“Let me fall if I must fall. The one I will become will catch me.” — Baal Shem Tov
Day 1 — After fifteen hours of trailering over the weekend, #7184 deserves some time to decompress, so I do nothing but sit in the round pen with him, slowly increasing my proximity. Twice, he lies down to roll in the snow with me nearby! After dark, I get the closest to him yet –under 10 ft away!– as I’m inching towards his hay pile. He keeps one eye trained on me. He has two significant notches on his face, the fur stripped clean off either side of his muzzle. If I make any sudden movements, he will explode in the opposite direction. His lead rope fell off during transit and I cannot lasso him, so I have no hold on him until I can reattach the rope to his halter.
Day 2 — Turns out its harder to shovel manure when it’s frozen solid to the ground, ha.
I think it’s miraculous how the human body gradually adapts to the cold; I now find 20 degree days warm while 30 degree days, if the sun is shining brightly, can call for shorts! Normally, I am wearing four layers, including my balaclava.
#7184 goes down for another roll in the snow shortly after I come by in the morning. I move his hay to the edge of the round pen so he has to come towards me to eat. He is far more comfortable with me on the other side of the bars. I put grain, mixed with hay, in a trough for him. He is reluctant to eat it.
I am a bit hesitant about the fact that he was a stallion just two months ago. I wonder if some of that testosterone, which can make a stallion so ferocious, could still be in his system.
Video Of #7184 Under A Winter Sun
Day 3 — #7184 eats out of my hand for the first time!! Sort of.
He does so hesitantly, with his head snaked as far forward as it can possibly go and my arm equally extended through the bars of the round pen. All the while, I feed another horse beside me whose presence puts #7184 at ease.
I get a good look at his split mane today; I like it. I plan to keep it that way. It covers his BLM brand, so I can only see traces of it when he’s in movement.
He readily comes up to investigate a tarp I place on the bars of the round pen by his hay. He has accepted grain. I was worried about him being skittish of the sled I use to collect his manure since it makes an absolute racket as it scrapes along the ground, but he is surprisingly good with it! He doesn’t want it charging towards him or coming within 10 ft, but he isn’t skittering to get away from it just because it’s present in the round pen. I decide to try bringing his daily grain bowl in with the sled to see if I can spark his curiosity and it seems to work.
He cautiously, but pointedly, follows the sled to investigate it.
Video Of #7184 Eating Out Of My Hand For The First Time
Day 4 — It rains relentlessly. I get soaked for 5-6 hours, determined to bridge the gap between #7184 and I. We work on a lot of approach and retreat. My timing is poor. Sometimes I put too much pressure on him. Other times, not nearly enough. I give in too fast, too slow. I’m afraid to push. I fall into the common pitfall of second guessing how to proceed, how to read and respond to his body language and end up missing my moment(s) entirely.
People will scoff at this, and I don’t care. This is what it means to be a beginner. There’s no other way to cut it. “Good decisions come from experience, and experience comes from bad decisions,” as they say.
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Our progress is hard fought … and hardly there.
Day 5 — Due to the rain yesterday, the entire property is a sheet of ice this morning. I have to carve a path to the round pen with sawdust then knock the frozen gate latch loose. I wear cleats on my shoes. I cannot risk having #7184 slip and injure himself severely, so he can’t be provoked into a burst of speed. This severely limits what we can do safely since everything makes him want to run.
Read MoreWe’re still crawling towards something that feels like progress.
Video Of #7184 Getting Desensitized to the Carrot Stick
Day 6-7 — One thing that bothers me about #7184, which I am a bit embarrassed to admit, is his eyes. It doesn’t help that others around me are reinforcing this. I can tell they are cautious of the look he gives off, too. Many horseman are superstitious about eyes. As stupid as that may be, it’s rubbing off on me. #7184’s eyes are not wide and round and kind. There’s a slant to his brow that makes them more narrow and almond-shaped. Cold and steely. He reminds me of a bird of prey, a raptor with the look of eagles in his eyes.
I wonder if an eye can ever change. I wonder if I can grow to see his eyes differently. On our seventh day, I go to bed feeling uncharacteristically depressed, having made little to no progress. It’s been a week and I still can’t touch my horse. I confess in my journal, “I want to give up.”
Day 8 — Every day it’s like I have to start from square one, in some way, with #7184.
When I enter the round pen, we have to reestablish that, hey, it’s me, and you’ve seen me before, and no, you don’t have to take off because I’m 5 ft away. I struggle to have the patience to do long sessions together and tend to split our time into multiple rapid fire ones. On our second session, I swing the carrot stick over his head and he remains in front of me, remarkably calm and engaged with me. No flinching! On the third, I make contact with his wither for the first time with the tip of the carrot stick! He is terrified, a ball of nerves on the edge of bursting, but he doesn’t move. After just two or three seconds, I pull the carrot stick away and leave the round pen, giddy.
I learn that he is scared of the expectation of touch more than the touch itself.
It’s when the carrot stick is hovering a few inches away from his fur, narrowing in, that he is the most wide-eyed and wired, threatening to make the greatest break for it. Once the stick connects, there is a noticeable change in the atmosphere. He always acts like he’s on the edge of a cliff, resisting the urge to flee the longer I’m in his bubble, but I can also begin to see the cogs in his brain turning. He’s registering that when the stick touches him, it’s not biting him.
After a few tries, I manage to touch him with the carrot stick without him flinching away in anticipation first. Then, I start working my hand along the carrot stick, shimmying it slowly up the shaft. I must lead with the carrot stick. If I extended my arm forward by itself, I would lose him. I do this until my hand, poised above the tip of the carrot stick, can rest over his withers. After I repeat this a few times, I try reaching my hand out, unaccompanied by the carrot stick, and I’m able to. I pet him with my bare knuckles. I could cry in joy. I’ve spent over 20 hours trying to touch him, and I have finally done it!
He lets me stroke him with my fingers, if only for a second, without leaving me. He lets me be the first person to touch him voluntary.
Read MoreAs optimistic as I try to be, the reality is that I am not sure that #7184 is the right horse for me. It’s impossible to know this early on. And as colorful as my dreams may be, I don’t want to shoehorn him into a role that he can’t fill. I can’t. Removing his tag is very symbolic for me; I want it to coincide with the recognition that he IS my partner. If he will be. This is why he is nameless, too. This is why I staunchly refer to him as #7184. I know what I will name my road horse, but I don’t want to give him my name until I’m sure.
If things don’t work out between us, I would want his true partner, whoever that may be, to have the honor of giving him his first name.
So, for now, he is #7184, and a green cattle tag remains around his neck, stating the same.
Video Of #7184 Being Touched For The First Time (w/ the carrot stick!)
Video Of #7184 Being Touched For The First Time (w/ my hand!!)*
*confession time: this statement is a lie! Technically, this is my third or fourth time touching him. Sorry for the click bait title, but I made the critical, numskull mistake of pressing “stop” on my iPhone camera when I thought I was pressing “play,” capturing absolutely none of the true “first” touch!
Day 9-11 — Now that a rope anchors me to #7184, I can begin teaching him how to lead! I am excited about this because it feels possible.
I fully comb out his mane with my new florescent green curry comb. After struggling to untangle his massive dreads, I take my pocket knife to them. (A fellow boarder at the barn is horrified by this.) I am amazed to see that there are white and blonde hairs interlacing his mane! They are invisible from a distance. Even up close, they are small and scattered and hard to distinguish until the sun lights them up, but WOW! They are gorgeous!! And here I thought he was a “plain” ol’ red horse.
I bring a separate lead rope into the round pen and practice approaching him with it, mimicking the action of taking it on and off. He is scared of my hand being under his chin where it’s unseen, and he struggles with the clicking sound the bull snap makes.
One morning when I go to approach #7184, he backs against the walls of the round pen, cocking his rear legs in fear. Reset. It feels like I’m chipping away at a block of ice. I’m getting through it, yes, but achingly slow. I wish the ice would just melt.
Normally when I pet #7184’s face, he has a stony demeanor. Like he can’t bare to admit that it feels good, even if it does. His eyes often say “I hope you die in your sleep.” His poker face has been impenetrable …. until now. His armor drops long enough for me to see a flash of enjoyment in his face when I stroke his check, right beneath the hollow of his eye, where his halter rests. It suddenly clicks as to why this is: his halter is itchy. He nudges me to pet his face more.
Later, he will act like this never happened, but I remember.
Video Of #7184’s Mane Being Groomed
Video Of #7184 Investigating The Tarp
Video Of #7184 Having His Hind End Touched For The First Time (w/ the carrot stick)
Day 12 — I go into the round pen with #7184 and attempt to lunge him for the first time. I pick up his lead rope, tie an extension piece to it, then point my carrot stick in the direction I want him to go. I drive him forward too sloppily, I recognize this as I’m doing it. Confused, he does a few laps around the round pen while I stand in the middle, tracking him with my eyes while pivoting in place. I then back up, curious to see how he will respond.
He stops, his body parallel to the bars of the round pen and his head tilting in my direction.
Good. I like that.
I don’t expect him to face me outright.
After a few seconds of release, I send him in the other direction.
#7184 loses his mind. There is no other way to describe it. He goes insane, launching into a full blown, frenzied gallop, a gait he’s never shown before, while snorting at the top of his lungs like a velociraptor.
Things go from 0 to 100 in a millisecond and I am paralyzed with uncertainty on what to do. I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to leave the round pen and reinforce his behavior by making him think it worked in getting rid of me, but the longer I stand in place, the worse he acts. He runs and runs and runs in circles as I stand there trying to hold my ground. He snorts-like a shrill scream-again and again. He cuts towards me as if to charge then seems to change his mind and gallop on. He kicks out while still along the rim of the round pen. His movement’s too fast for me to register. Then he does it again, closer this time, and I know I must do something about the threat so I take a step in his direction with a panicked “HEY!” and lift my arms up to ward him off. He keeps running, escalating. He won’t stop screeching, and my head is spinning, and I’m realizing it’s not a matter of if he will attack me but when, and when he does, I’m going to fold. And that would be worse than retreating.
So I leave the round pen.
I sit on a stool outside of it, considering #7184 through the safety of the metal bars, and I wait for the next attack that will come. Not from the wild mustang before me, but from the my host who was no doubt been watching this scene unfold from her kitchen window. She will emerge at any moment to begin her own rampage, filled with expletive laced barbs and disparaging taunts. “You are an IDIOT!! are going to RUIN HIM!!”
I would almost be better off staying in the round pen with #7184.
Video Of #7184 Letting Loose In The Snow
Day 13 — I thought I would sleep off my angst, but I don’t. I have a dream overnight, replaying what happened. Except in this version, #7184 charges me head on, rearing up as I fall backwards in my attempt to flee. When I wake up in the morning, my stomach immediately aches. I am badly shaken. It feels like a line was crossed that never should have been in more ways than one, and I don’t know if we can come back from it. I don’t know if I can come back. My confidence has been crushed. Trust, lost.
I return to #7184’s side for only a few minutes today to see where we stand. He lets me approach and pet his right hand side, but he seems far more withdrawn than engaged. I message a local horse trainer who agrees to have #7184 in their program when a spot opens up.
“Could be tomorrow, could be three weeks from now.”
Day 14-16 — No progress, no regression. I am more tentative with #7184 than before, in a way that does neither of us good. When he takes treats out of my hand, he is awkward about it. Like he can’t figure out how it’s done. A silly thing, but it makes me laugh. I turn to Facebook to read about other people’s experiences with their mustangs, and it brings me solace:
“I’ve had my main horse almost 2 years and he just recently started trusting me fully a few months ago. He was so skittish and would blow up over every little thing. Everyone told me to sell him, told me I was insane for holding out hope, but he is now the best behaved and most willing horse. Some horses, like people, will trust whoever they meet, and some will make you earn that trust. Rome wasn’t built in a day!”
“It took ten months to get to trail riding. And that was with 1-4 hours every single day for 9 months. Don’t give up!”
“My girl literally threw herself into a wooden fence and double barreled me in the back without provocation. Some of these horses have been through so much they don’t know how to be gentle. It took me a better part of a year to get to a point where I actually trust her and she trusts me. You aren’t alone with struggling. Despite how much social media will try to tell you otherwise, sometimes these mustangs aren’t always sunshine and rainbows and instant love right away.”
“I had one who took less than day for touching, I had one that took three months before I could get the tag and even then she wasn’t entirely comfortable. Another one took 30 days to touch, but by day 60 I was riding him. They’re all individuals!”
Video Of #7184 Engaging With Me Through The Bars
Day 17 — I decide that I’m going to sleep beside #7184.
I have been telling myself that I would for a few days now, but the weather has been too poor for me to have the courage to commit to the idea. Tonight, I have no excuse. It’s in the mid 40’s, dream weather. It’s easy for me to get disillusioned by the trappings of comfort. Of having a bed, a roof, and four walls surrounding me. It’s difficult to push myself to leave that setting, but when I do, when I get OUT and step into the fresh air, it helps settle my head. It helps remind me that comfort is so often a false stability. Comfort does not inspire action, adventure. Growth.
God, I missed sleeping under the stars.
I lie in my sleeping bag beside the round pen. #7184 is beside me, softly munching on his hay. Someone may come up to the barn, hollering at me for lacking sense to be camping outside in February, but I don’t care. I feel a quiet contentment. I feel like I have come back to myself, however briefly. I know the moment won’t last, that it’s fragile. I’m not sure if #7184 will ever allow me to get close to him. Maybe I will always be kept an arms length away, but I’m suddenly stricken by the thought of giving up on him. I’ve considered abandoning him in my darkest moments and that … is a cowardly thing.
The moon, almost full, slips in and out of shadowy clouds. I regret having never spent a night sleeping beside my horse before. This feels right, more than anything else has all month.
I wake up at 2 a.m. to glance over at #7184 and see he is lying right next to me in his bed of hay, close enough to touch through the bars, if only I reached out.
Day 18 — It’s miserably rainy. I enter the round pen only to muck it.
Day 19 — I start a part time job mucking stalls at the training stable where #7184 may be boarded shortly.
I didn’t think it would be feasible to work there until the owner put me in touch with another employee who I could carpool with. I spend 8 hours cleaning 22 stalls. It’s grunt work, exhausting and straining and I’m painfully slow at it. I knew I would be at first. It’s why I’m glad I’m being paid $50/day rather than by the hour. I am a slow learner, and I don’t deserve to be compensated more for that. I appreciate that there is not a serious time constraint with the job, that I’m not penalized for my ineptitude or, worse, forced to rush.
Still, I try to get through the stalls as readily as possible, and it takes me 8 hours. From what I can figure, it’s meant to take 3-5. I’m a little disappointed in this but not discouraged. I will get better over time and, if I don’t, then it’s not the right position for me to be in. Simple. At the end of my shift, my boss teases “are you ready to quit yet? Better to know sooner than later with people.”
“Not yet,” I reply with a terse laugh.
She then tells me, point blank, that if my horse is going to be brought here, I need to be actively involved in his training. That’s a condition of taking him on. I blink, startled by her admission, because she’s saying this as if she thinks she has to convince me of it. When the reality is, that has always been my condition, too. I wouldn’t agree to have him at the training facility if I were forced to be hands off, to sit back and watch his development without ever being allowed to play a part in it. I don’t want that at all. I want to be with #7184 every step of the way, learning and growing as one.
I’m not sure she’s convinced.
Day 20-26 — #7184 is incredibly engaged with me when I enter the round pen one day. It might have something to do with the apples snacks he suspects I have in my pocket. He’s taken well to them. On a poorer note, a hook on his breakaway halter has snapped overnight. That’s designed to happen in the event of an emergency; “better to break your halter than break your horse” is the philosophy of it. Still. The strap now hangs limply on his face. The entire thing is liable to fall off at any moment. Luckily, Gavin happens to be visiting and generously offers to do a session with #7184. By the end of it, he is able to switch out #7184’s old nylon halter for a rope one.
My mood peaks and plummets throughout the week.
I will have a rush of elation when I am in #7184’s presence, the inexplicable feeling that, yes, he is my horse, but then it drops off the next second. When I am away from him, I am at my lowest. Yet, ironically, it’s this low that discourages me from seeking him out more. I think part of my problem is that I have taken his outburst the other day too personally.
He threatened to attack me. I am still shaken up by it.
Yet it does no good to make it into something bigger than it was. I can’t keep berating myself about my mistakes, either. I need to learn to forgive the both of us if we are going to have a chance together.
It will be a long time until I can.
Day 27 — I introduce a ribbon stick to #7184. He does remarkably well with it, even when the tendrils of ribbon fall over his face. When the opposite is true, and he jerks away while I’m holding fast to his lead rope, I receive a nasty rope burn for my troubles.
#7184’s forehead is quickly becoming a sweet, safe point of contact for him. I touch it with my hand any chance I get.
Today, I have been given permission to lead him out of the round pen for the very first time. A row of objects — a tractor, a tarp, and multiple barrels — are erected between the gate of the round pen and the barn, so if he breaks away from me, he is unlikely to escape altogether. An extension piece is added to his lead rope, too.
When I open the gate and step out, he is hesitant to follow me. I have been told this first step is often the hardest. He tries to back up hastily enough that I’m forced to return into the round pen with him before trying again.
We take it one step at a time.
Literally.
I apply pressure to his halter, and he gives, one foot reluctantly lifting forward. He stops. He starts again. At one point, he blanches at the sight of his reflection in the aluminum trailer beside us. He has a peculiar look on his face, I can’t quite place it.
This process repeats for five minutes until he enters the barn and I am able to soft tie him for the first time. He is fed his daily grain here before being placed in an indoor stable for the night.
Tomorrow morning, it will take 20 minutes to convince him to leave this stall because he is so terrified of the concrete flooring of the barn, but tonight, I think of how he looked at me when I was leading him into the barn, and I realize that he was looking at me for guidance the entire time, as if he were searching in my eyes for what could save him.
Video Of #7184 Being Too Scared To Leave His Stall
The Day It Doesn’t Matter — because, at last, my host and I have a falling out.
There is a backstory to this, an obvious “Why, Gin?” but it does no good to go into detail. The short story is that I was living with a single older woman with a crippling inability to self-reflect or to take accountability for herself, to disastrous ends. “You will learn, Gin, as my ex-husband did, that I am always right,” she sneered at me in my last week there, around the same time she went off her medication, or “crazy pills,” as she affectionately called them.
She reminded me of a drowning victim, desperate to grab onto whoever is nearest to her and drag them underwater in a futile attempt to save herself. The more her mood declined, the more she looked outward for someone to blame. The more she needed an enemy to destroy. And I, being the closest to her and the weakest in her social circle (in her eyes), made for an easy target. It was clear she saw degrading me-insulting me, threatening me, shoving me in the round pen, once- as what would make her feel better. She didn’t want peace, she wanted to be right. Right in her anger, right in her treatment of me. Her son once asked her “why do you blow up like this?” and she confided in me what she had once told him. Quietly, she said, “because I’m always in pain.”
I should have seen the red flags for what they were. She had a string of burned bridges in her past, others who fell out of her favor in the exact same way but, sadly, I didn’t in time.
It is a troubling thing to reflect on, because it is easy to remember how monstrously she treated me in my last two weeks there, but I am trying to have the grace to remember the good, too, on how she was before she lost her mind, the person I know she desperately wants to be, but I’m not sure she ever will, unless she realizes that hating others will never rid you of your self hatred.
Video Of #7184 And Me Saying Goodbye (briefly)
March 9th, 2022,
I sit in a motel room in central Pennsylvania, listening to everyone tell me to go home.
It’s my first time being homeless.
Well, sort of.
I gorge myself on microwaveable food. I stare at walls. I flip through TV channels.
Defeated. Up against monstrous circumstances.
I’ve been here before, haven’t I?
The walls were just different.
I must weigh my options.
The brakes on my bike, my only mode of transportation, are broken. When I was riding down a bunny hill a few weeks ago, they suddenly gave way, and I went over my handlebars. After covering 5,000+ miles on my bike last year, this singular crash has decimated my confidence in bicycling. Until I can visit a mechanic, I’ve been using my feet as makeshift brakes, but I can’t abruptly plant them at high speeds, which means my feet have to continuously drag on the ground like an anchor to avoid gaining traction downhill. My first order of business will have to be getting this fixed.
It’s too expensive to stay in a motel. I cannot afford to for more than a few days. There is one homeless shelter in town. It’s full. The other burned down last year. I’ve aged out of the youth shelter; I may be able to pass for 16 but my ID will say otherwise. City streets aren’t safe for sleeping.
No one believes in me.
But I do.
I smile at myself, humorlessly. I do, and I like a good story.
Maybe that’s true.
“Go home” the world says, where a bed is promised.
A bed, and what else? I’ve missed the cutoff to enroll in school for the spring semester, so what does that leave me with? Another job at a fast food joint or a grocery chain? Working at those places is like drowning in place to me. It’s not that I think I’m above that work, it’s that I’m not cut out for it. I’m too soft.
Yet if I stay here, I will have to stand alone.
I’m always alone. That thought steals into my head uninvited, bringing with it a current of pain. I wallow in it, then I try to shake it off, to convince myself: I am alone, but I don’t have to feel alone. (Do I?) I can carry a presence beyond myself. I did during my walk across America. (Didn’t I?) I crossed the country solo then, and never once did I feel lonely, lacking resolve. In fact, I would often have to remind myself that there was no one beside me — despite how much I personified my stroller, Faith — and, each time, it would shock me. It would make me laugh, incredulously.
So I have that going for me, I guess. What would you call that? The ability to pretend?
#7184 feels so faraway, even when we are separated by a few feet and not miles. I can’t see him. We’re approaching the 40 day mark, and I can hardly touch him. He is still flighty, frantic. Unpredictable. Dangerous. He is scared of me. I am scared of him, and I’m quietly suffocating in the guilt of that. I have no idea who he really is underneath the fear, what his true personality will reveal. He is indiscernible. He could be anyone.
He could be anyone, but can he be mine?
I don’t know. Maybe I should run away from it all. That’s what everyone expects me to do. It’s not too late to find another horse.
If I throw more money at #7184 by working with an instructor, and he ends up being a waste of time, that’s it. I can’t afford to buy another horse. I would be digging a hole for myself I can’t get out of.
Sigh.
TO BE CONTINUED