I Wish I Had Horses Too

When someone hears you have a horse, a lot of times they will say one of two responses, "Oh wow, I would love to have horses." or "Yeah, I used to have some."

The freedom horses offer us when we learn to use them as our legs, or the meditative quality just living on a farm space has, is immense and also underplayed. Just how much does it take to make it all real though? Why is there so many in the "used to have some" category? And that opens the door then to even bigger questions like, "Why are healthy young horses going to slaughter?"

I adore living on our little property with our chickens, horses, ferocious barn cat, and my house dog. I love watching my kids go out and play with them, interact with them, and generally learn how to be better people from the inside of themselves as they see their reflection in animal eyes.

It's also hard, in addition to being expensive, every single day. The stalls have to be cleaned and the horses must be taken care of. When I had the virus going around last winter that made it nearly impossible to sit straight up to have a sip of water in bed, I still had to clean stalls, take blankets off, and put them back on. Water is heavy, messy, and daily. If it's well below freezing, it's even harder. Feed sacks weigh 50 pounds each and around here we go through 300 pounds every 13 days. Those sacks of feed have to get to the barn even if the mud is ankle deep. And those are just routine things, there's also stocking shavings, hay, the hours holding horses for farriers, the vet checks, dental work, worming (more fun with a black belt pony), etc.

Then there's actually working with the horses. You have to have courage, physical strength, softness, and the patience of a saint. Horses will make you laugh, threaten you, love you, push you, and challenge you in dangerous situations. You have to be smart enough to avoid, reward, or retrain without a split second consideration on what the right thing is to do. In a blink of an eye you can do something to help fix a problem or something that can negatively change who a horse is. And you have to do it again and again, horses left out to pasture become nothing more than hard to catch large lawn ornaments quicker than you can say, "Who wants to go on a trail ride?". Odds are that once in awhile trail ride ends up being the "horse with tons of potential but he's been sitting awhile" we see all over Craigslist.

Afternoon outings and dinners are planned around times horses need to be brought in and morning celebrations, such as Christmas, start early so muck boots can go on and chores can get done.

Humbleness is needed in excess to live with horses. You must be able to learn and then willing to relearn. While you present yourself as a strong, certain, and benevolent leader to your horse, you may also find that something you have done for years may not be the best and swallow your pride to change it instead of being blind to it.

Most difficult for me, you have to be able to literally be thrown to the ground, get up, and do it again with softness and courage. With wounds and bruises, you have to have some sort of inner compassion to be able to stand up to your horse AND appear safe to your horse, as you try again.

I am neck deep in another intense session of skills that are either totally new for me or are completely different than what I've done before. One sort of major thing I was taught to do years ago I now can see as wrong and guilt goes with that. To make it more interesting, days like today come along where you have a game plan of working softness with your horses only to have them decide that a tarp a neighbor placed 50 yards away is going to kill them. There was a lot of spooking and bolting under saddle today and working core basic skills instead of the more advanced lessons I had in mind, lucky to be able to hang on and stay out of the way of their feet.

Somewhere deep in my (at times tapped out) heart, it is necessary to find the boot straps to pull up by, acknowledge where you botched the whole thing, and go out in the mud tomorrow and do it again. No boss to complain to, no HR department to petition for improvement, no understanding ear even (unless you have great horse friends), just you and the hope for those moments when it all comes together in perfect harmony to let it fill you up completely.

I can find enough in this for it to be worth every drop of sweat and that's why this is my life that I wouldn't have any other way. The way that my horses walk to me loose with curiosity and trust, makes my soul sing.

How do you put all of this into words, the complete daily life change horses are, as a person looks at you to say casually they wish they had a horse too? After stalls are cleaned of course...