I was chatting with someone today about farriers and such, and I made the comment that, although my mare, Arwen isn’t generally too fond of men, she seems to get along ok with my farrier. The lady kind of chuckled and said “she doesn’t like anyone.”
Alright, first off, how rude. And secondly a few months ago, I probably would have agreed with her. Arwen didn’t seem to “like” anyone, including myself. We either got along or we didn’t and most often, we didn’t. But as with all things, this too seems to have shifted. I took her to the Rocky Mountain Horse Expo in March. It was fairly overwhelming for us both. I hadn’t been to a show for myself in years, much less one this big and it had been a sworn goal to ride again at the National Western Complex in Denver. For Arwen, our relationship was struggling, and she’d never been anywhere sans the fairgrounds in Sterling Colorado and neither of us knew what to expect.
Truthfully Arwen was a dream. She stalled very quietly, was not spooky, and aside from a little nervousness just from the sheer volume of activity, rode out calm and quiet each time the whole weekend. All in all, she did me and the Mustang association I had gone to represent proud. While we were there I had a friend and communicator come to see us. I had some questions and I hoped she had some answers for me. She spent well over an hour releasing a lot of negative energy both Arwen and I had trapped, and Arwen’s drastic life changes were made clear to her and why she was with me. It was a very needed discussion.
Ever since I brought Arwen home I have toyed with the idea of keeping or selling her. As I usually do I have a picture in my head of what type of horse I “like” or “need”, and Arwen didn’t really fit the bill. Although I felt a huge sigh of relief at expo, that maybe we could do better than “get along”, as soon as we got home my own fears and doubts came right back. She had almost a full month off before I got back in the saddle. I can blame some of that on weather, being sick and a few other things, but mostly just because I was dragging my feet not wanting to battle the same issues we had been having before expo. And, for a month I threw around the idea of selling. I even offered her to a few people for the right price, right home situation.
Then sometime in the last few weeks something has changed. Her eye has softened, and her guard has come down several notches. I no longer have to follow her around her pen to catch her, she turns to me and waits for me. She is happier, quieter and more relaxed under saddle. She “plays” with me by licking my arm. When I put her bridle on, her head is so low its by my knees and after I slip the headstall over her ears we just take a moment there. I rub under her ears and on her big cheeks, stroke her forelock, cradle her head, and we just exist in that moment for a while. She no longer fights me with her feet, trusts me to brush her legs, doesn’t tense at fly spray or conditioner. She rests a foot while I groom her. And she is no longer grumpy and uncomfortable when I pull the cinch.
On the flip side, I no longer worry about what she’s doing or how she might run me over when she’s walking behind me, because that’s just where she walks. I smile and talk to her when she licks my arm instead of pushing her away thinking she may bite. I ask to come into her space instead of demand it, you know how females are… I am more relaxed when I ride. I take the time to brush her legs and cradle her head. In short, we are getting comfortable with each other and we’re both learning to trust.
She is perfect for me. We are very similar she and I. We’re both past our prime riding age. We’ve both had some bad experiences. We both are a tad out of shape and we both have our fair share of aches. But we can both come back. We can come back from the bad experiences, we can come back from being out of shape. We can both get fitter mentally and physically. She has already come so far in her balance and fitness, and I feel I’m getting stronger again too. And we’re doing it together. Caesar Millan said “you don’t get the dog you want, you get the dog you need.” And I firmly believe the same goes for horses. Arwen may not have been the horse I wanted, but she is certainly showing me she has been the horse I needed for a long time.
