Is Your Horsemanship Letting You Down?

I find that mine is letting me down. Natural horsemanship makes better horses, but most importantly it makes better people. Over the years it has allowed me to learn to accept the weaknesses of others and to understand how much we are all products of our backgrounds, It has allowed me to be tolerant of the views of others, regardless of how much I disagreed with them. It allowed me to be able to place the needs of the herd above my own needs without engendering any resentment.

Perhaps the greatest thing that I learned from the round pen was that completely ignoring self interest is not the goal of an ethical life, it is merely the first step to achieving an ethical life. The round pen teaches that a life that has any focus except improving the lives of others is a wasted existence.

Natural horsemanship requires one to develop sufficient empathy to understand the emotional needs of a prey animal. It is but a short hop over to develop sufficient empathy for people whose lives, particularly as children, were filled with such trauma and suffering that they respond to life as does any prey animal.

That understanding has allowed me to prosecute crimes of molestation and abuse against children for over twenty years while only once having a victim that I could not instill with enough confidence to take the stand and testify. That understanding has drawn many people to our program upon whom pain drips down constantly--sometimes even running in torrents, sometime in slow drops, but never ceasing to drip. What they have learned in the round pen helps them have life and to have it more abundantly and allows them to help others

Now I enter stores and see ignorant, smug, people parading around with out masks proudly picking up their beer and cigarettes and dropping them down on the counter to be waited on by a senior citizen who is waiting for the end of her shift to go home to fix supper for her spouse of forty years whose diabetes and other health problems have turned him into a shut in.

And I feel nothing but rage.

And I see neo Nazis and Klan trash on television who genuinely believe that they were born superior to other people.

And I feel nothing but rage.

And at every turn in my life I see people who not only fail repudiate self interest in the interest of others, they affirmatively place their own interests and desires above the good of others.

And I feel nothing but hopelessness.

And in the past I could work some horses, teach some little ones to ride, ride deep in the woods with some brilliant young adults and older teens, do a thirty  mile ride, or maybe even more......and feel restored.

But not now.

Choctaw Foaling Time

Last summer we brought down the spectacular Choctaw stallion, Big Muddy Miracle, from Mary McConnell's herd in Rappahannock and left him out with several straight Choctaw mares and a few Colonial Spanish mares that are very high percentage Choctaw. He spent August with us and by late  July five mares should begin foaling. A bit later on Baton Rouge, a Corolla mare should have a foal from , a Corolla stallion owned by Wendell Whitehead.

The Corollas are one of only two herds of wild Colonial Spanish horses left. Bonnie Gruenberg's great book, "Wild Horse Dilemma" explains how the native horses of the mainland, called by white's, "Chickasaw" horses were bred into the horses of the Outer Banks in the 18th century. In the book she refers to one of our mares, Swimmer," as a living example to that genetic infusion. When pastured with Choctaws today I doubt if anyone would be able to identify her as being anything but straight Choctaw.

When one looks today for the perfect family horse one would be hard pressed to find a better strain of horses than the Choctaws. The Corollas have the best temperament of any horses that I have ever trained but the Choctaws come in a close second. Their endurance is simply shocking. Were it not for the fact that they are so rare as to be nearly extinct, I have no doubt that they would absolutely dominate the sport of endurance riding.

I hope to have a stallion born of one of these Choctaw mares for our breeding program. The other foals will be available for sale at the appropriate time.

The colt in the picture above has reached the appropriate time. He is in his third year and is becoming an experienced trial horse. His mother is a formerly wild mare from Shackleford and his father is a powerful little Corolla stallion. Whoever purchases him will have to agree to keep him as a stallion and to make him available for future breedings. The Banker Colonial Spanish horse is one of the rarest strains of these horses left and to geld a stallion like MatchCoor is nothing better than vandalism.

This Is Not A Mule

This is a donkey, a Mammoth donkey, a heritage livestock breed that is nearly extinct. She is taller than most of the Colonial Spanish horses that I ride. They have little fear and training them to saddle is much easier and safer than training a horse to saddle. They walk faster than most horses but they trot and canter slower than horses.

They have a need to bond with people that might even be stronger than the need to bond that I see with Choctaw horses. They respond well to clicker training and once they develop a skill it seems to be stuck with them without the need for refresher sessions.

In some ways they are too tough for their own good. Their tolerance for pain is so high that it often more difficult to to tell when a donkey is sick than it is to tell if a horse is sick. Worst of all, they make little effort to keep flies off of their legs. Unfortunately, I have found  no fly spray that is truly effective in repelling these flies, regardless of advertisers claims.

The gray donkey here is Nick. His mother was a BLM donkey captured in California. She was bred at the time. He was born here and has lived all of his life here. He is over twenty years old. Donkeys live much longer than horses and Nick loves his chance to take riders in the woods with the other donkeys.

That is Jenner sitting on the log with the donkeys. Jenner is a serious donkey man. He prefers them to horses. If the virus allows us to remain open this summer, Jenner and I will be doing a five session, "Intro to Donkeys" class on Saturday afternoons.

The donkey riding experience might not be for everyone. I doubt that teen age barrel racers would enjoy riding donkeys as much as I do. For all of their advantages it must be conceded that donkeys will not you where you are going as fast as a horse will.

But as one matures one can find an easy solution to that problem. If the donkey won't get you there as soon as you would like, just begin your ride sooner.

Is America Listening?

There was a time around 2014 and 2015 that my optimism for what programs like ours can do for the nation was at its peak. I was seeing the impact that teaching kids from different economic and racial backgrounds how to apply sankofa, the African concept of reaching back into history and bringing forward that which is good and useful. to today's world.

This is not some silly nostalgia. This is not reaching back to a time when everyone "knew their place." This is reaching back to bring forward skills, beliefs, values and practices that connect us to who we are, by learning who we were.

This is the teaching of the things that connect us--to nature, to farming, to livestock, to art, to music---to everything that made us human.  I was watching it happen with the students from Rivermont School. The boys were primarily black kids from the city and had not been exposed to life in the woods or in the pasture. Suburban kids (and adults) in the program had minimal exposure to the lives that some of these boys led.

But the simple act of clearing land, cutting down trees, moving brush, planting pasture and riding horses brought a close connection in less time than I had ever seen between people of such different background.

My role model has been the Henderson School in Marion, Virginia and before that the Fox Fire Project. Cultural educational institutions can be important part of the building blocks in building a just society.

So can Mill Swamp Indian Horses--both directly and indirectly. On a direct level I plan to expand the reach of our program to bring in a more diverse set of kids. One of the worst things that the established horse world has done to our nation is to turn horses into toys for little rich white girls and pricing them out of reach of the rest of society. We do not follow such wicked practices.

But secondly, if I can maintain the energy to keep it going and if I can keep our program alive through the time of this violence and sickness and financial hardship, I want to reach out to other programs that teach the historical, cultural skills that give meaning to individual lives and bring people.

I want to see how we, working togehter can promote this kind of vital cultural understanding.

And as hard as it will be to keep so many things afloat at the same time I believe that this is the time to move on such a mission. The irony is that while the nation appears splintered and divided on the surface, the reality is that the protests are multi racial events. The reality is that there has been a massive change in white understanding of the reality of black life in America. And it is happening fast and we must strike while the fire is hot.

I write on June 19th, the day in 1865 when enslaved people in Texas learned that they were free. But I am writing on June 19, 2021, at a time when so many white people across the nation have finally come to understand what freedom must mean.

Once again, it is time for the nation to experience a new birth of freedom. It might be really difficult to understand that teaching black and white kids to tame wild horses together can bring about that new birth of freedom.

But it will. That is what sankofa can bring us.

For Everything There Is a Season

Just heard on the news that happiness in America is at it's lowest level since the question was ever put to a poll. I believe that it said that 50% of those surveyed said that they were unhappy and only 14% said that they were happy.

I have long since given up on the existence of happiness as more than a fleeting moment of whimsical relief. When I feel it, it comes more as a brief memory than as an actual emotion. In that regard happiness is much like the flavor of horehound candy. I have not tasted that candy in over forty years, but every now and then I can taste it--my memory of it is as clear as if it were in my mouth.

Last Saturday we opened back up to giving riding lessons to smaller kids. It was tremendous fun and for the day I felt actual happiness.

I do not believe that the two are mutually exclusive for everyone and I am delighted that there are some who can experience both happiness and meaningfulness in their lives. Happiness certainly has its place, but if I had to choose between a life with meaning and a life of happiness the choice would be clear.

The irony could not be richer. The existence of so many unhappy people, living lives of pain and tedium, makes it that much easier for all of us to live a life of meaning.  Opportunities to improve the quality of the lives of others can be found at every hand. The virus, the divisiveness, and the economic catastrophe that this nation finds itself trapped in ushers in opportunities for service that were not so obvious just six months ago.

If memory serves, the eulogy at Momma's funeral ended with these lines:

"When you see hunger, open your pantry. When you see homelessness, open your doors. When you seen need, open your checkbook.

And if you do not see hunger, homelessness, and need, open your eyes."

This is the season for Americans to open their eyes.