The Early Years

I think the main trouble I had with Cherry in the first couple years I owned her was the fact that we hated each other. She obviously loathed me and I detested her. The only think keeping me from trying to get rid of her was the fact that this was my only horse, if I didn’t like her I didn’t get another. If I’d taken her on trial I’d have given her back.

Life was filled with pinned ears, yelling and four hour battles in the arena over something simple like stopping. I screamed at her and she screamed right back. Riding in the arena was misery. For a month I had to beat her through the gate with a crop b/c she flat out refused to enter. Her basic attitude towards me was, “Fuck you!” and she made that abundantly clear.

Our only solace was trail rides. The trail was the one place where we came to a grudging acceptance of one another and usually could get through a ride with only one or two small fights. Usually these fights were over what speed we would go. Most of the time, though, we could cruise down the trail as a rough semblance of a team.

I took lessons, many lessons, on Cherry. At least once a week she also had a training ride by either the barn owner Debby or her assistant Alice. I took a lesson once a week for about five years.

In the beginning, the only way to get a downward transition from the canter was to turn Cherry into the wall. She consistently held her head so high her ears were in my mouth, and had the huge underneck muscles to prove it. She alternately fussed with and avoided the bit, and scooted forward in this strange half-bolt every few strides.

It wasn’t much better on the ground either. Cherry would try to drag me to the grass, or bite at me as I tightened the girth. She stood tied just fine, but pawed in the cross-ties and danced if she though food might come. Leading her was a pain in the butt. She’d charge in front of me or fall behind, attempting to divert our walk towards the nearest patch of grass.

Looking back now, I can see just how ignorant we both were at building a partnership. Neither of us had any idea how be a team. I either rode dead broke horses that didn’t care what you did or rank horses that tried to scrape you off on the nearest tree. Cherry was neither of these, and I didn’t know how to handle it.

For her part, Cherry had never really been broke. She had extensive trail miles on her and could carry a rider over all sorts of terrain, but had never been taught to listen to the rider’s aides. She was smart enough to figure out what you wanted, and if she saw a point she’d go along with it. On the trail she was totally reliable b/c she saw a point to the ride. She wasn’t going to charge down a hill or leap over a creek, and would slow down when conditions called for it. But she never learned to trust her rider and to be obedient.

Our fights in the arena were due to lack of training on both our parts. I didn’t know how to train a horse, and Cherry was too confused and angry to want to listen to me. It didn’t help that both of us were terribly stubborn and hot tempered. Lessons helped with this a bit, and now I can see the huge delusion I worked under, that the horse had been trained when in fact she had not.

Only one of my trainers finally noticed this. She told me that my horse wasn’t being bad, she just didn’t get it. And she didn’t get it b/c nobody had ever taught her. We worked on really basic things like turning and stopping, moving away from the leg (instead of taking off like a bat out of hell), and relaxing the neck. Slowly, painfully slowly, Cherry developed some top line muscle. We were getting better.

All through this painful process we went out on the trail. The trail was where we were safe, far away from the arena and the frustrations that existed there.

We went out on some great rides, both alone and with friends. Cherry quickly became the “babysitter” trail horse, standing patiently in the mud while my friend’s arena baby TB danced at the edge.

One memorable ride, the TB was terrified of some bags of brush left by trail workers. As she snorted, pranced and blew, Cherry looked wildly around in the opposite direction, unable to locate the horse-eating monster. We jumped logs, we raced up hills, we rode until dark, we rode at night, we rode bareback, we rode on deer paths never meant for horses to traverse. And we had a blast.

I remember why I had wanted Cherry in the first place.