Breakfast With Mama - part 6

By Kathy Johnson, Executive Director, MHP

Call Me Ahab

After our near death experience in the round pen, I decided that Mama and I needed to fill in a huge hole in her education, her intolerance to touch. I recalled reading someplace about the prisoners who train wild mustangs. At the facility, they have something like a dipping vat or stocks where the horse is immobilized in a big pit that is then filled with corn kernels. Apparently, the horse finds the feel, smell and taste of corn pleasant. The horse is desensitized to touch, and the prisoners work with the horse's head without fear of hooves. Of course, I had no such corn pit.

I watched Mama in her kindergarten herd of young horses to see how she handled their touch. Little Flynn and Soxx knew better than to get close enough to touch or to be touched by Mama. They stayed happily at their end of the pecking order and out of Mama's kicking distance. One twitch of Mama's ear sent them scuttling. Shantih, the biggest and boldest of the foals, the beautiful butterscotch paint, had a problem with Mama. Every herd had a leader and an underdog. I gauged the herd leader with a simple test. At feeding time, I called them in from turnout to their stalls. The first one to the gate was the first one in. The first in and fed was, by this criteria, the leader. In a wild herd, the lead mare always ate first, taking care of herself so she could take care of the others. Mama always made it to the gate first. But, because she was wary and hyper-vigilent, she stopped to inspect everything before entering. Taking advantage of Mama's hesitation, Shantih slipped into the first run and got to the feed first. And so, Shantih became next in line for the alpha mare position, and first in line for the wrath of Mama.

If Shantih bumped Mama, nudged her, or even got too close, Mama spun and kicked her. The kicks were hard and very fast. They weren't so hard that she ever hurt the other horses, but what might sting a horse can break a person's bones. Once, Shantih got too close to Mama's front end. Mama attacked, teeth bared, ears pinned. She grabbed Shantih by the neck in front of the withers and moved her out of the way, the way a mother cat moves a kitten by the scruff of the neck. So far, at least Mama had never threatened me with her teeth. In the pecking order of Mama's herd, I was somewhat above Soxx, Flynn, and Shantih, but well below her daughter Sasha.

Sasha was a big, bay filly cut from the same cloth as Mama, big boned, chiseled hooves, strong willed and beautiful. Both mares might be called blood bays, but Mama's coat was diluted venous red, and Sasha's saturated arterial crimson. It slowly dawned on me that something was askew in Sasha's story. If she had been sold off of the reservation, she should have been branded. Her coat was unmarked. There was a possibility that she had not been born on the reservation. But where, then? I had more phone calls to make and another mystery to solve.

Mama never raised a hoof to Sasha, nor did she allow Sasha to push her around. Their relationship was set in stone. They were seldom out of each other's eyesight and when they were, there was a noisy reckoning as they called back and forth to each other. They grazed side by side, so close together they looked like one horse. And they often rested in the shade, side by side, Mama's nose to Sasha's tail, and vice versa, swishing flies from one another with quick flicks of their black tails. They gave me an idea.

We went back to the beginning. I returned to the front of Mama's run and fed her breakfast. I pulled up a chair and sang to her again. I held the longe whip over the fence, like an extended appendage, a long arm. I stroked her neck with the lash. She jumped back. The foals felt her fear and ran to the back of their runs. With the safety of the fence between us, I remained seated and singing. Mama returned for her breakfast. I touched again. She jumped back again, but not as far, not as fast.

When faced with something new and frightening, all of Mama's senses became hyper-alert. She stomped angrily at the flies she had tolerated a few moments before. If someone entered the barn she fled. She ignored her sweet feed. She turned up her nose at the scent of sugar in my hand. A pigeon purred, a sound so safe and soothing it was usually like barn music. Mama started. A foal bumped a foot on a metal trough. Mama spun. A pair of black and white magpies trotted across the tin roof, tiny feet pattering like a tight snare drum. In a cloud of red dust, Mama bolted, flinty hooves rattling on the rocky ground.

These were the patterns of her life, things she knew a hundred times a day. But when she tensed, they amplified. Mama was, in a way, like one of the many children we worked with at Medicine Horse Program. She had sensory integration issues. When frightened, which was much of the time, her senses heightened so much that the slightest touch became intolerable.

I sat on my chair and touched her over and over with the whip. I practiced circular breathing. My feet grew heavy on the ground. I waited it out. The longe whip felt like a fishing pole in my hand. I imagined myself on the banks of a river, the brown waters sometimes swirling and eddying, sometimes spilling in angry torrents over the rocky dams, sometimes moving languidly and lethargically. The sun warmed my tired bones. A breeze ruffled small waves. I cast my line again and again, looking for the sweet spot where a fish might bite, or might not. Fishing was an exercise in patience, with the possibility of no reward.

Mama was like an elusive old brown trout. Sometimes fish swam away from my line. Sometimes they ignored it, and sometimes they bit, then fought. Sometimes Mama moved away, sometimes she ignored me, every now and then she stood quietly, and often she fought. At one point, with the uncanny ability horses have to stop a bath by standing on the water hose, Mama had two front feet standing on the line, leaving me snagged on the river bottom.

Mama was fine with the line around her head and shoulders where I had spent so many hours detangling knots. I touched her neck. I moved to her withers and then her shoulders. She stood and ate. I gently pulled the whip over her head and touched her other side. I touched her elbows, then the short, strong cannon bones and her dainty fetlocks of her front legs. As long as Mama would stand, I touched.

I stroked her back. But when I moved to her hindquarters, the fight renewed. Mama kicked at the whip. She learned to come into the feed bin straight on so I could not reach her hindquarters. I stood to make up the distance. If I touched a hind leg, she lashed out. This was a bigger fish to fry. The haunches were the most vulnerable part of a wild horse. They were the locus of control for the flight instinct. If the horse was running away, the first and strongest instinct, a cougar or wolf could hamstring her. If the hind legs were tangled, she couldn't kick. Horses can't see directly behind them, and to turn slowed flight. Mama was overly protective of her hind legs.

I resolved to move more slowly in that direction. I got in one good touch without a kick. I stopped. I sat back in my chair while Mama ate peacefully. I sat, I sang, I waited. I touched her front end over and over, gently flicking flies with the soft lash of the whip like a horse's tail, reaching places Mama couldn't reach with her own.

 

Chapter Index - Don't Miss The Other Episodes

 

Breakfast With Mama copyright 2011, 2012, Kathy Johnson
Photos copyright 2011, 2012, Tony Johnson