I wasn’t looking for a new horse. That’s typically the lie those of us afflicted with equine compulsion malady tell ourselves as we casually keep an eye on “what’s out there”. In this moment though, it genuinely was the furthest thing from my mind. And my heart.
I’d been struggling emotionally to come to terms with the loss of my beloved mare, while watching the herd dynamics unravel, causing ulcers in at least one of its remaining members. It felt like two separate deaths. That of my mare, and that of the herd I had known. While they sorted things out amongst themselves – as horses do – I tried hard to not take everything so personally.
And then one afternoon I had a call with one of my oldest and dearest friends. She happens to be the one who gave me this equine affliction decades ago. I wanted to tell her the story of “that day” everything changed. I wanted to cry with her. And then I wanted to hear the good news of her newest horse. How exciting it must be to have this new adventure!
And so I shared. And we cried. And she shared. And we cried.
Under an avalanche of specific circumstances, her new adventure was unraveling before her. So here we were with our loose threads and broken hearts. A herd of mares in mourning and a sweet gelding who needed a home.
Who suggested the healing balm of connecting her gelding with my mares I don’t recall. It’s inconsequential really. Because it was so blindingly apparent that this was the solution. In that moment of conversation the constellations spun ever so slightly to align the stars for all of us.
The horse who would be named Galileo, by way of a litany of whispers from the universe, arrived late into the night on my 44th birthday. The story of his journey must be saved for another post. Perhaps an entire book. It was…. something.
But he was here. And his merger into the herd was extraordinarily anticlimactic. The fireworks I was so accustomed to when introducing a new horse to the herd, absolutely fizzled.
He is a baby horse who spent an inordinate amount of time on a trailer to arrive in a new place several hundred miles away, so of course he was a bit skittish. The novelty of chickens, sheep, ducks, and goats were trial by fire. However, in true gelding fashion, he managed to pacify a herd of mares while still being spooked by his own shadow.
For a month I asked nothing of him. I simply observed him as part of the herd. And the immediacy of his soothing and reunifying of the herd was astounding really.
Leo is just 5 years old. The same age my lost mare was when we found each other. And I remember forecasting how old I would be when she passed. How long we would have together. How delightfully charming the friendship of us two old gray mares would be. If I learned anything in recent months, it’s that time isn’t always a kind friend. And fantasies of growing old together would be better served as imagining growing together.
When not working with a trainer who shows up at my farm weekly with expectations of me, I struggle to maintain consistency. But that is the one thing I really wanted to offer this horse. We may not have much time or direction, but I promise to be a consistent presence in his life in an effort to build trust and connection with him.
In lue of a trainer appearing in my barn weekly, I have who I consider to be one of the best trainers in the world showing up on my computer weekly. I have long adored Anna Blake for both her riding and writing. Though, there’s not that much riding actually. In fact she’s likely the most painfully boring clinician to watch as she breathes, and waits, and waits, and breathes, with the horses she works with. An approach I can get behind.
It’s my commitment mainly to Leo, but also to my friend, to document our time together. To hold me accountable to following through on my promise. To keeping her connection with him alive.
The story of how a displaced gelding and a time-constrained horsewoman went from untrusting strangers in a pasture, to cosmically connected companions (my optimistic fantasy must have somewhere to go!) is just beginning. There have already been missteps, regrets, and moments of such flow I felt high.
If you’d like to follow along, you can find Leo’s Training Diary here. Our time together will rarely be of great length, so I’m able to share these diary entries in segments of (hopefully) less than 5 minutes.
So come and breathe with us. And wait. We may not have forever, but we have all the time in the world.
To learn from Anna, you can join her Barn School and gain access to several courses, Calming Signals being foundational to her work.
