A Journey to Softness E-Book

Mark Rashid

• Herausgeber: J A Allen
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 319

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

Mark Rashid shares personal stories about events in his life that helped him on his journey to softness, as well as the stumbling blocks along the way. The narrative includes a section in which Mark passes on the experiences of others from a wide variety of walks of life and occupations, all sharing their views on how feel, connection and softness apply to their respective professions. Those interviewed for this special section include a musician who has written and performed several number one country music hits, a highly decorated helicopter pilot, a movie actor, a college professor, a master carpenter, an artist, and numerous others. What the reader learns by example is how to develop feel, relaxation, connection, and softness in both horse and rider. The methods and techniques Mark demonstrated have been gleaned from decades of work with horses and horse people, as well as while he trained with world-class martial artists whose lives have been dedicated to developing softness and connection with a partner through feel.

Leseprobe

Journey to

Softness

In Search of Feel and

Connection with the Horse

Mark Rashid

Foreword by Skip Ewing

J.A. ALLEN

First published in Great Britain in 2016 by

J.A. Allen

www.allenbooks.co.uk

J.A. Allen is an imprint of

The Crowood Press

The Stable Block

Crowood Lane

Ramsbury

Wiltshire SN8 2HR

www.crowood.com

This e-book first published in 2016

Copyright © 2016 Mark Rashid

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, by any means, without written permission of the publisher, except by a reviewer quoting brief excerpts for a review in a magazine, newspaper, or website.

Disclaimer of Liability

The author and publisher shall have neither liability nor responsibility to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by the information contained in this book. While the book is as accurate as the author can make it, there may be errors, omissions, and inaccuracies.

J.A. Allen encourages the use of approved safety helmets in all equestrian sports and activities.

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978-1-90880-949-0

Cover photograph by Fall River Productions ([email protected])

Book design by Laury Eddlemon

Cover design by RM Didier

Typefaces: Gotham, Helvetica Neue

For Declan, Jack, and Brinley

Contents

Foreword by Skip Ewing

Preface

1 Powerful Softness

Softness from the Inside Out—Angela Ewing

2 The Pull

Offering the Inside of Ourselves to Our Horses—Shannon Brown

3 Internal Softness

Thoughts on Connection, Feel, and Softness—Michelle Scully

4 Initial Contact

The Difference Between “Make” and “Help”—Walter Josey

5 Friction

The More You Listen, the More You Hear—Lee Cranney

6 Working the Edge

Cultivating Softness—Lasell Jaretzki Bartlett

7 Simplicity

“Feel” Is a Verb—Tim Harvey

8 Feel

Opening to Softness—Crissi McDonald

9 Softness

Afterword: An Exercise in Softness

Foreword

Gratitude.

For the fact that you’re reading this. For the fact that you may have chosen to ask the question, “How can I be even more skillful for my horse, any horse, every horse?” or perhaps “What might be here that opens the door of greater understanding, not just of horses, but of others … of myself?”

Gratitude.

For the journey you’ve already taken and the myriad decisions that may have led you to pick up this book; to watch, listen, learn, practice, care, try, refine, try again, teach, train, try yet again, and perhaps even transform habits and ways of thinking that no longer serve your relationships well, including the relationship you have with yourself.

Gratitude.

For the long history of effort leading to the heart and intention behind the words in this book and the many others my friend Mark Rashid has written.

Friend? I meant brother.

Gratitude.

For the offer to be involved with so many hearts, so many horses, and so many humans on so many levels.

Gratitude.

To all of you, for your willingness to reconsider the horse, again, and again, and again.

Gratitude.

I believe it’s the best place to begin, an even better place to end, and a good way to assure that every ending is an even more skillful beginning.

As a friend of mine once wrote with me, “If you got it right more times than you got it wrong … you got it right.”

Friend? I meant brother.

With great confidence that you know the spirit in which this was written,

Skip Ewing, Singer and Songwriter

“You Got It Right” (Skip Ewing, Mark Rashid) © 2013 Write! Music (BMI)/Rocking 5 R (BMI). Lyrics used by permission.

Preface

Very early on, as I began working on the outline for this book, I realized that one of the main concepts I wanted to share was the fact that the development of softness truly is a journey—one with a beginning and a middle, but not necessarily an end. One of the other concepts I wanted to try to impart is the fact that if we’re not working on softness in everything we do, achieving it when we are with our horses is going to be considerably more difficult.

I asked a few friends, all with different backgrounds, from different walks of life, and from different parts of the country, if they would be willing to share some thoughts on how the practice of softness has helped them in their respective occupations, as well as with their horsemanship. Many of them were kind enough to jot down their ideas on the subject, and these can be found throughout this book as “Reflections from My Friends.” My thanks to all who contributed!

Mark Rashid

Estes Park, Colorado

There is strengthin muscle, butpower in softness.

—Mark Rashid

Powerful Softness  1

Dwight and I hadn’t been on horseback very long when we reached the top of a small mesa and looked down into the valley below, green with new spring grass and bathed in the yellow glow of sunrise. The valley was maybe a half-mile long and two hundred yards wide, and in it were a handful of horses. One looked to be black or very dark brown, one was an Appaloosa, two were gray, and three were sorrel. One of the sorrels had what appeared to be a new foal running at its side.

“Is that her?” I asked.

Dwight shifted in his saddle. “I don’t think so.”

“No?” I asked. “She’s got a foal, and I doubt there were any other pregnant mares out here.”

He tipped his weathered cowboy hat back and scratched his forehead. “No.” He readjusted his hat. “I think she was a bay.”

“A bay?”

“Or brown.”

“You don’t know what color she was?”

“It was dark.”

“The horse?”

“I think so. But the sale was at night, so it was dark out.”

He squinted down into the valley and watched the sorrel with the baby. “And it was over a week ago. I’m pretty sure she weren’t no sorrel.”

“Pretty sure?”

“Well, I did buy two sorrels,” he said, still looking at the small herd below us. “But they was geldings. The mare was a bay … or brown … I think.”

Satisfied, at least to some extent, that the mare we had come to find (and that, at Dwight’s suggestion, we would take off the 3,500-acre pasture on which our ranch horses had wintered) was not with the band we were currently gazing upon, we turned our horses and continued on our way.

The excursion that morning had begun a couple of days earlier when I received a call from Dwight about some horses he had bought the weekend before. Dwight had made a trip up to Minnesota that weekend to visit friends and family, and while there, took a little side trip to a horse sale. Saddle horses were going pretty cheap, so he had taken it upon himself to buy a few head that he figured I might be able to use at the guest ranch where I was foreman.

Dwight, an excellent and lifelong stockman, had a good eye for both cattle and horses. He also had a heart as big as Montana; if there were a way to help someone, especially a friend, he would do it without hesitation. In this case, he knew I was going to be short some horses for the upcoming season and so had decided to “help” by picking up a few for me. Details—where the horses would go once he bought them, were they rideable, did they have some kind of communicable disease that could possibly infect every horse on the place—just weren’t that important.

So, when he called to tell me he had bought a few horses for the ranch, and then told me he thought they were all healthy and had turned them in with our herd out on the pasture, I wasn’t too concerned. Of course, I hadn’t actually asked him to buy any horses for us and I had no idea what these horses looked like. The fact that he also seemed to be having trouble remembering what they looked like was a little troubling, as not all of the horses on the pasture belonged to the ranch. Some, about fifteen head or so, belonged to other folks from the area who also pastured their horses there during the winter.

There was a very good chance that we could accidentally take the wrong horse, which would open up a whole other can of worms.

At any rate, when Dwight called, he told me that he was pretty sure one of the horses he bought (the only mare) was pregnant, and he was just as sure that she was not more than a week or so away from foaling when he put her and the others in the pasture.

“I just got to thinking,” he said. “We may want to go out and get her. Maybe bring her up to the ranch so she can foal out up there.”

“You bought us a pregnant mare?”

“She was pretty cheap,” he happily replied. “Besides, you get a two-for-one!”

“But we don’t have a place for a mare and a …”

“And while we’re down there, I’ll try to pick out the others I bought for you. I think they’ll work out real good for your outfit.”

“You’ll try to pick them out?” I remember asking, making an effort to hide the fatigue I was beginning to feel at the thought of all the extra work it was looking like his generosity was going to generate.

“Yeah,” he said, cheerfully. “It was dark when I turned them into the pasture, so I’m not real sure what they look like.”

So there we were, spending the better part of the day riding a big circle on 3,500 acres, looking for a mare I’d never seen that might be bay or dark brown, that also might be pregnant.

By half past three that afternoon, some nine hours after Dwight and I first threw a leg over our saddle horses, we found ourselves back at the same mesa we’d started out on, looking at the same little band of horses down in the long, narrow valley below. We had eliminated the rest of the horses—I knew which ones we already owned, recognized the brands on ones we didn’t, or concluded that the colors of the horses we found didn’t match the colors of the horses he bought.

This time, however, as we looked down into the valley, we could see that the foal was no longer running beside the sorrel it had been with earlier that day, but rather, was next to what appeared to be a black horse.

“Well,” Dwight shrugged, “that’s got to be her.”

We turned our horses down a small ravine and worked our way to the valley floor. It didn’t take long to get to the small band. The mare was a nice-looking, very dark bay, refined, with what looked to be some Morgan in her. She had a kind eye and was spending all her time moving her baby, an equally dark little stud foal, away from two of the sorrel geldings. One of the geldings, a sixteen-hand, rawboned mustang-looking horse with a Roman nose and a white strip on his face, seemed fixated on getting to the foal. The other, a much smaller, stocky little fellow with no markings whatsoever, seemed more intent on following the bigger horse rather than going after the mare or baby.

The baby had most likely been born that morning, probably just before we arrived, and looked worn out; the geldings’ constant attention had caused the mare to keep the baby moving nonstop. There was no telling how much rest, if any, the foal had managed to get since we had first seen it that morning running at the gelding’s side, or how much, if any, it had been able to nurse.

“Looks like that gelding’s trying to get at that baby,” Dwight said as he moved his horse into position to cut off the gelding.

I moved toward the mare and began turning her and the baby back in the direction of the path Dwight and I had taken to get into the valley. Once at the top, we’d be able to make our way over to a large catch pen near where we’d parked the truck and trailer that morning, not more than a half-mile away.

The mare started up the path easily, but it was clear almost from the start that the baby wasn’t going to be able to make the climb. As soon as the trail gained elevation, which was pretty much right away, the baby stalled out, then stopped. This, of course, stopped the mare, who turned and nickered to the baby. But the already-exhausted youngster wouldn’t, or couldn’t, move.

“We’ll need to take them around the long way,” I said, bringing the mare off the path and back into the valley. “The little guy won’t make this climb.”

The “long way” was a narrow trail that followed the bottom of the mesa and then sloped gradually upward along its face to the south and, eventually, to the catch pen. It was about a half-mile farther than if we’d gone to the top of the mesa, but with the baby and our saddle horses as tired as they were, it was going to be easier to take the lower route.

I maneuvered the mare off the path to the top of the mesa and eased her forward along the lower trail, her baby walking wearily at her side. Dwight brought up the rear, with the two sorrel geldings trailing behind him. From time to time, Dwight would turn his horse and chase the two geldings back down the trail toward the valley, but inevitably, as soon as he turned back around to rejoin us, the geldings would charge up behind him once again.

On several occasions, the bigger gelding tried to pass both Dwight and me, but the trail was much too narrow and rocky for him to get around us, and he’d fall back in line. Finally, after nearly a half-hour and numerous stops to allow the baby to rest, we neared the flat ground that would take us to the catch pen. Dwight and I both knew that if the gelding got to that opening, he would easily be able to overtake us and get to the mare and baby.

So, with less than a hundred yards to go before the flat, Dwight turned and moved the two geldings almost all the way back down to the valley. While he was doing that, I took the mare and baby to the pen, opened the rusted metal gate, and moved them both quietly inside. Once that was done, my horse Buck and I headed for the truck to get a halter for the mare.

I had taken a halter with me that morning, tied to my saddle. We figured we’d just put it on the mare and pony her back to the trailer after we found her. But while Dwight’s recollection of the mare’s coloring was fairly correct, his recollection of how big she was had been a little off. He had apparently mixed up the sizes of the mare and the mustang-looking gelding, and the halter I brought was way too big for her.

I took a smaller halter from a pile in the bed of the truck, tossed the bigger one back, and returned to the catch pen about the same time Dwight came loping up the trail. When Buck and I reached the gate, I opened it and we went inside. I was closing the gate behind us as Dwight eased his horse to the pen fence and dismounted. The mare was quietly standing over the foal, who was lying on the ground fast asleep. I hated to disturb the little guy, as I’m sure it was the only rest he’d had all day. But it was early spring, and coming on dinnertime; we were going to be running out of daylight soon, and the ranch was some forty miles away.

Then, just as I began to ease Buck toward the mare so I could get her haltered, I heard an unearthly scream from the trail. I looked up in time to see the big sorrel gelding galloping toward us, head and tail high, mouth gaped open, bawling and squealing as he ran. He made a beeline for Dwight, then veered off at the last second, making a large circle in the meadow adjacent to the pen.

“That’s enough of that,” Dwight grunted, and without hesitation, jumped back in the saddle. He pulled the lariat from his saddle, shook out a loop, and began to swing it in a big arc over his head.

Then the second gelding suddenly appeared, loping up the trail and calling for his buddy, who by this time had finished his circle and was charging toward the pen’s gate. He veered off again, making a smaller circle, then returned to the gate, where he slid to a stop, but not before crashing into it with his chest. He called frantically, shaking his head and stomping his feet.

The second gelding ran straight for the big red horse, stopping next to him. The big horse turned and bit him hard on the shoulder. By this time, Dwight had made his way around the pen and was moving in on the pair. He threw a loop at the horses, not so much to catch either one but rather, to get them to move away from the gate. Both bolted and immediately split up, the smaller horse moving to the east, the bigger one to the south.

As Dwight gathered his rope and began building another loop, the mustang-looking gelding wheeled back around and once again headed straight for the gate. This time, as Dwight began to swing the rope, the big gelding all but ignored it, breezed past Dwight and his horse, and jumped the gate just as pretty as you please, landing inside the pen.

I quickly turned toward the mare and saw that she had already roused her foal to his feet and was urging him forward while she shielded him from the gelding with her body. I moved Buck in front of the gelding, dropped the halter I was holding, and grabbed my rope. The gelding rushed past Buck and me as though we weren’t there and headed for the mare and baby.

At this point, something quite extraordinary happened. As the gelding closed in on the mare, I watched her wheel her hindquarters toward him and kick him square in the chest, causing him to recoil a good fifteen feet. While the force the mare put into that kick was quite astounding, creating a shockwave I could feel from my position some thirty feet away, what was even more remarkable was something the mare did with her baby at the same time.

At the very moment she laid that powerful kick into the gelding’s chest, the mare had also used her nose to ever-so-gently move her exhausted baby away from danger. It was an amazing feat of total body control. While her hindquarters seemed to harness all the strength of her body and hit the gelding with an accuracy and speed the like of which I have seldom seen, her front end was as soft as butter, guiding her foal to a safer place while barely touching him.

I didn’t have much time to contemplate what I had just seen, however, as things that were only slightly out of hand just a few seconds earlier were beginning to get increasingly more “Western” as time went by. Outside the pen, Dwight had his hands full trying to chase the second horse away from the gate. The little gelding had tried to follow the bigger horse over it, but only managed to crash chest-first into it, nearly knocking it off its heavy metal hinges and springing the latch that held it closed. Startled by the metallic bang he made when he hit the gate, and Dwight’s yelling and rope-swinging, the smaller gelding scrambled away from the gate and down the rail fence until he was roughly parallel with the bigger gelding, who was still inside the pen.

Meanwhile, the bigger gelding seemed momentarily stunned by the kick the mare had just administered and bolted for the far end of the pen, away from the mare and baby. His change of heart didn’t last long, though, and after stopping for a second to touch noses with his newly arrived and frantic buddy, he turned his attention back to the mare and baby.

All of this activity had given me time to build a loop and allowed Dwight an opportunity to get himself and his horse inside the pen with us. He had also built a nice loop and was already making his way down toward the day’s troublemaker.

Dwight and I had been working horses and cattle together for years, and it wasn’t uncommon for us to go through an entire day of branding or sorting or doctoring without saying more than a few words. Not because we didn’t like one another, but rather because there was usually no need to talk. We both knew what job needed to get done, and we just did it. When we did communicate, it was often with a nod or other gesture, or sometimes a word or two.

In this situation, we both knew what needed to be done: get the gelding under control and the mare and baby out of the pen, into the trailer, and on their way to the ranch. Why this gelding seemed to be so infatuated with the baby didn’t matter. The job needed to be done, and that was that.

Dwight trotted his horse to about the middle of the hundred- by forty-foot pen, then eased the horse into a walk as he moved closer to the gelding, who by now seemed to have all of his attention back on the mare and baby at the other end. The horse didn’t even seem to know Dwight was there, although I’m sure he did. Dwight began to ease his loop into an arc over his head as he closed in on the gelding, but before he got close enough to do anything with it, the big red horse suddenly bolted back toward the mare and baby.

Dwight expertly tossed his loop as the gelding passed him, and from my perspective, it looked like he was going to catch him easily. But then, just as the loop was about to drop down over the gelding’s head, he ever so slightly dipped that big ol’ Roman nose of his, causing the rope to skip harmlessly off his ears, bounce off his rump, and miss him completely. As he galloped straight for the mare, Buck and I were all that stood in his way.

In the time it took me to glance around and check on where the mare and baby were and turn back, he had pretty effectively covered the length of the pen and was almost right on top of us. I had a good loop built, but little time to do anything with it other than toss it out in front of him and hope I caught something. Dwight would later tell me it was the ugliest job of rope-throwing he’d ever seen, and by the way it felt as it left my hand, I’m sure he was right. Yet, somehow, that awkwardly thrown loop found its way over the big gelding’s head, dropping down around his neck and allowing me to take up the slack and slow him down.

It was clear almost as soon as the loop slipped around his neck that this was not the first time he’d been roped. Instead of panicking or fighting the rope once he felt it tighten, like most horses would in the same situation, he gave in to it immediately. As Buck and I loped along with him, it was fairly easy to get him turned away from the mare and baby.

Within seconds, however, he gave a sharp pull and tried to turn back toward them. I took a quick dally, which all but stopped him in his tracks, then Dwight came loping up and moved in from behind, pushing him away from his targets. With me on the rope and Dwight pushing from behind, we were able to get the gelding across the pen, where I looped my rope around one of the heavy wooden fence posts. I was a little surprised to see that he stood pretty well once he was secured, and other than some frantic ground-pawing and screaming at the top of his lungs, he caused no more trouble from that point forward.

Dwight and I finally dismounted, and he took our horses back to the trailer. I retrieved the halter I had dropped in the dirt when the gelding jumped the gate, and Dwight brought an extra halter back with him from the truck. He eased up to the mare, slipped it over her nose, and buckled it into place. I took the other halter, and removing the lead rope, turned it upside down and slid it over the exhausted baby’s head. By turning it upside down, the part of the halter that would normally be over an average-sized horse’s nose was down around the base of the baby’s neck, and the strap that would normally go behind an adult horse’s ears and over the poll was now around the baby’s girth area. By buckling that strap into place around the girth, the halter effectively became a small harness, something like folks use when walking their dogs.

It was the first chance we had to see the baby up close. He was a handsome fellow, dark brown like his mother, with a dished face; big, inquisitive eyes; and straight legs. Unfortunately, he also had cuts on his chest and front legs from what looked like being run into or through a barbed wire fence, and he had a number of bite marks on his neck, back, flanks, and hindquarters.

With Dwight leading the mare and me using the halter/harness to guide the baby, we took them to the trailer and got them loaded. Our saddle horses were in the nose of the stock trailer, the middle compartment was empty, and the mare and baby were in the back compartment. We then hauled the trailer a good quarter-mile away before going back to turn the big gelding loose.

Things were quiet in the truck as we headed back to the ranch—not unusual after a long day. The quiet allowed my mind time to drift back to what I had seen the mare do that afternoon in simultaneously defending her baby from the gelding and guiding the baby away from him. I played the scene over and over in my head: the power of the kick that came from the back end of the mare, the total softness coming from the front. I was amazed at how quickly the foal moved with just that soft touch from his mother, particularly considering how tired he was at the time.

I began to wonder if there might be a way for humans to harness, or replicate, the type of powerful softness the mare had displayed. The problem was, at the time, I had never heard anybody talk about it or seen anybody doing anything like it. In fact, as I gave it more thought, I began to realize that the two words didn’t even seem to fit together: powerful softness. Was it an oxymoron? Was it something only animals possessed? Did it even exist, or was I just imagining it? Could it be, or was it already being, developed and used in some form in the human world?

My thoughts shifted to the foal riding in the back of the trailer. I wondered if he had nursed at all during the day. I wondered where I was going to put him and his mom once we got back to the ranch. I’d heard the weather was going to turn bad in the next couple of days and wondered if he’d be strong enough by then to make it through the kind of spring storms that are common in the mountains. About that time, Dwight cleared his throat, the way he always did just before he got ready to say something.

“People pay a lot of money for horses that can jump that high,” he said, interrupting my train of thought.

“What?”

“I was just sayin’ you could probably make a jumping horse out of that gelding.”

“Not much call for jumping horses in the dude business.”

“Yeah, I suppose not.” He turned his attention out the window of the truck. “Still, he sure jumps good.” He paused for a couple of seconds. A herd of Black Angus cattle milled around in a large open field, and a handful of three-day-old calves took off running and bucking, tails high and heads swinging. He smiled. “I sure like this time of year.”

I watched the calves as they began to playfully butt heads, their mothers grazing peacefully nearby.

“Me too,” I said.

Softness from the Inside Out

Angela Ewing

Just months ago, I was coming home from work physically exhausted, with pain burning in my shoulders, lower back, and hip joints. I recall those first few moments when, retiring for the night, my body seemed to find relief. My job as a Physician Assistant, which I consider a life’s reward to be able to do, requires a commitment of time as well as physical sacrifice.

Our bodies are amazing in their ability to respond to what we require. In my case, that involves standing for sometimes six hours in one position, keeping my hands within a narrow range (approximately mid-chest to waist level), focusing intently through a microscope. Frequently, I am required to wear a heavy lead vest and skirt for the majority of the day.

It took my work in improving my relationship and connection with my horse to make me realize that my job was affecting my posture, the way I stood, walked, sat, and most importantly, the way I was riding my horse.

Over the last thirteen years, I had begun resting all of my weight on my right leg and hip, unaware that I was intermittently locking my knees, hollowing my lower back, and standing off-center. I had found a way to “rest” my body as it tired from long hours of standing. In one of Mark’s clinics, we unfolded the layers of physical hindrance of my presentation to my horse. It became obvious in the way my horse moved that the problems began with me. It showed in my inability to round and soften my back, which came from the overdevelopment of opposing muscles that I had built while “managing” a position at work. During a lesson with Mark, I was able to find my center, which affected my balance and immediately changed my horse’s movement. It was a light-bulb moment for me to realize that for all the work I had been doing to connect with my horse, I had not completely connected to myself. I had pieces of the puzzle, but not all of them.

I have spent the last few months retraining my body to maintain the correct position all the time. Standing in line at the grocery store, driving my car, walking, and—where I spend most of my time—at work. It has been an amazing experience to find a way to consciously soften myself from inside out. My back and hips no longer hurt. I have muscles in my shoulders that I never knew existed. The ones that were in constant spasm are now relaxed. When I have to retract an incision with an instrument, I find I no longer use muscle, no matter how long I am required to do so. I use my core and the energy from within to complete the task. Most importantly, I breathe—the deep kind of breathing, which is where you find your center. My hope is that, over time, I won’t have to think about it so much; it will become second nature.

It never ceases to amaze me how horses continue to teach us more about the human experience just by their presence in our lives. It requires a conscious effort on my part to offer my horse presence of moment, and I must remember to do the same for myself. In doing so, I learn to do something that ultimately affects everything … including my horse.

The Pull  2

While seeing the mare with her baby may have been the first time I became consciously aware of the idea of powerful softness, it was not my first introduction to the overall concept of softness when it came to horses. The old horseman I worked with when I was a kid—whom I’ve always called the Old Man—had introduced me to it years before. Of course, I don’t recall him using the word softness much, if at all. Back then, instead of telling me when something was soft, he would simply point out when it wasn’t.

When I was about eleven, I was riding a little gelding named Spark and was having trouble getting him to turn and stop. If I pulled to the right, he would pull to the left; if I pulled to the left, he would pull to the right. If I pulled on him to try to get a stop, he would push into my hands and just keep walking forward. The longer I rode him, the more frustrated I got, and the more he seemed to want to fight with me.

Keep in mind that regardless of age, both humans and horses work to the level of their knowledge base and life experience. This was certainly true in my case while I was working with Spark. At the time, I hadn’t ridden very many horses, so my knowledge base was limited to things that I had ridden, such as a bicycle. With a bicycle, when you turn the handlebars to the left, the thing goes to the left. When you turn them to the right, it goes to the right. When you stop pedaling, it stops. I guess I just naturally assumed that a horse would operate the same way.

It’s the way an eleven-year-old thinks. Until he knows better, a horse and a bicycle are basically the same thing to him. Intellectually, there is a gap that keeps him from understanding that a bicycle is a machine that always does what it is told, when it is told, and horse is a living, breathing, thinking animal with ideas, feelings, and emotions. In the child’s mind, both things should operate basically the same way. That is why a child with a limited knowledge base will become frustrated pretty quickly when a horse expresses its feelings, ideas, and emotions while being ridden.

At any rate, the Old Man had been watching me for a while as I struggled to do just about anything with Spark. Then I guess he just couldn’t stand it anymore, and finally walked up to us. The gelding and I had just finished a monumental battle, which started out in the front pasture. After all my efforts to get Spark to turn one way, then the other, and finally to stop had failed, he dragged the two of us unceremoniously over to the hay barn, where Spark put his nose on the faded-yellow brick wall and just stood there.

“Horses don’t like to be pulled on,” the Old Man said drily, petting Spark on the neck.

“I wasn’t pulling on him, he was pulling on me!” I argued as only an eleven-year-old could. “Every time I try to make him do anything, he just wants to do something else. He doesn’t want to turn, he doesn’t want to stop, he doesn’t want to …”

The Old Man held up his well-weathered, calloused hand, signaling me to stop talking, which I did. Even at eleven, I knew better than to talk into a hand that looked like that. He reached down, and with two fingers, picked up the left rein, the one closest to him. Then, lifting the rein and using hardly any effort, he easily turned Spark’s head toward him. He gently lowered the rein, then reached across Spark’s neck and took hold of the right rein. He repeated the same action, and Spark responded by effortlessly turning his head to the right. He lowered the rein, allowing Spark’s head to straighten. Then, while still holding the right rein, he took hold of the left rein with his left hand and again, with gentle and minimal contact on both reins, he induced Spark to willingly back up.

He backed Spark seven or eight feet away from the wall, then let go of the right rein. Still holding the left rein, he led the two of us back out into the pasture where all the trouble had begun.

“Horses don’t like to be pulled on,” he repeated. Then he turned Spark and me loose and walked away.

Though I had no way of knowing at the time, what I had just witnessed was an expertly performed demonstration of softness, through what many in the horse world these days might refer to as “feel.” Of course, both concepts completely escaped me at the time. On that day, my understanding of what I had seen was that he just hadn’t pulled as hard as I did, and somehow, the gelding responded. So I replicated what I thought I saw the Old Man do, and in return, I started getting better responses from Spark. Not responses as good as the Old Man’s, mind you, but better than before he stepped in.

Like a lot of people, I suppose, I had a very difficult time understanding the concept of how not