My heart always speeds up a beat, even now after 41 years of working horses, as I slide my foot into the stirrup and wonder what this particular ride will bring.
It’s always different.
Sometimes it’s with a young horse, green and unbalanced and needing slow training to build up muscles and his mind. Sometimes in the past it was butterfly sensations at the start of the cross-country phase of horse trials, seeking perfection. Not in the sense of being perfect but, as I realize now in sports psychology speak, hitting “the zone” where you and the horse became one unit, almost unthinking in partnership, so perfectly in tune with each other that to the observer the rider becomes literally invisible.
For me the partnership was always the important part, be it competing over jumps, or roping cows, or powering up mountains on pine-scented trails.
And it was always a working affair. It might mean going around in circles to develop those muscles, but I wanted somewhere, ultimately, to use them.
Vern McLeod, who team ropes and runs roping clinics in Grand Valley, had similar views.
“I grew up with horses,” he explained. “Workhorses, racehorses, ranch horses. My folks homesteaded and helped build the railways. Horses were just part of your life. These days when I’m working with them it’s the connection, getting it, them getting it, that’s the challenge.”
Horses, it seems, have always bewitched, worked, been there for humans in time of war, peace and travel. Their species drew me in from the time I stood next to a tired old mare. I was 11-years-old and learning to ride.
Monika, an angular bony bay, was three times my age. Years later I realized her canter’s suspension factor was long gone — she was arthritic.
While waiting one day, I remember being enveloped in a golden glow that seemed to encircle just the two of us. Timeless, peaceful. Time, literally, seemed to stand still and those minutes still resonate with crystal clear clarity all these years on.
I remember hearing in the distance the three-time hoofbeats on the thick peat, the white shirt I was wearing, a smudge on one sleeve.
That day, standing by that tired mare not long for this world, I remember her calmly turning her head and a dark limpid eye watching me. I leaned against the sloped shoulder, both of us somehow sharing knowledge that soon she would be gone, a horse ancestor by week’s end and yet somehow both of us accepting.
“I gave you my best canter,” she was telling me.
“I know,” I said internally, slowly, so somehow she could understand. The eye blinked, she sighed and the ears drooped, relaxing.
I was hooked forever.
Horses, though, mean many things to many people. For end-of-year thoughts as to why, I started asking around.
I ran into reining supremo and trainer Clay Webster, newly located at what used to be Bob Grimshaw’s training centre in Springbank and already with a stackful of plans for 2005.
I asked Webster what had taken him on his particular path with horses and his spectacled gaze sharpened.
“Pharlap,” he said without hesitation, “Pharlap.”
I blinked, not comprehending, blank.
“Pharlap was the Australian version of Seabiscuit,” he said. “When I was 17, I watched the film, and how the trainer’s assisttant used horse psychology and that changed the whole way I wanted to work with horses and people.”
Pharlap was almost a mirror Antipodean image of Seabiscuit and equally lazy and cantankerous. A rangy 17.1 red-coloured gelding, his list of successes was spectacular during the Depression, garnering 37 firsts in 51 starts. During one incredible four-day meet he won each day before heading to Mexico and the major $100,000 Agua Caliente Handicap which he won despite overwhelming odds.
He died shortly afterwards, believed poisoned by gangsters.
“Pharlap!” exclaimed instructor and judge Janice Gagnon as our vehicles crossed paths on Horse Creek.
I began to feel a little out of the loop and a mite disgruntled at seemingly being the only horse person in the Cochrane area unaware of this mighty horse.
“I need time to think on your question,” she said, eyes narrowing.
That night I picked up the phone and we continued the conversation.
“My family travelled all over the country,” she said. “Horses were the one constant in my life, they were always there. Friends and places changed but there were always horses.”
I sought another female viewpoint. I e-mailed professional development coach and certified level three rider Terri Fisher, who’s facilitating spring clinics with international speaker Kathy Pike.
“Horses have,” Fisher replied, “shown me the way to freedom, they are raw power . . . yet I have had moments when the horse is so soft they disappear and give you that magic carpet ride. A companion, and many moments of truth; they allow me to take a hard look at myself and what it is that I am really about. They become my meditation and allow time to expand.”
Wow.
Sandra Donnelly, of Alborak Stables, currently working towards a place at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, generously took time to think on the question despite a horrendously hectic schedule and an appalling case of flu. She zeroed in on her potential Olympics mount, Willow.
“She’s small and in North America, unlike Europe, bigger is better; no one else would buy her,” she said realistically, with trademark humour shining through. “She’s great over show jumps, a nightmare in the dressage and has probably given me the best moments of my life cross-country.”
Dave Richards, of Saddle Peak Outfitting, also paid tribute to an individual horse. I’d asked what was the best bit of back-country riding and the silence was so long I thought I’d offended him. He was looking for a particular photograph. It showed a line of riders in brilliant midsummer sunshine, their smiles ran from ear-to-ear and the mountain backdrop was spectacular. They were atop Black Rock in Ghost country.
“That’s the best part of the business,” he drawled, “but this was my one good horse. My dad always said if you had one of those in your lifetime you were lucky.”
An avalanche of photographs of Big Bud, a palomino, sluiced across the table. I looked up to the walls of Richard’s log house, where posters of Roy Rogers, atop a rearing Trigger, beamed down. I glanced at Dave, he looked at me, and I realized, when he recalled a moment at the Calgary Stampede meeting the great man, that Rogers had left quite a legacy on someone’s mind.
And that’s what horses do for you.
Pam Asheton lives northwest of Cochrane. She can be contacted at Sunwired@hotmail.com.
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