LUNA – MY TEACHER

I am aware this is a long story. I have made a commitment to myself to share my journey. Each step of self-knowledge nudges me closer to a sustained level of quiet inside. It includes many bumps along the path, and this is one of them. It will not hurt my feelings if you don’t have time to read it.

This is the story of a mustang gentler, an obstacle clinic, a paint horse, and a kid with a learning disability.

When mustangs are rounded up by helicopters and removed from their land, they are packed together in a small enclosure to await their fate. The lucky ones end up in a “Mustang Makeover” and are adopted.

These horses have lived in the wild, ever watchful for predators who will kill them if they are unable to flee to safety. Even though we have domesticated them, horses never lose their survival skills and fear of unfamiliar intrusions in their protected lives.

The thing we humans can do to help them with their fear is called desensitizing. Every horse person does this differently, generally depending on their temperament or the use to which the horse will be put. Imagine the techniques used to prepare a horse to be ridden by a mounted police person, on a city street into an angry mob!

For a horse who will be ridden in public, whether in the show ring or on a trail, it must be able to deal with all kinds of unexpected stuff. A flapping tent, a water puddle on the back side of a jump, a soundless bicycle rider whizzing up from behind, a backfire from an old truck, or a plastic grocery bag born on a gust of wind – all can be terrifying to a prey animal.

Events called Obstacle Clinics have been created to teach equestrians how to deal with the unexpected. To be more accurate, the clinics are designed to teach people how to deal with their horses when they face a ‘predator’ in the form of a row of pool noodles, a big old tractor tire filled with sand, or a collection of long ropes, hung from a cross bar forming a moving curtain. To a horse, all of these unfamiliar obstacles are frightening and that’s even before the human asks them to walk into or onto them.

In the clinic, the humans are taught how to guide their horse, on a long line, by walking beside them, twirling the opposite end of the line, in the horse’s visual field, as energetic ‘pressure’ to move forward. At the beginning of each clinic, participants are taught that the object of the day is to establish a relationship of trust and a method of clear communication between the owner and her/his horse. It is also stated that the goal is not necessarily to get the horse through all the obstacles. So, on a hot June day, a friend trailered three horses to a farm, about an hour up the road, to just such a clinic.

Enter the paint horse, Luna and the grown up ‘kid’ with an undiagnosed learning disability, me. I am an auditory learner in a visually oriented world. I have struggled in school my entire life. I have always loved horses and have taken English riding and jumping lessons for twenty years. I had a natural balance so falling off was never much of a fear. What troubled me was that I never seemed to get any better.

I would finish a lesson and ponder afterwards why I simply couldn’t do what the trainer was telling me. I could see what they were saying in my mind’s eye but couldn’t translate it into my own muscles. Consequently, in trying to do the best for my horse I continually felt like a failure. My desire for connection and trust-building with my horse kept compelling me to try and try again.

So, the story’s elements all converge on a sweaty June day in Berthoud, Colorado. We have the ‘kid’, now 74; my paint mare, Luna; a 4-hour Obstacle Clinic; and a facilitator named Jessica –a woman who works with mustangs.

Along with nine other horses, we enter the clinic area. Luna is crazy with anxiety, prancing around, pushing, and circling around me. Of course, my confidence takes flight, and my anxiety replaces it making everything worse. Luckily Jessica spotted my worried mare and immediately, with firmness and intention, shook the long line, to get Luna’s attention and had her backing respectfully away. Jessica handed the line back to me, asked me to relax my arm and breathe. Luna stood still for 20 minutes, 8 feet behind me, calm and quiet.

Horses and people were then invited to play with the obstacles. Luna and I did fairly well and got through or over tarps, bridges, rows of pool noodles until we arrived at

the Rope Wall.

This element is tricky as there is no opening for a horse to pass through and the human is to simply ‘send’ her through with a guiding hand near her head while the other hand twirls the end of the line to ‘encourage’ (read pressure to a horse) forward movement. There was a young girl assisting with this element who held 1/3^rd of the ropes aside so the horse had an opening to pass through.

After 2 ½ hours in the heat, my mind had already clicked into the old thinking – RESULT (“Just do the obstacle!”) versus the PROCESS of trust building and respect for the horses’ fear. Luna exploded through the opening, the rope sizzled through my hand, she vaulted over a low rail and ran into the midst of all the other horses and obstacles! Now, I am completely humiliated, wishing the earth would open up and swallow me.

Fortunately, I asked for help. Jessica came over and my learning began. She and Luna stood at the rope wall as I watched from behind. She spoke while she attended to Luna’s fear. With no pressure (rope twirling) she let Luna just stand. Jessica pointed out that Luna had gone into ‘statue’ mode. Holding her breath, not blinking, and slightly wrinkling her nostril to smell the wall. (I saw then that for the last couple of hours, I hadn’t watched her face, didn’t even know what to look for, just pushed her to acquiesce to my demands.)

As the two of them stood there I saw the signs and, on her exhale, the slight forward movement Luna was able to do. Everything was slowed way down. Fifteen minutes later, when she got her nose and eyes through part of the ropes, Jessica stopped, called it ‘good’ and we walked away feeling satisfied, including me!

Jessica had gently returned me to process vs. result.

We loaded the horses, and as we drove home, the critical voice inside me started up with full derogatory force saying things like “You should have known this stuff! You’ve been around horses for years! What were you thinking? Are you that stupid?”

I was still puzzling about why I felt such a failure when later that night,

the lightbulb went off.

Luna was showing me my lifelong difficulty in learning. Not only is my style auditory/kinesthetic, when faced with new information, I need to have the incoming data slowed way down, otherwise the pressure to achieve, results in me freezing also (like Luna’s ‘statue’). When the pressure goes away (the end of class or a riding lesson) I flee to a safe place and try to figure out what’s wrong with me. When an escape from the pressure opened Luna fled also. But, unlike me, she has no inner critic!

She was showing me that when faced with a difficult learning situation, (with perceived external pressure) my brain slides into the instinctual, mustang strategy of freeze and flight.

As creative kids, we figure out how to get by even with the learning difficulties. Now we call them ‘work arounds’. I have been able to accomplish many things in my life, including passing all the exams to be an investment advisor as well as starting and running two different, small businesses.

Now, in my 70’s, I have mostly retired, and as such, have no ‘role’ which allows me to feel competent. Consequently, as I pursue my love of horses, I have reverted to reacting in a younger, more child-like way as I struggled to learn these skills,

just like I did when I was a kid.

With a lifetime behind me, I see that in order to keep learning hard things, I must request that the information come to me very slowly. Much in the way Jessica approached Luna at the Rope Wall. Also, the importance of being uncomfortable in the process of learning versus pushing ahead to show some kind of accomplishment “in order to please the authority”- both outer and inner.

For me, the intrepid explorer of my inner world, this is a breakthrough! I didn’t find my way through this puzzle alone. Many wise friends, help me uncover bits and pieces which have allowed me to find the relief that comes with understanding ‘why I do what I do’. I hope this resonates for you. I hope you can open your heart to the ‘kid’ inside with tenderness.

I certainly have.