What Animals See…

When I was 17 I had a horse named Chelsea.  She was a retired racehorse, a Thoroughbred.  When I got Chelsea she was one of those horses that no one really wanted to ride because she was so skittish.  The girls in the barn didn’t like her because she “freaked out” at everything.  You couldn’t ride her in the arena, you couldn’t walk her past other horses in the aisle and you sure couldn’t catch her if she was in the pasture…  I took things really slowly with Chelsea.  I don’t even think I rode her for the first month I had her (and, I was a 17-year old girl, so I was basically spending every waking hour at the barn!).  We would just “hang out”.  I would sit with her in her stall.  I would sit on the fence with her when she was in the pasture.  Slowly she began to approach me on her own; she began to understand I wasn’t a bad thing.  Back when I was 17 you didn’t really hear about rescue groups much – for dogs and especially for horses…  So, who knows what Chelsea’s history was, but I guessed since she was a retired racehorse it would be similar to the retired Greyhound I adopted when I was 20.  Minimal human exposure, basically crate/stall to racetrack and back.  Chelsea was an adult horse that just didn’t know about things yet…

So, Chelsea and I spent the next few months getting to know each other.  She would eventually come to me when I called her from out in the pasture (huh, kind of like a dog!).  She would eventually walk calmly and with confidence down the shadowy aisles past other horses, sometimes even lowering her head to go under a tie-up that a horse was clipped to (huh, kind of like a dog – wonder where my dog training started, eh?)… Chelsea eventually let me put on her bridle and saddle without moving an inch.  She was calm enough, she would just stand there and let me groom her, check her feet, and get her ready to be ridden.

From that point it was the scariest of all to her- going into that huge arena.  A big wide-open space, usually with no other horse friends in there to keep her safe. To a “prey” animal, going into a wide open area like that can cause them to be full of fear…  The girls that tried riding her before me would say things like – she just freaks out at nothing!  Well, Chelsea and I discovered together what triggered her fear… and, when you would really look at it and think about it, it made complete sense!  We would be riding down the long part of the arena and when we would come to a turn all of a sudden she would stop and lurch sideways, often times trying to gallop away from the corner.  It’s a corner that we humans didn’t pay attention to because, well, there was nothing to it – to us… When you stopped to look at it from a horse’s perspective it was super scary!!  The corners of the arena at this barn were used for storage, which also meant that they didn’t always look the same.  Sometimes there were bales of hay in them, sometimes a tractor, sometimes wooden pallets, sometimes tarps – and sometimes those tarps would flap with the breeze a horse would create by cantering past it – Yikes!  How scary!!  And, to top it off, the lights were usually burnt out in the corners and the owners of the barn thought because it was the corner, it was unnecessary to have them replaced – So, with all of that terribly scary stuff going on in the corner it was also dark and full of shadows!  Wow…  Amazing that any horse would go near it!

So, we worked on hanging out in the corners.  I would walk around with her when no one was in the area and let her go up and sniff things on her own.  It was a little heart-breaking and a little hilarious at the same time.  This 1,000 pound horse lunging backwards at the site of a kitty cat jumping up on a bale of hay….Yep, she pretty much had NO socialization in her prior life!

The other part of the arena that would cause fear was that some areas were light and some (like the corners) were dark.  Horses cannot see directly in front of them, so it’s not surprising that sometimes they become skittish of things – Imagine not seeing something directly in front of your face, but then turning your head a bit and discovering it’s *right there*!!  Well, we quickly realized that the barn had sky lights.  Big, huge, scary sky lights…  So, when it was daytime the lights in the arena were off and the light would come through the skylight.  Picture this – a ray of sunshine with dust floating around in it.  You know how you can see the dust floating in the ray of sunshine, but not really outside of it?  Chelsea would act like there was a brick pillar in front of her and come to a dead stop – even if you were cantering or turning off of a jump!  Yea, not so good when you have a rider on top of you!  So, again, we worked on walking up to and actually THROUGH the sunbeams!  That was a big step for her…

Chelsea learned a lot when we were together, she would walk around the barn with me without a leash, I mean, lead rope!!  We would ride in the inside arena and outside arena, she would come when called when she was outside in the pasture. We became best friends.  When Chelsea and I were working together I thought it was pretty cool how we were helping her get over her fears…  Now, 20+ years later I look at my relationship with my horse, Chelsea and think – WOW…  I can’t believe how much I learned from her.  She was a one-in-a-million horse and it wasn’t until later in life that I realized how much she really taught me about animals and the way they view the world…

It's an old picture, so the quality isn't very good...

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