Ernest Effort

I told you in the early part of the year, that PURPOSE is a pesky concept for me. Jack Russell-like, the “why?”of all things yaps in my brain, most especially “the why are we here?” which invariably narrows down to the “why am I here?”

The answer is always the same: To be of service to something greater than myself.  Simple. Yes. Grandiose. Certainly. 

Trouble is: life is daily. It is easy to lose track of simplicity when the items on the “to do list” exceed the hours in the day or to appreciate the Zen magnificence of the “chop wood/carry water”phenomenon or in my case the barn chores/office slog in the earnest effort of running the MMSC.

 And then you get an adoption application with an addendum like this:

To those of the MMSC:

A horse was responsible for ending a belief. No one can explain the infatuation that many little girls have with horses, but I was one of them. My bedroom was filled with books about horses: Black Beauty, Black Stallion, Misty of Chincoteague. I had the Breyer horse figures placed throughout, and on my wall, a poster of the famous Secretariat. Every birthday, every Christmas, I asked for the same gift--a horse. I knew the chance of a birthday horse was slim since it would have to be given by my parents, but Christmas, certainly, there was hope for a horse at Christmas. Surely I was a good girl and Santa would bring me the only present on my list. Year after year, dolls, bikes, games, but no horse were under the tree. This ended my belief in Santa. But it did not end my belief in the dream of owning a horse.

The little girl grew up, but the dream for a horse never faltered.  It only got pushed to the far corners as life’s demands took precedent--college, career, marriage and children. The dream would have to wait...

The letter went on to explain after years of waiting, grown children and growing grandchildren that Susan O., the writer, had taken up riding lessons, and had at long last the time and the finances for horse ownership. 

“It should be understood, “ Susan wrote, “that this will be my first and only horse. We will age gracefully together, appreciating each other’s idiosyncrasies and short comings, endearing us even more to each other.  I appreciate this opportunity to possibly fulfill my dream of one of your special horses. Thank you.”

When I read this letter, the Jack Russell in me went bonkers! Fulfill a dream!?  Purpose!? We’re on it!

When Susan and her trainer, Lisa, came to the MMSC to look at horses after she was unanimously approved (“She certainly deserves this chance to own a horse!,” one of the Approval Committee members wrote on Susan’s application), we carefully reviewed together her level of riding, horsemanship, goals and preferences.  I suggested two geldings, both very sane and forgiving, one somewhat older.

“I am sort of partial to mares,” Susan said.

 Mares?!  Oh no!  Not a good choice for someone starting up riding in her September years. Granted Susan was lithe and fit, but I know only too well that after 40, once doesn’t bounce back as well when the law of gravity gets the upper hand.

“I only have one at the MMSC,” I responded.  “She just came in and she raced five days ago. We haven’t done anything with her yet. Best to look at the geldings.”

“Could I just see her?”

“Sure,” I said, reluctantly, sliding open the door of the gray filly’s stall. “Her name is Earnest Effort. We’ve nicknamed her “Effie.” She’s four years old, has had a few starts, and never finished in the money. She is sound and her owner did the super responsible thing of retiring her before she broke down.”

“She’s beeeeaaauuutiful!,” said Susan quietly as she tentatively stepped beside me in the stall.

You can guess where this is going. Yes, Susan  watched both the geldings. She rode one, Xin Xu Lin, as steady a horse as can be.  Her mind said yes to him.  But her heart?  

“Do you want to watch Effie go?” I heard myself ask. (What was I thinking! No groundwork, bombproofing, or long-lining first?) 

You know the answer.  

We tacked Effie up. I figured she had been ridden less than a week ago, had been turned out 24/7  for three days, was level headed, and had finished at the end of the pack in all her races. Besides she had a sweet face and a generous eye.

Stiff and a little tense, but kind and willing, Effie walked, trotted, and cantered both directions. She even stepped over the tarp, bridges and cavalletti first time out.

“Wow!,” said Susan’s trainer, “she’s lovely.  She’ll go fast.”

“Yes, she will,” I agreed. “She’s special.”

  

I looked over at Susan.  She was staring at Effie.  Her eyes were big with wonder and yearning...

“Do you want to ride her?” I heard myself asking.  (OMG!  My head said. But my heart smiled.)

Susan on Effie with trainer, Lisa

Speechless, she nodded a vociferous YES!  

I turned to Lisa. “You ok with that? If she stays on a lunge?” 

 Lisa looked at Susan and then back at me. 

She nodded.

“Keep her safe, sista,” I said and I handed her the rope.

Lisa smiled.

Although Effie had a tentative rider on her back, she never put a foot out of place.  She was so good, Lisa unhooked the rope and Susan rode her solo.  

When Susan dismounted, I suggested she put the reins over the Effie’s neck to test the “join up” of their partnership at liberty. Effie followed Susan everywhere in BFF-”best friends forever” step. The mare’s choice was clear.

Susan’s was too, but I had to slow down the romance.

“It’s clear to me that your head knows which horse is best for you, but your heart has made a different decision,” I told Susan. “If you were not planning to board with Lisa and if she weren’t such an experienced horsewoman with expertise with Thoroughbreds, I could not in good conscience let you go with a horse so recently off the track.  But if you agree to let Lisa take over this horse’s let down and retraining, then I am ok with your taking the filly. The gelding is the better horse for you today. But I believe Effie will be that horse for you in 60 to 90 days, maybe a bit longer. My suggestion is that you go to a great little truck stop nearby for lunch and discuss the pros and cons of each choice. And, by all means, have a piece of the homemade chocolate peanutbutter pie. It will give you the necessary endorphin rush to make up your mind. ”

Needless to say, when they came back, the decision was stamped all over Susan’s face.  She glowed. She radiated. She was that little girl at Christmas who had just received her heart’s desire from Santa Claus.

I had made an earnest effort to persuade her to take the more seasoned horse. But my purpose is not about forcing choices on people. My purpose is to present the options that I have available and then let go. Susan found the answer to her lifelong dream in Effie. Helping her fulfill that dream was an exquisite privilege for which I am supremely grateful.

Besides, although it probably made more sense to steer her towards the gelding, we all have more neurotransmitters in our guts than in our brains. Therefore it makes sense to trust our intuitions.  If you remember anything from this blog, let it be this: LOGIC SHOULD ALWAYS BE ON TAP, NOT ON TOP!

Cheery bye!

Susanna

Synergy

SYNERGY is a ubiquitous phenomenon from physics to chemistry, herds to birds, cliques to corporations. It’s from the Greek “synergos,” translated as “working together,” but the concept is bigger than that: It means working BEYOND, i.e. “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” (Thank you, Aristotle! )

I got the concept of synergy at eleven. As I told you in a January blog “Mise-en-scene,” part of my childhood was spent in Paris, France. My favorite place in the city was the Sainte Chapelle, an architectural masterpiece built by Louis IX in the thirteenth century to house the purported relics of the Passion--part of the Crown of Thorns and a piece of Christ’s cross. Only 34 feet wide and 67 feet long, its glorious stained glass windows rise 50 feet in the air creating solid walls of glass. I was awestruck not only by the architectural phenomenon but also by the effort that went into creating every image, one piece of glass at a time. I liked sitting along the sides of the chapel, watching sun pour through the windows creating patchwork carpets on the massive stone block floors. It was like being in God’s jewel box.

To be successful, a team needs to be synergistic. It has taken a while to lay the foundation for such a team at the MMSC (and many thanks to all of you who have helped along the way). Finally after six years, we have built a solid team that works together, each bringing unique strengths (or colors!) to our mission.

You have already met, Catherine Flowers (Cat People and The Three Gs, andPromise), Barn Manager. She came to the MMSC in 2012 first as a volunteer, then for an internship, then...for another internship! She graduated this May Summa Cum Laude from Asbury University in Wilmore, Kentucky, and applied for the MMSC barn manager position. I had numerous applications for the job. The choice was a tough one. While Catherine had fewer technical horsemanship skills than some of the applicants, she had earned my deepest respect with her ceaseless (pay-less!)dedication in all that she did for the MMSC. I know first hand the toll of the long days and hours. She always showed up, on time, professional, even tempered, and positive. Her loyalty and honesty, smarts, work ethic and passion outweighed any lack of riding technique. That can be acquired. In June, Catherine came on as Barn Manager, and every day, I am grateful for having made this decision.

When I first became Director in 2008, all bills were paid through the headquarters office in New York.  To get a better understanding of what was going where, I bought a Quickbooks program along with the oh, so necessary, Quickbooks for Dummies and set up my own records. I learned a lot, most importantly that bookkeeping is detail oriented and there is lots of room for error. When we became our own 501(c)3 in 2012, I knew I didn’t have the skill sets to be keeper of the REAL numbers.

MA + 3 (Joseph, Anna, and Conner, l to r)

Enter Marialyce Gradek,an experienced book keeper for non profits, with a devilish sense of humor and ten year old triplets. Talk about a colorful character! I look forward to MA’s (for that is what I call her)  once a week appearances at the MMSC very much.

Lori, Jasper and Sam

MA’s big sister, Lori Tobin, Office Manager, came on board in the summer of 2012. A lawyer by profession, she relocated from DC to Lexington in 2008 to be closer to her family, and started teaching med tech law classes. For almost a year, she donated her time in the MMSC office. Lori has many assets, the greatest of which is her OCD attention to detail which she uses to get everything in order from tattoo numbers to pedigrees, applications to contracts, phone calls to appointments. Lori keeps track of them all. Most importantly, Lori keeps me on track. That is no small task as anyone who knows me well would attest! I have a proclivity to travel at high speeds in multiple directions at once. Thank goodness, I got the funds together this spring to hire her. She keeps the whole place together. 

Tony Yanek, Farm Manager, is my exquisite tiger. Reserved, moody, perfectionistic, he prowls the premises, headphones over his ears, tuned out to the world, but not missing anything, keeping the terrain beautiful, watching over every horse, piece of equipment, fence board and tree. He comes and goes tending to his own work. He sputters and scowls when anyone (including Catherine and me) leave anything out in the elements or out of place in the barn. Although he is truly a pussycat, Tony has terrified many an intern in the three years  he has worked for me on and off, as a contract laborer until I could afford to hire him full time. Tony is also terrific at Natural Horsemanship. He’s observant, quick, and strong with that rare combination of quiet confidence and compassionate leadership. Fillies, in particular love him. Tony's shadow is named Tank. He is the only dog allowed full-time on campus. That’s because Tony has trained him to perfection. He is obedient, unobtrusive, and an excellent watch and working dog.  He also is a playmate for barn cats Sam and Jasper, who,when not on pest patrol, stalk him. Then there’s Callie, a feral female that shadows the boys. She’s quite wild still, but as soon as we can lay secure hands on her, she has an appointment with the Humane Society for “alterations.”  Then, she, too, will be welcome as  a part of the synergistic MMSC team.

So back to the idea of the whole being more of the sum of its parts. In my travels throughout France, I saw churches and cathedrals with windows damaged or obliterated in war. It saddened me. Having seen the Sainte Chapelle. I knew that every piece of glass, no matter what size or color was essential to the telling of the story. 

My screen saver at work is a constant reminder of that. It's an image of just one of the 1,134 scenes in the Sainte Chapelle. I want the team of warriors and the white horse to make me mindful of and grateful for every individual who helps the MMSC on its crusade for Thoroughbred Aftercare. It also reminds me that the story can only be seen when graced from light on high.

                       
     Cheery bye!  
               Susanna

              

Promise

In "Trust the Process," a blog I posted at the beginning of the year, I explained that it takes the time it takes for a horse to get reschooled and adopted out. You know, Horse Time.

In an even earlier blog "Looking at Horses, part 2," I wrote about going back to Normandy Farm, a place dear to my heart as it was the first horse farm in Kentucky that I ever visited many years ago as a thirteen year old girl.


The horse I saw on that bleak winter day and decided to take on as an MMSC candidate was  Promise. Beautifully conformed with a lovely high-set neck, very correct legs and an ebony coat, Promisei'llbehome (by Came Home out of Maddie's Promise, foaled in 2004) is a looker. (Take a peek at his picture in the left hand column of this page.) At the time he was also a stallion, and although he was gentle as far as stallions go, he still knew how to strut his stuff. Nancy Polk, the petite and somewhat frail owner of Normandy Farm, beamed when Promise pranced out of the stall of the famous Normandy barn with the Limoges porcelain cats positioned along the rise of of the slate roof. The pockets of  her puffy coat were bulging with carrots which she liberally shared with this homebred favorite.

Promise had had 33 starts and garnered $152,890 with 5 wins, 2 seconds, and 1 third. He ran in over 25 allowance races and one stakes race. He was trained by Hall of Fame steeplechase and flat race trainer (the only person ever to be named to the two, by the

way), Jonathan Shepherd. In 2011, when Promise was seven, Mrs. Polk decided that he had done enough for her and brought him back to the farm to retire. His career, although successful, was not outstanding enough to warrant standing him at stud, and his temperament, while occasionally a handful, was not  sufficiently rambunctious  for her to want to castrate him. So, Mrs. Polk turned him out in a paddock to graze happily for the rest of his years. Except, that he wasn't happy. He seemed bored to Mrs. Polk, in need of a job. Hence the reason I got a call.

We don't take stallions at the MMSC. With limited paddock space, volunteer help, and the public streaming through our doors, stallions are a liability. Besides, who, in their right mind is going to adopt a stallion? So Promise came to us in February as a gelding. But although anatomically lighter, he still was carrying plenty of baggage.

Seasoned racehorses take longer to reschool than horses that went to the track but never raced. Old campaigners have many trump cards and are wily about playing them. They are physically mature to boot. When you take on a horse like Promise, you're playing in the big leagues.

Promise let us know that from the get-go. Dancing to and fro from the barn to his paddock on his hind feet, front legs batting the skies, he showed off his mo-jo, scaring interns and volunteers with his antics. In the round pen, it took many more sessions than usual to convince him that he was not head honcho. And still, after many days of training he conceded begrudgingly. He didn't believe in a democracy or a republic. He was a dictator at heart.

Part of his issues, I am certain, is that he was uncomfortable. He moved like a barefoot man stepping on hot coals with small, elevated, quick and careful steps. His shoulders were jammed; his pelvis twisted. Not that he was lame. Just compromised. And he had been that way for a while. He had the musculature to prove it. It was going to take regular chiropractic adjustments and careful systemic exercise to help his body remodel.

But no matter how he moved, he was spectacular to look at.  In April he caught the eye of a local huntsman who serves as whip. He adopted Promise and spent several weeks trail riding him two hours a day through the countryside. All was well until one windy day on a hill top after jumping, Promise bolted. Riding 1200 pounds of out-of-control horse moving at almost 40 miles an hour over uneven terrain is scary at any age. When you are over 50, it's a near death experience. It didn't surprise me that Promise came back to the MMSC.

Bolting is one of those trump cards that ex racehorses sometimes play. They get the bit between their teeth, and no matter how hard you pull back, they're off. In fact, pulling back  gives them leverage and recalls their track days.  Bad idea. But, totally instinctual for most riders.

I deal with the problem by taking the bit away completely. Leverage too. No bit. No  hackamores. Just a side pull. I exercise my limited knowledge

of physics by putting into practice Newton's first law of motion, the law of inertia: An object in motion continues in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force. Inertia sounds grand atop a bolting horse, and I work really hard to use my body weight as obtrusively as possible--squeezing hard with my knees and thighs and breaking up the straight trajectory with a one sided pulley rein drawn hard across the bony ridge of the horse's nose. Not pretty, but pretty effective.

Bolters are always surprised the first time you ride them without a bit. They surge forward with the intention of slamming down their Ace card taking over the game, but as soon as they realize that there's nothing to lean on they start decelerating. They open their mouths. Their tongues flail the air. Game over. 

Catherine, our barn manager fell in love with Promise from the moment he stepped on campus. (Oh dear, bad boys do have a magnetic attraction, no matter how many legs they have!)  And she has patiently worked with him from round pen to sidepull to reintroduction of a bit, to jumping, to trail riding, first at a trot and then at a canter in a big open field. Now the side pull is gone and he's traveling in a  snaffle and a figure eight noseband

He and she have good days and bad days. Sometimes he is grouchy. Happily, however those days are fewer and father between his soft and willing ones. It took a long time to build up his muscles in the right places, but he is moving ever so much better. He still is nippy (give it six more months for that testosterone to cycle out), and at times he sports that distant gaze in his eye of his early days. But he melts around Catherine, looking at her with real connection and affection. 

And, he has found his calling: Promise LOVES  to jump!  Now all we have to do is find the perfect new home for him. How long will that take?  It depends. We're letting go and letting God.

Cheery bye,
Susanna

HORSE TIME

I have a day clock on the wall in my office. It doesn’t keep track of hours. Just the days of the week. I need that because I often get off stride with Father Time. Most weeks, I feel that I wake up on Monday and put my head on the pillow on Friday, with little sense of hours passing in between. That’s because, as I explained in my last blog, I am passionate about what I do. The other reason? I am on Horse Time.

Time!? What a mind boggling topic. Humans have been grappling with its measurement for millennia. Bravo to the Egyptians for figuring out  how to divide the day into measurable snippets! Hats off to those who came up with time zones! Daylight Savings Time? I don’t know how great that idea is, but interesting that we would mess with time constructs to better suit the economy. All things are related, aren’t they?

And what about the meaning of time? How slow or fast does it go? It’s relative, says Einstein, depending on one’s experience (two minutes for a man sitting with a pretty girl, or two minutes for that same man sitting on a hot stove are very different in length, he points out) or on the speed at which something travels. Scientists purport that a sense of time is developed by the ability to remember a sequence of events.  This suggests that while animals have memory, they are not capable of understanding or measuring the passage of time. (Hmmm.  I guess those scientists have never walked down a barn aisle at feeding time and heard the nickers, rumbles, and kicks emanating from stalls.)

Whether horses can or can't measure time, it is profoundly illuminating to watch them in the field. They graze. Meander. Run. Spar. Tails swish. Heads lurch shooing errant flies. Others yawn or lie down to nap in the sun. Sometimes they just stand, ears pricked, attentive to mysteries we can neither see, hear, nor sense. Whatever they are doing, horses have the art of living in the NOW down pat. Unlike humans. Most of us exist burdened in a morass of  the past’s should have/would have/could haves or beleaguered by the "to do" lists of the future, barreling through our days worried and stressed, missing the joys of the present. 

It's not that horses don’t carry baggage. They do, because they learn quickly (and Thoroughbreds especially so) and they have prodigious memories. Horses bring stuff to the table for sure. That’s why training them can be like playing cards. If you want to have the upper hand, you need to keep track of which cards have been played and figure out where the remaining cards are likely to be. Don’t be tricked by the fact that horses live and act in the moment. Remember they have trump cards from past experiences that may be played at any given time. As a trainer, it is your job, to get the horse to lay those cards down when you want to see them, and not the other way around. 

Let’s say you want to teach a horse a given skill. As a piano teacher might start a new student with scales or one handed tunes, so a trainer must break down a skill set into intelligible pieces. If the horse doesn’t make sense of the pieces, it is the trainer’s responsibility to explain each step more simply, more clearly, and that takes the time it takes.

If, on the other hand, the horse understands the question being asked and chooses to ignore it or answer incorrectly, the trainer has a different challenge: That of presenting the question so the horse CHOOSES the correct response. In other words, ask the question in a way that makes the correct answer easy for the horse and the incorrect answer hard.  You don’t want to force the horse to do anything--for as they say in the Spanish Riding School, “Nothing beautiful is ever forced.” Force creates resistance. Choice leads to partnership. And partnership is what we are striving for with our horses, isn’t it?  We don’t want vehicles or servants. We want partners and friends. We want to do what horses can do: run fast, jump things, go places we could never go on foot. And we want them to do so willingly for us and with us. That is why we must make the correct choice pleasant and the incorrect one unpleasant.  But in doing so, we must remember two things: 1. To let the horse choose. 2. To give the horse the time it takes to make the choice. Horse Time.

Sometimes this is inconvenient. Horses can and will just flat out dig in and say “NO!” on occasion either because they are willful or because they are in pain, or because they don’t understand and their brains get fried and simply shut down. When this happens the trainer has a few choices:  1. To use force.  2. To forget about the passage of time altogether and to be prepared for spending however long it takes to get the message across. 3. To alter the question.

Just as musicians play the same pieces with different styles and interpretations, so trainers will vary in how they deal with the inevitable training challenges that arise with every horse.  Personally when I am not getting across to a horse, I pull up short and ask myself:

What part of my question does the horse not understand?

Am I asking too much from the horse either mentally or physically?

And, most importantly, am I on my time, or Horse Time?

If I can figure out the answers to these questions, and be truthful to myself about them (which can be a problem because EGO gets in the way), chances are I can restructure my request in a way that will bring about a positive result. If I have the time I might build on that result to see if I can get closer to my original request. If I don’t have the time, I will stop there, rewarding the horse for one good choice and hoping to pick up from that point in a subsequent lesson.

If however, I try to rush or force the horse to understand because I am listening to my own agenda, then I am guilty of the wrong choice. And it is 100% certain that I won’t get anywhere and things will end on a bad note.

I don’t like ending on bad notes, so I pay attention to Horse Time. Things take the time they take. Savor the gift of the NOW.  Even one small positive step, rather than the leap you might have hoped for, is cause for celebration.

Cheery bye,

Susanna