“Me and Amos had a cousin that was in a car accident when she was about seventeen. Dora was her name. She had a lot of sistas, but Dora was easily the prettiest and brightest of ‘em all. Dora died abut twenty years ago. She got some sort a cancer, but I don’t remember which.”
Walt or Amos didn’t talk much about family. Sometimes I wondered if they were found under a bush. I don’t know why he was telling me about Dora now when I really wanted an answer to my problem.
I was breaking in a Connemara filly, called Connie. She was only about 13.3 hh, but very stout and could easily carry an adult. But Connie was particularly jittery. Everything new scared her. She didn’t shy in a big way, but she was fast and a fellow could get whiplash when she did. I had been working with Connie for a couple of weeks and didn’t seem to be making much of a dent in her nervous reactions. I had worked her with a flag over and over, but the next day it was like she had never seen it before. The bush by the laneway she walked past every day caused her to shy every time. She never seemed to get over having the rug thrown on her despite exposing her until I no longer had the strength to lift it anymore.
But what was really giving me a headache was trying to catch her. I would walk into her yard with the halter and lead rope and Connie would head for the furthest corner and turn her bum to me. I knew better than to go up to a horse with her hind end facing me, so I would flick the rope at her rear to let her know this was not acceptable. When I would do this she would mostly run to another corner or sometimes even run a lap or two around the yard. If she turned towards me I was generally able to carefully walk up to her and slip the halter on – although she was pretty touchy around her ears. But quite often she would stand in another corner with her tail towards me and I would pretty firmly let her know with the end of the rope that she had better have another thought about that. I had been taking this approach since I started working with Connie and for the most part I was having to do less and she was taking less time to face me, but I always had to do something. I never was able to enter the yard with Connie looking at me, waiting to be caught. She always started out turned away from me. I knew this wasn’t okay, but I didn’t know why she wasn’t much better than she was.
Yet, in other aspects of the breaking in process she was doing great. But despite all this really good improvement there was an underlying nervousness that seemed to be impenetrable.
That was why I was leaning against the old Bedford truck while Walt started to ramble on about cousin Dora. I wanted to know why she was still hard to catch and what I should do about it. I wanted insight into what I was missing and clues on how to help Connie let go of her constant worry. In the back of my mind I sort of knew that Walt was not one to wax lyrically about days past, so I figured there was going to be a point to the story about cousin Dora and I would have to be patient until he got there.
“Dora used to baby sit for Amos and me when we were little and would always play games with us until it was time for bed. She was so full of life and I reckon she was me favourite of all me cousins.
Well, after the car crash Dora weren’t never the same. She was in hospital for months with brain damage. When she eventually was allowed home her world was real different. She was slower and it was hard to talk to her ‘cause her mind would jump from one thing to another real quick. She’d be tellin ya about going for a swim and in mid sentence she would talk about one of the chooks that had gone broody. Ya couldn’t keep up with where her mind would take her. As kids we thought it was funny, but I can see how poor Dora really struggled later in life to have a job or a fellow in her life.
One of her strangest quirks that she got after the crash was how she saw things in life. She seem to measure everythin the same way, but different.”
“What does that mean, Walt?” I asked.
“Well matey, I remember how everythin for Dora she saw as a box. It don’t matter what it was. It was always some type of box. The way her mind worked seem to have her see the world and all the stuff in it as boxes. All different boxes, but still boxes. The doctors had a name for it, but I can’t remember what they called it. She damaged a particular part of her brain that made this happen.”
“I’m not sure I understand,” I said.
“Matey, everything was a box. If Dora saw a house, it looked like a box. A car was a box on wheels. A person was a thin box on its side and with legs. A balloon was a box with all the corners cut off. She could only see the world in terms of boxes. We ain’t never learned why she saw the world like that, but somehow she needed to define everythin in terms of somethin she knew and boxes was the shape she new best of all.”
“That’s weird Walt.”
“I know matey. It’s very weird. But somehow the brain was tellin Dora somethin that was different from the rest of us. To Dora it made perfect sense, but because our brains don’t see everythin as a box, it don’t make no sense to us. It’s like sayin a Frenchman is talkin crazy because he speaks a language that’s different from us. Dora didn’t know she saw things weird.”
“But Walt what has Dora’s problem got anything to do with Connie?” I asked.
“Connie is a little like Dora. She sees the world in a weird way too. Different from you and me. She sees everythin as somethin that might get her killed. When ya go into her yard to catch her she turns away from ya. She ain’t sure you don’t mean trouble for her. If the fence wasn’t there she might leave and go into the next yard. But the fence is there and stops her from getting far away from ya. So she turns her back to ya. She ain’t bein rude. She ain’t bein disrespectful. She’s just bein afraid.”
“I get that Walt. But how come she does it every time. When I do eventually catch her she should be learning that I am not going to kill her. I haven’t done anything that would make her think she is in trouble. I catch her; I pat her and rub her. I lead her quietly. There’s nothing to be afraid about. So why do I have to go through the same routine every day?” I asked.
“Two reasons. First, the routine she goes through every time you try to catch her has kept her alive so far. In her mind she has lived through every experience by doin what she has done. If she changes and does somethin different, the outcome might be worse. Ya know some footballers go through the same ritual every time before a game. They eat the same breakfast, wear the same socks and pet their dog the same way. If they changed, they might have a bad game.”
“Okay, I see that. Connie thinks that turning away is keeping her safe in some way. Even though it doesn’t make sense, in her mind she lived through it, so it makes sense to keep doing it. I see how that could be,” I said. “What’s the second reason?”
“The second reason is that you have convinced her that people are a raw deal..”
““What? Why?” I asked.
“Well matey, she believes that lettin somebody approach her with a halter in their hand is probably not a good deal. So she turns away. Then just to prove she was right to think like that, ya flick the rope at her and scare her.”
“But Walt I wasn’t trying to scare. I just wanted her to realize that I didn’t want her rear towards me, I wanted her to face me.”
“I know matey, but that’s your thinkin. Her thinkin is that you were threatenin her. She already has enough worry about ya walkin into that yard and then ya just prove to her that she should be worried because ya tried to attack her with the rope. Why would she ever trust ya and greet you when ya go to catch her?”
“I didn’t realize Connie would feel that way. I thought she would learn that facing me was a safer option,” I said.
“I know matey. But ya see if ya had grown up with Dora ya’d have realized that every body sees the world differently. Maybe ya need to think about how Connie sees it. She ain’t wrong, just because she’s sees it differently. Maybe ya might try to make it easier for her to face ya, instead of harder for her to turn away.”
Our herd of ‘hard to catch’ horses.