why the sudden whisper of fear?
You finish tacking up and hide behind a smile (and in denial). Everything’s fine – at least that’s what you tell yourself. You’re just being silly. After all, it would be too embarrassing to tell your riding instructor that you’re afraid, and you wouldn’t share that with your family – they don’t even understand why you want to ride in the first place.
But by pretending everything is OK, you’re setting yourself up for more discomfort down the road. Without acknowledging and working to understand your feelings, the fear will keep coming back and you will feel more and more powerless to combat it.
Bring your fear out of hiding
If you’re going to continue working with horses, you’ll need to do some inner work.
- Extend grace to yourself. You are not hopeless, idiotic, pathetic or any of the other nasty adjectives you use to label yourself. We are ridiculously unkind to ourselves – beating ourselves up over things we likely wouldn’t even notice in a friend. So – no self-flagellation allowed.
- Acknowledge the emotion. You are entitled to your emotions and no one else has the right to belittle you or gloss over your feelings. This extends to your instructor, your family and yourself!
- See and feel the emotion. Enter journaling and visualization. I know – journaling has become the new black. I think the only thing I haven’t heard people insist journalling can cure is male pattern baldness. But – I’m saying to journal anyway. Write down the instance when you felt the fear – put in as much detail as you remember. Now, visualize the experience in “slow-motion”. Take it one frame at a time and see if you can pinpoint when and how the fear showed up. Were you picking out the horses’s feet? Were you getting ready to tighten the girth? Once you’ve identified when you first noticed the fear, now connect with the what. What did the fear feel like in your body? Did you have a mini-flashback, so brief that you hardly noticed it? Did you feel a catch in your breath or a tightening in your shoulders? Sit with that feeling. You’ll most likely want to skip this or do a very cursory job of it. Resist the resistance. Acknowledging your emotion is the first step in understanding it, and understanding yourself.
- Visualize the scene again, but this time, imagine you acknowledged your fear. Imagine you spoke with your instructor and explained your fear. Imagine she listened and worked with you to find a way to work through the fear. How does that feel in your body? Did you experience the same tightening in your shoulders? Did it stay the same, intensify, or lessen? Being able to feel the physical manifestation of fear stops the downward mental spiral that can quickly spin into a much greater level of anxiety.
- Gradually work through your body, head to toe, and consciously relax each body part – the jaw and shoulders are often where the fear pops up, but check the rest of your body as well.
- Repeat the second visualization a few times and you’ll see your fear start to dissipate.
Visualization is a great way to “pre-treat” anxiety and fear as well. Visualize in great detail that you’re tacking up the horse, you and the horse are calm and relaxed. Feel the silkiness of the horse’s neck as you pat him, smell the peppermint that you gave him. Feel yourself leading him to the mounting block and mounting him quietly as he stands perfectly still. You take a deep breath and exhale, and carry on with a great ride.
Until the next time, love your horse, love your life, and love yourself!
Are you interested in a few more stress-busting exercises? Grab your free copy of 60 Seconds to Calm and learn 3 simple exercises you can do in 60 seconds or less to help you nip anxiety in the bud and fully enjoy your Horsey Life.
by penny | May 3, 2021 | The Horsey Life
Horse owners, just like everyone else, all know those people who are always looking for the next shiny thing. They’re always trying new diet and exercise plans, doctors, grocery stores (and, in some cases, husbands), because the previous one had some glaring fault or another. It’s called SOS (Shiny Object Syndrome), or FOMO (Fear of Missing Out). Add a horse to this person’s life, and suddenly there are thousands of new things – and suddenly, other people at the barn start ducking into the bathroom or pretending they’re talking on their cell phone when they see this never-happy person coming.
An example – how many horse owners do you know who spend a lot of time on forums asking everyone and their uncle for opinions on caring for an insulin-resistant horse; whether it’s better to have your horse shod or barefoot, or whether cold-laser treatment is worth trying. They perceive an issue, and (rightly) turn to their vet for an answer. The vet gives a straightforward evaluation, (backed up by years of training and experience), but the owner isn’t satisfied. They read on a forum that when horses have symptoms of ABC, they have to be treated with DEF. So then they have a chiropractor and/or a massage therapist work on the horse (on the basis of someone on a forum saying that’s what saved their horse’s life), then, when the (occasionally nonexistent) issue doesn’t resolve to the owner’s satisfaction, they decide that it’s really a shoeing problem, and they ask all their friends who the best farrier is. Hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars later, the owner circles back around to the vet’s original suggestion – at least until they read the next forum post touting a new supplement or therapeutic treatment. Don’t do that, OK?
Horse Owners Need to Listen to the Professionals!!
Here are some of the problems I have with that sort of behavior – in no particular order.
- Why in the name of all that is good and holy would you take advice from anyone and everyone with a clever screen name on an unmoderated horse forum. Seriously?? Do you even know if FriskyFilly1999 can tell the front of a horse from the back? What’s their training? Just because they’ve seen their neighbor’s son’s girlfriend’s horse get cured of something does not mean they have any actual knowledge – trust me on this!
- You need to have a support team you can trust – and then you need to let them do their jobs. Your veterinarian has spent years (in many cases, decades) acquiring the knowledge and wisdom it takes to provide exceptional care for your horse. What’s FriskyFilly1999’s horse experience? (having read all of the Black Stallion books 25 years ago does NOT count…) If you’re not comfortable with your vet, figure out why, then figure out exactly what you are looking for and get recommendations. Want a vet with a hospital including surgical ward, treadmills, pools, etc for rehab, or are you happy with the vet that’s been working with horses since 2 years before you were born and arrives at the barn in her slightly battered pickup? Neither one is necessarily better than the other, they’re just different – like a brand new Camaro vs a 15-year-old pickup truck. Gotta get hay, you’ll have better luck with the truck. Do lots of driving for work? Maybe the Camaro is a better fit (especially a red convertible, just sayin’). If your horse benefits from chiropractic treatment, acupuncture, and massage therapy – go for it – but do it as part of an overall plan – not just because you want to try the next shiny thing that comes along. Over my 50 years as a horse owner, I’ve relied on professionals in all those specialties and more to keep my horses healthy and happy, but I’ve never done it on the advice of SaddlePalGal on some forum or another – I’ve actually trusted the professionals I enlisted to help care for my horses.
- Need another reason? You seriously get on people’s nerves – namely your vet, chiropractor, massage therapist, farrier, and horsey friends. For goodness sake – pick one thing and actually give it a fair shot before you decide it isn’t working! Few things in life are fixed within the first 5 minutes of a new treatment. Learn the facts about the modality you’re interested in, (notice, I said facts, not opinions), and give it a long enough trial period to be able to evaluate its effectiveness.
- Final reason? Probably the most important one. You’re doing a disservice to your horse. Even if your heart’s in the right place, constantly trying the latest thing, only to abandon it a few weeks down the road, or when the next shiny thing pops up, can stress a horse, physically and mentally. Horses are creatures of habit, and constant upheaval doesn’t usually settle well with them. Please note: I am not saying that you shouldn’t ever try new modalities, supplements, or stretching exercises – what I am saying is to work with your trusted professionals to establish a plan to help your horse feel and perform his best.
Still dealing with FOMO? Go ahead and read those forums and check out what FriskyFilly1999’s latest suggestion is – read everything, then go to someone reputable (like your vet), and get the real story. Chances are, you’re not actually missing that much.
Until next time, Love Your Horse, Love Your Life, and Love Yourself!
by penny | Feb 13, 2018 | The Horsey Life
We all want to do our best with our horses.
Whether we trail ride for relaxation, compete at schooling shows, or hit the big circuit, we want to do what’s right by our equine partners. And this is a good thing. The trouble creeps in when we’re so busy striving for perfect that we miss excellent.
If you’re a dressage competitor, you’re familiar with the 0 – 10 scoring system. Fortunately, in all of my years scribing for dressage judges, I’ve only had to put that goose egg into a score box a few times. Sadly. I’ve only had the pleasure of writing that rainbows and unicorns score – the “perfect 10”- a few times as well.
The perfect 10 is something we’re used to pursuing culturally – from the 1979 Movie starring Dudley Moore and Bo Derek to the Olympic athletes that capture our attention and our hearts every 4 years – everyone wants a 10. But the truth about 10? It doesn’t stand for perfect – it stands for excellent -and there’s a very big difference: excellence is attainable, perfection usually isn’t.
Why Perfectionism Doesn’t Serve You
An article in Psychology Today compares how people pursuing excellence rather than perfection cope better with setbacks, learn from their mistakes, and are able to feel good about themselves, even when they come in second.
Let’s break these down a bit.
People pursuing excellence rather than perfection are better able to cope with setbacks.
Picture this – you’ve been doing well at shows all year, and if things go well at the last 2 shows, you’ll walk away with a year end championship. You’re so excited – you’ve dreamed of this for years! And then your horse goes lame. Nothing serious, but it puts you out of the running for that long-coveted 4 foot tall trophy, embroidered cooler, and bragging rights with your friends and family (and anyone who stands still long enough at the tack shop).
Your response is:
- They never drug test at these shows. I’ll just bute him up for the next 2 shows and then he can have the winter off. Nothing is coming between me and that trophy.
- OK, I’ll give him this first show off, bute him up, and then enter him in enough extra classes at the last show that we’ll still have a shot at that trophy.
- It’s only a trophy. My horse is more important to me than any trophy, no matter how big and shiny it is. I’m in it for the long game, we have years ahead of us. I have so many good memories of this year – the ribbons we’ve already won are so far above my hopes. I’ll go to those last 2 shows and groom for my friends.
If you answered 1, you’re probably (as in 150% definitely) a perfectionist. You need to cut yourself (and your horse) some slack. One or both of you are going to end up burned out, used up, or permanently injured.If you want to push yourself that hard, go into a sport that doesn’t require your horse to pay the price for your dreams of glory.
If you answered 2, you’re in the bargaining phase. Not quite resigned to giving up the trophy, still holding onto that child-like optimism – you’re walking the line between being a perfectionist and an excellentist (I don’t know why that isn’t a word, don’t you think it should be?) Hopefully, the optimistic child in you loves her horse enough not to do anything stupid, or should I say “ill-advised”, and you’ll give your horse the chance to heal properly.
If you answered 3, Are. You. Kidding. Me? What planet did you just fall from?? I mean, it’s awesome that you love your horse and you’re taking the setback in stride, but seriously – you’re going to go to the show that could have been the answer to your childhood dreams and groom for your friends? That’s almost frighteningly nice.
But I digress. The point here is that when you pursue excellence, you really do deal with setbacks better than the average perfectionist. (Is “average perfectionist” an oxymoron?)
People pursuing excellence rather than perfection are better able to learn from their mistakes.
So – to revisit the lame horse in our previous scenario – the vet feels the lameness issue could be because you forgot to call your blacksmith and your horse was over a week late for new shoes. Since his toes had grown out a bit, the change of the angle caused him to be a bit off… From now on, the blacksmith’s next visit is scheduled before he packs up his truck and drives out through the gate. You learned from your mistake – voila!
People pursuing excellence rather than perfection are better able to feel good, even when they don’t win.
So you’ve spent all season working toward that championship. You’ve cleaned up your aids, worked on improving a little every day, and when the day arrives, you and your horse just aren’t on your game. You come in 3rd. Or 10th. Or last.
Can you brush it off (after you go back to the trailer and have a good cry) and understand that it simply didn’t come together today?
Can you look at a “loss” and not beat yourself up about it?
Spend a little time thinking about how your mind works when you’re having a riding lesson, trying something new with your horse, or even preparing dinner for guests. Do you note the things that go right or the things that go wrong? Fretting over the fact that you got expensive wine for dinner and neither of your guests drink may stress you out, but fretting over the fact that your horse always bulges through the outside shoulder in leg yield to the right is going to affect him as much or more than it does you. This is where you call a time out, take a deep breathe (and don’t forget to breathe out again…), and find out what’s really going on – both with your horse and with your mindset.
If you’re in a perfectionist mindset, you’re likely to be having thoughts that include words like “should”, “always”, “never” and “why-the-heck-can’t-you-get-this-right-we’ve-been-working-on-it-for-two-weeks!?!” None of those words are going to help your horse stay straight in a leg yield. Try instead, “What’s actually happening?”
If you discover that he always budgets his shoulder when circling to the right, you’re also likely to realize he bulges his shoulder when leg-yielding to the left. Break it down until you can isolate a specific body part (or a few specific body parts).
If you’re not able to feel it, have a friend give you a hand (actually, a pair of eyes). If your friend happens to know what “bulging a shoulder” is, well then, you’ve got some pretty awesome (and useful) friends. If not, have someone, anyone, (even a spouse works for this) take a quick video on your phone. Then have a look and see if you can tell what’s going on.
By taking this step in curiosity, and a genuine desire to know what’s going on NOT so you can beat yourself up, but so you can thoughtfully and consciously work for improvement.
Perfect really isn’t somewhere we’re ever going to dwell for too long, but “better” is a great journey for you and your horse. Even though it may still be a stretch, “better” is attainable, realistic, and the “perfect” way to get to excellent.
by penny | Apr 16, 2017 | The Horsey Life
Things were going so well.
I was writing, spending quality time with my family, hanging out with my horses, exercising, loving teaching my therapeutic riding students – and then suddenly I wasn’t. Things stopped going so well.
In the space of a week, I was diagnosed with a heart condition (no wonder I’ve been so exhausted!), and I injured my knee severely enough to warrant surgery. I missed a few days of writing, a few days of exercise, a few days of spending extra time with my horses… and then it was a week, and then it was 2 weeks…it felt like I had lost my way. Can you relate?
Plans and Dreams or Pain and Drudgery?
The truth is we’re all faced with stuff that crops up and knocks us for a loop. Health, horses, family, work – none of it runs smoothly all the time. But how we cope with those unexpected issues can be the difference between returning to our plans and dreams, or getting stuck with pain and drudgery.
We can do what I did for about 2 weeks – we can wallow, play the poor me game, whine a little (or wine a lot ;-), and just let it all wash over us. In fact, that’s probably a useful thing to do. It gives us the chance to sort out and deal with all of the ramifications of our unwanted circumstances (like teaching my therapeutic students while on crutches and having major bouts of dizziness and lightheadedness.)
[Tweet ” But there comes a time to put away the pity party hat. It’s time to move on.”]
If you read my post about meditation, you’ll remember that I recommend the app 10% Happier – Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics. One of the teachers in 10% Happier is Joseph Goldstein, a man with an amazingly calming voice and manner. Joseph’s advice when your mind wanders in meditation is, “simply begin again”. I think Joseph is on to something.
We have a choice. We can continue to focus on the problem, or we can look for the solution. Lamenting the time I’ve lost exercising isn’t going to heal my knee or move me toward my weight loss and health goals. Far better to find ways to exercise that don’t compromise my knee, and simply begin again.
Throw my plans for my blog, my coaching courses, and my book out the window because I’ve abandoned my writing schedule for a few weeks or push my self-imposed deadlines a little further out, and simply begin again?
Fuss that I’m not riding or keeping on my training schedule for Bella, or spend my time doing ground work and relationship building with my horses, and simply begin again.
It’s a choice we all have – wallow or win? Whine or work?
For me? I think I’ll simply begin again.
