Lesson From Your Horse

Lessons From Your Horse

Originally published in Equest Magazine VOLUME 2. ISSUE 8 August/2007

No matter how long you have been around horses, you will never "know it all". True, there are people who are very knowledgeable and some might consider them experts. But no matter how much you know, you will always find a horse that will teach you something new.

I am by no means an "expert". I never have been. I never will be. I know a lot, but I don't know squat. My horses teach me something new every day.

Up until a few years ago, I lived in Tucson, Arizona. At the time, I had two horses, Dennis and Baldy, who lived at a boarding stable. As circumstances unfolded at the boarding stable, I had to move Dennis and Baldy to a private self-care facility where they were the only two horses in residence.

Shortly after we moved to the new facility, I noticed an oddly shaped "pit" forming in Baldy's stall where he had apparently been digging when I was not around. In some places, this pit was almost six inches deep! I chided Baldy about trying to dig his way out of his stall, and what was he going to do when he stepped on some poor China man's head because he dug all the way through the Earth to China (re: old cartoons).

So every Saturday, I would waste a couple of hours filling in the pit and leveling out both stalls (the dirt that Baldy dug out always seemed to land in Dennis' stall)...and by Sunday evening, the pit would be back! ARUGH!!

This went on for almost two months. Then one Saturday, I turned Dennis out first and left Baldy in his stall as I went about the pit routine. As I was cleaning Dennis' stall, Baldy stood over his pit, did a couple of turns and laid down. As I stood there watching him, he looked up at me with the all-knowing equine eye and told me, "Mom, this is my bed—please don't fill it in!"

As I looked at him on the ground, I could now see the purpose of the pit. He had dug the pit deeper for his body, made places for his front and hind legs, and even had a ramp of sorts for his neck and head…and it all fit him perfectly!

I was stunned! Baldy got up, shook himself off and walked over to his gate. Just to make sure I "got the point", he turned around, went back to his pit, laid down and again gave me the all-knowing equine eye. All I could do was stand in Dennis' stall with my chin dragging on the ground in amazement at what this horse had just taught me. I stopped cleaning stalls, put the halter on Baldy, turned him out with Dennis and played with my two horses for the rest of the morning.

The horses and I have since gone from the private self-care stable to our own 30-acre ranch and a third horse joined us last year. I still clean stalls. I do a lot more now with 30 acres to take care of. But I no longer worry about stall pits. I now make it a point to spend at least an hour a day with my horses—if not more—before I do anything else. There is so much more they can teach me!

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