The Language of the Heart

The Language of the Heart                                                                                                                  Originally Published in Horse Directory, December 2011

by Tom Gumbrecht 

During the holiday season, someone invariably brings up the old European legend that states that on Christmas Eve at midnight, our animals can speak in human voice.  This quickly leads to amusing banter about what our horses would say to us. How we wish we knew what our horses were thinking about us!

But do we? Do we really need human language for such a conversation? We are all students of the Equus language. The very best of us become fluent in it.  After quite a few years of study, much longer than it would take to get a Master’s Degree, I still only have what I would call a working knowledge of it.  When we meet someone who is fluent, we have found a great horseman.  When we meet someone who is not only fluent but can translate for us into human language, we have found a great trainer. Equus doesn’t always translate readily into human language, but the best trainers find the words in the same way an artist uses oil paint to capture the feeling of a magnificent vista. But the words of the trainer are just there to facilitate the real, nonverbal, horse-human connection. Equus is a language that words take away from, not add to.  It is purity, simplicity, honesty, integrity. It is the language of the heart.  And that is, quite possibly, what attracts us to our equine partners.

Honesty, in a word, defines the human-equine relationship.  Honesty fosters trust, and trust is what we require in order to do what we do with our horses.  Actions, not words, create it.  People say, but horses do.  We are what we do; what we say is how we want to appear.  Horses don’t care how they appear.  Sometimes when I come back from a solo trail ride I’m asked, “You went alone”? Trying to appear witty, sometimes I’ll reply, “Alone? No… I was with my horse!” But I mean it… the time spent with just horse and rider to me has been a priceless asset in my study of Equus. In those moments, words are a distraction… an interruption in the flow of messages between us. So, while I enjoy the companionship of a like minded rider, I also value, no, treasure those times when it’s just me and my horse. They are my language lessons.

It has been said that princes learn no art truly, but the art of horsemanship. The reason, the saying goes, is that the brave beast is no flatterer.  He will throw a prince as soon as his groom. Truly, when we have earned the respect of a horse, we have really earned it. They have no ulterior motives. Their language doesn’t include flattery to entice getting what they want, coercion to force getting what they want, sarcasm to ridicule into getting what they want, courtesy to put a different spin on what they want, or withholding of truth to spare the other’s feelings. When we learn to speak Equus, our language is simpler:  asking for what we want, observing the reply to the question, rephrasing the question when it’s necessary, and expressing when we are pleased with the effort.  When failing to make myself understood, I need to change the way I’m asking.  It’s such a simple rule if I can just remember it.  The better we get at remembering that, I believe, the better horsemen we become. 

So, what is it that makes our relationship with our horses so unique and compelling?  Perhaps it is the opportunity to converse in the language of the heart.  Because what comes from the heart, touches the heart.

Dear Lola: A Love Letter to a Racehorse

Dear Lola:                                                                                     

A Love Letter to a Racehorse

By Tom Gumbrecht

 Originally published in Horse Directory, February 2011

Dear Lola,

 I have a confession to make.  The day after I brought you home from the auction, I was angry and resentful.  Not toward you, but at the man who brought you there, who told me that you were sound and gave you drugs to make you look like you were.  The drugs wore off, and you couldn’t walk. And he didn’t return my calls.

Your injuries, no doubt incurred during your short career at the racetrack, were of the type that would likely take a long time to recover from.  That’s what made me upset. I didn’t know if I had it in me to endure the roller-coaster ride of horse rehabilitation yet again.

I had some people giving me advice, which ranged from euthanasia (no), to breeding (didn’t know enough about you and didn’t have the knowledge, time, or facility), to just bringing you back to the auction (which would make me just as bad as the man who had brought you there).  Or…I could just take a deep breath and deal with it.

My decision was really already made; I made a promise to you in my trailer before we left the auction that I would never hurt you, and that I would always do everything in my power to give you the best life I could.  Luckily, I keep my promises.

Oh, that crying into your mane when we were alone it the stall?  That was just me feeling sorry for myself.  And scared.  I was projecting about months of care, medical expenses, chances that you wouldn’t recover.  That’s just how my mind works sometimes; especially when I’m scared.  I think a year at a time.  But life gets lived a day at a time, and that’s how we managed.  A day at a time.

You patiently let me wrap your legs until I became skilled at it, but you never lost patience with me.  You stood still to let me run a cold hose on your leg, and you let me hand walk you with no complaints when I know you didn’t feel like it.  You seemed to know that I needed encouragement so every time I came into your view, either after an absence of thirty seconds or four hours, you would nicker furiously like Black Beauty reuniting with Farmer Grey.  You found a way to express gratitude in a way that a human could understand it.

Days built upon days which became weeks and then months, and your body slowly became whole again.  I was as cautious as you were anxious.  You broke out of your small day paddock into the riding arena one day and your enthusiasm set our program back a few months.  I became doubly cautious and did not read the signs that you were ready.  Somehow you broke out again, and as I watched you from the house I was at once awestruck and petrified.  Awestruck by the beauty of you expressing your elation at being free to be a horse again, and petrified at the prospect of yet another setback.

I waited days for the consequences of your adventure, but they never came.  It seems that you knew best.  You had healed!

Luck stayed with us as we found our friend Laura Ruben, who taught you to be patient with me and me to be patient with you.  I learned the ways of the racehorse and you learned the ways of…I don’t know what… perhaps the ways of an older guy who many might think should be out on the golf course and not riding young racehorses.  Through our interpreter, Laura, we are figuring each other out and training now for the jumpers.

Lola, you are more than just a talented horse.  You are not my first horse, nor the first horse I have bonded with.  You are my first mare, my first Thoroughbred, and my first racehorse.  Other horses have allowed me into their world.  You, however, have always made me feel that I am a part of yours.  You are always trying to be a better horse for me, and it makes me want to be a better rider.  From the very first time I met you at the auction,  I felt not sympathy for your situation (which would certainly have been warranted) but connectedness.  Your dark, kind, liquid eye told me that you felt the same.  You weren’t pleading.… you were knowing.

The other day I ran across the business card of the man who brought you to the auction.  It had a little religious symbol on it that I once cynically thought must have been put there to throw the unwary off track… to expect honesty and trustworthiness where there was none to be found.  For a while, those thoughts were used to fuel a resentment.  Now, however, I believe that man was an instrument in the plan of some higher power, a plan to bring us together which could have worked no other way.  It was a better plan than I could have devised.  Had it worked any other way, I would have been cheated out of what may be my once in a lifetime horse.

                                          Lola learns to jump.

A Ribbon For Mary

A RIBBON FOR MARY                                                                                                                                     

By Tom Gumbrecht       

Originally published in Horse Directory, 2009

photo: Mary with Buddy

If there is one thing I like almost as much as riding, it is talking about riding. When I get the opportunity and the audience, my dissertations are regularly punctuated with the word,“I”. “I” learned to ride as an adult, “I” bought horse property and built a barn, “I” trained and eventually began to compete, etc., etc.

Occasionally I would throw a “we” in there, referencing my equine partner when I was attempting to appear humble. Aside from those sparse references, you would think I was quite the self-made horseman. It’s easy to think that way now, because at the moment our equestrian “infrastructure” has been in place for some time, and a lot of the family equestrian activities are centered on my horse, and my riding. Samantha went away to college with her mare, Bella, and Mary is a non-rider. But anyone who knows the real story, knows better. And they know Mary.

Mary is my wife, and the source of my moral, emotional, logistical, and every other kind of support as an adult amateur rider. When I was first exposed to the horse world a little over ten years ago, Mary, I suppose, thought it was “cute” for a middle aged man to take up riding, English riding at that. She indulged my little ‘interest du jour’, most likely thinking it would be another one of the many “phases” I had gone through in our then twelve years of marriage. I had started our niece, Samantha, in lessons a few weeks before starting my own, possibly thinking, in the process, that it made my own endeavor appear a little less self-indulgent.  Then, a few months later when I came up with a plan to lease a horse, Mary may have gotten the idea that it was more than “just a phase”. That thought would be further reinforced another year and a half later when, having gone through a couple of occasions of suffering the agony of developing a relationship with a horse and having the horse be sold, relocated or otherwise unavailable, Mary beat me to my well planned-out plea and suggested that it might be time to buy my own horse. Of course, I had been thinking just that. But what I was also thinking, was, well….I wanted my horse to be a family member. Which meant purchasing a horse property. Which meant selling our beach-community house that we had recently finished making just the way we wanted. We loved it there and more or less assumed that, like our parents’ homes before us, it would be our first and last house.

Now things were getting serious. This was no longer a little fling, a weekend endeavor to be taken up and put down like a game golf or tennis. This was a life changing, long-term responsibility we were considering. I felt in every fiber of my being that this was the right course to take. Mary, however, an animal lover but a non-rider, had only, through me and Samantha, felt a trace of the joy that we knew horses can bring to your life. She supported us.  She did it on faith and a belief in me, which made her the braver one, for sure.

We spent many months searching for the perfect horse property, and we settled on an older house, in Fort Salonga, where we basically had to start over again in terms of repairs and improvements. It had no horse facilities but had enough property to build a barn, some paddocks and a riding ring. We put our Centerport house on the market and spent a summer of sleepless nights when it didn’t sell as quickly as everyone told us it would. Eventually that perfect buyer did show up and we spent two months packing our lives of the past thirteen years into cardboard boxes and inventorying them into composition books. We moved in, and the preparations needed to create a barn site and riding ring turned out to be a bit more expensive than we had considered. Mary’s take on it was, “We’ll find a way to do it”. She didn’t know how these decisions would affect out lives in the years to come. It made me happy, and she supported it, that was all. Everything eventually came together and we had our very old house and a brand new barn, paddocks, and riding ring. And we had my first horse, Buddy, followed two months later by Magic, a mare we got for Samantha. I had promised Mary a new master bathroom, which remained as a sink and a toilet sitting in a gutted room of bare studs and rafters for about a year and a half while the barn was complete and the horses had everything you could imagine.  The roof over that bathroom leaked in a heavy rain, but the barn roof was of course, brand new and water-tight. I never got any more of a complaint than the rolling of eyes when Mary’s mother asked, “So how’s the bathroom coming along?”

Why I felt the need to push to build this little horse farm, I don’t know. But I knew I had to. It was a little like the “Field of Dreams” thing, but a lot less spooky. No ghosts of old athletes walking out of the woods. But I did have the sense that this was the exact right thing to do, and I never really had any evidence to that effect except for a feeling. The sense of a bigger plan came two years later, when Samantha’s mother, Mary’s sister, died suddenly and we found ourselves first-time parents of a then twelve year old girl. Then slowly, and sometimes painfully, the plan began to make a little bit more sense, if ever any sense can be made of such a situation. Mary, a nurse by profession, is a natural-born nurturer. She fell into the parent role easily, or seemed to. I had to be taught. And the horses taught me, a middle aged guy who never thought that much about anything other than myself, how to care for another being, be responsible for another life, to put someone else’s welfare before my own. Skills I would need in my new role. It also gave me something to have in common with that little twelve year old girl that would bring us together, for better or worse. No matter how bad I may have made things in my clumsy, ham-handed attempts to be “parental”, Sam and I would still eventually have to work together, getting her horse ready for the weekend show, trailering, grooming, doing the emergency tack shop run for that one forgotten item. Our horses forced us to work together, even when we really wanted to be away from each other. After years of having adopted the role of parents, I’m sure that Mary could have done it under any circumstances but I’m also sure I couldn’t have without our horses as teachers, mentors, catalysts, competitors, and companions.

It seems now that a lot of those growing pains are behind us. I just returned from picking up Samantha and  Bella, from Ohio after finishing their first year of college. Now I get to train and show sometimes on the weekends, and Mary helps me and wakes up at the crack of dawn and grooms for me at the shows. She beams when we win a ribbon, and encourages when we don’t. She…understands.

She understands that this isn’t a luxury for us, as many people might think. It’s a lifestyle. A lifestyle that we were predestined to live, I believe. It’s not what we do as a family, it’s who we are as a family. Made possible by the faith that Mary had, and continues to have, in me.

If you have a person in your life that has supported your horsey endeavors even if, or especially when, someone with an ounce of common sense would give up on it, someone who would wear old shoes when the horses need new ones, who would do all the dirty work on show day and then take a picture of you holding the ribbon, then you know what I am, quite inadequately, trying to say. I am trying to say thank you.

The Day Buddy Got His Nicker Back

The Day Buddy Got His Nicker Back - June 2005

By Tom Gumbrecht

Anyone who has had a horse with a serious long-term illness knows how emotionally wrenching the roller coaster ride between improvements and setbacks can be. Buddy started off heading into the winter of 2003 a bit shy of his normal weight. We had some tests done, thinking that perhaps some worms got past the normal rotation of wormers that we use. No other symptoms were present so this was really just a precaution. The blood tests, however, painted a different picture. They showed a significant deterioration in his liver. While planning a course of action to follow, one cold day Buddy's feet appeared frozen to the paddock. He moved so painfully and slowly, and it was shocking to see this 23 year old horse (who normally acted like an 8 year old) in so much distress. Further tests showed that he had Lyme disease to such a degree that they ran the results twice because the lab had never seen them so high. Forty-five days of antibiotics, 100 pills a day, showed slight improvement, but then another worsening. He had foundered. I am told that the anti-inflammatory effects of the doxycycline can sometimes mask some of the symptoms of founder. At any rate, Buddy then was tested for Cushings and was positive. He got bar shoes. He went on Pergolide and we set out on the long road of managing that disease and the resulting founder. He had good days and bad days. He had many abscesses pass through and we spent many early mornings and late evenings soaking his achy hooves and rubbing his tired legs. We managed his medications and changed his diet. We pulled his shoes and tried a different trim. We wanted answers. We got possibilities. We wanted a definitive course of action. We got a hundred different opinions. I don't know how it is for other people, but the sequence of emotions with me went something like this:

1) My horse is not really that sick. These people don't know what they're talking about. They don't know my horse. I do. We can get through anything.
2) My horse is really sick. What on earth am I going to do? What if he dies? What will I do? What will I do with his body?
3) Can't any one agree on a course of action here? What do I know, anyway? They're the ones with the medical degrees.
4) I better learn as much as I can about this stuff.
5) Most of what I'm worried about hasn't happened yet. His life is in God's hands. His comfort is in mine. A day at a time, I think I can manage that.
6) I miss riding him. But of all the things I get from Buddy, riding is only one of them. I still get all the others. I get the rubbing of my back with his nose as I soak his tired feet. I get his puppy-like inquisitive presence following me around the stable yard as I do chores. I get his loving, liquid eyes locked to mine at dawn every morning. I get to give back to this horse who has given me so much.
7) This is not so bad. We can do this.

We took Buddy to the New Bolton Clinic of the University of Pennsylvania in October of 2004. We hoped for more definitive answers. We had an ultrasound and a needle biopsy done of his liver, which came back clean, although blood tests still showed elevated liver enzymes. Not a clean bill of health, but not devastating. The sports medicine and radiology departments then got him, and digital radiographs showed the large degree of rotation we already knew about, but categorized it as significantly more serious that had been diagnosed on the local level. Or probably, more accurately, we were just more willing to accept what we had already been told. I do not want this information but I need it. Is this life threatening? How long can he stay alive without being in terrible pain? Not years, I'm told. Months. And not many. The long trip back from the university is not a pleasant one. I came for hope and I'm going home hopeless.
In the days to follow, I do what I'm now trained to do, make him as comfortable as I can and deal with each day as it comes. Days become weeks, and weeks become months. His bad days are bad, but not as bad as they have been. His good days are better and more frequent. Spring comes, and he jumps up and kicks his hind legs in the air. I'm concerned that he's going to hurt himself. Don't worry, his now alert eye reassures me, looking down as he prances around the paddock with his mane flowing and his tail up just like he used to be. Not every day is like this. Some are better than others. This is a good day. He is not the horse he was, but I am not the man I was before this ordeal either. I have learned the power of faith, patience, and love. I wanted more answers. I got only more questions. I wanted facts. I developed faith. I wanted reassurance from the doctors. I got it from Buddy. He doesn't know he's sick, and he's not depressed about it. He gave me faith. I wanted him to keep teaching me to ride. Instead, he taught me how to be.
And today? Today was a very special day in my barn. As I prepared Buddy's breakfast just after dawn, I heard the soft wuffle that crescendoed into the beautiful sound I have waited eighteen months for. Today was the day that Buddy got his nicker back.

Update, 2007:

Buddy amazes us, and our veterinarian, constantly. We have two young horses now who are his pasturemates and he has found a new “career” as their babysitter. He chases my young paint gelding around and around and they rear at each other and throw kicks in the air. I was worried at first that he would get hurt or worn ragged. Again Buddy taught me to trust his judgement and enjoy watching him spend his twilight years just being a horse.

Arthur and Helen                                                                

By Tom Gumbrecht

Originally Published in Horse Directory, 2008

Photo: Helen Gumbrecht with Buddy

Arthur and Helen were my parents. They both died a few years ago, about six months apart. They were good parents, and loved us very much. Neither one ever displayed much affection publicly, either to us or to each other, but they showed it in other ways. In the two years before his death my father, Arthur, was very sick, bedridden for most of the time, and my mother, Helen, was his caregiver. He would lie in bed, and she would see to his every need. When he didn’t specifically request something, she would stand by the bed, rearranging the pill cups and magazines at his bedside, anxiously awaiting the next set of orders. Arthur could only take so much of this, and when he reached his limit, he would turn toward her, frown, and dismiss her with a wave of his hand. She would quickly retreat to the kitchen, and then ease back in over the next couple of minutes and return to her station at the bedside.

After my parents died, our gelding, Buddy, got very sick for two years. He had gotten Lyme disease, foundered badly, and a host of other complications ensued. It took time to diagnose and treat the problem and the subsequent complications. During this time, more often than not, he would be lying in the paddock on his side, with Magic, our mare, standing next to him. Normally only barely tolerant of the gelding, Magic stood watch over Buddy for an entire year. Now, Buddy is a friendly sort, but he can take only so much doting. Magic would lightly nuzzle his neck, and use her nose to push small bits of hay toward his mouth. When Buddy had enough of the fussing, he would turn toward her and pin his ears slightly. This would, of course, send Magic running to the other end of the paddock, where she would hang back, observe for a minute or two, and discretely make it back by his side. Over the year I sat at my window and watched in amusement, it was evident that the love they had for each other was as intense as it was obvious. Unspoken, unheralded; just reliably and dependably there.  Like Arthur and Helen. But, it took watching my horses’ quiet devotion to one another outside my window to put aside my faint regret of never hearing love spoken by my parents.  I am reminded that words are really not needed for communication, as our horses all know.

After about two years, Buddy slowly regained a good deal of his mobility, the spark in his eye, and his nicker. And, his supposed indifference toward Magic. One November day, Magic went uncharacteristically off her feed. At dinnertime, she went out into the paddock and lied down. This was so out of character that we immediately got her up, began walking her, and called the vet. I had never seen Magic even slightly under the weather in all the years we had her, and now she had colicked.  The vet came and gave her a shot of Banamine, and we were given instructions for her care. We were concerned, but not overly so, as Magic was a trouper. But after an initial improvement, Magic was progressively getting worse. She became so dehydrated that we had to administer saline IV’s every for hours, which the vet taught us to do. Over the next four days Samantha and I were by her side constantly, taking shifts as Sam’s high school schedule allowed. I put work on hold to tend to her. It felt wrong to see her on crossties with the IV running into her neck.

Magic was Sam’s first horse, her baybysitter, her pal, her partner, her confidante. She was the mare who we let non-riders get on without worry.  Sam and her friend rode her bareback, backwards, double, standing up, dressed up for Halloween, you name it. Magic took it all in stride, and with good humor. She kept us in stitches with her comical ways, unlocking a stall door in 10 seconds to let her friends out to play. She took care of us, always. To see her in this condition was something that was hard to process.

Slight improvements preceded major setbacks. By Tuesday evening, the vet looked us in the eye and took us where we had stubbornly avoided going. I didn’t want to go there. I need more time. At least until Friday. Thanksgiving is Thursday. Dr. Perry, sometimes slightly aloof, let his eyes do the talking, and they were as compassionate as any words ever spoken. We knew. It was time. I was afraid to tell Samantha. She had lost her mother two years ago, and Magic was one of the few constants in her life in the emotional turmoil that followed. We stood in the barn flanking Magic as I heard the words come out of me. We cried into Magic’s mane as the reality of the situation set in. Buddy stood quietly nearby throughout.

That night I tried to sleep, but it wouldn’t come. I moved from the bed to the floor and back, trying to find comfort somewhere, but it wouldn’t be found. Mickey, our Golden Retriever, sensing my despair, just wrapped himself around me in unspoken consolation.

Morning came and I was hoping it was a dream, but it wasn’t. This was the day I had to play God with my friend’s life. The logistics of doing what needed to be done kept me busy for hours, until one o’clock when Dr. Perry was to come. I took the horse trailer and parked it next to Buddy’s paddock. I cleaned the interior and put down fresh bedding. I had rehearsed this in my mind all last night and it seemed surreal to be actually doing it. Dr. Perry drove in the gate and I put a halter and lead on Magic, walked her around the paddock, and led her onto the trailer. I followed instructions once on the trailer.

The vet prepared the syringes that would take our mare from her pain. Magic was about twenty feet from Buddy, their eyes locked through the openings in the trailer. As first one, then the second syringe took effect, Buddy let out a loud nicker, and then I was holding Magic’s head, cradling it for what seemed like an eternity. When I got up, I went and got Buddy and walked him to the back of the trailer to see his friend. He seemed indifferent. I walked him back to the barn, and he went into Magic’s stall. Her blanket was draped over the stall chain and he buried his muzzle in it. He backed up and licked the lead ropes that hung from the ceiling where she had stood getting her IV’s. Then he walked out of the stall and didn’t go back in.  I drove away with Magic’s body in the trailer to be cremated. Sam and I had agreed on that so that we could sprinkle her ashes at some of her favorite places. Buddy was always very calm, and he seemed more so than usual right now. I won’t ever forget what happened as I drove out the driveway, though. Buddy reared up, and with a snort and a cry charged around at full speed, tearing up the paddock. He spun around at the fence close to us, and kicked the top fence rail out with both hind legs, sending the rail flying in splinters. He had never acted like this before, ever. Then, he stood still, head high and still snorting, then slowly relaxed his neck and began to graze in his hay. He had grieved, and now his grieving was done.

As I brought Magic’s body on the forty minute trip to be returned to ashes, the choking tears subsided and an incredible sense of calm came over me. I was all right with it, with her, and with God.

Euthanasia, it is said, is taking the animal’s pain and making it your own. That’s a fair exchange for all she gave us.

The sting of Magic’s loss has been largely removed, replaced with the wonderful memories of a once in-a-lifetime horse.

We have a few new young horses now, and Buddy looks after them and teaches them horse etiquette and all those things we can’t teach them.

Buddy and Magic taught me to not long for what was already there. That love need not be spoken to be true. That the truest love needs no words; and that what I thought I was missing, I had all along.