Thoughts on an earthquake.

So there I was on Wednesday, in the middle of a fabulous lesson with my horse Simon and Kate. Simon was working really well, light and responsive, and I was loose and relaxed—which doesn’t happen often for me, so I try to celebrate it when it does! Suddenly, Simon took a sort of a stumbling misstep, as though all the air had been let out of his balloon at once. Kate’s response was, “Wow. Okay, let’s give him a break for a couple of minutes.” I glanced at the clock, checking in to see how long we had been working. It had been about 20 minutes, and the clock read about 1:40.

A few minutes later, we went back to work, and resumed a very good and otherwise uneventful lesson. When I dismounted, Simon was looking at both Kate and I with eyes wide open, staring out the door, and acting highly alert. It was CLEAR to both Kate and I that he was trying to tell us something, but we weren’t getting it.

It wasn’t until later that day, when I heard about the earthquake, that I put the pieces together. Simon felt the earthquake, even if we didn’t. He literally became ungrounded by the upheaval of energy beneath his feet, and was trying to check in with us to see if we felt it too. Kate was perceptive enough to realize that Simon’s sudden “quit” was very different from his somewhat lazy, looking for an excuse to not work so hard attitude.

This tells me a couple of things. One, it reminds me just how sensitive these large animals are, in ways that many folks are just learning to appreciate. Two, it makes me appreciate Kate as an instructor even more. Her ability and willingness to trust herself and her spiritual connection to the horses, to see what others don’t, assures me that she and CEGA are where I want to be—understanding my horses, and all horses, in ways that I never dreamed possible just a few years ago.

And lastly, it was a powerful reminder of the abilities that we ALL carry—horses and humans alike—to be able to let each other know how we’re doing, what’s important to us, to really communicate and connect with each other. It doesn’t matter that Kate and I didn’t feel the earthquake. What matters is that Kate could see that something unusual had happened, and she respected what Simon was trying to convey. If we empty our heads of extraneous distractions, and listen, REALLY listen to our horses, and practice this skill, the world will continue to open to us in the best ways possible.