Ed and I Pass the Peace

My horse Ed and I are at a new place in our relationship, thanks to the help of many healing practitioners including Ming and Candy of Reiki Fur Babies, Fabeku Fatumise of Sankofa Song and Sarah Tymeson of Healing-Horses .

We are a long way yet from riding down the trail together, but that’s okay.

Ed

If you’ve read about Ed before, you know that he was abused as a younger horse. You’ll know that he doesn’t much care for humans.

You will understand that I have torn my hair out and cried and given up and then come back and tried again.

I’ve questioned whether I was really helping or was just prolonging his emotional pain by keeping him here.

So, yesterday I walked up to the gate with treats in hand. He and his friends Oba and Mick came over and ate carrots out of my hand. I wondered if he’d stay and let me pet him over the gate.

When the treats were gone, he shooed Mick and Oba away. He let me pet his neck. He nibbled on my sweater. He licked my hands like a dog. We stood there for about a half hour together.

Most people with horses want to “do something” with their horses.

I was tempted to pull him out of the pasture, and scrape the mud off his back, rub his coat, condition his mane, brush out his tail.

I knew he didn’t want that. He wanted me to pet him on his neck, not as far as his ears and to just be there with him.

I was impatient, and not sure what to do. I am not good at standing still.

I said, “Ed, what are we doing?”

He said, “We’re passing the peace.”

We stood like that for quite a while, and then he asked me to sing to him.

I said “You don’t really want to hear me sing.”

Ed said, “Yes, I do.”

So I did. I sang some little song and after awhile he said, “Yeah, okay, you were right. You can stop.”

So I stopped and we stood together.  We remembered when we lived on a farm together and how much we liked that. He showed me his teeth. He did this little move that horses do when they want you to know that they are little. He smacked his teeth and stuck his tongue out.

He asked me to rub the other side of his neck.  He smelled my breath. He breathed on me. He let me touch his soft nose, and pick the guck out of his eyes.

I took out my phone and took pictures of him and he didn’t like that. He wanted to know what i was going to do with this pictures, and whether I was thinking of selling him. We’d tried that route before, twice.

I said “No, I want people to see what you look like now.”

He didn’t like that idea too much. He didn’t know who would care about Ed. He questioned my motives, and then he settled into my answer of “You’re my horse and I love you and other people care.”

I asked him what he does all day. Does he pass the peace with the horses here?

He said, “Yes, I pass the peace, and I spend time with Oba. She makes me happy.”

Oba is a two-year old strawberry roan who is a little too big for her britches.

And then it was time to go. I found a forgotten carrot on the ground and gave it to him. I told him I’d be out this week. He asked me to come back, and then he waited at the gate to see if I might change my mind, turn around and pet him some more.

Most people want to ride their horses, want to train their horses, want to exact a behavior from their horses. I have that urge too.  I’d like to be taking him around an arena. I’d love to see him jump.

But, if he was that kind of horse now, we’d be missing what we did yesterday.

I left feeling at peace. I left not worrying about Ed and whether he was in emotional pain. I left with our tenuous friendship intact and possibly even a little improved.

I stopped at the house to talk with the barn’s owner, Janie. She was excited to tell me that Ed was letting her touch him now. That he was coming up for a few pets at dinner time. Ed has lived here 11 months, and has decided that Janie is okay.

Some victories are quietly won.