I am not sure if he was meditating, but when I downloaded my pictures, there was this photograph of Nelson with his eye closed. Over the months that I have known him, Nelson has become a pretty equanimous horse. He takes things more in stride and I will often see him reading me – reading my movement, parsing what I am asking before responding.
My body has become more readable as well. I can feel it as I get out of the car and assemble my equipment (gloves, fanny pack with treats, brushes, sometimes a halter). Settling, breathing, feeling the rhythm and smoothness of my gestures. I don’t have a particular agenda or plan. Usually we review the things that we know (grooming, hoof lifting and picking practicing our movement cues. Then, depending on how he feels to me (steady, nervous, curious, disinterested), we move into something new.
I recently heard about a competition called the Extreme Mustang Makeover. Contestants have 90 days to gentle and train a wild Mustang. To me that sounds like a lot of pressure on both horse and human. It also sounds like doing things in human time, not horse time.
For me, the joy of Nelson is in taking my time and in building trust, friendship and understanding in slow, comprehensible steps. One of the greatest gifts that horses can teach us is learning to be in horse time, which is not goal oriented or clock and schedule driven. And, as Klaus Hempfling says, letting the horse come to me, not the other way around.
