02/02/2024
“Where’s your horse? Are you not riding today?” asked my friend Sue, when I showed up at the arena door without my partner.
Fridays are lesson days, for me. Every week, I join a handful of others for an hour of learning with our teacher. A few of us, like me, having been hauling to ride with this man for more than a decade. Things have to be downright serious, before any one of us would choose to miss a lesson. So, it was notable that I’d seemingly chosen to watch, rather than ride.
“Oh, he’s here. He’s just not ready to join us.” Sue looked at me with only a raised eyebrow. She knew that there was probably a roundabout reason for me to leave my horse out in the parking lot.
The horse in question is a smart little chap. Green for his age, he was wide-eyed when we’d first loaded up and headed down the busy four-lane highway to the public arena, an hour's haul from home. He’d been uncomfortable with the other horses standing too close, or circling us at a lope… but he’d quickly caught on. Even our teacher’s crackling microphone failed to faze him, after the first little while.
The second lesson, he was getting into his groove. Each week, he’d feel a little more comfortable, a little less surprised about the idea of going public. A lot of horses—and people—are nervous about riding out in open country but for a homebody horse, ‘civilization’ in the form of arena riding can be an eye-opener, too.
I first noticed his changed outlook a couple of weeks ago, at every single stop light, going through town.
‘Bang! Bang! Bang!’ came from the trailer, every time we slowed down and waited. Whenever the light turned green again, we would get moving… but to my horse, we were underway only because he’d stirred us into action!
I could feel what was going on, that there was an undesirable pattern forming, but there were a lot of lights enroute. Within minutes, I knew we were building a problem where none had previously existed. The next block, I could see a gas station with a fairly big parking lot. I slowed my truck, signaled the turn and pulled in, near enough that we could still hear the traffic on the road beside us, but without the pressure of having to go with the flow.
Even though we were going to be late, we needed to do some horse training.
Sure enough, as soon as I stopped the truck, the trailer began to rock and roll. I got a few looks from pedestrians passing by but could only smile grimly and wait. Bang! Bang! Bang! went my little pilot in his cockpit, growing evermore exasperated at our failure to launch. Whenever he’d stand quietly for a few minutes or so, we’d continue on…
We had to stop and regroup three more times, before pulling into the parking lot of the public arena.
Bang! Bang! Bang! went his front foot on my trailer, when I shut down the truck. Bang! Bang! Bang! as I organized my bridle, cooler and riding boots. Bang! Bang! Bang! when I grimly decided that I was going to walk away from him and wait for him to stand. Every time I stuck my ear to the arena door and listened, I could hear cycles of banging.
This is a hard thing to do, when you’ve got a trailer that wasn’t cheap and would be even more money to replace, now. It doesn’t deserve to be kicked and dented in but my endless parade of colts and spoiled horses is also why we traded my sweet, padded slant-haul for a heavy-duty stock trailer. I'd been 'taking a knife to a gunfight'!
Waiting is a hard thing to do, when you’ve prepaid for an hour-long lesson and you’re watching it begin, without you. My teacher is used to me bringing horses who have fundamental lessons to learn, before we worry too much about exercises on collection, or lead changes. He didn’t pressure me, knowing that I’d join them quietly when the time was right. Judging by the banging coming from the parking lot, the right time wasn’t going to be anytime soon.
Eventually, the pauses between the banging grew longer, as my horse began to listen for footsteps. As I made my way towards the trailers in the parking lot, I knew that he could hear my boots upon the gravel. I angled over to where he’d be able to see me. Each time he began to bang on the aluminum walls of the trailer, I would stop and walk away. When he’d stop, I’d pause, turn around and start walking back to him. Silly, you say?
Three or four times of this and he was in clear understanding that being noisy meant I was leaving. Soon, he was standing quietly while I opened the door, unlatched the divider and went to unload. The little horse was pretty heated up. Already saddled—a practice I do whenever I'm hauling colts or green horses to ride—the steam was rising from his body in the cold air.
We walked to the arena, pulled open the door, bridled up, cinched up and joined our class.
It reminded me of the times I’d needed to take my children from the grocery store, leaving our full cart until later, whenever they’d had meltdowns over chocolate bars at the checkout.
Was walking out convenient? Did I feel self-conscious, as they learned how to cope with me saying ‘No’? Would it have been easier to just chug along, or buy the candy, pretending that everything was all right? Would they have figured out how to act with dignity, eventually, had I not turned their outbursts into learning opportunities? I dunno. Looking back, all I know for sure is that those kids turned out all right. I can even smile about our most trying days, which is something of a miracle.
A lot of people wouldn’t let have the horse bang, as I did. They’d have redirected his focus with a flag, or worked around the issue, or told him verbally to knock it off. They’d maybe have got him off the trailer before he did any damage, before he caused such a brouhaha.
This latter thing becomes even more important when we've made our way back home. Too many horses demand to be unloaded the very instant the truck is turned off!
For me, it is more important that he learn how to self-soothe/regulate and to conserve his energy. A ‘public veneer’ of pleasant manners isn’t always a bad thing! I will not always be there to flag him, or to yell at him, even if the latter method actually worked. Instead, I choose to ignore the outbursts—he’s safe enough on that heavy-duty stock trailer—and be ready to praise his change towards good.
I’d feel differently if my horse was panicking or scared but his bangings and outbursts all have a manipulative slant to them. He doesn’t need rescuing. He needs to come up with a better way.
Will I have to do this every time I go somewhere with this horse? Maybe for the next few trips, yes. I will have to be ready to pull off and wait, should he want to stir things up, in the future. But as I said before, he’s a smart guy. If I commit to being his teacher, he will commit to figuring it out.
Here's an old 'pic from the past' of my '01 Chevy with Rockabilly, ready to head out for an evening lesson. The truck would eventually die a warrior's death, when it was hit, along with our little car, by lightning!
