Ridin', Reinin' and Writin'

The above roughly-paraphrased quote from an unknown author embodies a sentiment I have always known to be true but of which I am reminded of from time to time. This past week was one of those times.

My connection to my horses and theirs to me has always been strong, so much so that I take little notice but sometimes what passes between us is more - telepathic, even spiritual. So palpable I can 'feel' it. I write about such a time in the blog posts, A Peace in their Presence, a morning when my mares bathed me in peace and softness, and A Filly Named Feather, how a special filly lifted me. Then, in A Life With Horses, about how four foals supported me in the only way they knew how at a particularly difficult time in my life:

I arrived back home from an overnight in Emergency at Williams Lake hospital (See I Fought Them All and They All Won) last Sunday afternoon and immediately checked my horses. I could see the four mares that pastured together in the river field waiting at the fence to greet me and I walked there first. Something was different. Although they often come for a visit, today they were more attentive. Actually, where they before asked for attention, now they were giving attention. I first noticed the change in Sapphire, my four-year-old mare. She hung at the fence longer, lowered her head to be stroked, ran her nose up and down my arm and face. Breathed on me. Generally, she and her friend, Mistral, both came to me but that day, Sapphire was more interested in me than Mistral. She wanted to be at my side.

Silk also, was unusually attentive. Her eyes never left me, her ears forward listening, her body relaxed and giving. Although she always looks at me like she really 'sees' me, now she looked at me with tenderness too. Was I imagining this? I don't think so because two days later, as I walked down the trail to the bottom, the mares met me. Silk looked at me again like that as if to say, " I am so glad to see you! I was just coming up to check..." 

I love this mare with a love that frightens me. Her soul and mine are enmeshed in a way I cannot explain. Although I have the support of friends and family, Silk is here for me every day in every way. I feel that although she does not speak. No. She does speak  . . . but in a different language . . . and I am so grateful. 

Of all the horses I have ever owned, Silk is perhaps the most intuitive. Highly intelligent with a raw energy that could scare some riders, she and I bonded the day she was born and we have not been apart for long ever since that time. She likes to know where I am and the feeling is mutual.

That these two mares of all my horses should be the ones who "gathered 'round" for the past several days should not have surprised me. Sapphire is Silk's daughter. She is also the daughter of Running With Wolves, one of the four foals in the photo above.

I didn't catch Sapphire last Sunday even though she wanted me to. On Monday, though, I relented. I turned her in the pen opposite the house, the one I can see from my window. We're both happy with that arrangement. On Tuesday I rode her to check fence/ gate in the river field. Although she is often high-spirited like her mother, looking for bears in the bush, she was not that day. She walked quietly, head down and relaxed as we circled the pasture, waded into the channel of the river and up the hill home again. Sapphire is continuing the legacy of her dam, Silk and maybe her grandmother, Tamarac, great-grandmother, Mahogany, and great-great grandmother, Duchess. All those fine mares "carried me" in good times and in challenging ones.

To some of my readers, this may seem like a lot of nonsense; others will understand perfectly. As I heal and adjust to a new reality, I value even more the company of my horses, who give back more than I can ever give to them. They breathe on my heart.   

Horse people are all connected in some way - usually through horses. Throughout the years, there have been many examples of this and I am never shocked. In fact, it always gives me an unexpectd lift, kind of confirms who I am.

Take the case of the recipient mare, Ten (named for the number on her halter). The young sorrel mare was one of several mares bought by the veterinarian doing the embryo transfer from my Rooster mare. She was chosen for no other reason than the timing of her cycle to carry my mare's baby.

When I picked up both mares, the vet told me he thought Ten was a registered mare and that he would look into that. I promptly forgot the conversation. sometime in the winter, Ten's papers arrived in the mail. I absentmindedly looked at them . . . then looked again. I knew her grandsire very well - I had put some training on him! And I once owned Ten's great granddam!

Another example...

This past winter a lady contacted me to book her mare for training in the spring. In the course of the conversation, she mentioned she had an old Arabian gelding.

"Nero's a Spanish Arab," she said.

"I trained and showed a Spanish Arabian stallion many years ago," I replied. Then I stopped. I felt the hairs on my arms starting to prickle like the time I realized my cousin was sitting across from me in my own house and neither one of us knew it (a whole other story). Nero?

"Where did you say you got him," I asked. When she told me, I knew. Nero was the son of the stallion I rode. Not only that, I had handled the stallion when his dam was bred, the breeding that resulted in Nero. I had later conditioned Nero for sale , took him to the sale and delivered him to his new owner - the lady my client had bought him from.

I did not know my prospective client, who lived many miles from me. I still have not met her in person, but she said right from the beginning that something had led her to me. Maybe it was an old gelding named Nero, son of Nino Hermoso, the stallion I reined in 1992!