First Impressions

Some days don’t seem to go just as planned, with unexpected twists and turns along the way. Today I found myself ferrying 9 horses through the process of having their teeth floated and blood drawn for coggins tests. I always like to think that my horses are by far very well behaved when it comes to being worked on by the vet, and I think that most of the vets that have worked with my horses would agree. Today there was little exception to this thought.. until it came down to Ceylon. She caught a smell of something that disagreed with her senses (perhaps it was a little blood from the molar caps just recently extracted from O Man’s mouth?), regardless she was determined NOT to have the same done to her. After several laps around the paddock, I deferred to bringing Truman in first and getting some help to round her up rather than wasting the vets time while I tromped through the muddy paddock attempting to catch one of my “well behaved horses”.

After the four of us cornered Ceylon and gave her slight encouragement into the stall that is attached to the paddock/pasture, things once again resumed the easy going atmosphere. After some sedation to make the dental procedure more bearable for her (and us), some quick photo snapshots for the coggins and a vial full of blood, she was parked back out in the pasture with the rest of her doped up pasture mates to let the effects of the drugs wear off.
This afternoon as I arranged to rearrange the horses back to their appropriate paddocks and pastures, I once again we presented with a lack of interest in being caught, by Ceylon. Again after some time of her running from one end of the pasture to the other with absolutely no interest or sign of changing her mind otherwise in being caught, I opted to feed the rest of the horses their dinner and come back. In the past I may have thought it prudent to continue running back and forth across the pasture as she avoided and dodged my “herding skills”, with the hopes of eventual success. Now I’ve given up on the theory that success is measured only in the attainment of the ultimate goal. What about all of the in-betweens? Is it still considered success if I’ve terrorized or traumatized my horse in the process?

So after having resigned myself momentarily from the task at hand, and perhaps to some I let her win that hand in the battle, I regrouped and headed back out to the pasture, halter and lead in hand. As I walked into the pasture, Ceylon was non-chalantly hanging out along the fence line, perhaps 20 feet from me. I’m sure I could have made an attempt to approach her at that point, but I chose not to. Instead I walked up from behind her at a slight angle so I was actually increasing the distance between us as I walked, and parked myself some 40 feet from her. There I stood, halter still in hand, chilled from the strong wind that’s been blowing all day, wondering if she knew there were two vaccines in my pocket that I had to give her upon catching her and before turning her loose…

An interesting thing began to happen, as I stood there, trying as I might to shed any expectations of what she may or may not do in my second attempt to catch her. She began to circle me. At first keeping a good distance, and it eventually closed in until she was passing almost within arms length. I remained steady in my patience, never making a move, just observing her own actions. After about the 6th pass, she circled again heading to the right, got just past my line of vision when I heard a shuffling of hooves, tilted my head and saw that she had turned around completely and was now facing my back. She slowly sidled up to me, continued to sniff, snort and thoroughly investigate the back and hood of my coat, and then took another step forward and was next to me.

There are so many moments that I feel frustrated, but they are always with myself. I’ve found that if I wait patiently long enough, everything turns around and comes my way. Perhaps the measure of a good trainer is never the result of the horse they are attempting to catch, but in how it is handled when the difficulty presents itself. My vet never got to see me “successfully” catch Ceylon, and who knows what his impression may have been of the “herding”, but I know that what matters most to me is not that I may have lost the opportunity to impress my vet, but rather that I gained the opportunity to have the connection with Ceylon this evening where it really counts.