Small victories
An ordinary ride is a mark of progress for a mare and her owner.
Ioften try to combine my riding with other chores, such as exercising the dog or running an errand. So when I realized this morning that I needed some sausages from the butcher, I decided to fit my saddlebags and ride the couple of miles to the village shops. It does my Quarter Horse/ Appaloosa mare, Casey, good to see village life. We live “out in the sticks” here in rural north Wales, and she never sees a bus, an umbrella or a road marking unless we head down to the village.
There’s nowhere to tie her up outside the butcher’s so I have to dismount and pop my head in through the door and ask for what I want. The butcher and the other customers never fail to be amused by the spectacle of someone doing a spot of shopping on horseback. Animals are great icebreakers. It’s funny how people we don’t know will talk to us when we have an animal. As I’m waiting for the butcher to bag my sausages and bring them out, a man walks right up to Casey and asks, “So what’s your name then?” She greets him like a sport.
At the post office I leave Casey tied up outside. Her new endurance bridle, with clip-on rope reins, is proving very handy for shopping. I hear the bus roar by as I’m at the counter buying stamps, and I glance around quickly to check on Casey, but she’s all right. Just relaxed and waiting patiently for me.
Heading toward home I’m feeling quite chirpy; I’ve had a nice ride, chatted with some familiar and unfamiliar faces, and done errands that would otherwise involve using the car. So I start to whistle “Rose of Alabamy,” which goes nicely with Casey’s cool little jog. Then a man steps out of his front gate, taking his dog for a walk, and gives Casey a little start.“Oh, hullo,” I say. “I didn’t see you there.”
He laughs. “Whistling like that you remind me of John Wayne!”
As a 43-year-old woman, I should probably take being compared to Rooster Cogburn as something akin to an insult, but I don’t. I’m smiling as we trot steadily through the streets toward the big hill home, with Casey keeping time to my whistles with her smooth, rhythmic jog.
Today’s ride might not seem like anything special---I’ve traveled this route hundreds of times before. But today I really came to appreciate just how far this mare of mine has come over the past two years. Casey has been a bit of a madam in the past, and before she came to me she had been sold regularly, sometimes after as little as six months. She was opinionated, bossy and mareish as well as distrustful and cautious. And when I first owned her, she would stop dead, refusing to enter the village, and try to turn for home. Failing that, she would reverse at great speed.
After checking the tack and her back, I decided the only way was to outstubborn her, and for many weeks we went every other day, and she would dance around, refuse to move, shy at all manner of things, and generally make the ride as unpleasant as possible.
A mixture of carrots, some nifty reverse turns and dogged determination not to have a horse that refuses to go certain places has meant that finally we can now go to the village with very little ado. This might seem like a small achievement, but to me it is a huge step.
There’s no magic wand, is there? Just persistence.