Lessons From Lady

Lady was my first horse.

She wasn’t really mine… she belonged to the people at the dairy farm across the street from our house. The girls at the farm had gotten older, and sick of taking care of her, so she just lived out in a huge field with the “dry” cows.

Lady was a chocolate brown color, with huge brown eyes, a shaggy gold and brown mane, and a zig-zaggy white stripe down the middle of her face. I loved her, in spite of the fact that she was a cantankerous old pony, who seemed to only love being left alone.

The deal was; if I could catch her, I could ride her.

Lady was not overly fond of that deal. She’d grown very fond of her “Wild Pony of the Moors” existence, and hauling little kids around was NOT on her current To Do list.

Most days with Lady went like this:

I would rush off the school bus and change into my barn clothes, and hurry across the street. I would gather up lady’s dingy, ill-fitting bridle, her ancient Western saddle made of cracking, moldy leather, a saddle blanket stiff with sweat from rides past, and would head to the field where she and the cattle stayed. I was told that was the way the other girls had always done it.

The cattle in this field were too young to have given birth, or were waiting to have their next calf, so they had no milking schedule, or any schedule at all for that matter. Lady liked that routine.  Sometimes the herd would be close to the barns, sunning themselves in the worn, dry dirt patches or drinking from the huge water troughs kept full at one end of their field. Sometimes they would be in the tall grass out near the highway, a good mile from the barns, hanging out on the other side of the fence from their buddies in the milking herd.

Cows are fairly lazy, and these were all used to people checking on them and feeding them regularly, so they didn’t care if a 10-yr old kid wandered among them. Lucky for Lady, cows are easily led, or driven, when a quick getaway or a diversion is needed. When I first tried to go get Lady, she wanted nothing to do with kids or riding, which made catching her absolutely impossible. She would start by simply wandering through the herd, carefully keeping a cow or two between us at all times. If I was persistent, she would eventually start moving the cows off, darting here and there to get them started, and then the whole group would thunder past me toward the highway, or off to the bluffs on the other side of the stream, far away on the border of the neighboring farm. I would wander through the field after them, crying and calling, dragging the heavy saddle and fittings behind me.

Sometimes I would give up and go home sobbing. But other times, after an hour or so of leading me all over the field, Lady would probably take pity on me, and condescend to being caught. I was never mad at her, just ecstatic to finally be able to pet her, and would empty my pockets of carrots and cookies and sugar, and rub her face and tell her she was beautiful. Many times I would end up just feeding and petting her and letting her go, as I’d be too tired to ride by that point. Eventually, I stopped bringing all of the tack into the field, and would just bring treats and brushes.

Unconsciously, that is how I won my way into Lady’s trust. When I had no saddle in tow, she would come over much more quickly. Horses do love treats, so there was also the bribery card in play. But there came a time when, even after the treats were gone, lady would stay with me, and let me brush her and pick the burrs out of her mane until it began to grow dark.

     By this time, I had cleaned up an old rope halter, and washed it until it was soft and smelled nice. Lady did not mind at all when I’d put that on her head. I decided that old saddle was to stiff and heavy for either of us to carry, so I found an old piece of fleece from a dog’s bed, and got help sewing a makeshift belly band onto it. It had no stirrups, so to climb on to her back, I would have to lead lady to a rock or a stump. I wasn’t very good at getting on initially, and would slide under the horse as many times as I’d make it up to her back. Some times when I’d tumble, she’d run a little way off to eat grass. Some times she’d stay there and let me make another attempt. She never, once, stepped on me, for all the time I spent underneath her.

By the end of summer I could sit on her for hours as she moved around the field eating grass. Where we went was always her idea, but that was fine by me. From the ground, I could now lead her almost anywhere, so would sometimes take her out of the cow field and over to my back yard. I had brought her horrible tack home, and cleaned and softened it to the point where I could tie her to the picnic table, put her things on, and give my little brother and sisters rides around our yard.

Today there is a popular psychology tool called EFEL; Equine Facilitated Experiential Learning. Lady was clearly a pioneer in this field, and I am grateful for the lessons I learned from her.

I learned that: you don’t force a 1000 pound being to do anything.

I learned to figure out what she liked, and to adapt my desires to hers… to find a compromise.

Most importantly, I learned that... Chasing something rarely works, but Quiet patience and persistence sometimes does pay off.