My first horse

Is it possible to have love at first sight with a horse? I suppose so, but it is not how it happened with Bit and me. It was something more delicate and fragile. I first saw Bit last summer as the equestrian centers caretakers children galloped and trotted her back and forth, and her obeying because they were children. The next time I noticed her, she had a gaping wound on her flank. Someone had ridden past her wearing spurs, she had spooked and the spur had made a deep cut in the muscle of her hip. I watched as the wound healed, much too slowly. When the caretakers turned her out in the large arena with a gelding, and he tried to kill her, some of us ran to rescue her. I remember she was trembling violently when we were able to pull her out of the arena. After that, she remained alone and, much too slowly, her wound healed.

The next time I saw her, it was in July 2003. The pack horses were brought up from Bishop to be rental string horses for the local stable. Bit was one of those horses. I remember looking over at the horses that were tied, waiting for the various rides that would go out that day, and there was Bit. You couldn’t help but see her. She had a Jennifer Lopez, to die for butt and when she cocked one back foot, it looked like the saddle was going to come off. I watched her stand all day, and rarely did she go out on a ride. She was too small for most men to ride, and too much of a horse for an inexperienced woman to ride. She hated geldings putting their noses near her tail, and nose to tail is exactly how a rental string goes out on the trail. She would spin around and demand her space, which usually upset anyone who was on her. Bit could spin pretty fast.


It wasn’t that she was being abused, because she wasn’t. The owner of the pack horses had a business to run, and to her credit, the horses were some of the nicest horses I have ever seen on a rental string. What bothered me about Bit was that she just wasn’t a good fit for what she was doing. Too small, and too much horse with the most amazing mind I have ever seen in a horse. When I walked up to her and she nuzzled my outstretched hand, it wasn’t to look for food. She acknowledged me, and made eye contact. I moved my hand to her withers and scratched her where horses scratch one another, and she moved closer so that I could reach her a little easier. I moved my hand down her back, gently massaging her and she moved right next to the corral panel so that I could access her entire body. Love at first sight? No, it was more like meeting someone again, after having known them many lifetimes.

I spoke with the owner about buying her, but I knew even if I was able to somehow buy her, I could never afford to keep her. Three years of being disabled with a back injury had left me unemployed and financially devastated. One careless snowboarder had hit me from behind while I was coaching our local ski team. It had left me disabled and at the mercy of the California Workmen’s Compensation system. The only thing I could do at the time was to be her friend and continue our visits. I had to let this one go.

Something that I have learned in my own spiritual process is, put your intention out there, let go of what you think should happen, and let a higher power drive the bus. It did not occur to me that I was doing exactly that. I had a best friend, she happened to be a horse, and she had a job. I visited her whenever I could.

I found out that Pat Parelli was coming to Reno, Nevada. Pat has a unique way of training people to train their horses, and I liked it because it put relationship back into riding a horse. I didn’t want to just be a passenger when I was riding; I wanted a real connection and friendship. When I found out Pat was coming, I knew I had to go. The Parelli tour is a great way to immerse yourself in natural horsemanship. His wife, Linda always has a new and different perspective on relationship and riding your horse, and it is a great opportunity to meet 5000 other like-minded souls. I didn’t just want to go, I wanted to volunteer at the event because I felt it might be a good way to learn even more about my passion for horses.

As the time grew near for the tour to hit Reno, I found out I had to go to a doctors appointment in Los Angeles for my back injury the day after the Parelli tour ended. That meant driving back from Reno, four hours sleep and then getting in the truck and driving the seven hours to Los Angeles. There are no work comp doctors in the Sierras, and you are required to go to one by California law. It doesn’t matter that you are injured, or even if you have transportation to make the seven hour drive, you have to go or lose your benefits. My benefits were $70.00 a week, and that was what my daughter and I had to live on. Not much of anything, but without it, we would be homeless and on welfare. We were already on food stamps and a couple other programs so that we could survive. It was a delicate balancing act I had been doing for three years while going through the nightmare of the California Work Comp process. I realize that there is a lot of fraud in work injury claims, but I am not one of them. The new law punishes everyone, and helps no one. But, that is another story.

I just did not see how I could drive to Reno, volunteer at the tour, and then drive to Los Angeles. I defiantly couldn’t afford the gas. I called my friend that I would have stayed with in Nevada and told her I wasn’t coming, and why. My teenage daughter was not what you would call supportive with my decision to stay home. She is my cheerleader in life, and has more than once picked my soul off ground. Amanda knew how badly I needed to attend the Parelli tour. It wasn’t just a fun weekend; it was another rung in the ladder out of my dark night of the soul. She was relentless in her badgering, “You have to go, mom. You have been looking forward to this for months, and now you aren’t going to go?” She did not let up and I finally gave in the day before I was supposed to leave for Reno.

I called my friend that I would be staying with and told her I was coming after all. She was delighted, told me her “Parelli friend” from Sacramento would be staying with her, too and that we would have a wonderful girls-night-in dinner with her other friend. It was going to be a great weekend after all, and I would worry about money when I got home.

I arrived at the Reno Livestock Event Center Friday morning and began to help set up for the tour. I couldn’t do any lifting, but I did everything that my back would allow and the day passed quickly. By the late afternoon on Friday, I was exhausted and exhilarated! I couldn’t wait until Saturday morning when the show began. I drove the ½ hour back to my friends house, met her Sacramento friend, and then Joanie arrived. We all talked until midnight, drinking wine, and eating great food. Joanie grew up where I was now living, and as we talked we found out we had shared mutual friends, experiences, and the love of skiing. Her parents had owned Convict Lake Pack Station, so she had grown up on a horse. We were amazed that we had never met, and yet we had walked parallel paths.

She told me she was operating a non profit animal rescue foundation, and I told her about my life and that I was doing fine art as my back would allow. We went to the computer and I showed her some of my work. Her face lit up when she saw the mule foal I had painted and declared she had to have it. It works that way with the art. You can market till the end of time, but what it really comes down to is the right person seeing your work. It is a magical moment for both artist and buyer as you both realize in the same moment, the painting has found its human.

It took a good two weeks, after I got back from L.A., to be able to move without so much pain that I could not function. The headaches are ever present, the pain is a constant in my life, and I live on prescription ibuprophen. If not for horses in my life, I would also have an addiction to narcotics to add to the list of horrors my back injury has wrought. A friend of mine had a back injury in the 90’s and rode horses to control back pain. I thought she was crazy, but she told me about a medical report supporting therapeutic riding as a way to control back pain. A couple of years later, I remembered seeing a p.m. news show on therapeutic riding and how it was helping a number of disabilities, one of them being back injuries. When I realized my consumption of narcotics was becoming addictive, thanks to an eye opening Oprah show, I decided to try and find another way to control pain.

My doctor at the time thought I was crazy for wanting to ride horses. After all, I did have a back injury and horses are evil. I changed doctors. I was able to convince my new doctor to let me give therapeutic riding a try. We had done every kind of therapy available to relieve my symptoms, nothing had worked, so I felt I had nothing to lose. He asked me, “What if you fall off?” I responded, “I’m better at riding horses than I am at skiing. I am more comfortable skiing than most people are in their own shoes. I am more comfortable on a horse than I am on my skis.” I had been riding off and on since I was a kid, had started training hunter jumper at 18, worked at a track and training center as a pony girl, so I wasn’t concerned about my riding ability.
I also knew that the weekend before, my doctor had gone over to a mutual friends pasture and attempted to mount a horse that was usually a pretty peaceful gelding. But that gelding is not so peaceful when some wanna be cowboy rudely jumps on his back without asking permission, so he bucked the good doctor off. When he asked me, “What if you fall off”, I said, “I’m not going to do anything stupid, like go jump on a horse in a pasture and get bucked off”. His eyes got big, but then he laughed and said, “I guess we could give this a try.”

I knew some horses that were rock solid trained and would take care of me, so I started riding and my back pain became tolerable. There were still days of so much pain I had to stay in bed, but the more I rode, the more I saw the pain decrease. It was the miracle I had been looking for.

I told Joanie about the miracle the horses had brought to my life in Nevada, so when she called two weeks later, she offered to buy Bit in exchange for the painting. I told her that even if she bought Bit I could not afford her upkeep, but that I would think about it. I called her back a few days later and told her that I would give her the painting if she would just give Bit a peaceful place to live on her ranch. She told me that Bit was meant to be in my life, that she was not only going to buy her, but she was going to pay for whatever Bit needed until I could afford it myself. This was miracle number two.

After a two week long process of negotiation, Bit was mine. It just so happened that Joanie was very good friends with Bits current owner, and assured her that Bit would always have what she needed in spite of my financial situation. Miracle number three.