Tiva

To ask what it was like to have the opportunity to bring Tiva to her first off-site clinic – and a Buck Brannaman clinic at that – the simplest answer I could give you is that it was great.
Sometimes, language fails.

Tiva was as at home in the strange corral of Ellensburg’s rodeo arena as she was in her paddock back at SAFE. Glancing over at any given moment saw her standing comfortably, napping in the sunshine, or moving off the pressure of Esme’s ask (these two roommates at home also shared a pen during clinic).

This was both of our first Buck clinic, and though I had been to audit in the past, setting foot in that rodeo ground with a horse in hand is a very different experience than observing from the stands. But any nerves I might have had were squelched when we stepped out onto the sands of the arena, and Tiva felt just as with me as she does back at SAFE.

It was a glimmer of what Buck talked about in that same class. He and his horse — Beef — stood before one another, both of them relaxed and perfectly at ease in front of the crowd. Well, I can’t speak to Buck’s internal landscape, but I can say for a fact that his horse looked about as content and mellow as I’ve ever seen one. Buck had been on the road since January, but spoke about how that fact made no difference to his horse, for Beef’s home was not tied to a physical address, but rather the peace he received from Buck.

It was this same sort of peace I hoped to instill in Tiva, and for the most part I felt successful. There were a very few moments of uncertainty when the environment became something that drew her focus away from me, but I was able to bring her back quickly, and once we worked through it, it was over.

It was a tremendous three days of learning, working to adjust myself in the effort to better communicate with Tiva. I worked a lot on my timing, attempting to make our groundwork more of a dance. I admit, I am not always the most talented of dance partners, but in making a concerted effort to time up my feet with Tiva’s, it did feel as though we were able to establish more of a flow. I was also working her in the snaffle, a change from the halter, and therefore had to be even more conscious of my releases in order not to hang on her mouth.

Watching the intentionality with which Buck worked his own horse made me really slow down and think about my own movements and asks. He really is a master at his craft, and it was inspiring to watch how little he does to get the result he asked for.

Horsemanship is a practice that has no true end, and one in which the progress is not always linear. I do believe that the lessons we learned and the experiences we shared at Buck made Tiva and I better, individually and as a pair. But what I am most proud of is how tremendously well this Yakima mare did in the face of it all — trailering, traveling, foreign environments, sights, sounds. She took it all in stride. On the last day as we loaded up, one of the gusts of wind that Ellensburg is famous for came and slammed the door of the trailer behind her as she was standing waiting to be tied. I think I jumped more than she did, which is a true testament to how much this horsemanship has worked for her. Even a few weeks ago, such a startle would have sent her skittering backwards, but at this sudden disturbance she hardly blinked.

I am so very grateful for the tutelage of Joel Conner and my horsemanship volunteer peers at SAFE, who helped make the clinic feel wholly accessible. Though there were some new exercises — and as always a feeling of needing to hone my skills — nothing we did felt out of my depth because of my existing knowledge. Buck does break it down into bite-sized pieces to make it digestible, but I am so grateful to have had so much time to practice at SAFE with people who can lend me guidance when I am feeling stuck. Both my and Tiva’s experience at Buck was all the better for it, and I am so thankful, as always, to have the opportunity to work with this very special mare.

The June Open House is in full swing. The forecast said rain, but the weather has held for the event, allowing our tour groups to meander leisurely around the property without worry of whether or not they remembered to re-waterproof their raincoats. At paddock #17, a smaller group has congregated – here for the open house, yes, but also to visit with a particular resident: Tiva. These are the people who brought Tiva to SAFE, who reached out to us to get her the help she needed when the situation seemed dire. They recount how scared and nervous she was as they stand around petting her face and neck and giving scratches to her withers. Tiva hears the crinkle of a half-eaten dorito bag in their hands and gives her best attempt to shake them down with her nose (she has never eaten a Dorito in her life, not sure where this desire for nacho cheese originated from). They pull away from the visit just as another tour group approaches. Tiva is kind enough to play ambassador to them as well, accepting even more pets on the face and neck. Her kindness abounds – this group doesn’t even have any Doritos they might give her.

Last farrier day, the mere sight of the hoofjack stand sent Tiva into a snorting spiral. Having to rest her hoof on it for more than a moment was a rather big ask. So in the six weeks between that appointment and her next, it became a goal to befriend Tiva to the hoofjack, ensuring the happiness of farriers and this horse forever more. Did you know, Tiva, that if you are to rest your hoof on this ergonomically-attuned cradle, built for this very purpose, you will receive many scratches on the wither (front hooves) or rump (hind hooves)? If she didn’t know before, she quickly learned, in a real ‘I’ll scratch your back, you keep your hoof here’ type of scenario. Her next farrier appointment can’t come soon enough!

A song about Tiva going over trot poles and a single cavaletti (set to the tune of Dancing Queen by ABBA):

Friday night and the lights are on (in the arena)
Looking out for some poles to trot
Space ‘em with the right distance
Elevate the back
That round was so dang clean

Every horse can trot the poles
Going ‘round to the left and riiiiiight
Then we add a caveletti
What will you do?
You’re gonna jump that thing

And when you hit your stride
You are the jumping queen
Young and sweet
Only just thirteen

Jumping queen
Set on back and clear that thing
Oh yeah!

You can jump
You can trot
Having the time of your life
Oooooh, see that mare
Watch that scene
She is the jumping queen

A chestnut mare is good for many things, one being looking clean while managing to harbor a frankly obscene amount of dirt. Each pass of a brush across Tiva’s rump disturbs the ecosystem she has been working so hard to cultivate, and yet the amount of brushing does not seem directly correlated to the amount of dirt that is displaced. Like one of those trick scarves, the dust just keeps coming and coming until she could pass for Charles Schultz’s Pigpen. Finally, two sore arms later, she is clean enough for a saddle, and we can get to work.

Turning her out in her paddock following the session, her order of operations is thus: drink water, check for food, have a roll. And so begins the cycle again.

Inside the boundaries of a 6ft tall priefert round pen, Tiva rolls her hindquarters to the left. It’s the 5,000th time she’s done so (not today, but in general) but it passes without fanfare or recognition. She will roll them another 5000 times before the year is out.

This time last year, she was nervously evading capture in her paddock, snake-necked and snorting at those who approached. Now, she squares up and drops her head in a bid for a pet on the face, a common request these days.

If she could understand English, she would probably be overtired of hearing me express my awe of her. “But,” I would argue, “there’s so much to be in awe of.”

She, a creature of the present, exists in the here and now. “You,” she might say, “dwell too much in the past, focusing on where I have been.”

“But only to compare it to where you are now, and where you are going! And as far as dwelling in the past goes, I can also look to the future, and this is what I see:”

Joel sliding the toe of his boot into the stirrup of a saddle that sits snugly cinched on Tiva’s back. It is a Wednesday in March, 754 days after she first arrived at SAFE. Leaning against the round pen, recording this moment, a montage plays in my head: Tiva stepping off the trailer at SAFE after spending a year in a stall, head on a swivel, snorting something fierce. Chuteing her into the round pen for those early days of work. Her fear of humans. Miming petting from a distance because she darn sure wasn’t about to let you touch her. Even with a rope around her neck, how it took hours to work up to those first pets. How smart she was, how fast she learned. Watching Terry put a halter on her and work the tangles from her mane. Watching Terry work her in the round pen, and being there to witness the first time she walked her into the barn. The first time I caught her in her paddock to bring her in to be worked, the uncertainty and grace we had for one another. The first time I worked her. Our first clinic together, touching her with the flag for one of the first times. Feeling in over both our heads. Working working working. More flagging, more roping. Changing eyes, again and again and again. The frustration and gratitude and adoration that comes from educating and being educated. Set backs and steps forward. Milestones reached. So many granules of sand materializing into a sandcastle. The first time I threw a saddle on her back. The first time we cinched it up. Thinking in that moment how far we’d come, how this was a probability-defying moment in and of itself. All the same groundwork, now with a saddle. Hindquarters-front quarters hindquarters-front quarters. Did I mention changing eyes? The journey of 10,000 miles starts with a single reach of the hind. Bumping her up to the panels and sitting on her for the first time – even though I was still committed to the panel, she’s under me breathing and solid and comfortable enough letting me dangle my leg over her and put some weight on her back, and it is really starting to feel real at this point, that we could ride her, that it’s not as much a pipe dream as we’d originally thought. Spots in there still that make us nervous. But things that reassure us. Hindquarters hindquarters hindquarters.

Joel swings his leg over, feet in both stirrups now. Riding Tiva. Tiva not fleeing the scene, all four feet on the ground. My heart in my throat, believing in her but not without a modicum of associated anxiety. Two years of work to reach this moment, a fear it could go south. But as the seconds tick on, that fear fades. She doesn’t seem tight. She bends both directions. She drifts her hind right, then left when asked.

She doesn’t want to go forward, that first ride. When the metronomic flop of Joel’s legs is applied, she does not yet associate it with moving off. Instead, she takes a tentative step back. That’s why we have someone with a flag in there, to provide support and help to make the rider be ‘the good guy.’ On the outside of the arena, the manure truck rattles by. Tiva hardly blinks. For a horse who once startled at leaves blowing across her path, this change is monumental, especially considering she has a rider on her back for the first time. Legs flop, flagger flags, and she goes, walk, trot, lope, though not without her patented Tiva ‘tude. This is a recurring theme, tied to a lack of freedom in her feet. If she feels stuck, she gets mad. You can’t blame a girl for this. She doesn’t understand quite yet how to feel free while carrying someone, and is just learning how to feel of a rider. On the ground, we have both made strides in freeing her feet, and as a result changing the orientation of her ears. I have been learning to get out sooner, not to nag her when she is trying.

I digress. She goes both directions, up through the lope, and Joel dismounts. I won’t lie and say that my eyes don’t leak a little when I go to unsaddle her, so much pride it’s flowing out of me. She gives me the same look she always does after we work: that was fine, but do you have a little snack for me?

Since those first rides — each one building on the foundation Joel laid — Tiva has continued to do well. So well, that on just her second ride, Kaya sat on her as a passenger. Terry has since taken the proverbial reins (we are still riding in a halter for now), and I help on the ground with the flag. She still has a reluctance to go forward based solely on leg, but I have been slowly walking back how much I am helping, and she is making forward progress, pun intended. She is soft to bend, and has yet to show any real signs of being bothered by environmental factors at play, though she did leap across the slash of a sunbeam once, perhaps setting her sights for the hunter/jumpers. Terry will continue to work on moving her out without my help from the saddle, while I still get the pleasure of working with her on the ground. Oh Tiva my Tiva, just how far you have come!

Below is a clip of one of her more recent rides:

Tiva has been working hard this summer, if not to fit into a bikini, then for something infinitely better: a saddle. There had been talk of Tiva meeting a saddle from the beginning. Even in those earliest days when she was a wild creature, pinning her ears and cowering in fear, we held a vision of her in tack, small in the back of our minds, but no less clear for it.

Over the last year and a half, Tiva has been preparing to wear a saddle. We have spent countless hours with the flag, with the tarp, with the rope — touching, patting, petting. In this horsemanship, we are always trying to ask the question of not what the horse can do, but what she can’t, and work on those spots that present themselves. Over the months, Tiva’s ‘can’t’ spots have become more difficult to locate (this doesn’t mean they’re not in there, but rather they’re less obvious). She still has a changing eyes issue, and has a much harder time turning loose to her left eye (she’d rather keep you on her right), but knowing where she began and seeing her now, it’s difficult to even believe she’s the same horse.

So after a particularly good session with the tarp one evening, one that included flapping and draping and crunching and really most other verbs you can imagine being done at the intersection of a lightweight, crinkly object and a horse, we made the decision to saddle her. There are always variables to these scenarios, and plenty of unknowns that we can’t account for, but Tiva felt about as prepared as possible. After nearly a year of working together, hours and hours of work, it was time.

We took it quite slow, checking things out and then re-checking them out. We threw the saddle on, something she had since become accustomed to, and walked her around with it on her back, bringing the cinches down and snugging them up, touching her with the stirrups and other saddle parts to gauge her reaction. Throughout it all, she remained calm.

Then, the moment of truth came, and we cinched her up. She stood quite still for the entire process, and when she did get mildly bothered, we able to find comfort in a pet on the neck or face. Once the cinch was up and tight, it was time for the moment of truth. While yes, Tiva did not pull any shenanigans while being saddled, or during those initial moments after when we walked her around a few steps on the line to make any last-minute adjustments before letting her loose, Tiva had already had some practice standing with a saddle and walking with a saddle from all our prep work. It was the moving out that concerned us, as it is very difficult, I’d say even impossible, to safely replicate the feeling of a saddle and all of its parts squeezing and moving and rattling at a gait faster than the walk. So as we undid the halter and stepped carefully away from Tiva in the round pen, we crossed our fingers that all the work we had done to get her to this moment would be enough to get her through it.

Sending her loose at the walk was fine, and when we bumped her up to the trot, she was ok there as well. But when she hit the lope, as often happens, she grew bothered at the strange object on her back, and gave a good half-circle of bucking before settling back down. She was having a difficult time moving up and down smoothly through the gaits, clearly feeling a bit stuck, so that first day we worked on helping her find peace with the saddle and an ease of movement. Aside from that first round of bucking, she was clearly bothered by the stirrup in her off eye, and gave a few kicks at it as she went around. But we helped her line out by catching her attention before she became too engrossed with what was happening in her off eye, and by the end of the session, she was moving out with a lot more freedom and a lot less anxiety towards all of the saddle’s moving parts. After a little more work, we pulled the saddle off, told her how very, very proud we were, and put her away.

The next day, she was just as easy to saddle as the day before. She was also smoother moving up into a lope, and while she still showed signs of being bothered by those pesky stirrups, she did not feel inclined to buck.

Since that day, she has been regularly been wearing a saddle, something that will soon become second nature. We have been working on pushing her a bit further each time: purposefully moving the stirrups to get her used to it, using the flag and the tarp with the addition of the saddle, sending her out loose and having her change eyes on the rope, mostly all things she has done before, but now with an added element. And Tiva, smart and quick to learn, is doing great. It may still be a little while before she is ready to carry a rider, but with the work we are doing, when that day comes, hopefully she will be just as prepared as she was to wear her first saddle!

Recent observations regarding Tiva:

Her shoulders, in particular, are rather itchy this time of year, and she is not opposed to a little mutual grooming if you would be so inclined to scratch, yes, just there, above the elbow. A gentle mare, she rarely ever uses teeth, and those whose hides are a bit less thick much appreciate and prefer the ‘stiff upper lip’ technique to the ‘barber shop shark’ when it comes to being groomed on.

While she is a cautious creature still, greeting most unknown stimuli with a snort first, think later approach, when it comes to her grass time, she willingly throws herself into the hands of strangers. The bearer of The Halter between the hours of 10AM and 2PM is a revered figure, and one who is sought out with great fervor. No one climbs above Esme in the herd, but it is not uncommon for Tiva to be biding her time at the front of the line at the gate, her internal clock tick-tick-ticking closer to that coveted grass time.

If, however, you approach after business hours (AKA, when the act of the catch is more directly correlated to sweating in a round pen versus in the pasture), her hospitality is rather lacking.

Tiva’s stink eye is impressive, her entire head getting into it as she flattens her ears against her skull and extends her neck, her wrath affording her a level of aerodynamics usually only seen in sports cars. Perhaps dragons were fashioned after mares like Tiva, from whose nostrils you can practically see the steam billowing. However, unlike a dragon, she is all bark and no bite — she wears this nasty little face even as she is moved away by the more senior members of her herd. She may not be a lover, but she’s no fighter either, and the most I’ve ever seen her challenge is via a slow, not particularly aggressive ears pinned walk towards the horse in question.
If Tiva were a human in a corporate job, she likely sign her emails with “respectfully,” while flipping the recipient off through the screen.

Tiva is the queen of cat naps. On any given day, she goes down for a dirt-filled snooze at least three times, and I really do mean at least. In the sunshine, her coat shines like a new penny — until she rolls, that is, and then it’s more akin to a penny you find at the bottom of your bag: a little more dull, but not at all lacking in worth.

With each groundwork session, we creep incrementally closer to the day when Tiva can be saddled. When I say saddled, what I really mean is cinched up, because Tiva has technically worn a saddle now numerous times, walking little circles with it perched atop her back as I keep a careful hand on it to ensure it only comes off intentionally. While she still has an issue changing eyes, which will make turning her loose with a saddle on a bit more challenging, she has come a long, long way with having things in her off eye, or behind her, or beneath her. With each touch of the flag on her flank, each squeeze of the rope around her belly, each time something waves behind her as we go from left to right to left again, we work towards that first saddling being as low-drama as possible for this mare. This mare, who had gone the first ten or so years of her life without much trust in humans. This mare, who over the last year and a half has cracked herself open for us and allowed us to show her what it can be like to be cared for, to be loved, but most importantly, to find balance and confidence in herself.

I’d written an article some months ago documenting Tiva’s journey with the intention of having a video to accompany it, showcasing the immense amount of progress she has made since she first stepped off that trailer over a year ago, snorting and scared. But as it has a habit of doing, time got away from me, and the visual accompaniment to Tiva’s tale was delayed. However, in the months between Tiva’s last journal entry to now, a lot more of her story has been written, and while not all of it has been visually documented, a nice cross-section of her year here has.

Since she first arrived, Tiva has hit many milestones and conquered many fears. Not shown in the video are the baths she’s stood so well for, or the many times she’s been led in and out of her stall, or the trail walks she has taken in the neighboring park. Her introductions to her current herd are missing, as are the literal hours of footage of her taking naps in the sunshine amongst these new friends. It doesn’t show her getting her feet done, or her standing for a long grooming session, ground tied in a bustling arena. It also is missing some of the tougher moments – the times when her fear and mistrust made her slightly dangerous and unpredictable in those early days of paddock cleaning. The hours it took to get within a foot of her. The sweat (and tears, and blood, on the human side of things) required to repair and build a positive foundation for a horse who had for so long been shown that humans didn’t have a lot on offer. All those ‘ugly’ times are just as much a part of her story as the progress shots. These things you’ll just have to imagine, but below are some peeks of parts of Tiva’s journey I did capture, snippets of her months of hard, hard work condensed into a little under 5 minutes.

I’ll let you in on a little secret: we have a document that lists all our horses here at SAFE with all their different stats. Name, height, weight. When they last had their feet done, when they last were vaccinated. It’s a way to keep track of things, helps us organize appointment dates and have a place to house all of the data behind the creatures we know and love. The sense of fulfillment when the document is complete is second to none.

But when a horse first arrives at SAFE, their line on this document is patchy. For some horses, we can fill the lines in quickly. Gentle horses arrive and are measured same day. These are usually the same ones who quickly see the vet and the farrier – two more boxes, filled.

Certain other horses leave holes for longer. Perhaps we can get their height at intake, but having a weight tape around their belly is a no-go. Every horse is different, and we of course give them the time they individually need, but it is always a cause for celebration when that last box is ticked (or at least the completionist in me feels this way).

It may not surprise you to learn that Tiva had many empty boxes for a long while after her arrival. Next to her name, her height, weight, and blanket spaces sat vacant. Even as other horses arrived and were filled in, they were bracketed by her empty spaces. And this is not to sound impatient. The spaces represented all the great work Tiva was doing here, the time it was taking her to feel comfortable, to let people get close enough to touch her, let alone figure out what size rainsheet she would eventually need. The data points were just fun little markers of Tiva’s forward progress, to be added at her pace.

So when we could start filling them in, it was certainly an exciting time. She got her first farrier trim, and while it was only the fronts, it was still a date we could add. Hooves, check. She saw the vet for her vaccines, check! She would tolerate a height and weight tape, check check. Her line began to lose all the blank spaces, dates representing a steady march towards true domesticity.

All this to say, Tiva had her dental float recently, one of the last boxes to be filled, almost a year after her arrival. Despite how far she has come, having strangers touch her can still be a point of contention for Tiva, and she is no huge fan of being poked with a needle (who can blame her), so being sedated for her a dental was perhaps not out of the question, but not firmly in the question either. But we had a day of dental floats scheduled, and decided that it was time.

Because of her contentious history with needles, we felt that it would be better for all parties involved to give her a bit of oral sedation via dorm gel before her IV sedation. The day prior, Tiva and I practiced the whole, ‘syringe in her mouth’ thing, aided by our friend molasses. Really, a syringe tip coated in a delicious substance sounds good even to me, almost like a friend holding a spoon of ice cream to your face and saying ‘open up!’ Ye olde, ‘something yummy this way comes (via syringe)’ is a great way to practice for deworming and administration of other oral meds, but dorming adds a new added challenge – you must get the gel under the horse’s tongue. Efficacy is lowered or rendered inert if the horse swallows it, so proper placement is crucial.

As is so often the case, I shouldn’t have worried. Day of, Tiva let me (and my molasses-tipped dorm tube) root around in her mouth with the patience of a saint, hardly blinking when the contents of the syringe deposited themselves under her tongue – a little less tasty than applesauce, perhaps, but she didn’t seem too offended. And then, thirty minutes later, she was sleepy in her stall, making me wish that I too could get dorm’d before I saw the dentist.

What’s the song, a spoonful of sugar…? ‘A properly-dosed syringeful of dorm helps the IV needle go in’ doesn’t exactly have the same ring to it, but the idea is the same. Tiva sedated like a little dream, and after, as they removed the speculum and I watched her little lip droop in the cradle her head was slung upon, I practically could have shed a tear. Tiva, this previously wild creature, had just had one of her last boxes checked.

For never having had a dental before, her teeth were in good condition. Some sharp surfaces, as was to be expected, but no vampire hooks or other painful stalactite formations. Our vet aged her at around 12. More puzzle pieces falling into place, another little bit of domesticity, cemented.

It will be another year before Tiva needs another float, and considering how far she’s come in the year since she arrived, I can hardly wait to meet the horse who gets her teeth done again next February.

There is a journey each horse must make, a map laid out before them when they first arrive at SAFE, a pathway to a brighter future. Not every route looks the same. The topography and length vary as much as the horses themselves do – some are short and flat, some steep and winding, some end before they’ve even really began (and these particular paths, if using the map analogy, dump out into a sprawling meadow where the air is always warm and the grass is always green).

We at SAFE hope to be the outfitters for these horses, preparing them with what they need for their trips. And like the paths themselves, the supplies they need are not all the same. Some require very little, arriving with some gear, already well set up for success but needing a tune-up. Some come with gear that has been working against them, slowing them down, hurting them in some cases. Very few show up with nothing. Every experience they have before SAFE contributes to their story, in one way or another.

Tiva came to us with some baggage, a real heavy kind of load that was going to take some lightening. Her road was going to be a long one, but we would help her with traversal.

If she were to have a field journal, with excerpts cataloging her time spent at SAFE over the last 8 months, it might read something like this:

• I have arrived to a strange new place. It has been a while since I’ve lived outside, and I’m not quite sure how I feel about it. There are people around, but I want nothing to do with them.

• Well, for as disinterested as I am with the people, they also don’t seem to care much about me. Every day I see them. They bring me food, big piles of hay. When they drop it into my shelter, I make sure to stand way back, just in case. They also come in to my area, which makes me nervous, but they don’t pay any attention to me, they just clean up after me and go. How odd. I still don’t care much for them, but at least they’re not asking anything of me.

• There is one person here who does pay attention to me. She sends me into a smaller round area and asks me to move around. I really want to run away from her, it’s not comfortable to be so close to a person. Sometimes she will ask me to turn and there’s a moment when I can’t see her – I really hate that. I don’t always understand what she’s asking, or don’t feel I can do what she wants. It can make a girl feel like lashing out. But this person does give me lots of breaks, and I can sense that what’s in her heart is good… Still, I don’t want her too close to me. She might bite.

• I understand a little more what is being asked of me when I go into the round area. I still feel like running away, but the person tells me I don’t have to. Sometimes I listen to her.

• I arrived wearing a halter, but now I understand what it means when the people say a halter is ‘breakaway.’ Me: 1, halter: 0

• There’s a different person in the round area with me today. A man. I can tell that he knows things about me, and while he makes me nervous, there’s something good about him. He pantomimes like he’s petting me, just like the woman does. He’s quite interesting, and when I go to leave he draws my attention right back. Something tells me this is not the last I will see of him.

• People come and go in my space like they have from the beginning, but I don’t mind it as much anymore. Sometimes they move abruptly or make a noise that startles me, and I have to snort, but you understand that, right? I also usually stay in my shelter when they throw hay for me. Not too close – I don’t want them getting ideas – but it doesn’t seem as important to be so far away anymore.

• Another round area, but this one has a lid on it, and I had to walk through a chute to get here. The man is back, the one I can tell knows things about me. I know something about him too, which is that he’s good at throwing a rope. I run as fast as I can, but I can’t get away from him or the rope, and he’s asking me to do something, pulling on that rope, pulling pulling pulling until I – oh, he just wanted me to face him? All the pressure goes away when I do that. Ok. Easy enough.
  But here’s a new thing, he’s getting closer, wanting to touch me. Now that is not as easy to allow. But he is going very slow. It’s like he knows what will be too much and stops right before he gets there. Mostly he is just touching my face with the rope, a little at a time. When his hand replaces the rope, it’s not too bad I guess. It’s the first time in months I’ve been touched by a person. It will take some getting used to.

• Covered round area. Man with the rope. I understand more today, and we get to the point we ended yesterday much earlier today. Then, my fri– that other person, who I spent time with in the smaller round area, she comes and swaps the man out. She stays with me for a long, long time. So long I almost fall asleep. And no, it’s NOT because she’s brushing my mane, I’m just tired from all the running, ok?

• No man with rope today, just the lady. When I walked to the round area today, my mane bounced against my neck in individual little pieces – the lady did something to it yesterday that keeps my neck a lot cooler, even if it feels kind of funny. The lady doesn’t have a rope either, but she does want to pet me. I like this person (there, I said it, happy?), but I still don’t really want her to touch me… well ok, it’s not so bad once she starts, but sometimes she’ll move a certain way or pet a certain spot and I have to move away. Boy is she persistent! She just follows me until I let her do it again. And again. And again. Then, she wants to pet me with something in her hand, a bit of rope, different than the one I got to know over the last two days. Oh, it’s a halter, but not the kind that stays on. So here I am, months later, wearing a halter again. But it feels different this time. We go for a little walk together, and she pets me some more. Really, not so bad.

• The people who drop hay for me seem surprised that I’m waiting for it to fall down into my shelter. I don’t get what the big deal is, I just want to eat sooner, is all.

• I go into the bigger round area a lot more now. I let the lady come and put the halter on me in my space, and we walk there together. She spends a lot of time petting me, with her hands and with some tools that feel pretty nice on my neck and back. Certain areas are still off-limits though, thanks very much.

• There are so many bugs out, and they are so irritating – landing on my legs and my face. Today, after spending time together in the round area, my friend misted some kinda smelly stuff on me. It made a weird noise, and felt strange, but I could handle it. Later, back in my space, I noticed the bugs weren’t as bad. Interesting.

• My friend wants me to pick up my front feet. I don’t really want to do that.

• I was introduced to some other people today, people who touched me and walked me around. I can’t say I wasn’t nervous at first, but they really just wanted to pet me. I could maybe get used to this. Maybe.

• Today I walked into the big barn for the first time. I really don’t like when things are behind me, in my blindspot, so I think my friend took extra caution to make it so I wouldn’t be startled. The barn has round areas too, and these ones are popular with other horses too.

• There’s some kind of event happening, lots of activity in the big covered space, with many horses and people in there together. My friend comes to get me, which I’m pretty used to by now, but we’re taking a different route today – going in to join the festivities. It’s overwhelming, I won’t lie, to be around so many other horses and people (mostly the people) who are moving in all sorts of directions. I can’t say I remain calm the entire time, but my friend helps remind me where my feet are when my head starts to come unglued, and I appreciate that.

• The round areas in the barn aren’t half bad, really. I come inside more frequently now, and that gets easier each time. I even will allow some other people to come up and put a halter on me and take me for little walks. That, too, gets easier with each time.

• I go on a walk to a new area today. There’s a new space for me to eat, a different location where my water is, and, most notably, a friend right next door. I knew this horse when we would go out and graze together, when the grass was still long, but now we’re even closer neighbors. I don’t mind.

• I met a person today who picked up my feet and filed them down. I’ve been working on the whole feet picking up thing, and I’ve become quite good at giving up my fronts. Today, the person holds them for a little longer, and moves them into odd positions, and it’s not always the most comfortable for me, but afterwards I do feel better. More balanced, maybe.

• Not to toot my own horn or anything, but I’ve really become quite brave. Today on my walk into the barn, a load of geese took off flying behind me, and I barely blinked.

• A man came to see me today. He had a long finger like a mosquito’s stinger, and it startled me when it came and bit me on the neck! I hear them say something about a ‘vaccine’ and ‘keeping me healthy,’ but I didn’t much care for the experience.

• There’s a woman at the end of the mosquito this time, and I know a little bit more about what to expect. But I think we were practicing for this – yesterday, people were walking up to me and poking me on the neck, which was only mildly troubling. I got used to that pretty quick. So today, when that little poke happens, I’m– well, I still don’t like it very much, but now I’m ‘fully vaccinated.’ Whatever that means.

• Another new area to live in, and this time, there are other horses to share it with: my long-time neighbor (the people call her Esme) and another white horse (they call her Darla). Esme rules the roost, and I mostly let her, but I can get her to move her feet if I really want to.

• This evening, I walked into the barn, but instead of the round area, they led me into a stall, like the one I used to live in. But this time was different somehow, and I knew that. I ate my hay and drank my water, and when the sun rose the next day, someone came and brought me back outside, to start a new day.

Tiva’s story is far from over, and her experiences here far exceed what has been catalogued above, but with each day that passes we hope to add another piece of gear to her tool box, so that the summits to come on her path feel far less daunting.

Our Operations Director, Terry, was able to halter Tiva for the first time here at SAFE, just last week. What is not shown in this video is the preparation in getting to this moment — the hours that were spent with Tiva in the round pen getting her to hook on, roping Tiva and going through the first pages of Buck’s ‘Red Book’ with her, the first touches at the end of the lariat rope on her face and neck, getting Tiva accustomed to a rope touching her muzzle — all that and more made it so that her first time having a halter put on here at SAFE went smoothly.

In the video below, Tiva continues to learn to free her movement through changing eyes, and get used to people being on all sides of her, including in her blind spots. We work on helping her relax as she moves around the round pen, letting her know that she doesn’t need to trot off all the time, and that walking is an option for her.

Putting a hand up by her face and mimicking petting is getting her used to the placement of a hand where it will eventually touch her. Because she is still so nervous, we are taking this slow, and waiting for her to accept the touch and not go away from it rather than forcing it upon her before she is ready.

Someone once told me that in their experience the Yakima Reservation horses were like trying to tame a “wild cat”. They are flighty, jumpy and in that person’s eyes almost impossible to domesticate. For us, the jury is still out. We have seen now our fair share of them come through SAFE, and each with their own personality. We have come across those that tend more on the anxious flighty side but really can feel no different than other breeds who tend towards the “hot” temperament. These horses can be either the greatest to work with or someone’s worst nightmare, it is all in the perspective the handler takes. 

What is very rewarding right off the bat with this type of horse is the “life” sitting right on the surface. They are sensitive and responsive to the slightest amount of movement and feel from you. As the handler, you better have a TON of patience and stamina to keep up with their quick bodies and minds, and you must be able to quiet your “feel” so that you don’t add to the anxiety they create on their own. The best part is that you have to do very little to create life, it is in harnessing that life that real skill comes into play.

One of the most important steps to successfully working with this type of horse is helping them change their minds from their most natural response: to run, into the most unnatural response: to stay when energy rises or they feel at all anxious or nervous about what is happening around them. It is pure survival at its greatest and there is a level of respect you have to have for what they naturally are wired to do and a huge amount of respect for those that allow us to touch them. The second piece of this is that they start to switch from a reaction-based answer to more of a response to requests. Both mean literally the same thing, but a reaction is based deeply in fear and a response is through thought.

A big change can come when the “hot” horse’s mind starts to sink with the handler. Even their hoof falls and beat changes as they match the feel of the person working with them. There is a peace in their movement and as our friend Joel Conner once said: “Their skin starts to hang differently on their bodies”. It is in these areas you start to connect with them even, before you are able to lay hands on them.

So far, the biggest challenge with Tiva has not been her sensitivity or her natural reactions to flee, but that for many months she was unable to do just that, move. When trying to halter start her in such a confined area, she bottled up all of her anxiety and her feet became stuck. Even when she was first let out of the stall her steps were full of braces and the sound her hoof made along the ground was tight and stabby. When horses are stuck, and “feel” like they can not move, they can become frustrated and in the worst cases turn to fight whatever is frustrating them. 

Tiva exhibits many visual signs of frustration. She repeatedly bumps her nose towards the handler, turns in and pushes towards them to try and move them and worst of all in frustration when standing still near someone she has tried to dive in towards them with a very bad expression. It is hard to imagine what her mental state has been over the last year. First gathered off the open land she was most likely born, nursing a filly on her side, shoved into trailers and moved from place to place and finally ran into a 12x24 box stall with absolutely none of the freedoms that are basic necessities of a horse. Not sure it gets much worse than this for a sensitive mare. 

We are telling you all this to help explain these are “unnatural” feelings, Tiva wasn’t born this way, most, if not all, of this was learned with every experience she has had with humans. To be 100% honest, it is a WHOLE lot easier to gentle a mare with Tiva’s temperament that has had zero experience with humans than accomplish what we are set out to do and try to undo the trouble inside Tiva now. 

So we begin. Her first groundwork lessons where not an attempt to draw her in to be touched, but rather allowing her to move and find the freedom in her feet. You could see how panicked she was with even the idea of standing and being asked to be near us. First, she needed to know that she was allowed to move and could move herself freely in all directions.

In the past, she had been told to turn in and face the handler, not a bad start for most horses but given her sensitivity and being in a small confined location of the stall it built in huge braces and anxiety. So, we literally “threw out the book” and did the exact opposite of turning in to draw in and instead we asked her to change eyes by turning away from the handler. We did this for a few reasons. First, we did this because she had so much anxiety turning in, we wanted to do something with her that she had probably never been asked to do. Partly to find some part of her that was still a “clean slate” and an opportunity to gain trust but also to show her how to work through something and find peace. Building search is a great way to gain trust and captivate their curiosity and build “try”. 

Changing eyes was definitely not very pretty in the beginning, a lot of gravel flying and uncertainty about this different angle presented by the handler. There are a few other added benefits the changing eyes work will help her gain include getting more comfortable when things go into her blind spot behind her, allowing her to feel free to move her shoulders both directions (which is huge for haltering), to learn different angles of the handler mean different things, especially that when they are in the front you, you can’t blow past them and finally it allowed her to find a very comfortable walk that was not “running” away from the person. 

This was a huge step that we will continue to build on as we gain trust and credibility with her. From these first sessions, it is evident that she is going to take a lot of time, patience and very skilled hands if she is going to make it as a domestic horse. Luckily, at SAFE, we have all of that along with loads of love and kindness to provide her with the best chance of a successful gentling, halter starting and experiences to have a lifetime of safety.

Introducing our newest mare, Tiva! She was picked up from a boarding barn in Olympia and arrived at SAFE in the late afternoon. After living in a stall for nearly a year, she was reluctant to leave it and or to get out of the trailer. Freedom was not something she had seen in a long time. Once off the trailer she stood in the far corner of her quarantine paddock taking in her surroundings with wide eyes and occasional snorting. The staff tries their best to always have another horse living close by to provide a little company and comfort to new horses whose lives have just been uprooted and are nervous about their new living situation. Cramer, calmly stood in the next-door paddock staring at in his cute new neighbor, occasionally pawing the ground and yawning.

SAFE was contacted by a good Samaritan who wanted advice finding a trainer to help her with a “wild mustang”. This horse came into her life when a very skinny mare and her filly were dropped off at the boarding barn she kept her own horse. This kind person was concerned about Tiva and her filly who was nursing, and wanted to help the mare. It appeared that the owner at the time was unable to keep them and so the good Samaritan had them turn over ownership. Tiva remained in the stall at the boarding facility and the filly was placed in a rescue. For a few months the good Samaritan worked on gentling the mare. She worked with a vet to refeed her and get her wormed. After realizing the mare was extremely sensitive and over her skill level, she tried to find a local trainer. No one would help with a “wild mustang”. Seeking advice, she contacted SAFE’s Outreach Team. This mare had already bounced around home to home, since being rounded up from the Yakima Reservation and her future didn’t look to have many options, so SAFE agreed to bring her into our program.

After working with Tiva in her first groundwork session, she appears to be sound and has a floaty gait. For now, we are being mindful of her sensitivity and only staff is cleaning her paddock while we get to know her. Tiva is a long project, but we give our horses all the time they need to find changes and lay a foundation that will keep them safe for the rest of their life. We look forward to helping this sweet mare, so she can live a happy life outside of small stall walls with horse friends and people who care about her future.