PHASES
Originally published in Horse Directory July, 2014
By Tom Gumbrecht
I paused to reflect today, Father's Day, after
sharing a short ride with the child I've shared all of my horsey
accomplishments with. She has her own child now, so we are entering a new phase
of life around Dreamcatcher Farm. It occurred to me that just like the rest of
my life, my horse life has had many phases. They seem distinct when viewed
separately but mostly they have been woven by time into a fabric that provides
the backdrop of my horse life.
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| Lola greets Daniel to her world, with new mom Sam.. |
The beginning phase was really just being
exposed to horses, in my case as a middle-aged adult, and feeling that
unmistakable pull that I perhaps didn't really understand but can now spot
instantly when I see it happening in others.
For me, you might say that the next phase was
obsession. The pull of horses was at it's peak, and all attempts to maintain
the illusion of self-control were fruitless. Every spare moment, it seemed, was
spent learning about or experiencing things horsey. Friends were starting to
wonder...
A couple of years later I guess I dove in head
first and took my family with me. We sold our house in a small beach community
that we had made just how we wanted, and started over in a much older home with
some land in a horse friendly area not far away. We built a barn, a ring and
paddocks and adopted our first horse, followed by another soon after. Non-horse
people that we knew were polite, but quietly concerned now.
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| The author assumes a new duty at the farm. |
The years leading up to being horse- and
barn-owners were filled with lessons designed so that we could find our niche,
which for Samantha and I ended up being jumpers and eventing. After getting our
first horses and building the barn, I took a little break from lessons,
focusing mainly on fun stuff like trail rides, group events, costume rides...
things that answered the call of any excuse to get on a horse and go. I don't
really remember if I thought that I was done with lessons or not, at the time.
But this phase was really just another lesson.
"Time in the saddle is what you need now," my first instructor
had told me. By the time I owned a barn
and some horses, I thought that I was past that phase, but really I was smack
in the middle of it.
As Sam's riding progressed and she became
engaged in competition on her own horse, my focus shifted to supporting her
riding, while riding enough to keep my
own legs and horses in shape, more or less.
During that time we also did some equine trekking both here and abroad.
But mostly that phase was characterized by trekking to lessons several times a
week, and weekend horse shows with the alarm screaming its demand for a 4:00 am
wakeup. That era ended with her leaving for college, with my duties then
diminished to transporting her horse halfway across the country twice a year,
and attempts at encouragement via text message.
During this time I entered a phase that I would
have skipped if given the choice, but that would have been an unfortunate
series of lessons to miss out on. My own horse became severely ill, and I
learned that the road to wellness for a sick horse is very much a partnership
between owner and the veterinary team. It was a sometimes frightening, sometime
crushing and other times rewarding emotional roller coaster that I was learning
to ride in my reluctant pursuit of horsemanship, as opposed to merely riding.
These were skills and a temperament that I would need desperately in the future
that was yet to unfold.
As my sick horse, Buddy, got better, it became
evident that he would be serving a purpose other than riding, going forward. We
acquired a younger horse and began training once again. Buddy took on the role
of teaching an arrogant young gelding some manners, and he was well suited to
his new role. Meanwhile, I found that I had missed those early morning wakeups
and the excitement of competition that I had been backstage for up until now.
The time seemed right to take the stage myself, and so I did. We enjoyed a
couple of years of moderate success at the lower levels of eventing and
jumpers, and moreover discovered an array of tools to combat things like stage
fright and frustration and learned the value of goal setting to accomplish more
that we would have thought ourselves capable of. I carried these tools out of
the arena with me, and they made a positive difference in my personal and
professional life.
All of the things, physical and mental, that I
had learned to that point were called upon when my next challenge was to be
faced: the rehabilitation and subsequent retraining of a racehorse who we had
adopted and who ended up having been injured just two weeks prior to our taking
her home under circumstances where her history and condition had been masked
and not accurately communicated. Although frustrated, we had all of the tools
available, including the somewhat newly honed ability to know when to ask for
help. In doing so, we found our real
niche in the horse world which enabled us to experience the rewards of teaching
a horse to do something completely different from what she had been trained to
do, made possible by finding the right mentor from whom to learn those
skills. I found that my most cherished
ribbon was the one we had earned in a class that I had trained her for
myself.
We wind up now, back at the point where we had
started: with the reason for this little mental exercise and trot down memory
lane, a little one-month old boy named Daniel. The child of the child we hauled
to all of those horse shows. I can't wait to tell him everything that I have
learned about horses. Will he be interested? Maybe he will, and maybe he
won't.
But maybe he will...
