Books with Spirit – Joyfulness between horses and people

Continued from the blog…

There were aspects of great joy when we were working out the stuff that eventually became Bobby’s Diaries.   But I am looking back now and realising that he was not a joyful horse in every aspect of what we were doing and that’s what he wanted me to understand when he was telling me to “Ride Matt”. 

 

So when he is being generous, when he is telling me that he is prepared to put up with something – no longer is that good enough for me.  I want it in his comfort zone at the very least.  And I would really like him to be joyful about almost everything.

 

I took a break from writing this article and I’ve just come in from doing morning feeds and here’s another aspect on the same topic.  Gee, what another coincidence that my horses should raise another aspect of the same topic while I’m actually writing this article!

 

About a couple of weeks ago, we had three horses injure themselves within a couple of days, all on separate occasions.  I was seriously wondering what the heck was going on.  Sunny got a bunch of cuts and gashes that varied from just through the skin to a couple that were quite deep and all of them were painful.  It looked like she had been fighting her way out of a blackberry bush.  Bobby had a cut in a nasty spot above the heel where it can be difficult to heal.  And Boots was walking around on three legs with something (a bit of wood maybe) that we had to poultice out of his coronet band.

 

We’ve been haltering each horse and dressing the wounds.  And they have all been generously standing pretty well for the treatment.   I’ve been dressing Sunny and Bobby with Tuffrock poultice – brilliant stuff.  You work it into a soft paste and just slap it on.  It gives excellent results for a very small amount of work.  Email me if you are interested in where to get it.

 

All three horses have been generous about having this stuff wiped onto their wounds all week, but yesterday Bobby stamped his foot down in a bit of a temper after I had finished putting the Tuffrock on.  I understood him then and got the message even bigger this morning.  I had to get the wound dressings into their comfort zone – not just have them generously putting up with it.

 

I noticed that Sunny had a tendency to want to fight me when I was putting the Tuffrock on a couple of sensitive places right up in her groin.  A couple of times she even startled me with the thought that she might kick me.  But when I asked her to move when she was Not Quite Right, instead of asking her to stand still and have her wounds dressed, just because that was what I wanted, she came quite quickly to a very relaxed and comfortable place about having the wounds in her groin dressed.  And she was at liberty, completely loose and free in the paddock while I was working.   I was happy with that result – her being relaxed and in her comfort zone.  I think joyfulness about wound dressing is a bit much to ask for!

 

If my book editor saw this article, he would have picked on that last paragraph and gone nuts about me hiding a very big concept away in a little paragraph.

 

Go over that again.  Getting Sunny to move instead of stand still when she was unhappy with what I was doing, took the fight right out of her – even though standing still to dress her wounds was what I was needed her to do eventually.   And it was about moving her and saying “come on baby, you are allowed to walk off whenever this gets too uncomfortable and I’ll even walk alongside you feeling warm and fuzzy about it.” (I was mirroring her when she walked off.)    Think about that for a minute….  It’s seriously big…..

 

Getting Bobby to move, instead of stand still when he was unhappy, brought the comfort zone to him as well, in about 20 seconds, even though standing still was what I eventually wanted.

 

Important note:  I always asked the horses to stand still while I worked on their wounds.  First I gave them a clear picture of them standing still while I dressed their wounds, then I physically asked them to stand still while I dressed their wounds.  They were clear about what I wanted.  But with both Bobby and Sunny, when they got uncomfortable, movement and me being happy about that movement, was what brought them back into their comfort zone.

 

If you haven’t read Zen Connection with Horses yet and are interested to know what this Not Quite Right is all about, how you can deepen your connection with your horse and how you can hear them tell you what they need, in order for them to give you what you want, then click here for more information about the book.

 

Cheers,  Jenny