Hores Stories
She's Not Just A Horse, she's Paloma
I was working with Paloma, a spirited 7 year-old Quarter Horse mare, and I was amazed at how smart and willing she was if I respected that spirit and her right to choose.
Paloma’s “join up” or “hook on” was solid. Mary, her owner and I, never used a halter when working with her. The horse stood right with us, walked when we did, jogged when we did, stopped when we did, and stood still when told to, no matter how far away we went from her. And when we called, she came trotting.
And above all, she felt safe.
It took some time to achieve this in the beginning, but all in all, it came about pretty quickly. In the beginning we worked with her in the round pen using our vocal cues and body language and never resorted to putting a halter on her to make her do what we were asking. We would just ask her, making sure she knew clearly what we wanted, leaving her the freedom to say yes or no. If she didn’t want to do something we were asking of her, we wanted to know. Mary was much the same horseperson as I was, and it was important that we have Paloma hanging out with us and doing what we asked because she wanted to.
Because she chose to.
If she didn’t want to do something, we would be ready for it. Our simple philosophy was to always find a way for Paloma to say “yes”. Like I said, Paloma was spirited, and as Paloma progressed into more advanced levels of training, whether it was in groundwork or in riding, she would sometimes rebel a little. All we would do is retreat back to something she could do well and, more importantly, something she was happy to do well, which would keep our relationship with her solid and keep us all on the same team. Through patience and consistency we would then work our way up again and make it to new levels. We weren’t forcing her to stop being spirited, we were showing her how to control it.
This way, Mary and I were always the leaders, Paloma was the follower, we always had her saying “yes”, and we were always having fun. After a while a rhythm developed through patience and consistency, and this then led to the two most important points of all between horse and human—safety and trust. This won over Paloma, and her world opened up more and more with every training session.
Paloma’s training reminded me of working with horses when they were completely free on the Sonora Desert in Arizona. How they would be spirited with high energy but also able to be calm and relaxed. They had balance. And to get along with this, it wasn’t about taming it, it was about fitting in with it and guiding it…
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The horse’s eyes and ears were forward as I rode, mine were to the ground looking for a sign. I looked into the surrounding oak and mesquite. The ancient trees stared back stoically with the weighty all-knowing silence of the Sonora Desert. Hiding nothing, offering nothing. Hazy beams of fresh morning sun eased through their jagged branches and came to rest on the desert dirt and this sun among shade was warming to my inside. Like I belonged there.
A sign. I got down off of the horse and examined the tracks. The impressions they made in the ground were darker than the topsoil. The sun had not yet cooked that upturned dirt.
They were close.
The horse’s eyes were calm. His name was Alto. He knew this job. His chestnut coat had turned fuzzy with the colder weather, the white blaze running from his forehead to his nose was now like a warm cap perfectly fit. He was tall and lanky. Tough. A desert ranch horse. I led him by one rein and started walking and he followed and together we walked out of the mesquite and made our way up a small grassy hill, spurs making the only sound in the land as they politely jingled on each step.
One by one the band of horses raised their heads from their peaceful grazing. Alto and I stood side by side and together we watched the ten horses of different colors grazing in the swaying yellow grass with the righteous mountains set behind them as if painted onto the landscape.
I took a deep breath and let it out easy and shook my head in disbelief.
The beauty here, the life I was living.
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The mesquite trees were now nothing but blurred jagged shapes as Alto and I galloped by them. I ducked to one side and then the other as branches narrowly missed taking my head off. Cuts from inch long mesquite thorns started accumulating… slicing, digging, burning. It was a land of split second decisions as we ran to keep up. In front of us sprinted four of the horses - the rear of the escaping herd. Dust erupted from under their pounding hooves, suffocating the air, blinding the sight. I would catch glimpses of the others up ahead but like ghosts they were only half there, half materialized in the swirling cloud of dust, gone then there then gone again.
Cutting back and forth, leaning into turns with raw determination to not fall down and to stay on, horse and rider gave chase. Staying with them… catching up. Suddenly there was a ditch. Without thinking I shifted my weight forward and Alto gathered himself under me and together we left the ground and a silence came over the world…
The trees gave way and the ten horses came out into the grassy flats and now we were running with them in the clear open, moving in swift unison, all turning together as if working under one mind, manes and tails streaming behind like flags, the sound of hooves like thundering war drums. I was running with the fastest horse I had ever been on through the hills of the Sonora Desert bringing ten horses back to their home, the Rancho de la Osa, a half mile from the Mexican border.
I let out a joyous yell. A shout like Marty, the head cowboy, made one time when I was bringing horses in with him. It’s fun bein’ a cowboy, ain’t it! Marty had shouted to me from a gallop. Can you believe we get paid for this! Joy shining in his face.
The horses had been on the range for a while and the wild horse in them had been reawakened. They were delighted and proud in the graceful movement of their bodies as they stretched over the hard desert land. Even with a rider on his back Alto moved just as effortlessly. His heart was as big as the world and he gave it all.
A gallop. Then trotting. The horses settled into a walk and soon fell into an orderly line like children coming in from recess. Some still playing. All understanding now they were going home and at peace with it.
Behind them were Alto and I guiding the herd. I reached down and softly laid my hand on his neck. His left eye softly looked back at me and there it was - that feeling I would get with a horse. Something simple, something easy. Something all the way right.
I took off my dusted up chocolate brown Stetson and with my torn up shirt sleeve wiped the sweat from my forehead and looked up into a clean blue sky.
We all have spirit, I thought.
If we can work together with horses without diminishing that spirit at all, and instead help it to grow, then we will be able to see our own spirit rise to heights of which it has never seen.