It is a pleasure to be presenting this column for California Riding Magazine. As a woman who has had a deep and lasting love affair with horses – from the purely superficial to the mastering of equine ethology (the science of behavior) - I will write about what I know.
I look forward to fielding your questions and answering them from a desire to empower all women with what’s really going on between them and their horse. To give a “leg-up” to establishing that soul-endearing relationship with a beloved horse you have always wanted. To go from wishing and hoping your horse is your best friend to feeling the magic of it way down deep in your bones.
Like many of you, I was just another horse-crazy young girl growing up in the suburbs of Southern California. Young, reckless and a hopeless romantic, I swooned at sugar-plum visions of Flicka and Velvet and Black Beauty. Every Breyer horse ever created lined my bedroom shelf. Misty of Chincoteague was well-worn by the time I was a teenager. I devoured every movie, every TV show, everything that had anything to do with horses.

But as my parents didn’t believe in the frivolity of my owning a horse, certain it was just another of my passing phases, it wasn’t until I graduated from college and moved to the Sierra Nevada in search of joie de vivre that I indulged this life-long fantasy - to share my life with a horse of my own.
It began with an older couple who had raised an Appaloosa/Arab gelding, aptly named Chief Crazy Horse, from a foal. He had been their household pet (complete with popcorn in front of the TV) until he grew from cute and cuddly to big and feisty. Spoiled rotten and difficult to manage, they knew they were in over their heads and sought a sucker of a young lady (moi) to take him off their hands.
I had no idea what I was in for. All I knew was that he was beautiful, and I was in love. In my reverie, I just knew Chief Crazy Horse and I would be lifelong partners – he would look out for me and I for him. Being only 2 years old, wouldn’t he bond to me as dearly as an 8 week old puppy? Wouldn’t we share a telepathic understanding of one another in a way I’d never found with a human? I truly believed with all my heart that he would adore me, patiently wait for me, and nicker sweetly every time I came to ride him. Totally in tune. Pure bliss.
No Prince Charming
Pure ignorance was more like it, resulting in a torrential downpour on that parade! Crazy Horse was far from Prince Charming – in fact he had nothing but contempt for human beings (for good reason I can tell you in hindsight), and the reality of this tale more closely aligns to rodeo bronc-riding than majestically galloping off like Lady Godiva into a magnificent magenta sunset.
To say that my fairy tale dream had a few misguided follies of illusion is putting it mildly. Crazy Horse was doing his best to make me see the light, but I just didn’t have a clue what he was going on about. I don’t blame myself - I just didn’t know any better. But in looking back, knowing now what I didn’t know then, here is what Crazy Horse was desperately trying to tell me about our Charlie-Chaplin-esque charade:
“Mints and carrots? Sure – I’ll take them. In fact, I’ll gleefully bite the hand that feeds me to show you your treats don’t change the fact that I find you a royal pain in my noble behind. You leave me in this small corral for days at a time, then when you do show up you’re loud, clumsy and buzz around me like a nasty fly. You’re always fussing around my head, which drives me crazy. And you have no business being up on my back unless you learn to ride – really well, I might add.
Those half-hearted bucks every time you get on my back (believe me, if I wanted you off, you’d be off!) are telling you that your balance is atrocious and your “now-they’re-here, now-they’re-gone” hands wreak havoc on my mouth, which if you haven’t figured out, is oh-so sensitive.
Nicker when you come to ride me? Fat chance. Turn my hind end and walk away is what you get, and exactly what you deserve.
Add to this, brushing my coat until my skin hurts, pulling my mane (can you imagine what it would feel like to have your hair pulled out?), leading me around like a dog on a leash (how humiliating) and when I get a little indignant about such treatment, you get mad or frightened and yell or yank on my head. Can you understand that from my perspective, this relationship pretty much sucks? To err is human, to forgive is equine is all I have to say.”
It is an unspoken agreement among women that we intuitively understand and relate to horses. Maybe it’s the resonance of recognizing ourselves – the woman and the horse have shared many parallels in our deeply flamboyant histories. Maybe it’s an affinity for their graceful beauty, their fragile dispositions, their strong wills and their forgiving spirits.
Whatever it is, all we know is we desperately want to bring happiness to their lives in whatever small way we can. And I can wholeheartedly tell you that happiness comes to them when we care enough to learn and become fluent in their language, not expect them to understand ours. Staying in the moment with them and giving them what they need rather than expecting them to make us happy means more to any horse than the tastiest carrots or the prettiest bridle.
When they see and feel that you are there for them, not just there for you, they drop their resistance and, in their amazing forgiveness, happily oblige our wildest imaginings.