Baby Steps

You will catch them as them come into this world. You will teach them, give them skills, directions, manners. You will give them a purpose and work for their best life possible. You will see your work undone, you will see it and them disregarded, and it will hurt. You will care for them as if they were your flesh and blood, not of your flesh and blood, but your actual body. You will care for them as if they were you, better even. You will go through the stages with them. You will give them their life and be there when it leaves them. You are a part of their lifecycle, and they, yours. 

It is not something you have, or could have, chosen. It is too hard, too risky, too dangerous to willingly choose. It has chosen you. It has held captive your heart, your mind buzzes incessantly without it, and internally your compass always pulls you back. They are your blood, your life and your soul. They give that to you, and you to them. It is a symbiosis.  

Raising horses is a lot like raising children. You want them to grow up and be respectable equine citizens. You want them to grow up good and strong and healthy. You want to them to find their place in the world, find a good home, and be well taken care of. Perhaps parents of human children feel the same way, but I feel so much responsibility to make sure my babies are equipped with the right tools so they can accomplish those things. As with human children, you feel that each and every one of the horses you raise is a reflection on you.

You raise them so they trust, they are quiet, gentle, and cooperative. You raise them so they are well educated on the ground. They stand still, can be clipped, pulled, moved over, held, groomed and bathed. You educate them well under saddle. You try to give them your best, in the hope that one day they will do their best for someone else. All of this you are striving for, yet you start such a long way off. You start with a scrawny, scraggily, wide-eyed, baby who doesn’t know more than how to follow a big horse from the pasture to the barn every day. 

This baby probably bites, kicks, runs away, is terrified of needles, is sure the farrier is there to chase him with pointy objects, and is totally mistrustful and unwilling. Where do you go from there? The steps are so small that, at times, you are not sure if you are moving at all, and often fear you are moving backwards. You have to look back and remember that is was worse when you began this venture. You have to see the silver lining in the black clouds. Sure, he ran away again, BUT he let you catch him this time. He definitely only bit you twice week, and they weren’t even that hard. It may sound funny, but it is true. That is how you measure progress in baby steps.