Riding Beyond’s Origin Story
After 9 years of leading HOPE Equestrian Center, I resigned, skating on the edge of burnout from the 60 hour work schedule. Newly available time opened for me to write the book that had been on my mind. When I would present the summer program I had developed for at-risk teens at national conferences, people would often ask me afterward to write a book about it, because an hour’s talk just whetted a desire for more. Ha! I would say” Who has time to write book with our 60 hour weeks?” Suddenly, I had the time available to write that book. I expanded the audience to adults as well as teens, and crafted it for anyone interested in horses, wjether they owned one or not and to my amazement it got picked up by New World Library and was out in the world by 2007. Riding into Your Mythic Life, Transformational Adventures with the Horse gave me the opportunity to teach clinics around the US, Australia, and England. After a few years, in 2012 I realized that I wanted to offer something at home, of value to my southern Oregon community, something crafted as more of a boutique style that would not eat up my time and energy.
In 2013, I was invited to present at the Prescott College Best Practices conference for their students and others entering the field of equine assisted services. Arriving at the conference’s opening session for the keynote address, I sat in an aisle seat next to a woman I’d not met before. We chatted briefly and she invited me to attend her presentation and I said, sure, and you’re invited to mine, too. I don’t recall knowing the topic of her presentation when I arrived, but she started with the story of her life some 9 years before as a therapeutic riding instructor facing her last days in hospice due to her breast cancer treatment that had damaged her heart and lungs. She said that she had a book lying around that she’d not read for months. She usually found such books sentimental and useless to her. But she finally picked it up. “The author of this book is here at the conference somewhere.” She named the book I had written several years before, to my astonishment. I raised my hand and said “We’ve already met!” She continued to narrate that when she read that book it got her to thinking that maybe the story that the doctors had given her did not have to be her story. Thinking about that, she got a friend to help her onto the back of her one remaining horse, a small mare with a comfortable, flat back, which she mounted bareback, turned around and lay down on her rump, just lying there for comfort.
A day or two later the hospice nurse came to check on her. She asked her what she was doing differently, because her oxygen level was up in her blood and her heart rate had lowered. The only thing she had done different was get on that horse, she recalled. In the coming months, she enlisted a friend with medical training to help her continue her time on her horse. Within a few weeks she was out of hospice and in a year she was recovered. She had been offering what she’d learned for 7 years to women recovering from breast cancer treatment.
This information astonished me much more than the coincidence of her reading my book and sitting next to me at the opening address. And here’s why. In the previous 15 years I had accompanied two close friends through their treatment for stage 4 breast cancer, during the time I was running HOPE Equestrian Center. I saw first-hand how ravaging the treatment was to their bodies and their lives. It had never occurred to me that the horses at HOPE might have helped them. Now, though, I had the chance to offer this to other women in my community.
I returned home inspired to enlist Mystic, my personal endurance riding horse, in this work. Mystic was a mare who had come to me as a 5 year old in 2007 through a friend who had become afraid of her because she would rear with her. She turned her out with her two other horses but after a year, though she loved her affectionate nature, felt that she needed to offer her a more productive life with someone else. She asked me to help condition her for sale. At first I refused because a rearing horse can be extremely dangerous if they go over backwards with someone. Yet, I had done many trail rides with Mystic and my friend and had not witnessed that behavior and in the knowledge that a horse moving forward cannot rear, I took on the task of conditioning her. Two things unfolded that summer as I conditioned her: I was charmed by her eagerness upon my arrival at her home to go on a trail ride, running to the fence. And when I’d depart later, she’d run the fence after me. I exclaimed to my friend after a few weeks that I was falling in love with her horse. She confided then that she had hoped that I would be the one to buy her. No, no, I said, I don’t want a rearing horse. But here’s the thing: a few months before, I had determined that I wanted to buy a young horse that I could have a deeply personal relationship with, something fresh that I was yearning for. So, a few weeks later, after my declaration that Mystic was not that horse, as we headed out on a conditioning trail ride, just a mile into the ride,
I got the distinct “message” that I was on the back of that special horse. I was surprised to feel that certainty emerge, but I decided not to mention it to my friend for the next five hours, to see if I felt the same way upon our return home. I did feel that same certainty and told my friend who was delighted. The thing was, though, that I had planned to find this special horse by the next spring, after I completed a few months of book tours for the release of my book.
So, the next spring, I brought her home. Right away, she began to have a few days of episodes of extreme reactivity every few weeks, followed by a couple of weeks of the return of her usual affectionate willingness. After a couple of months, I realized that I was dealing an extremely hormonal mare in her spring heat cycle, major PMS. Just a sniff of a stallion nearby at a campground or a nearby field would trigger her behavior. I was working with my vet for attending to her extreme behavior shifts.
About that time a friend came to visit from California and was excited about learning to work at liberty with her horses. She offered to show me what she was learning and fortunately, we chose Mystic, one of my 3 horses, for the demonstration. Within just a minute or two I realized that this was what this mare needed. I needed to turn her loose in a large arena where she had freedom of choice to run off if I was being unskillful in my communications and where I had the opportunity to respond to her behaviors by responding with more effective communications. It changed everything. She still had her hormonal episodes, but we had worked out how together to cope with them.
So, fast forward to 2013 when I returned from Arizona inspired to enlist Mystic for breast cancer survivors, everyone at the barn declared I must be crazy. She was the dominatrix of the boarding facility of 40 horses. I had to choose an older, quieter horse, they said. I could see their point. Yet something urged me to say “let’s give her a try.” Four other women accompanied me with Mystic to a small arena where I climbed up on her bareback and turned around and lay down on her back. I was anxious once I got up there: I knew she could be unpredictable. Plus I had not tried this maneuver since I was a teenager on my first old trustworthy horse. Yet it was immediately clear that she was absolutely fascinated by it all. She was quiet and curious and fully engaged in this new activity. I realized that she knew me well, so it wasn’t too unexpected, so I invited two others there to climb up, two that she was not acqainted with. Same behavior: fully engaged.
That was enough for me to spend the next three months training her for entering the world of equine assisted services, leaving behind her endurance ride days. We formally dedicated Riding Beyond’s beginnings with about forty friends in August and then held a pilot program in September.
Jan was a participant in our first session. After meeting as a group of women in a circle, we stepped into the arena for her to invite Mystic to touch the back of her outstretched hand. Mystic eagerly stepped forward and did so, then immediately took another step and began rapidly and gently nuzzling Jan’s solar plexus area. I watched in astonishment for a few seconds, never having seen this behavior, and wondering why Jan did not step away. After about 30 seconds I asked Mystic to step back with a touch on her chest, and Jan stated with tears streaming that “She went right to where my tumor is!” She had not stepped away because she felt a powerful energy flowing from Mystic into her, and she just wanted more.
It was a life-changing moment for Jan and emotionally impacting for all standing by. Our work was launched in directions that we had never anticipated.I soon became aware that the liberty training foundation I had developed with all of my horses gave them the freedom to be safely expressive in a way that horses trained by conventional methods usually did not possess. We began to realize that we were embarking on something radically new and promising.
Here is Jan’s account of her experience of those first weeks of Riding Beyond’s origins:
I came to “Riding Beyond” with only the expectation that I would get to know a tiny bit about horses and maybe find some small happiness for the moment. I’d gone through a very difficult year – a diagnosis of
cancer and the loss of my beloved youngest daughter. Joy was hard tocome by. Grief was an every day companion.
One day, the phone rang, and it was my friend Elizabeth who told me about an equine program for cancer patients that was starting soon. I had actually read about it in the newspaper but hadn’t had the
motivation to call about it. Elizabeth gave me a cowgirl boot in the butt and I called Trish that day.
I went to the first day of the program with pretty much no idea whether I’d get bucked off a frisky horse or have a spontaneous healing like ones I’d heard about. Trish had explained the program, but with my extremely limited exposure to horses I don’t think anything really gelled. Well, I was in for one of the most treasured and healing experiences I’ve had in this rocky road of life. This would be a healing of the heart.
Mystic is a beauty of a huge soft soul. My first meeting with her was tender on her side but cautious & somewhat excited on my part. Her calm, quiet presence quickly infused me and I found myself really falling in love with something in her that was tangibly intangible. Maybe it was perfect that I knew nothing about horses, because I didn’t have any notions aboutwhat to look for, what to think, how to be. Maybe because of that I just “let it flow” with her.I found in the following weeks of the program that I was constantly bringing up her image in my mind when I felt stressed or sad or even happy. Just the thought of her would calm my mind and bring a feeling of contentment, peace, wellbeing.
On one occasion I was feeling some deep angst and restlessness and couldn’t really put my finger on the cause. I then thought of Mystic,almost automatically, like some people reach for a sedative. Immediately
a huge, huge wave of grief enveloped me. The release was like the wave of a tsunami and the minutes after were like floating in an endless quiet sea.
Another time I was praying and meditating but thoughts kept racing in and out and grief and sadness and confusion kept tormenting me. Again my mind automatically went to Mystic and very surprisingly, in an instant, I became profoundly calm, very quiet, at peace. Well, I didn’t know what to think of that but hey, I’d take it.
And so went the love affair with the horse, Mystic. It continues today. The program is over, but I have gained a beautiful amazing and nurturing friend. My life has an added dimension that I would never have
anticipated. I am so grateful.
Thanks Trish! Thanks beautiful Mystic! Thanks Elizabeth. And thank you to all my other new friends, the volunteers, who helped make this beautiful program a reality.