Caffeinated Courage

Dear Reader,

I think I have had too much coffee today. I am usually a one cup in the morning kind of coffee person, but in the last month or so I have started having a cup in the afternoon as well. Sometimes this doesn’t bother me; if I am busy at work, I can burn off the energy or burn it off when I come home. But today I feel like a nervous wreck.

That nervous feeling makes me feel like something is wrong and is out of place, and I have no idea what that one thing is. I over analyze everything that could go wrong in my day, near future, and beyond. I get worried about what I have to do when I get off work and start to wonder if I have forgotten to do something that was really important at work. But it also gives me a productivity high, like right now I am writing this blog and am writing faster than I would be if I wasn’t overly caffeinated. I can also get a lot of house cleaning done at an amazing rate. Sometimes I wonder if some of my generation’s anxiety isn’t fueled a little bit by our obsession of coffee.

When I am in this state of mind, it is probably when I can relate to horses the best. Every little thing distracts me and consumes me all at once. I can write a paper and listen to a conversation in the other room at the same time, but probably cannot tell you what either was about. When a young horse is worked up either because of a new environment or because of a high energy feed they are often like this. They are paying attention to you but are also obsessed with that weird looking branch across the yard and aren’t too sure about the cat. But if you can get them to focus on one thing and work out their nervous energy, they can be more attuned to you than you could imagine.

It is amazing though what makes a horse nervous, what doesn’t, and what they will put up with even if they are scared.

When I was little, I had a paint gelding whose name was King. He was only about 14.2 hands, built like tank, and had the grace of a drunk elephant, but I could do anything on him. I could ride him bareback without my dad worrying about him running off, I could braid his hair and his tail while my little siblings walked all around and under him trying to brush him and he could care less. But sometimes he would spook at things you would never expect him to. One time I had been practicing with my dad for an upcoming horse show and when we were done, we decided to ride him half a mile down the driveway together to get the mail. We rode down just fine with my dad behind me on the horse, got the mail, and headed back up to the house. When we got back into the yard, my dad decided to open an envelope, and the sound of tearing paper was apparently enough to tickle his ears and make him jump a couple steps. And that was the only time he really spooked.

The mare that I that I have owned since high school is not a spooky horse, but she does have her quirks. She doesn’t get scared by too many things. If we are out of her natural surroundings at a horse show she might shy at a banner or speaker, but her main vice was she did not like to be touched or covered with things. She barely let us trim her feet and was not a cuddly horse, so it was to my surprise when I walked down to the barn and my little sister had her in an elephant costume complete with a trunk and little boots around her fetlocks that looked like elephant feet. And to be honest, I think that Stella enjoyed the costume.

Just like humans, horses can control their fears and quirks when they know that something has to be accomplished. There are many different stories that I have heard about horses doing this, but my favorite is about a horse named Beau. Beau was a palomino gelding that we had bought unexpectedly as a prospect. I don’t know how many times Beau bucked with my dad and how many times my dad came in the house saying that he regretted buying him, but Beau eventually proved his worth. On the day of this story, my dad was working cows, and he and the other cowboys were trying to rope a particularly bad cow. After some missed shots with a rope, a few successful and halfway successful shots, my dad and another cowboy ended up with two ropes around the cow’s neck. But they also ended up with a rope tangled around the other cowboy’s horse and my dad’s back cinch around Beau’s flanks. It was not a pretty picture. (The back cinch is tied to the front cinch to prevent the situation of it sliding back, which has the same effect on a horse that a bucking strap does on broncs in rodeos. It doesn’t hurt, it just tickles them enough to make them buck.) But Beau managed to hold it together long enough for the rest of the cowboys to get the other horse untangled before he started bucking.

So that, dear reader, is a picture of the limits of a horse’s bravery, you just never know where those limits will be from situation to situation.

May the limits always be on your side,

The Rancher’s Daughter