[PHASE 2] Learning Experience

Whoever was in charge of writing all of the horse girl Hallmark movies that Valerie watched as a kid had clearly never interacted with a horse before. They were always tales of a girl and a horse that had been deemed as a ‘lost cause’ – with little hope of redemption or success – and their remarkable friendship. Like the main character was infallible and could do no wrong, an infallible pillar of moral character and horse whispering. See, that was all well and good for making an entertaining and profitable movie, but it was so, so far from the truth. Horses didn’t act like that, horse girls still struggled with problem cases, no matter how strong their ‘unbreakable bond’ or horse whispering abilities were. And what more evidence would anyone need to prove that other than Valerie’s current state? She was a mess (both physically and mentally), having spent over two hours trying to make any sort of progress with this stallion and failing miserably.

A rainstorm had rolled in the evening before, soaking the ground and leaving the pastures of Meadow Creek slipperier than a soaped up tarp with mud and standing water. And while that was good for promoting plant growth and filling the streams that ran through the property, it also caused a multitude of issues. Namely, it made footing unsteady in an already rather difficult to traverse pasture. It wasn’t necessarily dangerous, just uneven and a little precarious. It was already hard enough to catch a spooked horse on a bad day, but if anyone was to do it in these conditions, it was sure to be a formidable task.

“Listen, Sunny, I just need you to cooperate with me here, okay? I won’t hurt you. I promise, I just… just let me get you inside. And then you can go right back to whatever it was you were doing.” The woman cautiously approached the stallion, hands held pacifyingly flat in front of her, streaked and wet with mud. Her whole body was coated in the stuff, slippery and gritty and overall unpleasant in a way that was starting to be a little overwhelming. She would have to consult with Damien about using the barn’s heavy duty washing machine, because surely this much gunk would clog her own domestic one. She had no one but herself to blame for that, though, because somehow she had been stupid enough to think that this would be easy. That trying to help fix a broken, distrusting, and scared horse would be some simple task like in the movies, where everything went right and there was always a happy ending. But, boy, she had gotten quite the newsflash: movies were never real, not by a long shot.

 It didn’t take a genius to figure that one out. It was sort of what movies were for, right? They were a form of escapism where people could live out their fantasy dreams and pretend for a little whole. And this… this was the real world. However, Valerie had put in so much time and effort into training and correcting and trying to show this poor horse some love that it had been missing for the whole beginning of it’s life, but it just. Wasn’t. working. Trying to catch a horse on muddy, uneven ground was a dangerous task. For her clothes, her hair, and her own wellbeing as well as that of the horse. If he moved too quickly or hit a patch that was too slippery, he could incur an injury bad enough that… well, she didn’t want to think about it. And the same went for her.

“I just have to get you back to the barn. Then you can eat, yeah? Please?” Valerie took another step closer, but paused as one of her boots popped out of the mud with a wet *shlorp*, the stallion’s ears pricking towards her suddenly. She silently cursed the rain again, not only for getting her coated in mud from her slip and slide chase around the paddock but also for making any attempts to appear non-threatening as difficult as possible. Any movement she made was accompanied by an almost ridiculous sound effect that, while a bit comical to her and likely any of her other barn mates, managed to have the stallion backing away just far enough to be beyond her reach. It was a stalemate. And to think that all she had been trying to do was get him out of the pasture and inside to eat something before they worked on rebuilding his muscles again!

The woman wasn’t even sure that the horse *would* eat if she managed to get a hold of him. In the few weeks that he had been their new resident – a hopefully permanent addition to the farm, if all took a turn towards recovery rather than a fight – he had managed to gain a few pounds. Now, instead of being frightfully thin, he was merely a bit underweight.

Valerie internally scoffed at the thought of ‘underweight’ being any sort of acceptable, but Damien had assured her that they were making progress. She was making progress. And even if it didn’t seem like a lot, just a few pounds here and there, a couple of willing nuzzles for a scratch behind the ears, it was something. And she had to keep reminding herself of that, blinking away the frustrated tears gathering in the corners of her eyes. Any progress was good progress. And though poor Sunny – the nickname she had bestowed upon the hopeful stallion a few days after he had finally settled in – was still thin and not at all where she would like him to be at this point in the process, they had both come so far.

Besides, the barn had been working with a specialist on this case in particular due to the unique complexities of it. If she was harming him, the specialist would tell her. And even if he was still concerningly thin, his muscles had been filling out better in his back. Though it would likely never fully straighten out to breed standard, that didn’t matter to her. The countless hours of walking in circles and leading Sunny down trails at walks and trots to try and straighten the curve of his spine and relax the hyperflexion of his neck and shoulders had been worth something. The fact that he could bear to swallow his food, less restricted now that his head was seated farther from his chest, was a massive accomplishment. The way he willingly allowed a saddle pad to be laid on his back without so much as an ear flick. The knowledge that he didn’t spook as easily and trusted Valerie even just a little bit. It was progress. Good progress.

"There we go… nice and easy… good boy…” She approached him a step further, almost within reach but not making a move to grab for the lead rope dangling from his halter yet. And while this was the point he would have bolted again a few days ago… he remained still. Cautious? Yes, no doubt about it. But he had let her get close enough to hold him again. And even if it barely registered in Valerie’s fatigued and anxious mind, it was progress.

When the horse offered no further resistance, she carefully reached out and took the lead rope in her hands. And this time, he didn’t pull away, ears subtly relaxing into a more neutral position. She meant him no harm, and he had seen that. It had just taken a few hours of running around after him before she thought to go slowly, but she had been rushing. And if there was one thing everyone on the farm was insistent about, it was that patience was key to almost everything. She loathed to admit that they were right, but her mud caked clothing and semi-matted hair were proof that trying to rush through a regimented recovery schedule simply did not work. An hour long walk around the arena? Sure. That level of scheduling was fine, vague enough to be flexible but still structured enough to plan things out in a general sense. But ‘a walk at three, then a meal from four to four thirty, followed by walking for another hour’ was much too regimented.

That was how she had ended up in this situation, wasn’t it? She had been attempting to followed that timed out and precise schedule of working and feeding and rehabilitation, but horses did not work on easy time like that. She couldn’t schedule how he would react to being pulled from the pasture or how much he would feel alright with eating. She couldn’t control if he got spooked by one of the cats or another horse in a nearby pasture. She couldn’t stop him from trying to shake his halter and lead rope free and running to the other end of the field. Horses were animals with a certain amount of free will and choice, and trying to squeeze them into neat little boxes was what had gotten the poor horse surrendered in the first place.

“Why don’t we go get you some dinner? And then I’ll curry you off. So muddy…” Valerie chuckled, carefully and affectionately giving a few strokes to his muzzle. It wouldn’t be the last mistake she made while rehabilitating this horse, much less the last mistake she would make as an equestrian in general. But mistakes were a part of the learning process. She still had room to learn and grow and as long as she acknowledged that – took in her mistakes and the situations they caused and reflected on how to rectify them – she would be alright in the end.