Horse Mentorship Program
Horse Sense
by Kim Zanti
The Master sees things as they are, without trying to control them. Letting them go their own way, and resides at the center of the circle. ~ TAO
I’ve done it before. I’ve persuaded a horse to come to me, so I could pet its velvety nose. But it wasn’t really me that was so persuasive. It was the carrot in my hand. I’ve even worked for ten years with a Western art organization that exhibits saddles, headstalls, bits, spurs. But I’ve never had a relationship with a horse. Sara Vaughan, director of the Silver Horse Healing Ranch in Topanga, is teaching me how to start.
I begin with the ranch’s namesake. Although his coat is white and he was bred as a stallion, he doesn’t resemble the Lone Ranger’s famous mount. He is an 800 lb., 25 year-old Arab gelding that has the mystic character of a unicorn.
My task is to ask Silver to move from the corral fence and come to me in the middle of the working pen. Vaughan explains that intention is key. I stand on a circular piece of plywood bolted on a sideways tire. I hold in my hand a blue, flexible crop with nylon rope streaming from the tip. The question is: how do I make my intention known?
I have to do three things.
First, I have to heighten my presence. Next, I have to project that energy across the pen. Then, I have to release every last dust ball of expectation from my body. Silver understands what I want, but needs to respond on his own terms.
I slowly wave the crop over my head–just a couple of times–relax my shoulders, soften my posture and make low nickering sounds. After a few long minutes, with ears pointed like precisely tuned scanners and eyes focused on me, Silver walks over and stands by my side.
Vaughan joins us, smiling. I shake my head, surprised by the simplicity of this exchange and by how hard it was to calm myself enough for it to happen. I’m also embarrassed by my first, fumbling attempts at making noise to get his attention, like speaking louder to a foreigner to help them understand the language.
***
This was the first of eight, two-hour sessions in the ranch’s Horse Mentorship Program. What started as barter—I’d write a grant for the ranch in exchange for taking the program—deepened into a personal journey.
My guides were Silver, Jackie, Ruby, Diva, Hank and Laydee Lucille LeDon. Ranging in age from 5 to 25, they have all come to the ranch as ‘rescues,’ horses that have outgrown their usefulness, or whose owners were no longer interested or able to keep them. Four are from the Premarin Mare Industry. (Premarin is a hormone replacement therapy drug in which pregnant mare urine (PMU) is the main ingredient.) Jackie is one who was kept for years in a breeding stall, her five foals either restocked into breeding service, sold to a buyer or slaughtered for meat.
In these sessions, I learned practical skills, such as how to use a rope halter, and brushes and curry combs for grooming. I learned to run my hand along the inside of a leg and gently squeeze the fetlock so that it would bend, and I could clean the dirt lines of an un-shoed hoof. I learned to lead the horse in a canter, matching and pacing my movements in an elegant duet.
I also learned that horses are highly attuned to our emotional and physical states. On one particular day, when I was feeling a gnawing sense of loss, Jackie, who is usually aloof with students, made it clear by coming to me unbidden, and then not leaving my side, that I would work with her. Tears flowed that day as I brushed her auburn coat. For the fifth session when I was feeling physically weak, Silver, the smallest, did the same thing. I might have chalked it up to coincidence, until I learned that when you are working with horses, everything has meaning.
Vaughan’s skilled mentoring, the personalities of the horses, even the practical lessons taught me to stay in the moment and communicate with these intelligent, intuitive beings without talking or analyzing the situation. The changes in my perceptions of the world and my place in it are subtle, more like shifts than enormous leaps. Yet my sense of relationship, of connection, between humans and all living things feels larger. As our flawed systems crumble under the weight of greed and corruption, I feel less fear, more capable of surviving closer to nature, closer to the source.