Returning to the River…

Recently I was prompted to write a short horse training bio for a spotlight on Alaskan Horse Trainers series. My first reaction was to blush and smile, for those of you that know me in the realm of horse training, the word “trainer” really doesn’t resonate with me. I am fonder of the term counselor, but there isn’t a space for advertising in any of the horse publications for “Equine Counselors” and to be frank it does sound cheesy even to me.

So with an open mind I sat down to type out my achievements. Blank... It dawned on me that everything I had achieved took place over 10 years ago. My last championship award that I won in a show ring is a bridle bag for Hunt Seat Equitation, and the date on it is 1994. For a brief moment my ego overran my soul and I thought to myself – Am I a washed up has been? The truth is that all of us have an ego and a soul that are in competition within us. The ego begs us to perform, be noticed, make the spotlight and pursue with a vengeance, while the soul is content to wait in the background, be patient, look at the brighter side and accept things.

What drove me all those years ago to win that last championship was my ego, and have you ever noticed that your ego actually cripples you? The focus of your ego is to make everything appear flawless, both yourself and your performance - it is your ego that drives this demanding, merciless perfection. You can virtually watch my transformation as a girl to young woman become more and more crippled as the years go by; it is plainly visible in photographs. At the age of 5 sitting on a pony and I’m smiling from ear to ear, you can almost see the halo of magic around me, yet when I walked away from the show arena at 18, I rarely smiled on horseback unless I was walking out of the ring with a blue ribbon, and that smile was only for show much like my performance that won the ribbon. The turmoil on the inside tore me apart, blue ribbon or not it wasn’t enough to feed my ego or the incredible pressure that pushed me forward with unfailing inertia.

The cripple factor from creating a vision of perfection dries up not only your creativity, but also your soul. It is a miracle of the psyche that in a state of being absolutely married to the image of perfection that a tiny new life can start inside of you, a small well that flourishes on what is originally believed to be imperfections, under arduous and inhuman conditions, this well increases drop by drop. Under these conditions this tiny well that calls you back to where your soul belongs; the well starts as one single drop, and eventually overflows. It was this overflow that caused me to walk away from the arena all those years ago and find solace and essentially “soul food” in my childlike admiration of horses. It has taken almost11 years for me to straighten out the battle of ego and soul, still to this day it takes very little for me walk with a crippled limp.

I witness my clients every day have what are both small and large successes based on the eyes of the beholder. I help a friend who was much like me in the show world only in a different sport make her comeback from retirement and I sympathize with the pressure she is feeling, then I listen to what was formerly an arch rival not only list off her new titles in the show arena but announce her own horse training business. Then just as my ego is screaming for me to get back to the show ring and prove itself… In the midst of the inner war a miracle happens, just as my ego is about to make me limp, a soul reaches out who has dried up, lost hope and been told to give up, this soul searched for a drop of hope in their well. And whom do they reach for in their dry dark hour? Me… I am reminded all over again of why I do what I do, who I am, that I have been gifted a blessing in the form of my interaction with horses and am humbled that after 10 years Dark Horse Enterprises is not just a well but an overflowing river and fortunately this river is strong enough to provide drops of hope for other horses and people’s wells of soul. Indeed after 10 years I see photographs of me in the saddle and guess what I’m doing? I’m smiling – and it’s from the inside out.